The Bull Rider's Homecoming

by Allie Pleiter

  Begrudgingly needing her had turned into respecting her, had turned into liking her, had turned into—she’d thought—loving her. That boy had made her feel pretty and full of possibility...only to turn around months later and declare her not pretty enough and without enough potential to follow him to rodeo stardom.

  She suddenly realized it had been half a minute or so, and neither of them had spoken.

  Luke shifted his weight again. It dawned on Ruby that while she could wait all day for this standoff to end, he could not. He’d been injured, and badly. He may be in possession of all the bravado, but she was in possession of the solution—if there was one.

  “This won’t work,” he said under his breath but still loud enough for her to hear. How many times had she heard those words during Luke’s tirades about algebra and graduation requirements?

  The remark revealed just how much he needed this to work. He hadn’t changed: the more he needed it, the less he’d act like he did. She could see it, clear as day, because sensing things about patients was her gift.

  She did have a gift. The bravest, strongest version of herself looked Luke straight in the eye. She clutched her file and took a step toward him. “Won’t work, huh? Prove it.”

  Chapter Two

  The red scarf didn’t suit her.

  It was a weird thought to have, given the drama of seeing the girl you’d loved and left after so much time, but that was the first thing that went through his mind.

  Ruby, despite her name, wasn’t a red girl. She was more of a dusky pink, the color of Gran’s roses that ran along the back of the house. Red was trying too hard.

  The Ruby of his memory was a soft pink thing, kitten-like, full of wonder and amazed at whatever he did. She’d put him on a mile-high pedestal all through high school, and he’d liked that. Dad was lightning-quick with the put-downs, but Ruby looked at him—as Gran would put it—as if he hung the moon.

  He’d given her plenty of reason to admire him when they’d gotten to know each other. He’d swept her off her feet. First by accident, just to distract her from the tutoring she was supposed to be giving him, and then on purpose. The more he got to know her, the more he liked her. He’d delighted in romancing her with dramatic gestures and flat-out charm. By the spring of their senior year, like had turned to love.

  And then he’d done her wrong. Dropped her as dramatically and abruptly as he’d swept her up. If he could manage to regret anything—which was a reach for the likes of him—what he’d done to Ruby would top the list.

  Which made today excruciating on any number of levels.

  Right at this moment, however, what topped his list was that he couldn’t stand up much longer. The numbness was creeping up his leg, his sense of the floor beneath his left foot all but gone. If he turned to walk back into the house now, there was a fair chance his foot would drag against the ground, if not trip him outright. He’d left his cane back at the couch, determined to stand there on his own two feet and show her he was still strong. Now the only thing that felt strong was the throbbing in his wrist from the choke hold he currently had on the doorknob.

  This was the part he hated the most—he couldn’t tell if his knee would hold him or buckle, if his ankle would bend or drag. It was as if his body had dismembered itself, splitting off into strange pieces that refused to talk to each other.

  It’d be so much easier if it just hurt, just as it would be so much simpler if it didn’t have to be Ruby.

  As it was, she walked up to the guesthouse and stood waiting for an invitation to enter. The Ruby he’d known would have gotten back into her car after his first mean glare. This Ruby who’d just said “prove it” was an older, harder Ruby. It bugged him that he might be the reason for some of that armor.

  “Are you going to let me in?” Her voice tried too hard to be loud, mismatched to her personality just like the scarf the wind kept flapping up off her neck.

  “Do I have to?” The comeback sounded childish. Stupid, given that getting her here was what he’d wanted in the first place. He’d thought she was the only one who could get him out of this. Now that she stood in front of him, most of him hated the idea.

  Ruby stared at him, one eyebrow scrunched down in thought—the way she used to stare at a math problem. It had been one of his favorite things, watching Ruby’s mind whir into gear, but the fact that she was now trying to solve him sent an itchy feeling down his spine.

  “I forgot something in the car,” she said. It had the tone of a convenient excuse, and Luke swallowed the infuriating sense that she recognized his dilemma and was giving him a chance to spare his pride.

  Ruby made an exaggerated turn back toward her car. Luke wasn’t foolish enough to ignore the out she gave him and hobbled awkwardly back to the couch while she had her back turned. He left the door open. He couldn’t decide if he should be glad she’d given him the chance to sit down unseen, or ticked off she’d sensed he needed it. That was always the best and worst thing about Ruby—she could read him like a book.

  “You always wanted Granny B to let you live here,” came her voice as she closed the guesthouse’s front door behind her. There was no nostalgia in her tone; she recited it like fact, the way she’d recited the algebra theorems that gave him fits in school.

  Luke let his hand lead his numb leg to come up and cross casually over his good knee. She was watching the way his leg moved, and he fought the urge to cover it with the issue of Pro Bull Rider magazine lying on the couch next to him.

  Ruby settled herself in the chair opposite him, a file and clipboard balanced on her lap. She sat upright, knees together, elbows close, the way she used to sit with him in study hall back before he’d coaxed her out of her shell. Ruby had always been a much more entertaining equation to solve than algebra.

  “This won’t work,” he challenged again, knowing it made no sense but needing to keep her at a distance until the knots in his gut settled.

  “So you said.” Her eyes fell to the cane he’d forgotten to hide in his rush to get “casually” settled on the couch before she came in the door, and he bit back a scowl. She gave him what he was sure was her worst “therapist” glare. “Don’t think I haven’t heard that kind of talk before.”

  She’d heard it from him all those times he’d said he’d never be able to learn algebra. The history in the air between them was so thick and painful he could practically reach out and press his hand up against it like a cement wall.

  Ruby opened her file folder with an infuriatingly clinical air. “Left leg, nerve root injury close to the spinal cord. Concussion, loss of consciousness at the time of injury. Ongoing symptoms include loss of muscle strength and neuropathy.”

  Luke despised the clinical terms they used—why couldn’t they just say that a mean bull threw him against a fence at an event in Montana, knocked him out, and busted up his back. He remembered the ride, but any memory of the grisly fall came from video tape—he only woke up afterward in an ambulance with several panicked people poking and asking urgent questions.

  “How would you rate your current level of pain?”

  She’d have read every page of his file, so she knew that was a trick question. This new Ruby Sheldon wasn’t playing nice. “Ain’t nothin’,” he drawled, omitting the wink he usually gave the buckle bunnies. Those pretty, love-struck rodeo fans usually cooed and pouted over his collection of bruises and scratches after a show. They’d showed up at the hospital the first two days, then trickled off as the tour moved on.

  Her eyes narrowed, and she clicked her pen. “On a scale of one to ten, please.” He had to admit to a shred of surprise that she could produce such a hard shell in his presence. Maybe hate really was more powerful than love, like Dad always said.

  “Point-five.”

  “Do you have difficulty with any limbs other than the involved leg?” />
  He sat back against the couch cushions. “I’ve been told all of me works just fine.”

  That irritated her—those kinds of lines always did. She stood up and put her hands on her hips.

  “Stand up.”

  He glared at her. “You know, I believe I’m fine right here.”

  Something shot through her eyes, a stubbornness that surprised him. “Stand up. I’m not going to be scared off, so how long this takes is entirely up to you. Let’s try standing for eight seconds. That ought to be a time frame you know well.”

  Eight seconds. The length of a qualifying bull ride. Whenever she’d worried about how much risk or pain was involved in bull riding—which had been often—he’d always said, “Honey, I can take anything for eight seconds.” He hadn’t expected her to use their history against him.

  Luke Buckton had burned a heap of bridges on his way out of this tiny town, and now it felt as if he was going to have to fight to keep the pile of ashes from rising up and choking him.

  * * *

  Ruby made herself look straight at Luke as he pulled his long body up off the couch. He was trying hard to hide every single weakness—physical and otherwise—but she wouldn’t allow it. I’m as stubborn as you are, Luke Buckton. And I have just as much riding on this as you do. Lana was right; success with a high profile client like him would bolster business. But right now, Ruby mostly just wanted to show Luke up. Who’s stronger now, cowboy?

  She spied a straight-backed chair up against the wall and dragged it to his side. “Hold on to this and put all your weight on your good leg.”

  Luke shot her a look, and she suspected he was concocting some remark about all of him being more than good, but he simply grabbed the chair and rocked back on one hip as if leaning against a bar in an Old West saloon.

  “Raise your left leg as far as you can and hold it there, please.”

  Effort tightened the corners of his cocky smile. He got the injured leg up about as far as his knees, and she noticed a tremor near the top.

  “Like the boots?” He pointed toward his expensive-looking cowboy boots. Ruby guessed they cost as much as her used car. “Custom work. Gift from a sponsor.”

  “Very nice,” she replied. “Take them off.”

  “What?”

  “I can hardly see how your ankle rotates if you’ve got it locked up inside all that fine, hand-tooled leather now, can I?”

  He frowned. “None of the other gals made me take off my boots.”

  Ruby wasn’t backing down. “None of the other therapists,” she emphasized the correction in terms, “got that far before you drove them off.”

  There was a long, prickly pause before he said, “I can’t.”

  It must have cost him to say that. His bitter tone made her hair stand on edge. He looked like a porcupine, defensive spines sticking out in all directions, warning the world to keep its distance.

  Her heart twisted at the anguish she wondered if only she could see. Luke was deeply hurting, but scrambling to keep it hidden. It gave her only one way forward: if she was going to treat him, she’d have to meet his defenses head-on.

  But this was Luke. Luke with those eyes and all that history. Ruby made herself hold his gaze despite the monster-sized flip it caused in her stomach. “You can’t what?” she asked as directly as she knew how. Do not back down.

  He stared at her for a long moment. “I can’t get ’em on and off without...help.”

  The last word stuck, as if he’d had to drag it up from some pit to say it out loud.

  Cowboys pulled their boots off every day. Most did it without even thinking, either heel-to-toe or with a fancy little hook-like gizmo set up beside many Texan doorways. Way back, she’d seen Luke do it hundreds of times. Of course, such maneuvers required standing on one leg—something Ruby was pretty sure Luke could no longer do.

  Ruby carefully turned the straight chair so that the seat faced forward. If getting him to receive help came in the form of this near standoff just to remove his boots, then this was as good a place as any to start.

  Grace. Was she strong enough to extend grace to the man who had hurt her so deeply back then? The moment suddenly struck her as equally important to her as it was to him. If she claimed to come as far as she had from the teenager Luke had left behind, the proof would come in what she did next.

  Slowly, Ruby kneeled down at the foot of the chair and motioned for Luke to sit. “Well, then, help it is.”

  The gesture startled him—she watched the astonishment flash across his features before he hid them behind that famous grin. A deep resolve settled into place under her breastbone, the same resolve that had gotten her through all her therapist schooling with record speed and exemplary grades despite a mountain of obstacles.

  She folded her hands in her lap and stared up at him. I’ll sit here for an hour if that’s what it takes, Luke. I expect you know that. I expect that’s why I’m here. So come on, cowboy, what’s it gonna be?

  The long, tall body still held an athlete’s lines. The take-on-the-world planes of his shoulders, the try-and-stop-me set of his jaw. And yet, despite his strength and determination, all his features seemed to tip on the knife’s edge of a man in doubt. Ruby found herself doing what she’d never thought she’d do again: praying for Luke Buckton.

  Slowly—excruciatingly slowly and with all the ferocity of a bull fixing to charge—Luke sat down.

  Chapter Three

  Ruby drove a bit down the road before she eased her little car to the shoulder. She let out the breath she’d been holding since pulling the guesthouse door shut behind her and allowed her head to sink against the steering wheel.

  The longest hour of my life.

  Once Luke sat down, Ruby had expected things to smooth out. Having broken down the barrier and earned that one shred of compliance, she’d expected to gain more.

  She’d forgotten who she was dealing with.

  Oh, she’d gotten the boot off all right—albeit with a comical sequence of yanks and tugs—to expose the injured foot. When she asked him to use that foot, to show her his range of motion with the ankle or anything else, Luke turned mean. His frustration nearly darkened the room, it was so intense.

  Luke had always had a temper—it was probably half of what made him such a good rider. Something came over him when he got angry, a laser-sharp focus and determination that plowed through anything standing in his way. He’d spent most of his teenage years angry, primarily at his father, and that anger had driven him not just to succeed but to excel. Now that anger was directed at his own body, which made it much more vicious as it spilled out onto anyone foolish enough to be in range. Lord, Ruby sent up a moan of a prayer, he’s a wounded animal—twice as mean and four times as dangerous.

  It wasn’t as if Ruby didn’t know how to handle an ornery patient. Difficult patients were, in fact, a specialty of hers. Lana said, “Your greatest talent is seeing through the hard actions to the wounded soul beneath.” When Lana grafted Ruby into her agency, setting up Martins Gap Physical Therapy as an affiliated partnership of Lana’s own practice in Austin, she’d said it was because of Ruby’s gifts. “You always find the one gesture that will open up a crack in the walls patients build around themselves.” Ruby could always find a crack and pry it open.

  Today that gift felt more like a curse. The true torment of the last hour wasn’t Luke’s behavior—that was just a coping mechanism, the battle weapon of a man at the end of his rope.

  No, her real problem was her ability to see through him. To peer under the gleam of the brilliant shell he showed the world and see a man who wasn’t sure he could pull off the recovery he needed. A massive cauldron of doubt and pain boiled under that cocky disregard. She’d seen it for just a moment as he sat down, but within minutes of that glimpse he’d slammed the shell back on w
ith the ferocity of the bull bison who wandered the Blue Thorn pastures.

  Ruby’s cell phone buzzed beside her, and she fished it from her handbag to peer at the screen.

  Been praying for you. Call me when it’s over.

  Lana was the best instructor and mentor Ruby could ever ask for. Mama and Grandpa were supportive, but Lana often knew just how to bolster her spirits. It was probably due to Lana’s prayers that Ruby had lasted as long as she had with Luke.

  Forgoing a text, Ruby dialed her mentor, taking a deep breath as Lana clicked on the line before the first ring even finished.

  “And how was the Buckton beast?”

  “Beastly,” she replied, glad to feel a damp laugh bubble up from all the tension in her chest.

  “Does he look like you remember?”

  “Oh, his looks have improved with age. Those eyes are still...those eyes. I’d forgotten how dark they could turn. That man’s angry glare could set a tree on fire.”

  “That charming, huh?”

  “Let’s just say I’m not so sure the Blue Thorn bulls have the worst temper on that ranch. If he’s the charmer of the bull riding circuit, I didn’t see any of it.”

  “A mean son of gun, hmm?”

  Ruby let her head fall back against the seat rest. “He was mean—but not in the way you might think. He didn’t yell at me or call me names. His methods were more cold. Heartless. Wisecracking and dismissive.”

  “Ouch. How are you?”

  Ruby looked back at the Blue Thorn’s rolling pastures that filled her rearview mirror. “I don’t know. I mean, I knew it’d be hard. But it was so much harder than hard—if that makes any sense. It felt more like sixty hours than sixty minutes.”

  “Did you get him to do anything?”

  In fact, she had. That was the one foothold she had in this mess, and no one could grab hold of an ounce of progress better than Ruby Sheldon. “Two exercises. And I tricked him into showing me his range of motion, which isn’t much at all. He thinks he’ll be back on a bull, that’s clear.”