Her Lucky Cowboy

by Jennifer Ryan

  His mother handed him a plate. His father took his seat at the bar beside his mother. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Dane savored the fried chicken. His favorite. He’d missed his mother’s cooking.

  “Dane.” His mother had a look in her eye. She wanted to ask him something but didn’t want to overstep. He could only guess what she wanted to discuss now.

  “About Dr. Bell. Maybe you want to settle in here and get things running the way you’d like before you pursue other interests.”

  “Are you warning me away from the doc? I thought all parents wanted their kids to grow up and date doctors.”

  His mother and father shared one of those looks that says so much between them but Dane couldn’t quite read. They knew something he didn’t.

  Interested in what they were hinting at, he asked, “Dad, why did you let me believe I’d hallucinated her all those years ago? You knew she lived next door, didn’t you?”

  “Not at first,” his father answered. “The scandal happened years ago, then died down, and I hadn’t really thought about it in years.”

  “What scandal?”

  “Mrs. Warwick’s son had an affair with Miss Kentucky not even two years after he married and had a daughter with his wife. Bell is the result of that one-night stand.”

  “Bell’s sister, Katherine, is married to a buddy of mine. I don’t know Tony well, just in passing at the rodeos. His bull is the one who took me down.”

  “Their small ranch and yours sandwich the Warwick land.”

  His father said, “yours.” It hit Dane all at once. The responsibility of owning and running a business on this land. The small herd of cattle his father kept, the horses in the stables, and everything else. All his now.

  He thought of the layout of the property in connection to the Warwick land that bordered it. The Warwicks had a huge chunk of prime grassland, a river snaking through most of it and onto his property. Mrs. Warwick didn’t have any animals on the land. Nothing but pristine wildlife. Untouched for decades, except for her tiny cabin house and vegetable gardens.

  If he remembered right, Tony Cortez and Katherine’s place was much smaller. Maybe a thousand acres. Not enough space to run even a medium-size operation. But maybe that would change with Tony’s bull doing so well in the championships. They’d get some major stud fees and possibly buy more land. Or run cattle on Katherine’s family property. Where Bell lived.

  “Dr. Bell’s father was, is, a big deal in the pharmaceutical industry. He’s quite smart and developed a couple of drugs that help save lives. The affair caused an uproar for him personally with his wife and in his family, but professionally, it was nothing more than a blip. Still, when he discovered the affair produced a child, he made what I will graciously call poor choices.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His wife refused to take the child. She had her own daughter and was trying to hold onto her marriage. She didn’t want another woman’s baby. Dr. Warwick didn’t want a reminder of what he’d done tearing his family apart. He didn’t want to have to explain the child at the company picnic.” The anger in his father’s voice surprised Dane. Family was everything. A child was a blessing. That Dr. and Mrs. Warwick didn’t want Bell pissed Dane off just as much as it did his father.

  “Why didn’t Bell’s mother keep her?”

  “The girl he got pregnant was all of nineteen with her whole life ahead of her. She wanted to marry a rich man who’d take care of her the rest of her life. She thought she’d found the perfect catch. She didn’t want a child, she wanted a means to an end. When she didn’t get it, she didn’t want to spend what she thought were the best years of her life struggling as a single mother. She handed the baby, Bell, over to Dr. Warwick. The very same day, he handed Bell over to his mother to raise.”

  “Why isn’t she ‘Dr. Warwick’?”

  “I don’t know. Not for sure. I can only guess they wouldn’t allow her to use the family name she’d tarnished.”

  “She didn’t tarnish anything. Being born is not her fault. Her father and mother had the affair. They did wrong. That has nothing to do with Bell.” Dane felt sick, thinking about Bell telling him her grandmother still wished she didn’t exist. Who could say such a thing about an innocent child?

  “That’s not how her family thinks.”

  “Their thinking is wrong. She’s an amazing person. She’s a genius.”

  “It runs in the family. Which is why, when I contacted the authorities about Bell being hidden away in that house, they didn’t take her away to someplace better.”

  “What are you talking about? When did this happen?”

  “Right after your accident. You insisted you saw a girl out there. In the middle of nowhere. If you really had seen someone, she had to have come from the Warwick spread. I went over there and talked to Mrs. Warwick, who insisted no such girl existed. Bell walked out of the chicken coop not knowing I was there. The fear on her face when she saw me unsettled me. Mrs. Warwick went off, threatening all kinds of crazy punishments, from making Bell recite the Bible ten times to taking away her books.”

  Dane’s stomach soured. His heart ached with sorrow. “I imagine for someone as smart as Bell, isolated from the world, her books were very important to her,” he said, thinking of a little girl locked away from everyone and everything.

  “Her grandmother threatened to take away her outside time. She was only allowed outside for two hours a day. Most of that time she spent working in the garden and cleaning out the chicken coop. Sometimes she disobeyed her grandmother and strayed further from the cabin to the river, where she saw you.

  “Anyway, the authorities checked out the house, her, and determined her basic needs were being met.”

  “Right. She had food, water, clothes, and a roof over her head.” Dane felt sick.

  “All those things. Including the education her grandfather started before his death and Bell continued after on her own, since her grandmother refused to send her to school. A social worker gave her a test to verify her grade level. She finished it in twenty minutes and didn’t miss a single answer. They determined she’d surpassed what she’d have learned in high school.”

  “So no one did anything about her being alone out there.”

  “No. The law says you have to provide for the child. You are not obligated to love them.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The social worker tried to take Bell’s hand. Bell flinched away. The social worker thought she’d been abused. Hit.”

  “Not the case though.” Dane hated where his mind went. The awkward way Bell hugged Ella and Gabe goodbye. The look on her face when she hugged him. Like she hadn’t known if she’d done it quite right. Even before that. The way she’d stared at him before she’d come to him. He hadn’t been able to decipher it then. Now he thought he got it. She’d wanted to hug him but hadn’t felt she deserved it. Like maybe doing so would be a very bad thing.

  “Bell had never been touched from the time she was able to do things for herself. Her grandmother told the social worker not to touch the demon. Human contact of any kind would only allow the evil in Bell to seep into them. Infect them. She’d felt it every time she’d had to care for Bell as a baby. The evil hadn’t been very strong, but it grew worse as Bell got older, so her grandmother stayed as far away from Bell as she could at all times.”

  The rush of rage made Dane fist his hands. “Holy hell. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I wish I were, son. The social worker couldn’t take Bell, but she did give Bell the information she needed to save herself.”

  “She told Bell that with her smarts she could go to college,” Dane guessed.

  “Bell didn’t have access to a computer, a phone, TV, any modern things. Just her books. The social worker told Mrs. Warwick that Bell should go to college and that she’d qualify for scholarships and grants. Mrs. Warwick couldn’t wait to get rid of her, so she allowed the social worker to help Bell get into col
lege.”

  “Bell said she still lives there.”

  “Maybe in some limited way. She spends most of her time at the hospital. I heard in town that Mrs. Warwick suffers from diabetes, so I imagine Bell checks on her often,” his mother said.

  “Why the hell would she do that after the way that woman treated her?”

  “Because up until she left for college, she’d only ever known that life.” The disgust and pity in his father’s eyes matched the jumbled feelings running through Dane. “That woman is the only person she knew until she walked onto a college campus at the age of fifteen.”

  Dane shook his head, unable to put words to everything he felt inside. He wanted to go to her, hug her close, and let her know she wasn’t something to be hidden away but a woman to be celebrated for all she’d overcome, all she’d endured, all she was today despite how her family wronged her. How could they treat another human being so poorly? Dane didn’t get it. He wanted to punish Mrs. Warwick for being a backward-thinking lunatic. He wanted to kill her father and mother for abandoning their own child.

  “Why didn’t you tell me she was real? All this time, I thought I imagined her.” He let his gaze fall to the tattoo on his arm. His father frowned down at it, too.

  “I felt sorry for her. I didn’t want her to be in any more trouble than it seemed she was in. I tried to help her, but I may have made things worse. At least in the short term. She seems to be doing well now.”

  “She’s a phenomenal doctor.”

  “Yes,” his father said, but his tone hid a deeper thought.

  “What else?”

  “Nothing. She’s really changed her life.”

  “But.”

  His father and mother shared another of those looks.

  “Just say it. I’m going to be seeing her a lot over the next couple months while my leg heals. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “People talk,” his mother said.

  “Yes, they love to run their mouths about things they know little about.” Dane hated gossip. More often than not, people spoke out their ass, with more embellishment than actual facts. He’d been the subject of a lot of gossip over the years. Look at his reputation. He’d earned about half of it, but the rest was nothing but pure speculation and jokes at his expense about the number of women he slept with and his sexual prowess. Some of it made him laugh. He was a guy, not superhuman. He hadn’t much cared until he’d had the very open and candid conversation with Bell in the hospital and seen the disapproving look in her eyes when she’d felt he dismissed all those women as nothing more than something he used for the night and discarded at the light of day. It wasn’t really like that, but he understood now why she’d turn her nose up at him. Her father had done that to her mother, and she’d suffered the consequences while they’d gone on with their lives like nothing happened. She thought that’s how Dane was, too. Not so. He liked the women he dated. If a baby came out of one of his affairs, he’d man up and take care of his business—his family.

  He liked kids. He loved spending time with Gillian’s brother every time he came home. He’d like to have kids of his own someday. A family to fill this too-empty house again.

  “She’s not like the other women you know.” Nice of his mother to be diplomatic.

  “Yes, she has a job that doesn’t require her to take someone’s order, smile, and shake her ass to get better tips. Come to think of it, she barely smiles at all. She’s all business. Heaven forbid you call her honey and forget that she’s a doctor.”

  “Dane, think of her background. Her father treated her mother with little regard for her feelings or the fact she was carrying his child. Bell’s whole family hid her away like some awful secret. She was treated like a demon in her own home, never touched or loved or cared for with any regard for her feelings or well-being.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I forgot to take my pain meds. My leg and ribs are killing me. I wasn’t thinking clearly and said something stupid.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m worried about you doing with her. You need to keep things with Dr. Bell on a professional level. She’s your doctor. She’ll take care of your injuries.”

  “I know she will. She’s great at her job. Probably the best in her field.”

  “Which hasn’t been easy for her.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Think about it. She went to college with kids who were four to seven years older than her, and she outperformed all of them. That didn’t exactly make her popular. She entered medical school with people far older and more experienced than her and showed them up, too. She’s never learned to interact with people in a normal way because her whole life has been an awkward interaction between her and people much older. She didn’t go to her high school prom, or even date a high school boy. When she went to college, she wasn’t old enough to drive, let alone go to a keg party at some frat house. Imagine what college must have been like for her after living the way she did with her grandmother. Imagine what her life is like now, trying to relate to people when she shares very few experiences with them because she either didn’t experience them at all or she did so at a much younger age than everyone else.”

  “The reason she’s so awkward around her sister.”

  “The reason she’s awkward with everyone, sweetheart.” His mother took the empty dishes to the sink. She turned back to face him. “If what Gabe hinted at is true and you like her, the best thing you can do is treat her with kindness. Understand where she came from and that she is not like any other woman you know. If you trifle with her, Dane, you could really hurt her.”

  He almost said he never trifled with women, but his mother would hear the lie even he couldn’t pull off.

  “That girl is all alone in this world. She may have people, but they are not her family,” his father said. “It disgusts me the way that man treated her and still calls himself a father. Her grandmother is a messed-up, mean-spirited woman who should never have had the privilege to raise a child. That she didn’t completely ruin that girl, well, I don’t know how she didn’t. She sure did try hard enough to make Bell believe she was no good.”

  “It’s not like you guys to warn me away from women, or even ask about who I’m interested in, so why do it with her?”

  His mother glanced at his dad. “Tell him.”

  His father sighed. “When I saw Bell come out of that chicken coop, she dropped the eggs onto her toes, completely terrified I’d come to kill her.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Because her grandmother yelled at her that she’d spread her evil, tainted you, and the devil had taken you.”

  Her grandmother should be shot for all her cruelty. “Ah jeez, are you serious?”

  “Bell thought you died because she touched you.”

  “I passed out,” he snapped, letting his anger show.

  “I told her that. Her grandmother spouted a bunch of lies about her being responsible. I will never forget the look on Bell’s face and the sadness that came into her eyes. She dropped to her knees in all those smashed eggs, clasped her hands together, rose her face to the sky, and begged God to take her instead.”

  Dane’s stomach tightened and sank along with his heart. His chest ached with every breath he took, and it had nothing to do with his cracked and bruised ribs.

  “As smart as she is, son, she was still just a little girl influenced by the only person in her life and the ones who refused to see her. Now she knows that she isn’t evil, but her past still makes her who she is now.”

  “Someone who is nothing like anyone I’ve ever known. Someone who ran into that arena despite the danger to herself to save my life. Someone to whom I owe every breath I take and every beat of my heart.”

  “You’ve thanked her for that. Gabe did so on behalf of the entire family as well. Our gratitude has no bounds,” his mother added. “We wanted you to be aware of who she really is. When you see her, be mindful of what we’ve told you. She deserves nothin
g but the best from this family.”

  A warning from his mother if ever he’d heard one. The thing was, he wanted to give Bell his best. He’d never felt he needed to do that with anyone else. He hoped he had it in him to do, say, and be his best for her, because no way he would keep things professional when this had always been personal—for both of them.

  Chapter 7

  Bell set her book aside and picked up her ringing cell phone. She checked the caller ID and sighed. Her answering service. Must be about one of her patients. This late at night, it couldn’t be good.

  “Hello.”

  “Dr. Bell, this is Claire, with AnMed. One of your patients insists on speaking with you. Mr. Bowden states you operated on him recently, and he’s reinjured his leg.”

  Bell’s heart stopped. If Dane did something to his leg, he could lose it. Fear washed through her. She leaned forward in her chair, ready to get in her Jeep and rush to his place to help him.

  “Is he on the line?”

  “No, Doctor. He left his number for you to call him back.”

  “Give it to me.” Bell wrote down the number and hung up on the answering service without so much as a goodbye or thank you. She dialed Dane’s number, stood, and dug her car keys out of her purse.

  “Hello.”

  “Dane, what’s happened? Did you fall?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Bell stopped in her tracks, her hand on her bedroom doorknob. “What’s the matter, then?”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Well, I am in some pain, but I took my meds as you instructed.”

  “I don’t understand. My answering service said you’d hurt your leg.”

  “Yeah, about that. I’m sorry. I lied.”

  Angry, she asked, “You lied?”

  “What are you doing?”

  Her confusion only grew with his evasiveness. “I’m not clear why you called me. Do you need medical help?”

  “I’m sure I do, but that’s not why I called.”

  Bell began to think maybe he did need his head examined. He made no sense. “Maybe you should tell me why you called so I understand what this is about.”