Taming Rafe

by Susan May Warren

  Kat looked at her hand in his, his thumb running over the top. “You were just looking out for me.”

  He tried a smile, but it came off as a twitch, and she saw his eyes glisten. “Yes, Katherine, I was.”

  “But you’re not taking away the Breckenridge Foundation.”

  He pulled his hand away and shook his head.

  “We don’t need you to underwrite us anymore, okay?” Kat said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t need you.” She touched his arm.

  He looked at her. Then took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

  Kat glanced at Cari, who leaned against the door.

  “You were always so much more than I could have ever hoped for,” he said softly.

  Kat’s eyes clouded.

  “I’ll call you from London.” He leaned over to press a kiss to her forehead, then patted her leg through the covers before he left.

  “As usual, I’m completely in the dark,” Cari said. “Are you talking about Bradley . . . or something else?”

  Kat touched the place where her grandfather had sat. “I’m going for a walk in the park.” She pushed back the covers, slid out of bed.

  “Are you okay? You want me to come with you?”

  She shook her head as she started for her dressing room.

  “Kat?”

  She turned.

  Cari stood in the door. “He’ll call.”

  Kat sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe he decided that he simply didn’t fit in my world. That knowing me, loving me, was too much trouble.”

  “Please. The guy just about jumped off a roof for you.”

  “I nearly got him killed.” Kat went to her dressing room. Why hadn’t he called? She’d practically thrown herself at him. And hadn’t he said he was falling for her too? She tugged on her jeans and an old sweatshirt and stared at her footwear choices. Right, like there was any question. She reached for the red boots.

  The September air smelled of autumn leaves and fading flowers as she crossed the street and fell into the solace of the park. Two Canada geese paddled in the pond. A jogger ran by. Kat strode over the bridge toward the Chess and Checkers House, then meandered down past the ball fields, where a couple of kids were tossing baseballs. She finally turned up the path toward the carousel.

  Another Karen Carpenter song hung in the air from the loudspeakers of the carousel, something about birds and all the girls in town following a blue-eyed hero. Rafe didn’t have blue eyes, but those sweet-as-chocolate brown eyes worked just fine to attract the populace of Manhattan and beyond.

  Kat bought a ticket at the booth, waited in line with four other people, then walked around the carousel until she found her favorite horse, Hornet. She climbed aboard, shaking her head. She’d never outgrow this part of her, the cowgirl inside. But she didn’t want to either.

  “All that glitters isn’t gold.” Maybe she hadn’t found her storybook ending. But she had found herself and the grace and peace to stop striving to be someone she didn’t have to be. Wasn’t supposed to be.

  In the end, perhaps that was the happy ending she’d really been looking for.

  As the ride started, Kat closed her eyes, letting herself go back to Montana, the fresh breezes, the movement of her horse as she rode, laughter and strong arms, and two-stepping and bull riding, and . . .

  She opened her eyes. The carousel was still moving, the song not quite over when she saw him standing in the shadows. He was leaning against a tree, his arms folded, watching her.

  She closed her eyes again. She was just dreaming. When the music died, she opened her eyes.

  Rafe smiled. He didn’t move toward her as the horse stopped, but he simply uncrossed his arms. Then she saw why. Behind him stood a wheelchair.

  She climbed down from Hornet.

  “I’m looking for somebody.” He pushed the wheelchair with one hand, leaning on it as he took a hop toward her.

  “Yeah, who?” she answered, not moving.

  He nodded toward the carousel. “Someone who can teach me to ride.”

  She touched Hornet’s smooth wooden frame. “I got a great horse here.”

  Rafe took another hop toward her. “Bet his name is Shadow or Beauty.”

  “Hornet. Fastest stallion in the West.”

  “Is that so? Think I can stay on him?” He hopped until he was just a foot away.

  “I dunno. Are you tough?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can you handle pain?”

  “Tryin’ to.”

  “Are you afraid of a challenge?”

  He grinned. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Kat made a face. “He’s pretty wild. I’m not sure you can tame him.”

  Rafe shook his head, real slow. “Not sure I want to. How about I just go easy with him, let him learn to trust me. I promise not to break his spirit.” He took a final step toward her, lowered his voice. “In fact, you can teach me how.”

  How was she supposed to stay angry at him when he looked at her like that, all his emotions in his incredible eyes? She stepped off the carousel, closed the distance between them, and curled her hands into his shirt. “Think I’m a pro, do you?”

  “Oh, I know it.” He pulled her toward him. “But don’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.”

  Kat grinned, running her fingertip down his handsome, unbarbered face. “Took you long enough. I was getting worried. How’d you find me?”

  “Cari. And I figured out the carousel.”

  “You were paying attention, then.”

  “It was hard not to.” Rafe cleared his throat, his expression sobering. “Sorry I didn’t call, Kitty, but you gotta give a man some credit for wanting to be upright when he tells his lady that he hopes she’ll give him a second chance. That, if she’ll have him, he’ll try to be everything she wants—a bull rider or a gentleman. If he has to, he’ll even live in New York.”

  She ran her thumb over his chin, trying to find words but failing.

  “So?” He smelled devastatingly good, freshly showered, if not shaved.

  She wiped a tear that had escaped. “What if she belongs in both worlds, New York and Montana?”

  Rafe let one side of his mouth turn up. “Then both worlds it will be.” His face grew solemn again, and the scoundrel in his eyes vanished, and all she saw was the Rafe she’d known existed, the noble man inside who made her proud to know him. “You’re everything I never knew I was looking for, Kitty. You believed in me when no one else would. And because of that, for the first time I was able to believe in myself, in the man God made.”

  Kat let those words sink in, find the empty places, and fill them nearly full. “That guy’s all right, even if he does have a tendency to drive into things.” Her eyes roamed his face, lingering on the scar over his eye that made him seem just a little wild. Those lips that curled into a smile that could turn her to liquid. Those eyes that could see the cowgirl inside her that had longed to be set free.

  “Yeah, well, what do you expect? Perfection?”

  She laughed. “From you, champ, yes.” Then she wove her fingers into his hair and kissed him. Sweet and long and full of promises.

  He pulled her close and kissed her back, the way a cowboy should.

  Finally the carousel operator came out and asked them if they wanted another ride.

  So the cowboy climbed up behind his cowgirl, on their black stallion, Hornet, put his arms around her to hold her tight, and Kat Russell Breckenridge rode off with her hero into the New York sunset.

  An ending that even B. J. King would appreciate.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I’m the first to declare that I am incredibly blessed to be allowed to write books. I love to write, to see the story unfold, to get to know my characters and see how God works out His plan for their lives. For me, writing a story is so much about a journey and seeing God provide each step of the way. Every book tests my faith, because when I sit down and stare at a blank screen, I have to trust that even when I don’t
have words, God does. Every book also brings me deep joy, because at the end I see how God has worked it out beyond what I can ask or imagine. It is a humbling thing to see God at work in your life, in the process, and in the end product and know that He has done this for His good pleasure and for my joy. To paraphrase Kat, it is no small thing to have the Creator of the universe working in you and through you to touch others. It takes my breath away.

  This was an ambitious book for me—the different story lines, the book-within-a-book idea that I always wanted to try. I even had a song in the back of my mind that I wanted to write.

  I started this story with an idea—that often we don’t see the effect we have on others, and yet, as Christians, if we surrender to God and His plan, He uses everything we say and do for His purposes. More than that, everything we do—whether it’s raising money for charity, riding bulls, or even just making our family dinner—can be used by Him for good. This thought has given me great peace over the years, regardless of where I find myself—in Russia, living in a high-rise and planting churches, or in Minnesota, tucked in the north woods, writing books. I wanted Kat to see that God had made her uniquely Kat and that she only had to be true to herself and let God work through that person to touch the world around her.

  Of course, I didn’t have to look too far to find Kat. I was a lot like her growing up—had a horse on springs in my basement, a turquoise cowgirl suit, and bright red boots. I ate up shows like Bonanza and Gunsmoke and dreamed of having my own horse named SunDancer or Hornet. But I grew up in the suburbs (no horse in sight) and loved letting out my “inner Kitty” for this story!

  I was also fascinated with the world of bull riding. I was channel surfing one day and landed on a Professional Bull Riders event. It sucked me in with the danger, the bravado, the thrills, and the wrecks, and I wondered about the kind of man who rode bulls and what God could do with him if he gave his talents to Him. Many of the bull riders I researched are Christians, and for them, riding is a way to praise the Lord, just like writing is for me.

  My favorite part of the book, however, was John and Lolly’s story. I loved weaving their backstory throughout the book Unshackled and showing the different sides of love, including the biggest part, in my opinion: commitment. I loved setting Lolly free from her shackles and helping her see how John had been her hero all along.

  Thank you for journeying back to Phillips with me, for reading Rafe’s story. I hope you’ll join me for Finding Stefanie, book three in the Noble Legacy. Meanwhile, I pray that you see God working in your life and through your life to touch people around you. And I pray that it takes your breath away.

  In His grace,

  Susan May Warren

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SUSAN MAY WARREN recently returned home after serving eight years with her husband and four children as missionaries in Khabarovsk, Far East Russia. Now writing full-time as her husband runs a lodge on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, she and her family enjoy hiking and canoeing and being involved in their local church.

  Susan holds a BA in mass communications from the University of Minnesota and is a multipublished author of novellas and novels with Tyndale, including Happily Ever After, the American Christian Romance Writers’ 2003 Book of the Year and a 2003 Christy Award finalist. Other books in the series include Tying the Knot and The Perfect Match, the 2004 American Christian Fiction Writers’ Book of the Year. Flee the Night, Escape to Morning, and Expect the Sunrise comprise her romantic-adventure, search-and-rescue series.

  Taming Rafe is the sequel to Reclaiming Nick and the second book in Susan’s new romantic series.

  Susan invites you to visit her Web site at www.susanmaywarren.com. She also welcomes letters by e-mail at susan@susanmaywarren.com.

  FINDING STEFANIE

  If she could, Stefanie Noble would get on her bay quarter horse, Sunny, ride over the chapped, frozen hills of the Silver Buckle Ranch, and disappear into the horizon. Just keep riding. Because it was only on Sunny that the loneliness, the stress, would slough off, and she’d hear the wind, the voice of freedom, singing in her ears.

  After all, with her brother Nick running the Silver Buckle, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the ranch didn’t need her anymore.

  Okay, sometimes she wondered. But perhaps not at 5 a.m., smack in the middle of calving season.

  Singing—that’s what she needed. Something other than the sound of a cow in distress. Her ears ached with the noise as the exhaustion of being up all night pressed down against her, into her bones, her cells.

  “C’mon, old cow, push,” she groaned, bracing her feet against the haunches of a weary Black Angus as she pulled on the chains attached to the hooves of a not-yet-born calf.

  “She ain’t gonna give.”

  Stefanie glanced behind her. Dutch looked as tired as Stefanie felt, his face droopy with skin and white whiskers.

  “She’s hip-locked. We’re gonna have to C-section her.” He already wore a pair of blue surgical coveralls.

  “I can do this, Dutch.” Stefanie’s arms shook. “Just give me the puller.”

  “Stef—”

  “It’s almost out!” Even as she said it, Stefanie could feel the little calf slide toward her farther out of the birth canal. “I don’t want to lose another cow!”

  She refused to let herself feel those words, to remember watching the cow she’d so laboriously raised slip out of life as it bled to death. Stefanie could only blame a month of night calving for her unsteady hands, the way she had perforated the uterus and left a baby without a mother.

  “I’m gettin’ Nick.”

  “No!” Stef twisted, looking at him. “I don’t need Nick. I need the puller. Come over here and lift her leg up, please.”

  Dutch said nothing, just handed her a long bar that looked much like the handle of a rake. Then he grabbed the cow’s back leg and lifted it with his tree-limb arms.

  Meanwhile, Stefanie affixed the bar across the cow’s haunches, hooked on the chains that connected the calf’s hooves to the puller, and started to turn the crank, applying pressure.

  Slowly, the calf began to emerge. The cow let out a long moan as her baby slipped out into the straw. The little black calf didn’t move. Afterbirth glistened in its curly black coat.

  “C’mon, baby,” Stef said, cleaning its face, its mouth. “Breathe.” Please breathe. She cut the cord and put iodine on it. The calf began to gasp. “Yes, breathe.” She put her hand on his body, began to rub. In a moment, the calf had started to take in air.

  Stefanie looked up at Dutch. In the shadows of the barn he looked much older than his fifty-seven years. But that’s what all-night doctoring did. She probably looked about eighty-two instead of what some might call a young twenty-four. Most of the time she sure felt eighty-two.

  Dutch gave her a half smile. “I’m going to check the other cows, see if they’ve dropped their calves yet.”

  Stefanie sat back in the straw, everything inside her shaking.

  How she longed for, needed, thirsted for freedom. Just one day without everything—the weather, the calving, the bills . . . All of it gnawed at her, rubbing her raw with the weight of the shackles.

  But this was her life, like it or not.

  Although recently, for the first time in her life she’d begun to wonder . . . maybe not.

  Detaching the hip bar from the cow and the calf, Stefanie watched as the mother turned and slathered her baby with her tongue.

  “Good mama,” Stefanie said, standing. Grime, sweat, and even blood had long ago seeped into her pores. She reeked of manure and straw, and her hair hung in strings, having escaped her long dark braids. Stretching, she got up and walked past the other stalls, checking the recent mothers and the two heifers who still had yet to give birth. Then, finally, she opened the barn door and slipped outside, letting the wind shear the exhaustion from her face, her limbs.

  Behind her, Clancy, their half-shepherd, half-retriever, came up and nudged his wet nose in
to her palm. She smiled at him and rubbed behind his floppy brown ears.

  The thaw had tiptoed in this year, haunting the land, giving the faint taste of spring, then shirking back, hiding under a blast of north wind and sleet. The pallor of today’s sky, stalwart against the encroaching sun, told her that she’d find no hope in the forecast.

  No, hope had long ago forsaken this land. Or perhaps it had only forsaken her.

  It had returned for her brother Nick and his wife, Piper, now expecting their first child. And for Maggy and Cole, co-owners of the Silver Buckle, now that Cole had regained his health. And it had certainly found Rafe, recent GetRowdy Bull Riding National Champion. He had never looked as happy as he had at his celebration party when he asked Kat Breckenridge to marry him. They’d probably live happily ever after in her New York penthouse while helping raise money for Kat’s charity.

  Meanwhile, Stefanie would sleep in the barn and help birth baby cows.

  Stefanie, the ranch hand. For some reason, it wasn’t at all who she’d expected to be.

  As the wind found her, her own smell made her wrinkle her nose. The ranch at this time of day seemed most forlorn, most eerie, old ghosts alive in the creak of the barn doors, the low of laboring cows. Sometimes she nearly expected her father’s voice to emerge from a hidden stall, calling her to fetch clean water or help him with a calf. For a long time—too long—it had only been herself, Dutch, and Bishop, her father, running the Silver Buckle. Somehow even those years hadn’t seemed as lonely as having Nick and Rafe return, to see their lives hook onto their dreams, to watch them turn into the men their father had always hoped they’d be, leaving her sorely behind.