Ranch at River’s End

by Brenda Mott

  “Tuesday.”

  “Who’s the president?”

  “Obama. Is this a doctor’s exam or a pop quiz?”

  At first Jordan thought the boy was being flip, but then he realized Chris was scared, using humor to cover his fear.

  “I’m making sure your memory is clear,” Jordan said. He tended to Christopher’s wounds, first numbing them with lidocaine, then flushing them with sterile water before wiping the edges of each cut with disinfectant. The head wound was a good two inches long, the gash on Chris’s cheek not much smaller.

  Those boys had done a number on him.

  “You’re going to need a few stitches,” Jordan said. “Then we’ll get you to X-ray and make sure there’s no damage I’m not seeing.”

  Through a part in the curtain, he spotted two policemen hovering in the hall just outside. For a moment, his mind went back to another time…another pair of police officers….

  “Is he going to be okay?” Darci’s trembling voice brought his attention back where it should be. Looking down at her son, she stroked his forehead.

  “Mo-om.” Chris brushed her hand aside. “I’m not a baby.”

  “I think he’ll be all right,” Jordan said. “We’ll know more after the X-rays, but he’s not showing signs of anything more than a mild concussion.” For a moment, Jordan let himself relate to Darci on a level of parent to parent.

  Like him, she was a single parent, and Jordan definitely knew that wasn’t an easy job. Obviously, she loved Christopher just as Jordan loved Michaela. Still, he couldn’t help but be a bit wary of the boy after what had happened the other day, and given his behavior at his previous school. But at the moment, he seemed like an ordinary kid.

  “You must have a hard head,” Jordan said.

  “That’s what my mom’s always telling me.” Christopher glanced at the officers.

  “Chris, who did this to you?” Darci asked again. “The police are going to want to know.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Just some guys, like I told you.” He grimaced. “Can we talk about this later?”

  Jordan disposed of the used needle in the hazardous-waste receptacle. “That local anesthetic will act pretty quickly. Then we’ll get you stitched up. You know, Christopher, all along I’ve been thinking you look familiar to me.”

  “I should,” Chris quipped. “I’m your neighbor.”

  Jordan chuckled. “Yeah, all right. But seriously—I think I stitched you up before, when you were younger. Maybe three or four years ago?”

  Chris nodded. “My hand and arm.” He held up his right hand to display a faint scar. “Uncle Leon’s mare threw me into some barbed wire.”

  “Looks like you got a pretty cool scar to show for it,” Jordan said. “And you’re going to have a couple more. You and your mom are quite a pair for banging up your heads.” He smiled at Darci, hoping to ease her tension.

  She blushed and smiled back. Jordan continued to talk to the boy as he stitched him up, wanting to take the kid’s mind off the discomfort. Darci had stepped out into the hallway to talk with the officers, and by the time she came back, Jordan had just finished stitching both wounds. He pulled off his gloves.

  “All set. Now let’s get you down to X-ray.” An orderly came and wheeled the boy away.

  Darci hung back. “Thank you.”

  “My job,” Jordan said. “No thanks necessary.”

  “He’s really okay?” Worry lined her pale face.

  “Like I said, we’ll know more once I see the X-rays. Try not to worry.”

  Darci suddenly burst into tears, sobbing quietly into her hands. “I’ve never been so—so scared. Why would those boys do this to him?”

  Why indeed? Whatever Chris had done in the past, he didn’t deserve a beating, especially one that may have been unprovoked, from Rebecca Thompson’s description.

  Impulsively, Jordan took Darci by the shoulders, and she crumpled against him. He fought the sudden impulse to stroke her hair. Her vanilla-scented cologne assailed his senses.

  Where was his professionalism? Doctors couldn’t go around hugging their patients.

  “Everything will be okay, Darci. I really believe your son’s going to be all right.”

  Jordan gently extracted her from his arms and handed her a tissue.

  “Thanks.”

  A short time later, Chris was brought back from radiology. Jordan put the films up on the light board and went over them carefully. “Everything looks fine,” he said. “But you’ll want to watch him closely tonight. Don’t let him go to sleep for a while, and wake him up every two to three hours and ask him a simple question like, what’s your name?”

  “I know my name,” Christopher said in an exaggerated tone.

  “Christopher!” Darci said. “Dr. Drake’s only trying to help you.” She turned back to Jordan. “Anything else?”

  “When you bathe or shower, Chris, be careful not to get those stitches wet for a few days. You can have your family doctor take them out in about ten days to two weeks.”

  “We don’t have a family doctor yet,” Darci told him.

  “I’d be glad to give you a referral,” Jordan said. “Or you can bring him back here to the E.R. Meanwhile, if you see any signs of redness or further swelling, bring him in right away. Or if you notice he shows any signs of confusion or lethargy…excessive drowsiness, that kind of thing. You can give him some Tylenol, but no aspirin or ibuprofen. We don’t want to increase the risk of bleeding.”

  “Thank you,” Darci said again. She gave Chris a gentle nudge.

  “Yeah, thanks.” He dropped his gaze, once more the sulking boy Jordan had seen the other day.

  “Can we give you a ride back to the school?” Darci asked.

  Jordan had nearly forgotten he’d come by ambulance to the hospital.

  “Uh—no, thanks. I’ve got a couple of things to do before I go. I’ll catch a ride with someone.”

  “What about Michaela?”

  “Jenny’s mom will keep an eye on her. I called her on my cell.”

  “Okay then. See you later.”

  Jordan let out his breath. He’d wanted to accept her offer of a ride, but when he was around Darci he reacted in ways that made him slightly uncomfortable.

  For the near future he needed to focus on his career and raising his daughter, not on his good-looking neighbor.

  DARCI DROVE IN SILENCE for a few minutes, a thousand thoughts racing through her head. Witnesses had given the police the names of the two boys who’d jumped Chris at the skate park. How could this have happened right under the nose of the teachers, aides and parents who’d been supervising? Darci felt a wave of guilt, remembering she’d been the one to insist Christopher go to the park in the first place.

  She’d only wanted him to have fun.

  “The police caught the boys who did this,” Darci said.

  Chris snapped his head around to look at her, then winced. “Ouch.” He put a hand to the stitches on his head—six of them. Another four in his cheek. “How did they know who it was?”

  His tone told her Chris had known the names of the boys all along. Had he been afraid of ratting them out? Or had he simply not wanted to be known as a snitch?

  “Witnesses at the park. Chris, you should’ve told me.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. His black-tipped hair tumbled in his eyes, and Darci made a mental note to get him a new baseball cap, even if funds were tight.

  “Great, now they’re gonna think I narced.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid of them.”

  “Who says I’m scared?” he asked defiantly. “I don’t want to be called a narc, that’s all.” But his eyes told her different, and Darci wasn’t sure which was worse—her son being cyberbullied in Northglenn, or physically bullied here in River’s End.

  “We’re going to press charges.”

  “Mo-om. No! You can’t.”

  “Chris, we have to. We can’t let them get away with this. They’re only g
oing to pick on you more if you don’t stand up to them.”

  “Yeah, well I stood up to those creeps at North Star, and look where that got me.”

  “There’s a right way and a wrong way to stand up to someone,” Darci said.

  “Well, pressing charges isn’t going to help,” he said.

  Was her son right? Was she only going to get him hurt again? She hoped not. But she couldn’t sit back and do nothing.

  Once home, Chris changed into the boxers he slept in, and crawled into bed to watch a movie on the small TV Darci had bought on sale two Christmases ago. It had been another of the things her son had earned back recently for good behavior.

  Exhausted and knowing she’d be up half the night worrying over and waking up Christopher, Darci poured herself a glass of red wine—a rare indulgence—and settled into a hot bubble bath with a paperback novel. But after reading the same paragraph four times without comprehension, she set the book aside and simply sank up to her neck in the fragrant suds, closing her eyes.

  Immediately, she recalled the way Jordan’s chest had felt when she’d sobbed in his arms. Hard and strong…warm and way too inviting. It had been far too long since a man had held her, and Darci hated to admit she’d liked the feeling.

  She thought about the way Jordan had treated Christopher in the E.R. Gone was the defensive father who’d thought Chris had hurt his daughter. Darci liked this softer side of him as he joked with Christopher and tended to his injuries.

  And she’d liked the gentleness of the man who’d tried to reassure her everything was going to be all right.

  Darci only wished she could be so sure herself.

  Willing herself to stop thinking thoughts that couldn’t possibly do her any good, she sipped her wine, and told herself tomorrow would be a better day.

  CHRIS INSISTED HE WAS well enough to go to school the next day. “I’m not an invalid, Mom. It’s just a couple of cuts.”

  Darci gave in, knowing she did tend to baby him too much at times, and also because she really couldn’t afford to stay home from work and didn’t want to impose on Aunt Stella and Uncle Leon to keep an eye on him when they had work of their own to do.

  Every time she thought Chris was making progress, something seemed to happen. Not that the incident at the skate park was his fault. Darci wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and allow him to earn the privilege to stay home by himself, even though a part of her was having a hard time letting go.

  It wasn’t easy watching her little boy grow up and away from her. She told herself he wasn’t really going anywhere—he’d likely become closer to her again once he got older and realized that liking your mom didn’t mean you were a baby.

  By three o’clock, Darci’s shift at the hospital was over, and she drove home long enough to change her clothes before heading out to the Shadow S to work.

  “Christopher feeling okay?” Stella asked right away. She and Leon had rushed over late last night to see him. Stella had fussed over his injuries, but Leon had told him to cowboy up, jokingly slugging him in the arm.

  Chris had laughed it all off, acting irritated with Stella for fussing like his mom. “You all need to let me grow up,” he’d said. “Like Uncle Leon says, I’m gonna cowboy up.”

  He’d mock-slugged Leon back, as if it was all a game.

  But deep down, Darci had seen the fear in his eyes, and she worried if she’d done the right thing by pressing charges with the police. She’d never forgive herself if those boys got back at Christopher for Darci’s own actions, beating him up again.

  “I think so,” she said in answer to Stella’s question, “all things considered. He’s riding the bus out here after school.”

  “Any more word on those boys?”

  “I had to fill out a police report down at the station during my lunch break. Chris didn’t want me to press charges against them, but I felt I had to. Do you think I did the right thing, Aunt Stella?”

  “Abso-friggin’-lutely. You can’t let the little creeps get away with something that serious. They could’ve killed Chris.”

  Darci shuddered at the thought. “I just don’t see why they wanted to hurt him. Christopher said he was minding his own business, getting ready to ride his board and try some tricks in the bowl at the skate park, when they started calling him names, and then jumped him.”

  “Did he say anything back to them?”

  “He did admit he mouthed off a little. But that’s still no reason for them to hurt him the way they did.”

  “I’m not saying it is. I’m just saying Chris needs to learn to control his temper. It’s what got him in trouble before.”

  “True.”

  Had Chris antagonized the boys more than he was willing to admit? Darci sincerely hoped not.

  “Well, anyway, onward bound,” Stella said. “You’re going to like your first riding student today. She’s a very special little girl.”

  “Oh?”

  Stella nodded. “You met Shauna Roark at the school last night? Well, it’s her little daughter.”

  “The girl who had the heart transplant? Jordan told me about her.”

  “Shauna’s only child. Her name is Tara, and you’d never know the kid had anything wrong with her. She doesn’t complain, nothing.”

  “Is it safe for her to ride?” Suddenly, Darci felt more than a little apprehensive. She’d be responsible for the child’s safety while Tara was riding at the Shadow S.

  “Yep. She’s got a release form from her doctor. We don’t do anything strenuous as it were with the lessons she’s taking. She’s just learning the basics. Leon and I gave her a scholarship.”

  “I didn’t know you had those.”

  “We do in cases like Tara’s.” Stella haltered Dollar as they talked, then began to brush him down. “Poor kid’s medical bills are through the roof. And Shauna living on a teacher’s salary and what her husband makes down at the garage. It’s the least we could do to help them out. Speaking of which, we’re thinking about going a step further.”

  Darci picked up a curry comb and went over the gelding’s coat. “How’s that?”

  “Jordan’s wife, Sandra? She used to donate money for kids in need to take riding lessons.”

  “She did?”

  “Yep. She and your uncle Leon used to say the outside of a horse was good for the inside of a kid—and it’s true. For most everyone, not just kids. Anyway, your uncle and I are thinking of starting an annual event here in Sandra’s memory. I haven’t talked to Jordan yet, to get his take on it. But I can’t imagine he would object. We’d do a ranch rodeo to benefit someone in need. To help with hospital bills or whatever. Tara would be our first recipient, with all monies raised going straight to her medical expenses.”

  “Aunt Stella, what a wonderful idea! How can I help?”

  “We’ll need all the help we can get organizing the thing. We wanted to talk to Shauna about it first, make sure she understands this is something Leon and I want to do annually, so she doesn’t feel like a charity case. Woman’s got her pride.”

  Darci leaned over and gave her aunt a hug. “I think you and Uncle Leon are wonderful for coming up with this. And I think Jordan will be honored.”

  “Aw, go on.” Stella blushed, shrugging off the praise. “We’re happy to do it. Anyway, don’t say anything to Shauna just yet. I figure I can take her aside and talk to her today while you’re giving Tara her lesson.”

  “Sounds good. But should you wait until you’ve talked to Jordan?”

  Stella shook her head. “If he doesn’t want us doing the event in Sandra’s memory, then we’ll do it on our own using the Shadow S name. Either way, it’s something Leon and I have put our minds to.”

  “Okay. I think it’s an awesome idea.” Darci tugged on her hat brim. “I’ll go get Dollar’s tack.”

  As Darci walked toward the barn her cell phone rang. She looked at the ID, and was surprised to see it was Jordan. Speak of the devil. A handsome devil.

 
“Hello?”

  “Hey there,” he said. “You busy?”

  “Getting ready to give a riding lesson. What’s up?”

  He paused, then said, “I thought you might need to get away for a little bit, after all you’ve been through lately.”

  Darci nearly dropped the phone. Was he asking her out on a date?

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I’m off tomorrow and there’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Want to meet me after your shift at the hospital and see my boat? We can take it for a little spin if you’d like, or just kick back at the shore and have a Coke while we talk.”

  Alone. With Jordan. On a boat.

  She wasn’t sure she trusted herself.

  Silly. He asked you for a Coke, not hot sex.

  “Sure. I’d love to. Is anything wrong?”

  “No. Not really. I-it’ll keep till tomorrow.”

  Now her curiosity was really piqued. “Okay, fine.”

  “Great. Call me when you get off work and I’ll come over and pick you up.”

  “Actually,” Darci said, “I’ve got a riding lesson after my hospital shift. So it will have to be after that.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll be waiting.”

  Darci closed her phone, wondering what on earth Jordan had to talk to her about that required a trip to his boat.

  Maybe he was simply trying to get her alone after all.

  One could always hope.

  But then, having an afternoon fling with a neighbor and coworker wasn’t the best of ideas. Especially since she’d told herself she was through with men after her divorce.

  But she couldn’t help it if her imagination was working overtime.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A THOUSAND TIMES OVER the next day, Darci fought the urge to simply corner Jordan at the hospital and ask him what he wanted to talk to her about. But then, if it were something simple, he wouldn’t have asked her out to the boat where they could be alone, would he?

  By Thursday afternoon she was more than ready for her shift to end so she could get out to the Shadow S, do her lesson and go meet Jordan. She’d made arrangements for Christopher to ride the bus out to the ranch, where he could do his homework and help his aunt and uncle until Darci came back to get him.