by BJ James
“Here we go again.” Steve hardly knew he’d spoken as pain dredged old memories from his mind.
He knew a horse hadn’t kicked him, but he also knew he was on the verge of another concussion. With a sense of déjà vu and gritted teeth, he made himself sit erect. Arms clasped about his middle, he held himself tightly, closing out the punishing pain. He’d been in enough serious fist fights to recognize the pattern, and knew the damage to look for. Probing fingers skimmed clumsily but gingerly over his ribs, drawing a careful sigh and a nod from him.
“Nothing broken.” The determination was slurred through cracked and puffy lips, in a voice made hoarse by the hacking edge of a hand to his throat. In a flash of memory, he saw the slashing hand, a blue cuff fastened at the wrist. A disembodied arm, with no substance behind it, no identity. But he knew the vagaries of a rattled brain, and couldn’t trouble himself with it now. His immediate concern was physical. His hands brushed over his ribs again, this time more firmly. Wincing at his own thoroughness, he finally sighed and relaxed. “Bruised. Maybe cracked, but not displaced.”
With that assurance he began the torturous climb to his knees. The third time was the charm. Cold sweat beading his face and running in rivulets down his body, he knelt there in a scattering of hay and dust, body hunched and swaying like an ancient cripple. Wondering why he tried, yet knowing that he must, he reached out, locked his fingers around a supporting column and dragged himself to his feet. Ignoring the nausea that churned at the back of his throat, he took a tottering step. Pausing tiredly, drawing a long, slow, careful breath, he took another step. Then another, and another.
Setting his sights on the open door of the stable, and the path that would lead to the house, he staggered along. Bending to the pain, arms clutching it close, he forgot all but the need to put one foot in front of the other. No step was too small, and every inch an acoomplishment that brought the rictus of a gaunt grin to his lips. After a time that to Steve was eternal, his labored steps brought him to his first goal. Half falling, half walking, he passed through the roughhewn portal, clinging to it only long enough to get his bearings. Flinching from the blast of light, he stumbled on.
The ground was uneven, heat rose from it in waves, clawing at him, sucking the breath from wounded lungs. He grew dizzier, his vision worsened. No effort could wipe away the fog, yet he tried, pushing himself blindly on, until his legs refused.
Head down, swaying like a broken willow, he knew he wouldn’t make it to the house. A sweet and poignant yearning welled within him. As his body ached for the succor of his makeshift bed, his mind longed for the haunting scent of roses. The soothing ambience that seemed as much an integral part of the house as shingle and board.
“Roses.” The sound, more groan than word, whispered from his tips. “Imagining.” He blinked at the darkness that reached for him, muttering, “Only imagining.”
Like broken springs, his knees buckled, rocks ground into flesh and bone as he knelt in the sun. Lifting his face to the great white ball, feeling its fire, he knew he had to get up. He had to go on. He tried to rise. Once, twice. Again. He couldn’t.
“Tired.” Shoulders that had gained new breadth bowed under an invisible weight. His head rocked in a slow rhythm, side to side. Denial. But of what, he’d forgotten. “So tired.”
Even in forgetting, he meant to sit only long enough to gather his thoughts and recoup his strength. “Rest.” He tried to nod. “Only a minute.”
He didn’t know that before the words were finished, he crumpled into a heap, his face in the earth, dust stirring in fits and starts with each erratic respiration. In his delirious memory a pair of worn boots paced before him at eye level, a curious star carved in one heel winked and laughed at him. Hot breath touched his ear, burning, spewing hate.
A message from the lady...
His hand curled, loose soil sifted through his fingers, then he was still, lying beneath the burning sun. “No.”
Hank hurried across the veranda and down the steps. A meeting with Jake had run long, and she was getting a late start. She would have to push herself and her horse if she was going to check the herd on the north range and return before dark. The truck would make quicker work of it, but this roughest range would beat her black and blue the first mile. Unless she was hauling back a calf, she rarely took any of the ranch vehicles, preferring the freedom of the saddle.
Busy with her plans, she didn’t see Jeffie until she collided with him at the entrance of the barn. “Whoa!” Catching his arm, she righted herself. “Where’s the fire?”
“Fire?” Jeffie snatched his battered hat from his head, clutching it hard against his chest. “There ain’t no fire, Miss Benedict, ma’am.”
“You could have fooled me, the way you came barreling out of there.”
“Jeez, did I hurt you?” If he crushed the hat any flatter, it could serve as the Frisbee at the next ranch barbecue.
“I’m not hurt,” Hank assured him. “But I have to wonder what demon was on your heels to send you galloping at such a headlong pace.”
“No demons. Nossir. I mean no ma’am.” The boy backed away, ducking his head as he went. “No demons atall.”
The boy was babbling, his eyes were troubled. “What is it, Jeffie?” Hank rested a concerned hand on his shoulder. “You seem upset. Is there something I can help you with?”
“No! Yes.” The boy backed away another pace. He looked as if he would bolt at the slightest provocation. Miserably he ducked his head even lower. The hat curled in his palms. “I don’t know what to do.”
In a hasty decision, Hank determined the herd could wait. The boy’s distress was becoming palpable. She couldn’t walk away from him, leaving him so troubled. “Jeffie.” She took the mutilated hat from him, dropping it on a peg that held a bridle, as well. “Come with me.”
Taking his hand, she marched with him into the small room that once served as the foreman’s office. Sandy had seldom been in residence in the past, and never after Jake’s strokes. In their aftermath, and with the consequential disabilities, all ranch operations had been moved to the house.
Settling the boy in a chair, Hank sat across from him. “Now,” she began like a schoolmarm. “Suppose you tell me what has you in such a state.”
Jeffie shook his head as he stared down at his knees. His palms rubbed rhythmically over the tops of the bony protrusions.
“Jeffie.” Hank caught a hand in hers, stilling it, waiting for him to look at her. When he lifted his bleak gaze, she realized with a start that he was far younger than he claimed. A boy, with his head full of dreams, in the body of a man.
From the look of him, his dream had just turned into a nightmare. “There’s nothing you can’t tell me, you know.”
He hesitated, not sure what he should say. When Hank simply waited, her hand quiet over his, the dam burst, a torrent of broken words and disjointed phrases tumbled out. “They were fighting. I heard’em.”
“Who was fighting?”
“They rode out long before dawn, creepy like, walking their horses like they didn’t want anyone to see them. I was sleeping in the loft.” A flush spread over pale cheeks. “I like it in the loft, I used to sleep there most nights when I was home.”
A telling remark, one that would bear further concern. Perhaps it held the key to why a boy large in body, but young in years, sat before her trying to cope with something beyond him.
“When they came back later in the morning, I was working with the saddles. They started arguing in the corral, accusing each other, saying terrible things.” A pink tongue licked nervously at dry lips. “They ambushed him and beat him, and left him. Maybe he’s dead.” He looked away from Hank, unable to hold her shocked gaze. “Now that I’ve told, they’ll kill me too.”
Dread gripped Hank with a cold hand. “Who, Jeffie?”
“Rance and Wallie.” Ransome Lawter and his brother, Wallace.
Wallie and I can make certain he never touches you again. The remembe
red threat splintered through her calm demeanor. Cold dread turned frigid. “Steve.”
His name was a low moan that snapped Jeffie’s bleak stare to her. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Why? When?” Hank was on her feet, her mind racing furiously. “Where is he?”
“They jumped him in the barn at the Broken Spur and left him there.”
“What else did they say? No!” She shook her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. Turn the mare in the corral and saddle Black Jack for me.”
Jeffie jumped from his chair, eager to help. “I’ll go with you.”
“No. See to the horses, you’ve done enough already.” Before the boy exited the office, Hank was rummaging through a cabinet of first aid supplies always kept near the stable for the common injuries incurred there. But what injuries would Steve have? Would anything help? She considered taking the utility truck, then discarded the idea. Horseback would be faster. There were caverns and small crevasses she would have to drive around. Black Jack could jump them.
Slinging a small bag of supplies over her shoulder, she went to find Jeffie and her horse.
Black Jack was saddled and eager to run. Hank noted this youngest of cowhands had taken a minute to fill and tie a canteen to her saddle. Her rifle was in its scabbard. “Thanks, Jeff.” Patting his shoulder, she smiled encouragingly. “Don’t worry, you handled this well. I think you’re going to be a hand the Rafter B can be proud to call one of its own.”
Stepping in the saddle, she secured the bag, checked the canteen and the rifle. “Call the doctor in Silverton. Tell him to meet me at the Broken Spur.” Leaning down she met the boy’s gaze, and was gratified to see that it was utterly calm. “Warn him it may be urgent.”
She didn’t wait for an answer as she spurred Black Jack into a breakneck run. The stallion was in top form, and her desperate mood was contagious. From the first leaping start he gave her all he had. Hank’s only challenge was staying in the saddle in a ride that promised to be one that made all others seem tame.
Black Jack picked his way down the last precarious turn of the nearly vertical trail from the top of the mesa, and Hank scanned the grounds of the Broken Spur. She saw the horse first, standing head down in the sun, as if she grazed where there was only hard packed earth. Lorelei. But why was she free? Hank wondered. Why not in the corral, or her stable?
As Black Jack gained the confident footing of level ground and broke into a gallop, the mare tossed her head, but stood. The shadow huddled at her hooves didn’t move.
“Steve.” Before the stallion slid to a halt, Hank was swinging from the saddle. One step and she was on her knees, her fingertips at the pulse at his throat.
“He’s alive, Black Jack! Thank God! He’s alive!”
There were tears in her eyes as she buried her face in her hands.
Chapter 9
Roses.
He was caught in a drift of the scent of roses. A faint whisper of fragrance, as delicate as the touch that stroked him. As elusive as the sounds that washed over him like a lazy summer tide. He heard the pad of a quiet footstep, the muffled drone of voices without faces and words without context.
Familiar words in an unfamiliar place. All part of an exotic dream.
“Dust,” he croaked through lips too stiff to move. In his dreams there should be dust, the roar of the rodeo, the tramp of horses.
Horses!
He needed to see to the horses.
The compelling need leaped into his thoughts out of the senseless ramble. He had no idea what horses, or where, but out of longstanding habit, he knew he must go to them. Somehow, somewhere.
“Horses,” he muttered, struggling to rise, trying in vain to see through eyes that would barely open. “Have to see to the horses.”
The voices of his dream fell silent, and above the labored gasps of his efforts he heard the rush of footsteps. An angel’s footsteps, light, airy, weightless in their hurry. Hands touched him, an angel’s hands, warming his bared chest as their comforting pressure eased him back.
A quiet voice murmured, “Rest, be still. You needn’t worry about the horses, they’re in good hands.”
“Who—?” He lost the thought as he waited for a stabbing pain in his side to subside.
“Who took care of them?” the voice in his imagination supplied. “I did, of course.”
It made no sense. When did angels become stable hands? He tried to sit up. “My job.”
“It was your job.” He was eased back, carefully, firmly, unable to offer even token resistance. “For the next little while, it will be mine.”
“Mine,” he insisted, certain he’d lost his mind. That the touch was not real, that he argued with himself.
“You can’t.”
“Yess...” Steve growled through hard-bitten teeth, “I can.”
“All right, be bullheaded. I suppose you wouldn’t be who and what you are if you weren’t.”
The soothing touch of his dream angel lifted away. He lay silent and oddly unanchored, enveloped in a gray darkness broken by shards of moving light glimmering through tiny slits between swollen eyelids.
“Show me.” The voice never altered, but there was a taunting dare in its coaxing tone. “Come on, prove it. Show me now.”
She had backed away, he heard her step, the change in the direction of her words, but he couldn’t see that the hands of the woman who was more than a dream were raised and ready.
Ignoring the pain, he jolted forward. A costly inroad on his conviction, yet he wouldn’t give up. He couldn’t. Arms hugged against his sides, he waited until a wave of nausea passed. Every move hurt, every effort drew sweat to his brow, but from long experience, he knew the first move was the killer. The worst was over.
Sliding his legs over the side of the bed, he shifted, planted his feet on the floor, and lurched to a standing position. His body felt too long, too ungainly, as if there were more than the fraction short of six feet of him.
“I can do this.” He fought down another surge of nausea, and took a shuffling step. “I can.”
“Of course you can, Cody,” the melodic voice agreed as his knees buckled and arms too slender for their valor closed around him, breaking his fall. “Just...not...yet.”
They went down together, her back slapping the unadorned floor, her body cushioning his. Both lay still, Steve from the draining of the last of his stamina, she from the shock of the fall emptying lungs of that small, precious, priming flow of oxygen. Deflated tissues sealed and clung, defeating her silent, unmoving struggle. Yet she held him, her fingers curling around his shoulders and in his hair, wrapping him in her strength even as she endured the slow easing of the breathless paralysis.
Steve was conscious, but inert, a boneless, powerless form weighing her down. Though his respiration was shallow, there was an evenness in it, the warmth of his breath whispered over the slope of her breast with an assuring rhythm. His skin was clammy, but a fingertip at the pulse at his temple ascertained that his heart was staunch and steady. Relief brought a great gasping sigh to her lips, her chest lifted, drawing much needed oxygen to starved blood.
As if she woke him from a long sleep, Steve stirred, his body clenched, his head turned, his lips brushed yielding, fragrant flesh.
Roses, but not a dream. A flesh and blood woman.
Reeling away, he pulled from her arms. Disgust masked the excruciating punishment he inflicted on himself. The flare of angry disbelief widening the swollen slits of his eyes. “You.”
“Steve, don’t.” She reached for him, but he jerked away, his momentum bringing him to his knees.
“Damn you!” His face was pale, his body weaved drunkenly beyond her touch. He tried to catch the edge of the bed to gain his feet, his fingers missed the sturdy frame and closed over rough linen, dragging it down to him. In his helplessness a bleak, bitter twist of his mouth tore at split lips. A drop of blood, trickled down his chin, with the last of adrenaline-borne willpower, he wiped it away.
&nb
sp; He stared at his hand, at the blood. His pain was more than physical, as he lifted his poor gaze to hers. “Why, Benedict?” He shook his head, perhaps to clear his thoughts, perhaps to deny what he must ask. “Why like this? Did winning mean so much?”
His head drooped, a shuddering groan racked his body, his shoulders bowed. Darkness hovered at the edges of his vision, spirrating down around him, bringing with it oblivion. One last conscious cry tore from him as he toppled forward, one last muttered word as he was embraced again by the arms of the woman he believed had betrayed him. “Why?”
Hank caught him, holding him as she lowered him to the floor. “No.” She leaned over him, stroking his hair from his battered face. “Winning would never mean this much.”
He was hungry. The tantalizing aroma of cooking meat went straight from his nostrils to his stomach, reminding that he’d had only coffee before going to the barn.
The barn! Memories flooded over him. Images flashed through his mind too swiftly to be defined, but he knew. With undeniable clarity he knew everything, from the first scream of the horses to the healing, soothing touch of the woman.
“Benedict.” He opened his eyes, flinching only a little from the sudden bright burst. Lying in a tangle of cotton sheets, he let recognition of his surroundings seep in, orienting himself.
The Broken Spur. He was home, in his own bed. A pot hung on a book in the open fireplace. Vapors bearing the rich, mouth-watering scent billowed above it as a lone tongue of fire leaped from smoldering embers to lick at the sooty base. With studied care he turned his head, probing the rest of the room. All was in order, every surface shone, far more than from the haphazard ministrations of a solitary man.
A woman’s touch.
“Benedict,” he called again. There was no answer, and no place to hide in the single room of the small ranch house. He was alone, but only for the moment. She was here, somewhere. He knew it as surely as he knew he must find her and confront her with what she’d done.
A promise easier to make than to keep, he discovered five minutes later. He stood by his bed, naked, finding no trace of the clothing he’d worn, and with little hope of reaching the shelf that held fresh shirts and jeans. Not when his trembling legs threatened to dump him on his backside on a floor that lurched and bucked like a sailor’s nightmare. Still, he had to try. A stumbling, lunging step sent him headlong into a wall. Not the way he intended to go, but he was grateful for the support.