by Trish Milburn - The Texan's Cowgirl Bride (Texas Rodeo Barons)
When the call ended, she handed the phone back to Travis.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got the feeling I should hire your dad to help me track down people.”
“Oh, please do. Obviously, it’s something he can do while laid up. Keep him busy.”
When Travis gave her a questioning look, she explained. “He was injured several weeks ago in a senior rodeo, so he can’t go to work. And let’s just say that he doesn’t do well with boredom.”
“Ah. But you’re gone a lot, right?”
She shook her head as he opened the car door for her. “I don’t ride as much as I used to. I run the farm store on the ranch.”
“Well, you obviously haven’t suffered much for not riding as often.”
“Ha. You seem to have forgotten the part about me crashing and burning tonight.”
Travis shrugged. “We all slip at some point.”
“So you have a great P.I. boo-boo story?”
Travis helped her into the SUV and automatically reached for the seat belt. “I do.”
“Can it beat falling off a horse in front of hundreds of people?”
“Does following a fugitive and having half a dozen Rottweilers trap you in a tree count?”
The image made her giggle. She lifted her hand to her mouth. “Sorry. What did you do?”
“Before or after I had to call 911 to get help?”
This time she snorted.
“That’s it. I’m taking back the milkshake.” He reached for it.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” She pulled the cup out of his reach. A stab of pain in her side caused her to gasp.
“Sorry.” Travis placed his hand on her jean-clad leg. “I didn’t mean to make you hurt yourself.”
“It’s okay.” Savannah tried not to focus on the feel of his warm hand against her thigh. He wasn’t squeezing or pressing down, but she still sensed his strength. And felt an odd tingle, as if his flesh were touching hers.
“If it makes you feel better, you can pour the milkshake over my head,” he said.
She forced her focus off the weight of his hand and lifted a brow. “And waste a perfectly good milkshake?”
“Saved by a sweet tooth.” Travis smiled as he backed away from her and shut the door.
She tried not to think about how she was simultaneously glad he’d removed his hand while also missing the connection. Jeez, maybe the doctor had been wrong and she did conk her head.
The dose of extra-strength pain reliever she’d been given must be taking effect because the ride back to the rodeo grounds wasn’t as painful as the trip to the hospital.
Savannah directed Travis toward Abby’s rig. Before he even turned off the engine, Abby came bounding out of the trailer and straight for the passenger side of the SUV.
“Are you okay?” she asked as she opened the door.
Savannah told herself to ignore the twinge of loss that she wouldn’t get to enjoy Travis’s touch one more time. The truth was she needed to get away from him and the unexpected attraction toward him. “Fine. Just sporting the mother of all bruises. What about Bluebell?”
“She’s fine. A scratch, nothing more.”
Savannah breathed a sigh of relief. Bluebell wasn’t just a horse to her. She was a good friend, family, a trusted partner.
As Savannah unlatched her own seat belt this time and slid out of the truck, Abby spotted her bag of food and milkshake.
“Did you two go to the hospital or out on a date?”
Savannah shot her friend a “What the hell?” look but quickly hid it when Travis appeared at Abby’s side.
“Her stomach was growling so much that I was afraid the hospital staff would think a wild animal had gotten loose in the E.R.,” Travis said, a mischievous grin on his face.
Savannah wrinkled her nose at him. “Very funny.”
Travis gave a little bow, as if on stage. “Thank you. I’ll be here all week.”
This time, Savannah rolled her eyes and headed toward the trailer. “Well, this chick is done for the day. I’m going to bed and calling do-over for tomorrow.”
After shooting Savannah a wicked wink, Abby headed toward the trailer to get the door. When Savannah reached the bottom of the steps, she stopped and half turned toward Travis.
“Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome. Hope you feel better soon. Maybe we can catch up sometime when you’re not being carted off to the hospital.”
“Yeah.” Wow, that sounded enthusiastic. But it was as if her brain had finally said, “Enough. I’m shutting down now.” And she had a feeling it had more to do with the hunky version of Travis Shepard watching her than working late the night before or any physical trauma she’d endured.
She finally broke eye contact and climbed gingerly up into Abby’s trailer, not quite able to ignore Abby’s knowing smile.
“Too bad you’re injured,” Abby said as she shut the door to the sound of Travis’s vehicle starting. “Because you could have jumped that boy and I don’t think he would have minded.”
Damn if Savannah’s face didn’t flush at the image that popped into her mind. And of course Abby noticed.
“You do like him.”
“He’s a nice guy, and yes, he’s good-looking. But we’re just high school acquaintances who happened to bump into each other.”
“Him taking you to the hospital and buying you dinner isn’t just bumping into each other.”
“He was just being helpful. And it was the Burger Barn, not a five-star restaurant.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t think he’s interested in dating anyway, and I don’t blame him.” She recounted the incident with the nurse.
“Maybe he just wasn’t interested in her.”
With a shake of her head, Savannah left her friend behind and headed for that much-needed hot shower. If she avoided the topic of Travis for a couple of days, Abby would probably forget all about him.
When Savannah finally stepped under the water, it felt as if a week had passed since she’d left home instead of only half a day. She closed her eyes and let her mind float, and her thoughts drifted to Travis. In the solitude of the shower, she allowed herself to think about him, his striking good looks, the strength she sensed in him, the warmth of his hands as he’d helped her in and out of the SUV.
She ran her hand over the spot on her leg where he’d placed his palm, imagining she could still feel it. As her thoughts meandered down one path and then another, she found herself imagining him in the shower with her, water sluicing over both of their naked bodies as they pressed against each other.
Had her sister Lizzie finding love really sparked some sort of similar desire in Savannah?
She ran the soap over her aching body, picturing Travis’s hands doing it instead. Her skin grew warm and sensitive as she slid her hand up her torso and across her right breast. The image of Travis’s mouth settling against that breast had just formed in her mind when she froze and her eyes popped open.
Her heart skipped a beat as she moved her fingertips back over the area they’d just skimmed and then probed deeper. She bit her lip as the examination found what she’d feared. A lump, and it wasn’t on the side of her injuries.
* * *
HIDING HER CONCERN from Abby proved so difficult that Savannah used her injuries as an excuse the next morning to say she was going to head home. “We’ll plan another weekend soon. Hopefully, I won’t be so accident-prone next time.”
“I’ll forgive you for abandoning me if you ask Travis out and then tell me all about it.”
Savannah gave her friend a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Let it go.”
Abby looked over her shoulder as she cooked breakfast. “Don�
��t sit there and tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
Savannah remembered her imaginings in the shower the night before, before that lump in her breast had torpedoed her ability to think of anything else.
She didn’t give Abby the satisfaction of a response. Instead, she nabbed a slice of crisp bacon and headed for the door. But as she drove out of Mineral Wells and pointed her truck toward home, she didn’t find any peace in her solitude and wondered if she should have stayed through the second night of competition.
Her thoughts kept drifting to Travis and how nice and easy it had been between them the night before. But then her mind got jerked back to the lump. She imagined it getting larger by the second, making her so anxious she finally pulled over and scrolled through online listings for doctors on her phone. She had a regular doctor as well as a gynecologist, but the irrational fear that her family would find out if she visited either one of them had her searching for another option.
She sat at the rest area making calls until she found not only an office open to take her call but one that could fit her in on Monday. Glad to have a plan of action, it still felt as if Monday were aeons away.
When she pulled up to the barn on the ranch a couple of hours later, her dad was sitting at the entrance in his wheelchair. As if she needed one more thing to worry about. What was he doing, tracking the GPS on her phone?
She forced herself not to wince or make any sounds signaling pain as she slipped out of the truck and approached him. “Hey, Dad. What are you doing out here?”
“Needed to get out of the house. I’m about to go stir crazy.”
That she could understand. If she had shattered bones that prevented her from working, from riding, from even getting around by herself, she’d go bonkers, too.
Savannah looked beyond her father to the interior of the barn and caught the look on her brother Jet’s face. Yeah, just as she thought. Her dad had directed that he be brought to the barn to make sure everything was exactly as he wanted it. She still wasn’t convinced he hadn’t known she would be appearing earlier than she’d mentioned and had set up camp to wait for her.
Choosing not to invite the conversation, she moved to the back of the trailer to let Bluebell out.
“Your brother can take care of that.”
She wanted to take her father up on the offer, but she refused to do anything that would show she was hurt worse than she’d indicated on the phone the night before. Or to give any clue that anything else was wrong.
“I’m good.” As if to negate her words, a sharp pain skewered her side as she opened the trailer. Thankfully, her back was to her father because this time she couldn’t prevent gritting her teeth.
Forcing her expression to relax, she guided Bluebell out of the trailer just as Julieta, her stepmother, pulled up in her SUV.
“You don’t look any worse for wear,” Julieta said as she got out of the vehicle, looking just as lovely in jeans and a casual pink blouse as she did when wearing her sharp business suits at the Baron Energies office. “To listen to your father last night, I expected you to be rolled home in a full body cast.”
Brock huffed. “You are exaggerating.”
Julieta lifted a dark brow at him. “I know what I heard.”
Savannah hid a smile. Julieta might be considerably younger than Brock, but she wasn’t only a pretty face. She could hold her own with her husband despite his tendency to be gruff and demanding. Brock acted put out with Julieta’s sass sometimes, but Savannah knew the truth was he admired it even if he never said so.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Julieta said to Savannah before turning toward her husband. “Now, you, in the car. Time for your follow-up appointment.”
“I’m fine.”
“Then this should go quickly.” Julieta wasn’t letting him talk his way out of going to the doctor as instructed.
Her father was still grumbling as Savannah led Bluebell into the barn. At least his imminent departure would give Savannah a reprieve, however brief, from the conversation about the store.
She ached, was bone tired from not sleeping well the night before, and her stomach was in knots and likely would be until she saw the doctor on Monday.
Jet reached for Bluebell’s reins. “I’ll take care of her.”
“I can do it.”
“You can also go home and get some rest. I know you’re hurting and were hiding it just now.”
Savannah let the facade drop away. “I do sort of feel as if I’ve been body slammed by King Kong.”
He nodded his head toward the barn’s entrance. “Go rest while you can.”
“Thanks.”
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find anything beyond the most superficial sleep for the rest of the weekend. By Monday morning, she felt dreadful, wrung out like a wet cloth. She was ready to cut the lump out of her breast herself just so she could get away from it.
By the time she was being led back to be examined by a doctor she’d never met, she felt as if she was going to hurl. It suddenly occurred to her that she needed to explain her injuries before a nurse or the doctor thought she had been beaten.
The nurse, a peppy young woman named Becky, led her to an examination room. “There’s a gown on the table. The doctor will be with you shortly.”
“By the way, I have some significant bruising, so tell the doctor not to be shocked. I was in a rodeo Friday night and took a nasty spill.”
A hint of suspicion flickered in the nurse’s eyes, and Savannah couldn’t blame her. She knew lots of women came in with injuries from domestic violence that they tried to pass off as something else.
“You can check with the hospital in Mineral Wells, and with anyone who was at the rodeo.”
Becky finally nodded and headed out of the room.
One of the worst things in the world was sitting in a hospital gown in a chilly room waiting forever for a doctor to make an appearance. If she hadn’t been so incredibly anxious, she would have brought a book to read.
She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her anxiety level increased after the doctor came in and started her examination. When she finished, Dr. Fisher sat on a rolling stool in front of a laptop and started asking a battery of questions.
“Do you do regular breast self-exams?”
“Have you ever had a mammogram?”
“Is this the first time you’ve found a lump?”
Savannah answered all the questions, wishing the doctor would instead just tell her it was nothing to worry about.
“Do you have a family history of breast cancer?”
Savannah opened her mouth to answer as she had with all the other questions, but nothing came out.
“Miss Baron?”
“I don’t know. Not that I’m aware of.”
“If possible, check with your parents.”
That was going to be difficult since she had no desire to talk to her father about the lump, not when he’d overreacted about her falling off a horse. Oh, and the fact that she had no idea where her mother was, or if she was even alive, would make it difficult to ask her.
She fell so deep into her thoughts of her mother that she nearly missed what the doctor said next—that Savannah was being sent for a mammogram. Not next week, not the next day, but in a few minutes. That wasn’t good, was it? They always made you wait for these things, making you live in a perpetual state of freaking out until the test was done and results received.
As she maneuvered the hallways of the clinic to the mammography area, she felt as if she were trudging through a dense fog that slowed her thoughts while making it seem as if they were racing at the same time. A part of her buried deep inside wished she had her mother beside her, holding her hand. But that wasn’t possible. Delia Baron had abandoned her and her siblings, walked away from
them and their dad as if they meant nothing.
Savannah pushed thoughts of her mother away. She’d stopped trying to figure out the why behind her mother leaving a long time ago. After all, she couldn’t think of a single reason that wasn’t at its core purely selfish. Add in the fact that her father refused to even speak Delia’s name, and gradually she just stopped coming up in conversation anymore. Honestly, until Lizzie had gotten pregnant and started worrying about not being a good mother, it had been a while since Savannah had even spared her mom a thought.
But now, as she endured the boob smashing that every woman dreaded, she couldn’t help but think about the mystery of her family medical history on her mother’s side. As she left the clinic half an hour later with assurances that she’d be contacted as soon as the test results were available, she couldn’t stop wondering about her mother. Where was she? Was there a history of breast cancer in her family? Had her mother ever found a lump?
A part of Savannah desperately hoped the answer to that last question was yes, and that it had proven to be nothing of concern. In that one way, she was totally fine with following in her mother’s footsteps.
But how was she supposed to find out those answers without cluing her family in to the fact that something was going on?
She was still searching for that answer as she maneuvered through traffic toward the downtown Dallas office of Baron Energies. Even as she walked through the glass entrance and flashed her security badge to the guard at the front desk, she wasn’t sure how she was going to casually bring up their mother in conversation with her sister.
As she neared Lizzie’s office, she spotted her father’s longtime secretary, Maria, chatting with Emory, who worked as Lizzie’s assistant.
Maria’s face lit up the moment she saw her. “Savannah, dear, I haven’t seen you in forever.”
Savannah was careful not to allow Maria to hug her too tightly. “It’s good to see you, too.” She glanced toward Emory. “Both of you. Is my sister available?”
Lizzie poked her head out of her office door. “So I’m not hearing things. What are you doing here?”
“What, I’m not allowed to come take my sister to lunch?”