The Horseman's Bride

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Not till we get to the road. Cherokee an’ me’ll walk faster’n you do, so I’ll walk with you.”

  Except for the week or so he’d spent in a rehab hospital in Texas, he hadn’t walked as far as the road in more than five months. The distance seemed endless, though, in reality it was less than a quarter mile.

  “Are you gonna have horses here?” Elly asked, patiently matching her pace to his.

  “No.”

  “Why not? You gots plenty of room.”

  “Because—” His throat tightened. He hadn’t said the words out loud, though they’d been in his mind every day since he’d awakened from the first of numerous surgeries. Like thoughts of Shay, they’d taunted him, tormented him, left him feeling hopeless and helpless and so damn useless.

  Swallowing hard, he forced them out, strained, hateful, sorry. “I can’t work with horses anymore.”

  “Oh, ‘cause of you can’t walk right and your hand?” She tilted her head back to look at him. “I’m real sorry. Daddy says you trained Buck. He says you could sweettalk any horse in the world into doing what you want. I’d’a liked to seen that.”

  Easy was surprised her daddy even allowed his name spoken in his house. He was even more surprised that Guthrie had anything at all good to say about him. Of course, he would watch what he said in front of his kids. He would save his true sentiments for when they weren’t around.

  Finally, after what seemed—and felt—like an eternity, they reached the gravel road. Once again he offered to lift Elly onto the pony, but she led him to the fence and climbed on that way. Appreciative of her resourcefulness, he backed off a few feet to give a little advice as politely as he could manage. “You shouldn’t have come here without your mother’s permission.”

  “She wouldn’t give it. I’m not allowed to ride nowhere by myself, in case I fall off and Cherokee gets scared and runs away.” She snorted. “Like I’m gonna fall off. I’m a good rider. Daddy says I’m a natural.”

  “But you can’t come back without asking.”

  Her sigh was loud and forceful for such a little kid, then she grinned. “All right. I’ll ask next time. See ya.”

  He hoped not. He hoped there was never a next time.

  The road ran straight from his house to Guthrie’s. By the time she reached the driveway, she and the pony were little more than an indistinguishable blur that turned off the road, then disappeared.

  Slowly he turned back toward his own house. The distance looked impossible. Gritting his teeth, he took it the way he’d taken the last five months—one step at a time. He had to stop a time or two to catch his breath, and by the time he reached the front door, he was sweating with the strain. He didn’t stop, though. He went inside, into the bathroom and stripped down for a shower.

  The hot spray helped. So would the pills he took after he dried off. Once he got some food in his stomach, he just might feel more or less normal.

  Even, he thought as he looked at himself, if he didn’t look it.

  Normally he avoided mirrors. He only had to see the way others looked at him to know what they saw—other adults, not kids who didn’t know better. This morning, though, he looked—looked hard.

  The scar that marked his face wasn’t hideous. The plastic surgeon who’d stitched him up had been pretty damn proud of his results. The one that started on his jaw and ended below his collarbone wasn’t awful, either. The surgical scars were too neat to care about, though the heavier scarring on his hip was ugly—just not as ugly as the limp. As for his hand, hell, if that were his only problem, he could keep it hidden. That, he had discovered, was what pockets were for.

  None of the souvenirs of the accident, taken individually, were a big deal. But all of them together... Together they were more than he wanted to deal with. They generated more pity, more shock, than he could handle. Even Shay who had loved him—him, not his body, not his face—hadn’t been able to hide her revulsion when she’d seen the way he walked. He’d glimpsed the look on her face before she’d realized he was watching her. And she hadn’t even seen his hand.

  He raised it now, looking at the reflection for a long time before focusing on the real thing. The scarring was extensive, the rounded bumps where fingers should have been obscene. The doctors had told him how fortunate they were to have saved his thumb and forefinger, how lucky he was.

  Lucky. They’d chopped off parts of his body and told him he was lucky. They’d left him—a right-handed man, a roper, a horse trainer—two mutilated, barely functional fingers where once he’d had five strong, flexible, capable ones, and told him he should be grateful.

  What did he have to be grateful for? Living?

  There were times when he thought he’d be better off dead.

  There were times when he thought everyone else would be better off if he were dead.

  And there were times when he knew it.

  Chapter 3

  On Saturday morning, the temperature had already topped eighty degrees by nine o’clock. Shay lay in bed, watching the curtains flutter in the breeze and considered what to do with her day off. She could go shopping, if she could think of anything she needed. A drive into Tulsa to catch a movie at one of their deluxe, ultracomfy theaters would blow four hours or so. If she didn’t mind being asked to help out with the gardening, she could visit her folks. If she didn’t mind answering questions about Easy, she could visit the Harrises.

  Or she could stay here in bed all day and be extraordinarily lazy. She hadn’t done that ..heavens, in more years than she could count, and she’d never done it alone.

  Frowning, she backed away from the thought. It could only lead to dangerous territory, to old memories best left tucked away—but never forgotten. She feared if she lived to be eighty, she would never forget.

  She sat up, brushed her hair back and was faintly surprised to feel bare skin across her shoulders. She’d worn her hair the same way her entire life—long and heavy and styled just so—until six weeks ago. After hearing about Easy’s accident in June, she’d spent weeks trying to locate him, to find out how he was, to find out, she admitted with painful honesty, if he might need or want her. She’d made countless calls—to the trooper who’d investigated the accident, the Albuquerque hospital that had treated him initially, the Houston hospital and the rehabilitation facility he’d been transferred to, to every Rafferty within two hundred miles of Houston and every old rodeo buddy she could locate, pleading for information. Told by the last hospital that they would forward a letter, she’d written note after note, but never found the courage to send them.

  And finally she’d given up. She’d stopped talking about him, stopped looking for him, stopped acknowledging—outside the privacy of her own sorrow-filled thoughts—that he existed. She’d renewed her acquaintance with Reese Barnett, cut off the long hair Easy had always liked and started living her life for herself. But even after six weeks, it still surprised her that the hair was gone. And that Easy was back. And that she’d ever thought she might have a chance in hell of living her life for herself.

  After showering, she finger combed her hair to give it that seductive, tousled, just-crawled-out-of-bed look and dressed in her shortest denim skirt and her snuggest white tank top. She did her makeup carefully, spritzed her cologne liberally, added earrings, a necklace and an armful of bracelets. She told herself as she locked the front door behind her that she would simply go wherever the spirit led her—and that the spirit most definitely would not lead her nine and a half miles west of Heartbreak

  Her first stop was the café, where Geraldine gave her a head-to-toe disapproving look. “Child, you could use about six inches on that skirt.”

  Shay was used to the criticism and paid it no mind. “And then it would look like every other skirt in town,” she remarked as she sniffed the turkey roasting in the oven. “What would be the fun of that?”

  “You know, when cooler weather gets here, you’re gonna have to give up those outfits for real clothes. Then we’l
l have to get you a lime-green sign with rotating lights and a loudspeaker that hollers, ‘Hey, look at me!’ It would serve the same purpose.”

  “When cooler weather gets here, maybe I’ll just buy a long fur coat and wear nothing at all,” Shay retorted on her way to the dining room.

  Only a couple of guests remained from breakfast, and Amalia was chatting with one of them. Shay picked up the coffeepot and sashayed across the room to chat with the other.

  Reese looked up from his newspaper and gave her the same sort of all-encompassing look that Geraldine had subjected her to, but with a whole different appreciation in his dark eyes. “Ah, Shay, you’re a cruel woman. You tell me you can’t see me anymore, then you show up looking like this.”

  She refilled his cup, then slid onto the bench opposite him. “Refresh my memory. Why can’t I see you anymore?”

  “Because Rafferty’s back.”

  “Uh-huh. And—?”

  “And you don’t feel right leading me on, making me think you might feel something for me when you aren’t going to get over him in a million years.”

  Her good mood flattened. “Gee, thanks for the encouraging words.”

  “Sweetheart, if I could make you forget him, I would.”

  “And who are you trying to forget?”

  For a moment he looked startled, then his expression went totally blank. “No one,” he said, and she knew he lied. “Nobody at all.”

  “Right.” She smiled tightly. “We’re a fine pair, Reese. Two capable, intelligent, quite attractive people who can’t get free of our pasts long enough to find our futures.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Keep trying.”

  “You’ve already broken most of the available hearts in the county.”

  “Well, there are seventy-six more counties out there.” She punctuated the words with another brittle smile. “If that doesn’t do it, hell, there’s always Texas.”

  He stirred a packet of sugar into his coffee, then paid great attention to stirring it as he said, “Call me crazy, but rather than ruin all the single men in the state for any other woman, why don’t you try with Rafferty?”

  The smile froze, then slipped away, and her voice became harsh. “Easy doesn’t want me.”

  “Has he told you that?”

  No matter how badly I treated you, you kept coming back for more. You always were pathetic that way.

  Her fingers began to tremble, and she pressed them hard against the tabletop to stop them. “Many times.” In many ways.

  “So change his mind. You’re certainly dressed for it.”

  “You’re suggesting that I seduce him.” The idea was ludicrous, impossible—and too damn appealing Whatever other problems they’d had, the sex had always been incredible. From the first time to the last, she had been enthralled—No, she’d been in love. Losing him had almost killed her. Living without him had been a daily struggle—was still a struggle. And Reese was proposing that she deliberately put herself through it all again.

  “I’m suggesting that you remind him of what he lost. That you turn your considerable charms on the man you really want instead of some poor sap who doesn’t realize he’s nothing more than a temporary substitute until it’s too late.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said flatly, ignoring the devilish little voice in her head that was asking, Why not? It wasn’t as easy to ignore Reese’s deep, quiet voice asking the same question.

  “Why not? Because you might get hurt again?” He shook his head. “Honey, you’ve been hurting so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to not hurt.”

  “If this is such a great idea, why don’t you use it? Why don’t you go after this woman you want?”

  “Because she belongs to someone else.”

  He looked so bleak when he answered that she directed her gaze away to the street outside. Saturdays were errand days around Heartbreak. Everywhere she looked, she saw people she knew—and all of them had somebody. All of them but her and Reese. At least her somebody wasn’t married to another woman.

  But he didn’t want her. He’d made that clear.

  Finally she swung her gaze back to Reese. “I’d better go before they put me to work.”

  “Try not to walk down the street dressed like that. You’ll surely cause a couple of car crashes and put me to work.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m parked in the alley out back. I’ll slither out that way. See you.”

  She reached her car without seeing anyone, not even Geraldine, buckled up and pulled out of the alley before she scoffed. Seduce Easy. Right. She would have to be crazy to even consider it. Masochistic. A damn fool. Only an idiot man, thinking with some part of his anatomy other than his brain, could ever come up with an idea so outrageous.

  “Frankly,” Olivia said a half hour later when Shay repeated the suggestion to her, “I think it’s a good idea.”

  Shay stared at her. “A good idea?” she echoed, her voice little more than a horrified squeak.

  “Why not? You were in love with him. He was in love with you. You obviously still have very strong feelings for him, and I suspect he still has feelings for you. Why else would he come back here?”

  “Because he wanted to be left alone.”

  “Left alone?” Olivia repeated skeptically. “After a horrific accident that destroys his future, he comes back to live within a few miles of his best friend and his best girl, and you really believe he wants to be left alone?”

  “Yes! I saw him. I talked to him. I saw—” She broke off abruptly and stared across the yard to where the twins were playing with their puppy.

  “You saw what, Shay?”

  The gentle tone of her friend’s voice made her feel vulnerable. Shaky. Conversely, the gaze she fixed on Olivia was hard and steady. “I saw the way he looked at me. As if he couldn’t bear the sight of me.”

  “Or maybe he couldn’t bear to look at what he’d lost.”

  What he’d lost. Reese had used the same phrase, and she’d let it slide. This time she didn’t. “He didn’t lose me, Magnolia. He left me in a dirty little motel in Montana with nothing but my clothes and a wad of cash on the nightstand, like some whore he was paying for her services. Before he’d even gotten out of the parking lot, he’d replaced me with a pretty little black-haired barrel racer named Clarissa. She wasn’t his first affair, and I’m sure she wasn’t the last.”

  For a long time the words seemed to hang in the air between them, ugly and angry and thick with tears that she would be damned if she would cry. Then a stiff wind blew the length of the porch, literally clearing the air. She took a tentative breath, then a deeper one, and willed the moisture in her eyes to dry up—willed her heart to dry up. It would be better to feel nothing at all than to live with this constant ache.

  “I’m sorry,” Olivia said quietly.

  Shay leaned forward, picked an apple from the basket at her friend’s feet and examined it before taking a bite. “It’s not your fault, Magnolia. You didn’t make him a bastard, and you didn’t make me a fool.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Shay’s response was a shrug.

  “Do you regret running away with him? Do you ever regret not staying here and marrying Guthrie?”

  For a long time she avoided answering, as if she needed to think it over. She didn’t. If she found herself in the same situation today, she would take the same action. Even knowing how it would turn out. Even knowing how dearly it would cost her.

  Finally she looked at Olivia and shook her head. “No. I regret a lot, but not that. Never that.”

  And that made her the biggest fool of all.

  After lunch Saturday afternoon, Easy ventured outside for only the second time since he’d arrived. The rockstrewn, uneven ground between the house and the outbuildings required more of his attention than a simple stroll ever should, but he made his way without incident through weeds and clover to the corral out back.

  When
he reached the fence, he rested his arms on the top board and listened to his ragged breathing. He’d leaned in this exact spot hundreds of times, watching one horse or another, but this afternoon he wasn’t merely leaning. He needed the support.

  He’d never seen the place so quiet. His father had always kept horses—at least two dozen, usually more—and there’d been dogs, barn cats, a small herd of Herefords. But the animals were long gone. Fence was down, and the equipment shed that had housed the tractor wouldn’t survive the next strong wind. The barn was suffering, too, like the rest of the place.

  His father had bought the property at the age of twenty-one, and he’d brought his pregnant bride here the next year. They’d turned it into a ranch any man would have been proud of, but they hadn’t loved it, not the way Easy did. After every hard winter and every miserable, dry summer, Bud and Betsey had talked about heading south to Texas, where they both had family. She had thought the convenience of city living had Heartbreak beat by a country mile. He had liked the idea of milder winters and a regular job with a regular paycheck, where a few months without rain couldn’t wipe you out, where health insurance, vacations and paid holidays were a fact of every worker’s life.

  They’d left a few weeks after Easy had taken off with Shay. They’d sold all but thirty acres to the Rocking S. They’d unloaded the cattle on Guthrie at below-market prices—trying to make up for their son stealing his fiancée? —and had sold the horses to buyers all over the country. The thirty acres and the buildings they’d deeded to him, so he could come back someday and raise those horses he’d always dreamed of.

  That would never happen now.

  He should sell the place—turn it over to someone who could appreciate it, who could fix the fence and replace the buildings and bring it back to life. Someone with hope for his future, and not just sorrow in his past. But he knew he would never sell. This was his land. It was all that was left of his dream.