Saving the Soldier (Selkirk Family Ranch Book 2)

by Vartanoff, Irene

  “Do you have to feed the cattle all over again today?” Paula asked.

  “No. They’re good for two more days, according to the hands,” JD said. “By then, calmer weather is forecast. The emergency is over.”

  “The horses need daily attention,” Addie said.

  Baron said, frowning, “You’re not going to the stables alone.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Who’s volunteering to plow the path to the stables today and muck stalls while I take care of my babies?”

  “I’ll do it,” Tess said.

  “You’re a crazy lady. It’s got to be forty miles an hour out there,” Rolf said.

  Tess stared at him, challenge in her gaze. “So what? Horses need daily care. They’re not like cattle. They’re sensitive.”

  “I’ll say,” Addie agreed. “Okay. Let’s go do it.”

  Baron, Rolf, and JD continued to drink coffee and chow down, but the young women all rose, including Paula. “I’ll help, if none of these strong men has the stamina.”

  Rolf put his coffee mug down. “Fine, I’ll clean out a few stalls for you. Then JD and I are taking off.”

  “What?” Paula cried. Her face showed her shock.

  “That’s what I came here for, to get JD,” Rolf explained. “He’s wanted back at the VA.”

  Paula frowned. “You’re joking. What for?”

  JD said, coldly, “You don’t know all my business.”

  He saw he had hurt her. He hadn’t meant to. Yes, he had. She’d drugged him, abducted him, and then insisted on having sex with him. Why in hell should he care how she felt about anything? He added, “We can take off anytime. I gassed up the Humvee over by the airstrip last night on our way back.”

  Addie said, “You settle that. Tess and I are going to see to the horses.”

  Baron threw his cloth napkin on the table and stood. “I’ll do the plowing and you can ride behind me on the mower. We’ll pull Tess in the sled. JD, you and your friend might as well leave right now.”

  “I’ll pack you some food for the road,” Miss Betty offered, coming in on the end of it.

  “What about the buyer Baron says is coming?” Paula asked, looking as if she was about to cry.

  Baron turned back and said, “I’ve put him off. If Dad is in shape to get the governor to send out a National Guard vehicle, I’m not going to waste my time trying to force a sale. He’ll nix it. I give up—but only for now.”

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “Try again to find a manager, someone who can handle the ranch hands, keep everything organized, and communicate with the family as needed on strategy. You could do some of it even in Cheyenne,” he said, looking at JD.

  “It needs more than me,” JD replied.

  Baron’s mouth took on a sarcastic curl. “So find a manager.”

  He turned and followed Addie and Tess. A few minutes later, they heard the plow start up and move across the yard to the stable. Paula hadn’t said a word more.

  Rolf finished his coffee and said, “I’ll go get my stuff.”

  Paula and JD were left alone in the dining room while Miss Betty rummaged in the kitchen.

  “You’re going back to the hospital?” she asked. “Why?”

  “I’m not ready to resume life outside.”

  “But you did so many things here. You lived a normal life here.” Her voice revealed her disappointment.

  “Yeah, some experiences were normal,” he drawled, looking her up and down and deliberately conjuring up the image of their lovemaking two nights ago.

  She flushed. “I didn’t mean that, not exactly.”

  He tamped down any softness toward her and covered it over with resentment. She didn’t deserve to know his plans. “We had some fun, it’s true,” he said.

  Her expression tightened.

  He was a liar. Their lovemaking had not been about fun.

  She asked, softly, “When will you be ready to leave the hospital?”

  “Maybe never.” He didn’t want to talk about grand plans he’d only begun to consider. Anyway, she wanted him to run the ranch like his dad had, and that wasn’t happening.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what? Dragging me out here? Or the other night?”

  Her expression grew pained. “I’ll never be sorry about loving you,” she said in a low voice. “As for the ranch, I’m through interfering. You’re right. It’s not my business.”

  He saw tears in her eyes. She turned and walked away, head held high, before he could reach a hand out to her. To do what? Why? Everything she’d said was the truth. She had interfered. She thought she loved him, but she couldn’t be right about that. He was too messed up to be worthy of love.

  Within minutes, JD had gathered his few personal items. He kissed Miss Betty farewell, feeling an outcast because no one else on the ranch was there to say goodbye. That was the way he’d arranged it. Didn’t mean he liked it. The dog whined, and JD leaned down and petted him, “Be good, sport.”

  “Come on, buddy,” Rolf said, leading the way to the kitchen door where the Humvee had been parked last night.

  ***

  Paula stood at an upstairs window, watching the Humvee take off. She shouldn’t watch the end of her dream but she couldn’t stop herself. Even a week ago, she’d been completely confident that if she waited him out, JD would eventually turn to her. She’d been wrong.

  He wouldn’t forgive her for drugging him and bringing him here. He’d tried to seduce her merely to amuse himself. Maybe even to pay her back. After the disaster of losing his balance had humiliated him in his own eyes, he’d stopped. She couldn’t have let him burn with shame over not being the man he once had been. She wasn’t in love with teenage, cocky, lightweight JD. She loved this much older and angrier man, the JD who struggled with what his body had become, who lashed out at people who dared to care for him.

  The sex had been all her doing. She’d practically forced herself on him. He hadn’t said no, but what man said no when a woman offered herself? It had been wonderful. She couldn’t think about it. JD’s few kisses, his few caresses, were etched on her brain.

  When the terrible wind finally let up, she’d fly back to Cheyenne and go to her office and try not to think about JD again. She had no right to visit him in the hospital from now on. She’d burned her bridges with JD. It was over.

  Her tears fell as she returned to her bedroom and threw herself face down on the mattress, sobbing.

  Chapter 20

  After creeping along local unplowed roads, and larger arteries that had been plowed but had been drifted shut again, JD and Rolf hit a stretch of treated main highway and started picking up speed. As they barreled along I-80 going east, Rolf remarked, “Your family ranch is impressive, but it sounds like no one wants to run it.”

  “If it hadn’t snowed, and if you hadn’t come, Baron would have sold it. He said it was a sweet offer, too.”

  “Thought you were into ranching.”

  “Grew up on the ranch, and it was a good life. But Dad was so competent at running everything there wasn’t much room for any of us to get in on it.”

  Rolf was driving. He glanced over at JD. “If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s a mistake, not assuring that there’s a successor ready to take over if necessary.”

  “I think Dad finally caught on. That’s why he insisted Baron should take over.”

  “Why’s your brother so set on selling?”

  “Because he’s more comfortable with rocks than with people. The hands resisted his ideas and his orders. He’s awkward in a boss role, either says too much or the wrong thing. We’ve seen officers like that.”

  Rolf frowned. “He comes across as a serious guy, and a hard worker.”

  “The men don’t respect that enough. It’s not like the service, where you get court martialed if you don’t obey.”

  They talked more about the ranch, and how a property that large should be managed. Rolf had some good ideas for
getting the ranch hands to respect a new manager. “I don’t think my sister had too much trouble taking over from Dad, because he took her around with him for months before officially handing the place over to her.”

  “Not to her husband?”

  Rolf glanced over at him. “You’re showing your family’s old-fashioned sexism again. My brother-in-law isn’t the ranch boss. He’s a lawyer. He goes to town and sees clients, argues cases, the whole nine yards. My sister runs the ranch. He keeps out of the day-to-day.”

  “Addie doesn’t try to run our ranch.”

  “But she sure does run her horses and her stable, from the sound of it.”

  JD realized he had a lot to think about. At their next break, he insisted on doing his share of the driving. After the hours he’d put in during the cattle feeding, controlling the Hummer with his left foot wasn’t a big adjustment. Since those tense moments by the garage after he’d fallen off the mower, he hadn’t had serious trouble with the fake foot. He was getting the hang of it. Maybe something like an active life was possible after all.

  They drove straight through, arriving in Cheyenne soon after sunset despite signs the storm had swept due east across the state. They only had to rescue one set of travelers along the way.

  After promising to keep in touch, JD walked into the VA carrying his emergency set of crutches and the fake foot battery charger in another grocery sack. The nurses practically fell on his neck.

  His doctor wasn’t so complimentary when she came by an hour later. “You shouldn’t have left town. You’re not in any shape to be living away from here.”

  “I was fine on the ranch most of the time,” he insisted, wincing as she pressed her fingers on his stomach.

  Her stern expression didn’t alter. “Did you have pain in your abdomen?” she asked. She pressed down hard enough to make him wince again.

  “Uh, once or twice. Hey, watch it.”

  “Were you engaging in strenuous activity? I’m ordering a scan. The shrapnel feels like it’s moved.”

  A few hours later—nothing ever happened fast in a hospital—JD had his scan. The doctor hadn’t even let him move from his hospital bed.

  “The metal has moved close to your liver. It’s got to come out. You shouldn’t have gone AWOL like that. We must remove that piece of metal.”

  She stepped back and wrote on her clipboard, then held it against her breasts as if to protect herself. JD had flirted with her in the past. She’d acted skittish. Now she looked ready to engage in a lengthy argument with him over having the operation.

  He didn’t feel like playing those games anymore. The results of game playing hurt too much. “Okay, I’ll do the operation.”

  “You will?” He’d stunned her, he could tell.

  “Yeah,” he ground out. Get it over with and get on with his life.

  She promised to get back to him with a date and time. After warning him not to exert himself, she practically skipped from the room.

  Get on with his life? Where had that come from? Thought he’d decided to hide out here as long as he could?

  It didn’t even take one night in the hospital to convince JD that his days there were numbered. At three a.m., when the howls of yet another war veteran with PTSD woke him, he promised himself he’d move out as soon after the operation as possible. Lying in bed all day had gotten to be a bad habit. The unexpected trip to the ranch had broken him of it. He picked up his crutches and limped down the hall to talk the guy down.

  The room was dark. JD stood in the doorway so the vet in the bed could see he wasn’t a hostile. “Okay to come in?”

  “Yeah,” came a growl from the bed. The man clicked on the bedside light. He still looked freaked out from the night terror. He couldn’t be more than nineteen, if that.

  “It’s Jones, right? Saw you in PT a couple of times,” JD said.

  “You’re Selkirk? Heard you went AWOL.”

  “I’ve had a few wild days at the ranch. Want to hear about ’em? Okay if I sit?”

  “Sure.”

  They talked. Over the next several nights, JD’s sleep was broken a lot because every time he heard another vet cry out from a nightmare, he went to talk to him. Simple enough. He was no therapist, but he knew the same pain. He was glad little girls didn’t visit the hospital often. He still couldn’t look at them.

  The first few days JD was back, he was glad to be alone, away from Baron, Addie, Tess, Miss Betty, Rolf, and Paula. Especially Paula. They’d made quite the crowd at the old homestead. He enjoyed some solitude for a change.

  Then he began to miss them all. Especially Paula. JD had often tried to make them leave, using coarse language with Paula and bitter, nasty words that drove Tess to tears. Now he was sorry he’d done that. What had he been thinking? Had it been outraged manly pride that he was lying in a hospital bed, no longer the man he’d been, and they could see? Who could he be himself with if not his family, the people who loved him?

  Love. Did they really? How could they, after the way he’d treated them? Did Paula still think she loved him? He’d wounded her deeply. He was ashamed of how he’d been to her. Yeah, she shouldn’t have abducted him. Definitely shouldn’t have roofied him, by God, although that would make a great story to tell some day. But who would he have to tell, unless he got out of this place and started a life?

  JD had a lot to think about, and plenty of time to do it.

  His dad was still in the hospital because they’d decided to do a bypass. That was a shock. Dad had always been so strong. His mom stayed at the other hospital around the clock. Tess was still back at the ranch. Paula, of course, had no reason to visit JD after he’d savaged her with his anger.

  With no visitors bothering him every day, JD grew restive. He started talking to the other guys more, learning their stories. He even talked to the psych lady when she came around. She said his middle-of-the-night visits to other vets were helping them, and to keep it up. He felt curiously proud on hearing that.

  “All I do is tell as many dirty jokes as I know,” he said. “Or we play cards. Nothing spectacular.”

  “You’re associating a different outcome with an unhappy memory. That’s good. Just being there tells people they aren’t alone. Maybe I can get a few more of you on board with therapy and get some of you cured.”

  He gave her a cynical look. “You really believe that works? I’ve heard of people having nightmares for many years.”

  “Because they were untreated,” she said. The middle-aged lady, a little on the portly side, was named Tanisha. She recited the stats for men who accepted therapy. “We can help people now. We know what to do. We’ve got an array of possible tools, from talk to exposure to EMDR to brain optimization, and more. Our biggest problem is getting the patients to accept treatment.”

  He nodded. He’d been as stubborn as the rest of them. He’d told himself he had to lie here. That he couldn’t use his fake foot, and all the rest of the crap. Even that no woman would ever want to make love with him again. Paula had disproved that.

  No, don’t think about Paula. He’d done her wrong, but she’d deserved it. Hadn’t she?

  Miss Tanisha told JD she hoped he’d visit every vet. “They all have PTSD, you know. You have it, too.”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t. A few bad memories, that’s all.”

  She gave him a bland look. “Right. Don’t kid yourself. A haunting memory from your deployment is untreated PTSD. It can affect your life adversely for years to come.”

  “I’m fine,” he reiterated impatiently.

  “That’s exactly what every single one of you says,” she said. Her expression was compassionate. “Don’t you understand yet, son? You’re home now. You’re safe. It’s over. You can breathe.” She gave him a knowing look as the words sank in. Then she rose and departed.

  Did he have PTSD? Something major had shifted because of his few days on the ranch. He’d started to think about everything differently. His goal now was to get out of here as
soon as he could. He could have been gone already except he’d agreed to the operation. Now he was stuck here a while longer. Irony much?

  The operation was scheduled for Thursday. He called his mother to tell her. She cried over him, as expected. He asked her if Tess was back in town. “No. She’s at the ranch.”

  He made himself ask if Paula had returned.

  “I believe so. She called and asked after Robert, and me, too. I think she was here in town,” Anita’s voice became uncertain. “She might have flown Tess back. They’re such good friends.”

  True. Paula was a good friend to Tess. Kept taking her to the ranch, urging her to stop drinking. Maybe this time she’d succeed. Rolf had commented on how spunky his sister was. That was true, too. Tess had plenty of zip.

  He was surprised at how lonely it could be in the hospital without constant visitors. He hadn’t valued their visits previously. Now, he felt guilty because his dad was still in the hospital. A couple of days after his dad’s bypass, JD set out to visit his father.

  This time, there was no Paula to help. The cab driver wasn’t cooperative when asked to draw up at a specific entrance to the vast hospital center. He wanted to dump JD at the first door and let him hike around the corridors for miles. JD was wearing his prosthesis, but the doctor didn’t want him being active at all before the operation. He gave the cabbie what for and insisted on being let off at the rehab center. Paula had catered to his physical needs without saying anything about it or making a big deal about it.

  He didn’t want to think about Paula.

  It took a few turns and some help from an information desk volunteer, but JD soon found his dad’s new room. Robert Selkirk’s private spot in the rehab wing hardly looked like a hospital room. It had curtains on the windows, and a selection of comfortable chairs and a table. True, there was no carpeting on the floor, but otherwise, only the hospital bed and the panel of technical outlets behind it signaled the intent of the room. Robert was sitting up in bed, wearing a shirt that buttoned, not a hospital gown.

  “Dad. Looking good,” JD greeted him, leaning over to hug him. Robert felt curiously fragile, which made JD pull back. “How are you feeling?”