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To Love A Cowboy

Page 18

by Barbara Ankrum


  “Oh, God, Evan—oh, my God” was all Rafe could say. Evan could feel him shaking and smell the sharp tang of his sweat.

  “I’m s-sorry,” he cried into Rafe’s shirt. “I w-was trying t-to help that c-calf, and—”

  Rafe grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back to look at him. His face was angry and red. “Do you realize you almost got yourself killed?” he practically shouted.

  Evan stared at him in horror.

  “If I hadn’t found you...if I hadn’t gotten here in time—”

  “I’m s-sorry, R-Rafe.”

  “I told you not to wander off, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you to always keep me in sight? That was the rule, Evan. What were you thinking, going off like that on your own?”

  “I—”

  Pedro crashed through the bushes behind Rafe, holding his rifle out straight. He stopped dead at the sight of Evan and Rafe. Gus came next. When he saw Evan, he braced his hands on his knees and bent over, breathing hard.

  Evan felt sick to his stomach. Rafe was still looking at him, waiting for an answer. But he couldn’t talk. Instead, he squirmed away from Rafe’s angry hands and ran past Gus.

  “Evan!” Rafe called, but he was gone.

  “I’ll get him,” Gus said.

  Rafe covered his face with his hand. “Take him home, Gus. Take him back to the ranch in the truck.”

  “Sure. He’s gonna be fine, Rafe.” He looked down at the dead cat. “Thank God you got here in time.”

  Rafe couldn’t answer. He kept thinking about two hundred pounds of claw, muscle and fur chasing Evan down like he was a rabbit. He squeezed his eyes shut. Sweet Jesus. What if—?

  Ten feet back, the calf—still entangled in the wire—bawled miserably. Rafe started automatically toward it, but Pedro stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Jefe. I’ll do it. And then I will look for Tampico, si? He’s run off somewhere.”

  Rafe nodded and got to his feet. His knees were shaking, and his legs felt like gelatin.

  Pedro didn’t leave. “It was God’s will that you found him,” he said, in an attempt at comfort. “It was not his day to die, no?”

  Rafe didn’t feel comforted as he bent down and picked up his rifle. Leaving Pedro behind him, he forced his legs to move in the direction of the camp. He was to blame for this. Not God. Not Evan. The boy had been his responsibility, and he’d failed him. What had he been thinking about? Carly...the ranch...his own bloody future?

  And had he thought the boy wasn’t scared enough, that he had to yell at him? He remembered the look of betrayal on Evan’s face. Why hadn’t he just held him? Why hadn’t he been able to say that if he lost him it would have killed him, too?

  His own father’s drunken voice rang in his ears: What’s the matter with you, boy? You’re just like your mama. Never be no good to nobody. You’re too damned selfish!

  Well, what the hell? he thought grimly. His old man had been right about something after all.

  He caught Bogus’s reins and shoved his rifle back in its boot. Mounting up, he pointed the horse toward the house and kicked it into a full, lathering gallop.

  Carly was waiting on the porch when Rafe and Bogus returned. For the past half mile, she’d watched him slow the animal to a walk to cool it down. By the time he reached the yard, she could see it was going to be bad. For once, she was grateful to have the crutches for support. Her legs were still shaking.

  Rafe dismounted and tied the horse to the hitching rail near the house. He started up the steps, stopping when he’d reached her eye level, his face grim. “Carly, I’m...I’m so sorry.”

  “Rafe—”

  His voice was haunted. “I don’t know how the hell it happened. One minute he was right there, and the next—”

  “I know.” Her voice quivered with emotion she had yet to get under control.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s inside resting. He’ll be okay.”

  Rafe squeezed his eyes shut. “I’d give anything if I could take that moment back. You trusted me with him, and what did I do? I—”

  “You saved his life,” she finished.

  His eyes, clouded by self-recrimination, lifted to hers. “I almost got him killed.”

  “You told him to stay with you. Over and over. I heard you.”

  Rafe turned on his heel and sent a fist crashing into the porch upright. “He’s eight, Carly. It was my job to watch him. I was going after a cow and, hell, I don’t know...I forgot about him. I was thinking about a million other things—the ranch, the loan...you.”

  “Rafe, don’t do this to yourself,” she said, touching his shoulder. He Hinched and moved away, unwilling to allow her to comfort him.

  “It was my fault, Carly, not his. Mine. I told you I’d screw up—I warned you I’d make a lousy father.”

  “Do you think you’re the first father to lose track of his son? Do you think Evan’s the first boy to disobey a direct order? Or that I haven’t messed up now and then as a mother? Rafe, I could say the same about the car accident. I put his life in jeopardy driving through that storm. He could have been killed. We both could have. If only I’d confirmed those reservations, or if I’d pulled into the far lane...”

  She rubbed a hand across her forehead. “What I’m trying to say is that life is unpredictable. You saved him. If you hadn’t been there to shoot that cat—God, I don’t even want to think—”

  “That’s just it, Carly. I knew that cat was out there. He’s been harassing my cattle for weeks, now. I never should have taken Evan out on that range and risked his life. I just—It never occurred to me that...” He broke off, turning away from her.

  Fresh tears stung her eyes. She knew only too well what he was feeling. Gus’s retelling of the incident had left her shaken to the core. She could have blamed Rafe, but she chose not to, because she knew he’d die before he’d intentionally let anything happen to Evan. And seeing him this way only confirmed that.

  “They say what doesn’t destroy us, makes us stronger,” she told him. “Evan learned a valuable lesson out there today. Thank God you were there to see that he survived it.”

  Rafe shook his head, unconsolable. “And I yelled at him. Jeez, there he was, shaking like a leaf, and what do I do? You should’ve seen the look on his face.”

  She grabbed his arm and forced him to look at her. “Gus told me everything, Rafe. In your shoes, I would have reacted the same way. He was wrong to wander off like that. It almost cost him his life. He’s never faced such a consequence before. It shook him up. Badly. And yes,” she admitted, “I’m sorry it happened. And I know you are, too. I wish we could protect Evan from all the bad things that happen in the world. But short of keeping him in a plastic bubble for life, that’s just not possible. Rafe, look at me.”

  Reluctantly he did.

  “Thank you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. “Thank you for being there and saving his life.”

  He buried his face in her hair, and inhaled deeply. “Don’t,” he murmured. “Don’t thank me.”

  She nodded against his ear. “It’s over.” But she knew it wasn’t. Rafe’s confidence as a father was too fresh, too raw, to absorb this sort of a blow. Nothing she could say would repair it. It would take Evan to heal it.

  “Why don’t you go inside? He’s waiting for you.”

  Rafe nodded and pulled away from Carly, knowing that if he didn’t, he’d do something he regretted—like kiss her, or drag her to his room and bury himself inside her until the gnawing fear disappeared.

  Instead, he left her standing alone on the porch, knowing that there were more important needs to be met than his own.

  Inside, Carly had built a fire in the river-rock fireplace. The scent of pinon eased him as he moved toward the small boy curled up on the couch watching a cartoon.

  He’d been crying. His face was red and his nose looked like Rudolph’s. Through a sweep of lashes, he looked up at Rafe, wary as a wolf cub in a bear�
�s den. Strange, Rafe thought, but it was like looking at a mirror image of himself.

  “I’m sorry, Rafe,” he said in a small voice, tears of shame reforming in his eyes.

  “Me too.”

  “I didn’t mean to go off like that. I was only tryin’ to help that calf.”

  The cushions gave as Rafe sat down beside Evan. “I know. I didn’t mean to yell at you like I did. I was just real...scared.”

  “You were?”

  Rafe let out a breath of laughter, and he bent his head down toward Evan. “Yeah, see the gray hairs you just gave me?”

  Evan’s mouth quivered at the corners. “I don’t see any gray hairs.”

  “Just wait. You will.” Regarding his son with a shake of his head, Rafe explained, “It’s my job to protect you Evan; ’cause I’m your dad. When I yelled at you, it was only because I was so relieved that you were okay. If anything had happened to you, Ev...I—”

  Evan blinked at the moisture in his eyes. “Then you—you still want to be my dad?”

  A knot fisted in Rafe’s throat. “Are you kidding? C’mere, son,” he said, and welcomed his boy into his embrace.

  The next few days slid by too quickly for Carly. The branding took another day, and with the big cat gone, Rafe allowed Evan a second chance at the job. He shone brightly, following every rule to the letter. He even managed to rope a cow. When the two of them came back from the long day’s work, Evan couldn’t stop talking until Carly had heard more than she ever wanted to know about the process of branding, marking and castrating cattle.

  But it was the look on Rafe’s face that really touched her. Pride, love—that indefinable emotion a parent feels when he looks at his child. The fire he and Evan had walked through had forged a bond between them that might otherwise have taken years to build. Whatever obstacles lay before them, Carly knew that somehow they’d surmount them—together.

  Rafe made no attempt to hide the fact that he was still practicing on Red-Eye. Neither of them mentioned the nasty bruise that appeared on his cheek, or the way his limp grew more pronounced as the days passed. The topic was off-limits to Carly.

  She thought that the sound of wind buffeting the windows of her room and whistling into the cracks of the house had awakened her. But as she sat up straight in bed, a dark figure loomed over her.

  A scream hovered in her throat, but Rafe’s urgent whisper quickly cut off the sound. “Shhhh, Carly, it’s me.”

  She blinked in the darkness and, from the smell, dimly wondered if a horse had wandered into her room with him. She reached for the lamp switch and nearly gasped when she saw him. He was naked from the waist up, his face and torso were smudged with dirt and blood, his tousled hair was littered with straw. Good Lord! “Rafe, wha—?”

  “I need your help. The mare’s foaling. She’s having trouble.”

  Carly rubbed her eyes. “Shouldn’t you call the vet?”

  “Phone lines are down somewhere with this wind. Pedro and Gus are gone for the night. Will you help me?”

  “Yes,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Get dressed. I’ll meet you in the barn.”

  Carly found him there a few minutes later, leaning over the prostrate mare. She wasn’t moving, but Carly could see contractions rippling her belly, and the odd, faraway look of hopelessness in her huge brown eyes.

  Setting aside her crutches, Carly knelt down near her head, stroking her gently. Her breathing was labored and wheezing. “How long has she been like this?”

  “I checked her at ten and she was on her feet,” he said. “Something told me to come out here again at one, and she was on her side.”

  Carly glanced at her watch. It was 3:45 a.m. “Is that long for a horse?”

  “When the foal is turned wrong, it is,” he answered plunging his arm into a bucket filled with a strong-smelling antiseptic. Outside, the wind battered the side of the barn, making it moan.

  “I’ve been trying to turn it for the last two hours with no luck. I need an extra hand, or I’m gonna lose both of them.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  Rafe stretched out behind the mare. “It’s a back presentation, but the foal’s head’s pulled around. It’ll break the mother’s pelvis if I can’t get the head rotated back into position.” He slipped the noose of a small rope around the fingers of his left hand and gently eased it into the mare’s birth canal. “I’ve got to—” he gasped with exertion “—loop it around the foal’s jaw...and...” A contraction tugged at the mare’s belly, and Rafe winced as his arm took the full force of it. Every muscle in his body was straining.

  “I’ve gotta pull the head around. When I get it...you take the end of this rope and—”

  Rafe gasped, mouth open in concentration as he searched for the small jaw of the foal. Carly watched helplessly, wishing there was something more she could do.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. “I can’t...get... C’mon, mama, let me have her—”

  Carly lowered herself to the straw behind him and took her position, in case he managed to get the rope where he wanted it. It seemed like hours before he did, though only a few more minutes passed.

  “Okay—” he gasped. “Now...tug gently...gentle pressure on that rope as I...pull the head around.”

  She pulled back firmly and felt the rope give.

  “Keep going...keep going—Stop!” Rafe struggled some more to slip the rope around behind the foal’s ears before he removed his arm and joined Carly on the rope. Breathing like a spent marathoner, Rafe watched the foal’s muzzle, eyes and ears appear. The rest of the foal came easily, sliding onto the blood-spotted straw like a slick package.

  It was a perfect little filly, all legs and blazes and stubby tail covered with the membrane of birth. But it took only moments for Rafe to realize that it lay still and glassy-eyed, staring sightlessly at the barn wall. The wind outside howled, and Carly’s heart stuttered to a stop. It couldn’t be dead. Not after all this!

  “Rafe! She’s not breathing!”

  He cleared the mucous from the foal’s nose and mouth and blew into its nostrils hard. Two quick pumps on her chest, and the foal jerked to life on an inhalation. The foal’s long, spindly legs moved in the hay, and she blinked up at Rafe. Then, because the mare made no movement toward her baby, he dragged her up toward its mother’s muzzle.

  The spent mare actually lifted her head at the scent of the baby and sniffed it with curiosity. Then, with long, instinctive strokes from her tongue, she massaged the newborn foal as nature intended.

  Rafe sat back on his heels, still breathing hard. The smile of victory he sent Carly betrayed none of his exhaustion.

  Carly threw her head back and laughed in exhilaration. Rafe joined her, falling over in the straw and sprawling across it. Carly fell beside him and rolled toward him, still buzzing and enthralled by what they’d just done together.

  She leaned on her elbows in the straw beside him. “You were great.”

  “Damn, I was good, wasn’t I?” He chuckled with feigned machismo.

  “Incredible,” she agreed. “How did you know how to do that?”

  Rafe sighed. “Been around horses my whole life. I’ve watched a few of these. I got lucky. I almost couldn’t hook that jaw.”

  “But you did.” Her voice was awe-filled. “You’re amazing.”

  He slid a look at her and grinned. “I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for not getting squeamish on me.”

  “Squeamish? Humph.” She chuckled. “I’ve never been accused of that. And I might remind you that I’ve been through this myself,” she reminded him. “So I did have some empathy for the poor mare.”

  Rafe’s gaze drifted over her face lazily, as if, one by one, he were memorizing each feature. “I hope,” he murmured, “you had an easier time of it than she did.” But of course, he wouldn’t know that, Carly thought. He’d missed the birth of his son. She swallowed hard, knowing that was another thing she could never give back to him. She forced a pla
yful grin. “Compared to this one? Evan was a walk in the park. Well, maybe not a walk. A jog.”

  He grinned.

  “Or a full-out sprint.” She sighed. “Anyway, my doctor said I was ‘built for babies.’”

  His eyes, as deep a blue as the sky, probed into hers. “Why didn’t you have more?”

  She looked down at the straw. “It just...never happenned.”

  “You didn’t try?” he asked, still watching her closely.

  “We didn’t not try,” she hedged, feeling uncomfortable with the whole topic. “It’s just that I never...conceived.”

  Rafe’s mouth lifted in a tight smile, and he lurched to his feet. “God, I’m a mess.” He headed for the bucket filled with soap and water and cleaned the muck of the ordeal off him. When he’d finished toweling himself off, he reached a hand down to Carly and dragged her to her feet.

  Momentum carried her into his naked torso, and she stopped herself with her palms against his chest. For a moment, neither of them moved. Carly’s heart thudded in her ears so loudly, she wondered if he could hear it. Beneath her palm, she could feel his heart pounding, too. His gaze drifted from her eyes down to her mouth and back again.

  She returned the favor. “Hey, you clean up real good, Kellard.”

  “Yeah?” His amused gaze locked with hers.

  “Yeah,” she said, making no effort to disengage her hips from his. She waggled one eyebrow. “Say, did I ever tell you about my veterinarian fantasy?”

  “Oh-oh,” he said.

  “Mmmm... See, there’s a barn involved. And hay. Lots of hay.”

  Rafe eyes darkened as she ran a finger down his bare torso. “Aha. And in this fantasy, who are you?”

  “Another veterinarian, of course.” She laughed and raised up on her toes and kissed him fully on the mouth, threading her fingers behind his neck and pulling him toward her.

  Balance lost, they shrieked with laughter as they fell atop one another on a soft pile of clean straw there in the birthing stall. They rolled over, locked in a mirthful, lustful kiss that turned from playful to hungry in a heartbeat. Rafe’s tongue demanded reply as the kiss deepened and shifted in intent. Carly answered willingly, melting into him like heated candle dip, aching for this. How she’d missed the feel of his mouth on hers—his hands against her skin.

 

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