Chapter Eleven
Casey paced the wide corridor outside the sports medicine room. He’d never been more grateful to have a medical team on site, but they weren’t letting him in the room in and Rowan had been in there for fifteen minutes. He was quietly going out of his mind.
Paulo had caught up with him after the ride but had left five minutes later saying he was going to try and get Casey’s ride time changed to the next round. Casey didn’t like the other man’s chances of winning any concessions in that regard but it beat Paulo standing around and watching him come undone.
What was wrong with her? Why was no one saying anything?
Rowan had passed out in the chutes and hadn’t come to until he’d laid her out on the stretcher in that room and she’d been so light and pale in his arms. Too light and fragile and those eyes so full of warmth and light had been closed and her body boneless.
She’d seen him and let go of the rail, reached out toward him, her eyes wide and frightened, and what the hell was wrong with her?
Because Doc Freeman had ordered Casey from the room and shut the door in his face, and what was that all about? Since when had the doc demanded privacy when treating patients?
Granted, Rowan was a woman. Maybe that was it.
And patient confidentiality.
And the fact that Casey wasn’t next of kin.
Where the hell was Rowan’s father in all of this? Because if he was next of kin he should be here, in there, finding out what was wrong so that Casey could stop pacing.
Someone else appeared in the tunnel, a dark silhouette against the bright light, cowboy hat on, but it was only Paulo and that was all he needed—a reminder of the wider world and his obligations to it. He had a bull to ride, and no leeway whatsoever when it came to not getting out there and doing it.
“They’ll hold your ride ’til the end of the round,” Paulo said when he reached him. “Which means you’ve got ten minutes to get back to the chute. Mab says Rowan’s been off with a stomach bug for a couple of days and hasn’t eaten much. Troy said much the same, with one minor point of difference.” Paulo looked to the door. “You should ride.”
“Not until I see her.”
“She’s in good hands,” Paulo persisted. “Management’s being as understanding as they’re gonna get. You need to ride.”
“Not until I find out what’s going on.”
The door opened and the doc peered out. “You’re still here?” he said.
Casey didn’t take his eyes off the older man’s face. “How is she?”
“She fainted. Low blood pressure.”
“Now will you ride?” asked Paulo.
“Can I see her?”
Paulo put his hand on Casey’s forearm. “Are you deliberately trying to kill your career?”
“I’m trying to find out what’s wrong with Rowan.”
“Casey.” Rowan was in the doorway, wan but upright.
He was in her space in an instant but he didn’t know where to touch. She was standing. She wouldn’t be doing that if there was anything drastically wrong. He took that thought and held to it. “What happened? And why are you standing?” He glared at the doc. “Why is she standing?”
“Good question, seeing as I told her to stay put until we got some food into her.”
“Well, I might have stayed put if some cowboy I know wasn’t intent on ruining his career.” She took his hand and hers was warm and moving. “I fainted. It happens. Get out of here. Don’t you dare put me before you. Not for this. I’m okay, so please, Casey. Go. I’ve got this.”
He searched her face, still pale, but her eyes were clear and filling with tears as he gathered her close, peppered her with soft kisses to the edge of her brow and the curve of her cheek. “You scared me stupid.”
“Go.” She pushed out of his arms and leaned against the wall. “Please don’t screw up because of me.”
But still Casey hesitated. It didn’t feel right to go when every bone in his body wanted to stay. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Go.” Doc Freeman’s voice was firm but not unkind. “We’ve got this.”
*
Five minutes later he was in the chute and he’d never been more grateful for the professionals at his side, although seeing Joe Harper acting as flank man caused a hot lick of anger in him, especially seeing as the older man didn’t even ask how his daughter was. “Why didn’t you come to the medical room?”
“Someone had to be here to pick up Rowan’s slack.”
“She’s not slack, she’s sick. She works herself to the bone for you and you treat her like an inconvenience. You don’t even ask how she is.”
“Maybe if you rode your fucking bull the way everyone’s waiting for you to, I can finish my job and go and find out.”
And then Paulo was wedging his way between them and pushing on Casey with not inconsiderable strength. “Ride the bull, amigo. You don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, but I do.”
“Yeah? And what happens when your girl finds out you’ve screwed her father over as well as yourself? Think she’ll be happy about that?”
Fuck.
Save it for the ride, my friend.
It was the fastest setup in history. Eight seconds later he was still on his bull and the siren sounded and he put his free hand to his bull rope and started looking for an exit.
He scored high, a ninety, and figured it for a gift because his attention had been anywhere but on the ride or the bull beneath him. He’d just wanted it done.
He climbed back over the chutes, blood pumping, adrenaline coursing, and he knew now wasn’t the time to confront Rowan’s father. Didn’t even look around for him, just packed his mouth guard away, rolled up his bull rope and grimly set about thanking the riders who’d shuffled forward to allow him to ride last.
He did have manners, see? He wasn’t all about hot temper and raw words and being right.
See to his gear, walk back to his truck. Cool down some before he went looking for invalid soup or at least something that had more nutrition to it than a donut. Let Rowan’s father have some time with her, if indeed that was where the man had disappeared to.
It was a good ride and he was in the lead again and that meant riding tomorrow and having his pick of the bulls for the short go, and it’d probably be a Harper bull he chose, and fuck. Meanwhile he had to find chicken soup and get it delivered and take Rowan to his room and tie her down and make her rest until she was better—
“You realize you’re talking aloud.”
Casey turned to find Huck watching him from the other side of a bull pen. “What?”
“Chicken soup, rest, tying her down.”
Ah.
“Sounds like a plan,” Huck said. “Whereas pissing all over Papa Harper was a terrible plan. He’d already phoned the doc from the back of the pens and whatever the doc told him was enough to keep him where he was and doing his job.”
Casey wiped his hands over his face.
“I’m guessing you didn’t know that,” said Huck.
“They threw me out of the treatment room. I didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t.” People didn’t faint when there was nothing wrong with them, but then, she’d told him she had a stomach bug last night when she bailed on him and he’d barely seen her since. Stomach bug. No food. Physical work. Fainting. It made sense. “Maybe I over-reacted.”
“You think?”
Not a question that needed any kind of answer.
“You’re gone on her, man. All the way, shut the gate.”
“Yeah, well, thank you, Einstein.” He’d come to the same conclusion on the twenty-year walk from the chutes to the medical rooms with an unconscious Rowan in his arms. He’d looked down at her as he’d laid her on the stretcher bed and she’d been the beginning and the end for him and everything in between, and he’d been plea-bargaining with God for her to wake up and be okay, and now he needed to lean his elbows on the fence rail and stick the heels of his hands to his eyes and breathe and be and know that she was still there with him. “How do you stand it?”
“Stand what?” Huck was still there, a solid, steady presence.
“Love.”
Huck huffed a laugh. “Wait ’til you have kids.”
“I’m not having kids.” Not if it felt like this. “Never been part of the plan.”
And then Huck turned and kicked Casey’s foot, straightened and cleared his throat. “Hey, Rowan. How you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.”
Casey stood and turned and wondered how much of the conversation she’d heard.
“I hear you rode well,” she said with the ghost of a smile, and her father was right there beside her, a tense and silent presence.
“You’re even whiter than you were before,” he muttered. “Why aren’t you lying down?”
Big brown eyes in a starkly pale face looked back at him and she let out a ragged breath and then a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “I will be soon. I came to say I’m heading home for a while. Wanted to tell you so in person.”
“Home as in Wyoming?” Because they were a solid twelve hundred miles away from Wyoming. “You’re driving?”
“Flying.”
“And who’s flying with you?”
“Mab,” she said.
Morgan’s kid, and that was okay in as far as it was someone, but it wasn’t him. “I’ll do it.”
“You have bulls to ride,” she said, and stepped up and wrapped her arms around him and held him close. His arms went around her, they always would, but there was something off about this embrace and he didn’t know what. Her father was staring out over the arena as if giving them privacy, even if not space, and Huck had his head down and was scuffing the ground with his boot.
“I’ll come as soon as I can.” He spoke into her hair because her cheek was to his chest.
“No, it’s okay.” She pulled back, out of his arms, her eyes searching his face as if memorizing him. “Go get those points, cowboy.”
Something was wrong. “Why did you faint?”
“I wasn’t looking after myself. It won’t happen again.” She stepped away from him and her father both, slight of form as she turned away, head down and shoulders hunched. Her father made to leave only Casey had something to say.
“Got a minute? Sir?”
“Sir now, is it?” And yeah, there was Huck melting away, catching up with Rowan and walking with her toward the Harper trucks.
Casey squared his shoulders and turned his attention back to the other man and prepared to take his licks. “I’m sorry for what I said back there. I shouldn’t have said it. I was out of line.”
“Maybe you were. Maybe you weren’t.” Joe speared him with a glance. “I lost my wife and son because I failed to protect. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now but I still make bad choices. I give Rowan too much rope or too little. I put work first because it’s right there in front of me and it’s easier than thinking something might be wrong. You don’t do that. You put my daughter first and I respect that. She deserves that. So keep doing it.”
*
“I know what’s wrong with you. I’m not stupid,” said Mab three days after they arrived back at the ranch. It was midafternoon and they were sitting on the porch. Mab had put together a snack of fresh fruits and yogurt that he’d driven all the way into town to buy. Rowan had been thoroughly appreciative as they’d sat down to eat, but at his quietly challenging words the flavorsome berries turned to dust in her mouth.
“You sent your coffee machine down to the bunkhouse and all the beans with it because you can’t stand the smell of coffee anymore. You can’t keep food down of a morning and you’ve swapped out tea for clear soup. Can’t keep that down half the time either and yesterday you drove to the hospital in Casper. They phoned to remind you of your appointment after you’d left.” Mab had a stubborn jaw. She’d never noticed it before. “You’re pregnant.”
Three months pregnant and counting, underweight and tired enough to want to sleep sixteen hours a day. The specialist had been all for it. Get some rest, build your strength. See me in a week and don’t make me admit you.
The fear was constant, and it wasn’t just because she already wanted this baby with all of her heart, never mind that Casey didn’t. Casey didn’t know, didn’t have to know right now. Might never need to know if things didn’t work out.
“You could talk to my mom,” Mab said doggedly in the face of her continued silence. “She’s a good listener and she’d know stuff. All kinds of stuff like how to get through this part and how to cope later on when the father’s not around. I turned out all right, didn’t I?”
Rowan had to put her spoon down and look away and wipe at a tear that had swollen at this man-child’s earnestness. “I’d be well pleased if any kid of mine grew up as kind as you.”
“I could ask her to come,” he said. “You could ask her to come. You asked before.”
“To see you.” And even then, Rowan had no real idea if the woman had been able to afford the airfares involved or the time away from her job. “Your mother works.”
“She’d come if I asked. If I thought she was needed here.”
“It’s a nice thought.” It really was. “But this isn’t your mother’s problem. I can’t ask her to drop everything and come running because I’m—” She couldn’t even say it out loud for fear of jinxing herself and losing her baby five minutes after acknowledgment.
“No,” he said agreeably, but why was he nodding yes? “But I can.”
*
Her father arrived home on Monday the following week. Rowan hadn’t been expecting him, and he certainly hadn’t been expecting to see Mab’s mother making herself comfortable in Rowan’s kitchen, making chicken soup while Rowan sat at the table with the computer on and a spreadsheet open, calculating the increased wage costs of having one of the ranch hands take her place on the circuit. She could afford to employ someone in her own right if her father objected.
Her father was taking his hat off and standing at the door as if unsure of his welcome.
“Lenore,” he said to Mab’s mother.
“Joe.”
“Surprised to see you here.”
“You’re halfway to stealing my son out from under my nose,” Lenore countered. “It seems only fair I get a daughter in return.”
“Mab’s here because Jock’s having more chemo,” her father said.
“I know where Jock is,” said Lenore coolly. “I know what it’s doing to my son. I might even thank you one day for taking Mab under your wing the way you have, but it won’t be today. Tea?”
“Coffee if you have it.”
“Coffee machine’s down at the bunkhouse,” said Rowan. “Help yourself.”
“Tea’s fine. Black, strong, no sugar.” Her father’s gaze shifted to the living breathing lump of tight curls and liquid brown eyes at Rowan’s feet. “What’s that?”
Truly, who wouldn’t crack a smile? “It’s a poodle.”
“And why is it here?”
“It’s Mab’s poodle. It came with Lenore.”
“And Lenore is here why?”
“Because we needed her.” Rowan had never seen her father quite so wary of a woman before. It would have been amusing had she not been so instantly wound up about telling him things he needed to know. “Take a seat, Dad. How did you get here?”
“Flew and then hired a car.”
“Why?”
“You tell me.”
Lenore set a pot of tea and an empty mug on the table. “I’ll see to the washing on the line.”
She left and her father sat there, making no move toward either teapot or mug. “Rowan, what’s going on? You text me last night to say you’re not finishing out the tour and sending someone else along in your stead and then you won’t take my calls.”
“Because it was eleven p.m. and I went to bed. I called you back this morning and you didn’t pick up.”
“Because I was in the air.”
“I’m three and a half months pregnant.”
Nothing. Not even the tick of a jaw.
“And I’m failing to thrive. Me and the baby both.”
He pushed back, out of the chair and was out the door without a word. She followed at a slower pace and Mab’s poodle went with her. She got as far as the screen door and couldn’t open it when she saw her father crouching at the bottom of the steps with his hands in his hair and his head bowed, his elbows braced for a blow. She saw Lenore with the washing basket walk up and put her hand on his shoulder, before taking his hand and drawing him up and into her arms.
Comfort and he took it, her proud, taciturn father who’d never wept, not once, but his shoulders were shaking and his head was low. Rowan wrapped her arms around her waist protectively and leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
One down.
One to go.