Love Me, Cowgirl (The 78th Copper Mountain Rodeo Book 4)

by Eve Gaddy

  “Wait, Sean. Will you stay?”

  “Sure, if you want me to.”

  “Can Sean look at the x-rays too?” she asked Wyatt.

  “As long as you okay it.”

  “He might as well. It will be easier than me trying to explain to him whatever you tell me.”

  Honey spent the next five minutes praying that she hadn’t broken or re-broken any bones. “How long will it be before we know the results?”

  “I’ll look at them right now.”

  Wyatt put the films up on a light box where they could all see. “Good news, Honey,” Wyatt said, looking at the first film. “Your wrist is healing nicely, and the fall didn’t cause any problems.”

  “What about my ankle?”

  “That’s the bad news,” Sean said. “You didn’t break any bones or tear any ligaments, but you did sprain it. You’ll be hobbling for a week or two. Since you can’t use crutches, you’ll have to use a cane. Do I need to tell you not to ride for a few days?” Wyatt asked her.

  “No?”

  “No. Riding with a bad hand is one thing but now you have a bad foot too.”

  “But all I’m doing is sitting on Halo. I don’t need my foot.”

  “I thought you weren’t riding your barrel horse yet? Didn’t you say she’d been having problems since the accident?”

  “She did at first but ever since Sean whis—worked with her she’s been fine.” She had a hard time not calling it what it was, but Sean had made it clear why the term bothered him. “I guess I should be happy I didn’t hurt my wrist, huh?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

  “You damn sure should be,” Sean said. “Now you can tell us what the hell you were doing climbing on a ladder in the middle of the night.”

  “It was a step stool, not a ladder. I was looking for a box of costume jewelry I wanted to use for a new tote bag.”

  “In the middle of the night.” He made it a statement. Wyatt looked like he was trying not to laugh.

  Feeling defensive, she raised her chin. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “And you thought climbing on a la—step stool seemed like a great idea. Did it occur to you to ask me to help you?”

  “It was the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  Wyatt laughed outright. Sean simply shook his head.

  “Do. Not. Ride,” Wyatt said to Honey as his parting shot.

  “I don’t know why he keeps telling me not to ride,” she grumbled on the way out. “I heard him the first time.”

  “We grew up in Marietta,” Sean said with a smartass smile. “We know cowgirls.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning Sean drove out to the Gallagher ranch. Dylan had called a meeting of all the brothers. No one, except Dylan, obviously, knew what this meeting was about.

  Sean and Wyatt were the first to arrive. They both got coffee and some of Glory’s homemade coffee cake that she’d left for them. Dylan was around somewhere, Sean figured, but he wasn’t in the kitchen.

  “When did you whisper Honey’s mare?” Wyatt asked.

  Sean nearly choked on his coffee. “I didn’t whisper her. She was jacked up from the accident. I just soothed her.”

  “Why do you let a tragedy that wasn’t even your fault stop you from doing what you’re meant to do?”

  “What I’m meant to do? I’m meant to be a doctor. Nothing’s stopping me from practicing medicine.”

  “You’re meant to help horses as much as people.”

  “Where is this coming from? Look, just because I help out with an occasional messed-up horse doesn’t mean I’m a fucking horse whisperer.”

  “But you are. Lucifer died a long time ago. Don’t you think it’s time you really let it go?”

  Sean stared at him. “What did you say?”

  “I know about Lucifer. I’ve known for years. So has Jack. So have Dylan and Glenna.” He poured himself another cup of coffee.

  “How did you—Did Dad tell you?”

  “You both did. I overheard you two talking, a few months after it happened. I told Jack. I didn’t know what to do. We didn’t tell the two little ones, but they figured out something bad had happened when they were older, so we told them the story.”

  “Why the hell did you feel the need to tell everyone? Might as well have taken out an ad in the paper.”

  “We’re your family. We needed to know. We wanted to help.”

  Sean snorted. “Whose idea was it to bombard me with equine head cases?”

  “After a few more months when you weren’t any better and still weren’t having much to do with horses, Dylan started finding needy horses.”

  “Dylan did.” Right.

  Wyatt shrugged. “Obviously, he had help. But the kid was right. Even though he didn’t know what had happened, he knew what you needed.”

  “It wasn’t your business to tell everyone.”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d say that. Which is why I never told you.”

  “So why are you telling me now?”

  “Because it’s time you accepted that you have a gift. It’s time you let the past go. Besides,” he added with a smirk, “we’re all sick of watching out for your delicate feelings.”

  Damn. His whole family knew the story and had for years. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he’d have to sort it out later.

  “Do you know why we’re here?” Jack asked Sean as he entered the kitchen.

  “Nope. Not a clue,” Sean said. “What about you, Wyatt?”

  “I don’t know any more than you two.”

  “What I do know,” Jack said, “is Glory left us coffee and one of her famous blueberry coffee cakes and I’m going to dig in.”

  “Eating for two?” Wyatt asked him.

  “Ha ha. Smartass,” Jack said, bringing his food to the table.

  “Hate to tell you, bro, but you’ve got a bit of a pudge going on.”

  Jack looked down at his stomach, which was as flat as it had ever been. “You’re a riot. I haven’t gained any weight since Maya got pregnant.”

  Sean exchanged a glance with Wyatt. “Sorry, Jack, my man, but Wyatt’s got you there.”

  “Damn it, I haven’t gained weight,” he insisted through a mouthful of coffee cake.

  “No, no, of course you haven’t,” Wyatt said soothingly.

  “You look great, Jack. For your age,” Sean added. “After all, everyone gets a little soft around the middle at your age.”

  Jack shot them the bird and went back to his coffee cake.

  Dylan came in, tossed his hat on the drainboard, washed his hands and poured himself a cup of coffee. All without saying a word.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked him.

  “What? Oh, I’m worried about one of the mares. Her labor isn’t progressing like it should.”

  “Then what are you doing in here?” Sean asked. “We can do this another time.”

  “No, Jesse’s keeping an eye on her. He’ll let me know if he needs me. That’s not why I asked you to come out.”

  “Asked? You didn’t ask,” Wyatt said. “You demanded. So what the hell is this about?”

  “It’s about Glenna.”

  “What about Glenna?” Jack asked.

  “What’s wrong? Is she okay?” Wyatt added.

  “Is she still in Argentina?” Sean asked. He’d never been in favor of her going there, but she hadn’t asked him, or any of them for advice.

  “That’s just it. I don’t know where she is or how she is. She sent me a letter a while back.” He opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out an envelope. “Postmarked Cordoba, Argentina.”

  Jack grabbed it and skimmed it while Sean and Wyatt asked Dylan for details.

  “This sounds like she’s fine,” Jack said, looking up from the letter. “Why doesn’t she use email like everyone else?”

  “She always said they didn’t have Internet access at the ranch, and it was too much trouble to go into town to get Wi-Fi.” Dylan snorted
. “Turns out that’s no more true than the rest of that letter. Maya asked me to find out if Glenna planned to come for the baby’s birth. Or to see everyone, including the new baby, afterward. Glenna hadn’t mentioned anything in her last letter.” He motioned to the letter Wyatt and Sean were looking at now. “So I decided to call.”

  “How did you get the number?”

  “I looked up the ranch on the Internet. They have a pretty sophisticated website. All this crap about the ranch being small to medium-sized? That was bullshit.”

  “Get to the point, Dylan.”

  “Glenna wasn’t there. She was fired three months ago. They have no idea where she went.”

  “Fired? Glenna was fired?”

  “Did they tell you why they let her go?”

  “Yeah. They think she embezzled upward of fifty thousand. Dollars, not pesos.”

  They all stared at him. Finally Wyatt voiced what they were all thinking. “Glenna is an embezzler? Bullshit. That’s total bullshit.”

  “Exactly. But someone convinced her employer she’d done it. So they fired her and are continuing to look for enough evidence to arrest her. Except they don’t know where she is.”

  “Goddamn it, why didn’t she tell us?” Jack said.

  “People don’t always talk to their families when they should,” Wyatt said with a pointed glance at Sean.

  “Have you done anything?” Sean asked Dylan. “To try to find her?”

  “Hell, I just found out yesterday.” Dylan scowled at all of them. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “We’ll have to hire a private detective,” Sean said. “Even if one of us could take the time off, we know nothing about searching for a missing person. She could be anywhere. Argentina, another country. Anywhere in the world. She could be—” He broke off, unwilling to voice the rest of his thoughts.

  “She could be missing,” Wyatt said. “Or hiding.”

  “Or dead,” Jack said grimly.

  Glenna. His little sister. The only girl among four brothers. Glenna could kick ass and smile doing it. She was tough. Strong. Honest to a fault. Except, apparently, when telling her family of her whereabouts.

  *

  Ten days later, Honey was getting dressed to go to Grey’s to meet Sean’s brother, Wyatt, and his date, when her doorbell rang. “Can you get that?” she called out to Sean.

  One good thing about being sidelined with an injury, she thought, was her legs weren’t covered in bruises. She did have a big bruise from her recent run-in with the step stool, but luckily it was high on her thigh. And though she still limped a little, her sprained ankle was much better. Well enough that she was going riding tomorrow.

  In the back of her closet she found a red dress with a fitted bodice and flared skirt that she’d put aside for a number of reasons, chief among them being that barrel racers always had banged-up legs. Adding a pair of red and white cowboy boots she hadn’t been able to resist, even though she’d thought she had nothing to go with them, she grabbed some earrings and went to see who was at the door.

  There sat Buster, talking to Sean. Damn it, she didn’t need Buster’s crap right now.

  “There’s my little girl. Aren’t you a pretty thing? I’ve been telling your boyfriend here that you look more like your mother every day.”

  Bringing out the big guns, are you? Buster never called her his “little girl” or compared her to her mother unless he was after something. “We’re about to leave. What do you want?”

  “Can’t I come see my only daughter without wanting something?”

  “You could, but you never do,” she told him, repeating her standard answer to the standard question. “What do you want?” The last time she’d seen him hadn’t been long after her accident, when her brothers were with her. At least she didn’t have to deal with all three of them. Separately, they were fine. Or her brothers were, anyway. Put all three together and the meeting degenerated into a fight.

  “We’re going to be late,” she announced with a glance at Sean. He hadn’t said anything. He was sitting on the couch, observing. Sean was looking at her father like… Like a doctor, she realized. Studying him as if he were a patient.

  She tried to look at her dad objectively. He didn’t look good. Though he was in his early fifties, he looked ten years older. He still had a full head of hair, graying at the temples. But his face was bloated, his nose red and his skin blotchy. He was killing himself, but he either couldn’t see it or he didn’t care.

  “I won’t keep you, then. Nice to see you, Sean.” He got up and walked to the door, turning once he got there. “Oh, before I forget, I have a little favor to ask you. There’s a job I could use some help with.”

  “What is it?” Along with the anger, she felt a sharp jab of pain. Why couldn’t her father ever simply want to see her? Why did he always have an agenda?

  “I’ve got a new lighting job, over in Livingston. Here’s the thing. My crew has already committed to another job, which I didn’t know when I accepted this one. So I wondered if you could help me out?”

  “When is it?”

  “Well, that’s the other thing. It’s tomorrow. I know it’s short notice and all—”

  Sean got up, interrupting him. “You do realize Honey has a broken arm, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s been a while now and I thought—”

  “You thought you’d ask her to climb around on a ladder stringing lights with a broken arm. You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course he is,” Honey said.

  “And on top of a broken wrist, you might have noticed she’s limping. She fell off a step stool and sprained her ankle. Do you really think it’s a good idea for her to be climbing a ladder?”

  Buster scowled at Sean. “Look here, Honey is my daughter and I’ll ask her what I please. It’s none of your damn business.”

  “Maybe not, but since Honey won’t explain things to you, someone has to.”

  “Honey climbs like a monkey,” Buster said, paying absolutely no attention to what Sean had just told him. “She won’t fall. Besides, she can take off that splint and that’ll give her two hands.”

  Honey thought Sean was going to explode. Before he did, she limped across the room as fast as she could to hustle her father out the door. “I can’t help you, Buster. Not this time.” She all but shoved him out the door, then closed it and turned to face Sean.

  “Not this time? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “I said that to get rid of him. It’s not worth fighting about.”

  “Meaning next time he asks you to do something you’ll do it. Did you tell him no because of your arm or because I was here?”

  “You had nothing to do with it. I don’t need you to run interference between my father and me, and I sure as hell don’t need you telling me what I can and can’t do.”

  “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. Although someone needs to.”

  Honey glared at him. “I had no idea you were such an arrogant ass.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been called worse. I’m worried about you, Honey.”

  “Don’t be. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

  “Yes, you are. Except where your father is concerned. Why do you let him treat you this way?”

  “Have you ever had to deal with an alcoholic? You obviously don’t get it.”

  “Get what? That he takes advantage of you and you let him?”

  “It’s not like that. He knows that if I’m here in town, he can call me. He knows I’ll come through for him. I always have.”

  “Come through for him? You do his job, Honey. You take care of any mess he makes. He doesn’t have to take responsibility for anything.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Bullshit. You know it is. Your brothers have stepped back. Why can’t you?”

  “You notice Kevin and Mick don’t live here,” she snapped. “There’s a reason they still live in Billings.”

  “And leave y
ou to deal with your father.”

  Honey fired up in defense of her brothers. “My brothers have done everything they could to help me and my father. They’ve asked me to move to Billings over and over. As for my father, they’ve paid for his rehab. Not once, not twice, but three times. And they’d do it again if he’d go. They’ve talked to him, threatened him, begged him to quit drinking. All three of us have. But he won’t. So they finally washed their hands of him. I can’t honestly blame them.”

  “Yet you haven’t done the same.”

  “I keep hoping he’ll quit. He wasn’t always this way. He’s just… weak.” Honey continued earnestly. “There are reasons why I can’t desert him. Not totally. Reasons I can’t talk about.”

  “Why can’t you talk about them?”

  “Because that’s not what you do with someone you’re having a temporary affair with.”

  His eyes narrowed, and she could see his anger in the lines of his face. “Thanks for clearing that up. I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on.”

  She felt like a jerk. Sean was right about her father, and she knew it. Which only pissed her off more. She turned on her heel, limped into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What’s with you and Honey?” Wyatt asked Sean when they stepped up to the bar to get drinks.

  “Nothing.” They’d been late to meet Wyatt and his date, but they were lucky to have gotten to Grey’s at all. Honey had stayed in her bedroom for half an hour after their argument. Sean left her alone, figuring she’d either get over it or she wouldn’t. The one thing he wouldn’t do, though, was apologize for saying something she needed to hear. Consequently, they hadn’t spoken since they left her apartment.

  “Yeah? Then why are the two of you putting off sub-zero chills?”

  He shrugged and glanced back at the table where they’d left the girls. “We had an argument.” And she’d let him know his place, in no uncertain words. He kept hearing her say, Because that’s not what you do with someone you’re having a temporary affair with.

  “No shit?” he asked sarcastically. “Must have been a hell of an argument.” Wyatt tried to signal the bartender again, but the place was packed.