Chapter Eleven
The following morning, Evie drove cautiously into the hospital parking lot. The tray of Tanner’s pickup was loaded with his bull-riding gear, along with both their suitcases. She had a full tank of petrol—sorry, gas—and had spent a couple of hours poring over maps on her phone, memorizing the route out of town.
She’d also taken Tanner’s truck out late last night when the traffic was down to a bare trickle in the heart of downtown Tulsa, trying to get a grip on the whole driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road thing. Mostly, she was confident she could handle it, although she’d had to concentrate like crazy every time she came to a complicated intersection.
Parking the truck as close to the entrance as possible, she hustled inside to collect her surly, ungracious passenger.
They’d argued on and off over a couple of hours yesterday, but in the end she’d worn Tanner down. It had helped that she knew she was right. When he’d finally given in, he’d done so with an irritated, impatient sigh and a brief, taciturn nod of acceptance. Then he’d been quiet for the rest of the day, sulking in his inner man cave.
He’d get over it. Once he was home, he’d forgive her for bullying him. She was almost certain of it.
It took them a predictably long time to ease out of the clutches of the hospital. There were forms to sign and printouts and medications to collect from the hospital pharmacy. By the time Tanner had been strapped into the passenger seat of his truck, almost two hours had passed. Evie had already made plans to break their drive halfway, so she wasn’t too fussed about the delay.
Tanner, not so much. He was cranky, and she could tell he was finding being out of his room and moving around more disorienting than he liked to admit. He especially hated having to exit the hospital in a wheelchair as per hospital policy, and had only done so when it was clear St Francis wasn’t going to make an exception for him.
Clicking her own seat belt into place, Evie reached for the bottle of water she’d left in the drink holder in the center console and rested it on Tanner’s thigh to let him know it was there.
“Here. Water, so you can take these anti-nausea tablets they gave us in case you get travel sick,” she said.
“I don’t get carsick.” Then, belatedly: “Thank you.”
“But you might with your eyes covered. Why take the risk?”
“Because I like to live on the edge,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You won’t be saying that when I have to pull over in a few miles so you can toss your cookies.”
“Not going to happen.”
He was so bloody stubborn. She considered him a moment.
“Here’s the thing, Hard Man. I learned how to get medication into animals about ten different ways at vet school, and only one of them is oral. You seriously want me to practice my technique on you?”
As she’d hoped, her smartassery made his mouth curl up at the corners. Without another word, she pressed the anti-nausea meds into his hand and he swallowed them begrudgingly.
“Look at you. So co-operative,” she said sweetly.
“Shut and drive, Evie,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
She started the truck and spent the next forty minutes navigating her way out of town. It wasn’t until she hit the open road that she loosened her grip on the steering wheel and let out a little sigh of relief.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his head turning toward her.
“Nothing. Just glad I didn’t drive us into a building. We drive on the other side of the road Down Under, remember.”
“You’ve never driven left-hand drive before?” he asked, incredulous.
“Pretty impressive, huh?” she asked, deliberately misinterpreting his tone.
He muttered something under his breath and she reached out to pat his knee.
“I’ll get you home in one piece, I promise.”
His thigh was hard and warm beneath her hand and she all but snatched her hand away.
Before his accident, she and Tanner had made free with each other’s bodies in the best possible way, but things had changed since he’d sustained his injury. He’d retreated to some place inside himself, and the growing sense of intimacy they’d shared had all but disappeared. It felt wrong to touch him now, even if it was just casually. As though she was trespassing.
Not that she’d expected him to be all hot and horny after what he’d been through, but it was clear that at the moment he was barely tolerating her, when before he’d been… Well, she wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been, but it had felt a hell of a lot better than this.
This isn’t about you, remember?
It so wasn’t. And if it made Tanner feel better, even for a few seconds, to vent some of his inner turmoil by being snappy with her, she could live with it.
It was starting to get dark by the time they got to the motel she’d booked last night. She’d scoped out the midway point on their journey and reserved a twin-bed room, because Tanner would need help, whether he liked it or not.
Tanner opened the car door the moment the engine stopped. She opened her mouth to tell him to wait for her to come help him, then reminded herself he wasn’t stupid or a child. He knew he couldn’t make it across an unknown parking lot on his own without her aid. There was no reason for her to rub his face in it.
Sure enough, he got out of the truck, shut the door, then walked to the hood, one hand trailing along the side of the vehicle. When he ran out of truck, he simply stood, his head turned toward the driver’s side.
Waiting for her.
She scrambled out of the driver’s seat, grabbing her phone and wallet.
“Do you want to come into reception with me or wait here?” she asked.
“I’ll wait,” he said, then he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his hip against the truck.
The set of his shoulders, the way his head lowered… It just about killed her to not put her arms around him.
“Two more days and those bandages can come off,” she reminded him.
“I know.”
She went to pay for their room and get their key, then crossed back to where he was waiting for her. Taking his elbow, she described the terrain ahead.
“We’ve got about twenty feet of potholed tarmac, then there’s a step up onto the covered walkway that runs along the front of all the rooms. Ours is about five feet to the left.”
He nodded to let her know he understood and they started walking. When they got to the step up, she warned him, and he took it easily. It felt so wrong to her, leading this big, strong man around. She could only imagine how it felt to Tanner.
She unlocked their room and went in first to do a quick scan.
“Okay, two beds on the right. You take the one nearest the bathroom so you’ve got less distance to travel. Bathroom is at the back. Toilet in the far right corner, shower in the left, vanity in between.
“Got it.”
She led him to his bed and watched as he sank onto the mattress. Not by word or gesture did he give away how hard this must be for him, how terrifying. She felt the sting of stupid tears and pinched her arm to distract herself from her own unhelpful thoughts.
“I’m going to bring in our stuff, then stretch my legs. Do you need anything?” she asked.
“I’m good, thanks.”
She didn’t really feel like stretching her legs, she wanted to crash on the bed and take a nana nap. But her gut told her Tanner needed a break from being the guy people fussed over, so she was going to give him some space.
She hauled their cases out of the truck bed and put them beside her bed near the window, well out of his way. Then she told him she’d be back in half an hour.
There was a roadhouse-style diner next door, so she went and grabbed herself a cup of burnt-tasting coffee and sat in the window staring out at the traffic racing by.
In a few days’ time, Tanner would, in theory, be able to see again. That would go a long way toward normalizing things for him. Based on what the doctors had told her, it was likely he’d have issues with sunlight and depth perception for a few weeks, and he wouldn’t be allowed to do anything much except lie around and rest. But, still, it would be a huge improvement on where he was now.
She twisted her empty cup around and around on the table, wishing there was more that she could do, wishing she had the right to care as much as she did. If they’d known each other longer, if their relationship was real and not based on happenstance and crazy-good chemistry…
But it wasn’t, and nothing she wished or wanted was going to change that.
When half an hour had ticked by, she bought a couple of take-away meatball sandwiches and two cans of cola and walked back to the motel. She could hear the shower running when she entered, and her first impulse was to start forward and check Tanner was okay. Somehow she repressed it, instead putting their food on the single nightstand that separated their twin beds before leaning down to unzip her boots.
After a few minutes the water stopped.
“There’s food out here if you want it,” she called.
“Thanks.”
Her own stomach was rumbling but she didn’t want to eat alone, even if Tanner couldn’t see and maybe wouldn’t care anyway. She looked up when he appeared in the bathroom doorway, one hand touching the wall to his left. A white towel was cinched around his waist, and droplets of water still clung to his shoulders and torso. The sight of his big, hard body made her feel sad all over again. Nine years of bull riding had built and sculpted all that muscle and sinew, and now his sport was barred to him.
“Food is here, on the bedside table,” she said.
He sat on the bed, his back to her, and she saw that the hair at the back of his head was damp where the water had splashed up. The urge to touch him hit her again. If only she had the right to offer him the comfort of her body. Not sex, just skin-on-skin contact, wordless and simple.
But she didn’t, and she wasn’t game enough to force the issue. He was too quiet, too barricaded inside himself.
She watched as he shifted along the bed until he found the wall, then swung his legs up onto the mattress.
“To your immediate left,” she said, and he stretched out a hand and encountered the grease-marked bag containing the sub.
She busied herself with her own food, eating her sandwich with indecent haste, then washing it down with cola so cold and carbonated it made her throat burn.
She took a shower herself then, washing away the stress and strain of the day. Clad only in a towel, she stepped back into the bedroom and asked if he wanted to listen to some TV. He shrugged, claiming he didn’t mind either way, so she put the television on and watched for an hour or so before turning it off again.
“How’s your pain?” she asked.
“I can cope.”
“You’re not supposed to cope. You’re supposed to be comfortable.” She got to her feet and found the pouch with all his meds in it, tapping out two painkillers and crossing to his bed. Picking up his hand, she placed the pills in his hand.
“I don’t need them,” he said, trying to give them back to her.
“It’s not a competition, Tanner. No one’s going to give you a medal for being a bloody stoic. Take the tablets and be comfortable, you stubborn bugger.”
His hand fisted over the tablets for a second, then he tossed them into his mouth and swallowed them dry.
“Good. My pleasure,” she said, annoyed with him for being so damned self-contained.
She turned away, ready to head into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
“Evie.” His arm shot out to grab her, his hand winding up on her bare thigh.
For a moment she went very still, aroused and slightly ashamed by the jolt of desire that shot through her at the feel of his big hand on her. The man was blind, for Pete’s sake, and all her body could think about was sex.
“I’m sorry, okay? I know I’ve been a grumpy asshole all day. I just…I don’t know how to do this.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Yeah, I do. You’ve been great. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“You mean you don’t know what you would have done if I hadn’t forced my help on you.”
“That, too.”
The ghost of a smile curved his lips. He hadn’t shaved since arriving in hospital and she gave in to the urge to reach out and run her hand across his stubbled jaw. For a second his hand tensed around her thigh, his thumb stroking across her skin. Then he seemed to become aware of what he was doing, where he was touching her, and his hand fell away.
She let her own hand drop to her side.
“We should both try to get some sleep,” she said.
They had another six hours of driving ahead of them tomorrow.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
They took turns brushing their teeth. When he was safely settled in bed, Evie turned out the light and lay in the darkness listening to the sound of his breathing and the traffic outside.
It took her a long time to fall asleep.
*
Evie’s cheerful voice woke him the next morning, along with a gentle touch on his shoulder.
“I’m getting breakfast. Sweet or savory?” she asked.
Last night he’d apologized to her for being a bad-tempered bastard and privately promised himself to do better today. That undertaking started right now.
“Whatever they’ve got is fine. And coffee. Strong and black.”
“Done and done. Won’t be a tick.”
He used the bathroom while she was gone, humiliated all over again by the fact he had to sit down to pee. It was that, or risk spraying everywhere, and he wasn’t about to subject Evie to the pleasure of that discovery.
Just as well this is only temporary, because you are one whiny little bitch.
He hated himself for it, too, but he couldn’t seem to stop the endless, fruitless circling of his thoughts as he went over and over what he could remember of the ride and what Kane had told him about it, trying to work out where he’d gone wrong, what he could have done to prevent this from happening. He always ended up at the same place—he’d been standing at the wrong place at the wrong time. Simple as that. Doc Freeman had told him his helmet had been completely staved in on his temple—if that had been his skull, he’d be dead, no question.
He was lucky. Even without knowing what the situation was with his eye, he knew that.
But his bull-riding days were over.
He’d told Doc Freeman he wanted a second opinion on the risk of re-injuring his eye, but in his heart he knew he was going to hear the same thing. If he kept riding, there was a real chance he’d lose the sight in his left eye. The last few days had given him a small insight into what it would be like to be visually impaired. He loved bull riding, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d always planned to have a good and long life after he retired, and having his eyesight meant there was a far greater likelihood of that happening.
He was done. And it made him want to howl at the moon and smash a hole in the wall at the same time. For years now, there’d only been one goal in his life—to ride bulls and to win. Sure, he’d hedged his bets, investing his winnings in the ranch, setting things up so he’d have funds to draw on when he quit. He’d had vague plans for the business, and he’d thought about settling down, finding a woman to build the rest of his life and start a family with. But all of that had been a distant, hazy plan. A place he’d get to, eventually, one day.
And yet here he was. He was thirty-one years old. He had money, property, and opportunity galore. Life wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
Problem was, he knew that intellectually, but it was taking his gut and heart a little longer to catch up. And every time he gave himself a hard time about that, he could hear Evie’s voice in his head, telling him it hadn’t even been a week, and he needed to go easy on himself. Not that she’d said that to him—yet—but he knew it was what she would say if he shared his messy, chaotic thoughts with her.
He wasn’t going to burden her with more of his crap, however. She was carrying enough, doing enough for him already.
The sound of the key in the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Apple Danish and hash browns,” she said as she entered. “Breakfast of champions.”
She sounded so pleased with herself. He wished he could see her. Just one second of her smile, the one that knocked people back on their heels when she aimed it at them.
“And they say the days of hunting and gathering are over,” he said.
“I know, right? Shows what they know. Whoever they are.”
They were on the road again within half an hour, God-awful pop music playing courtesy of Evie’s phone being connected to his car sound system.
“What is this?” he finally asked, pushed past forbearance by songs about fireworks and people lighting up the sky.
“Katy Perry.” Her tone was incredulous. “Don’t tell me you don’t know her?”
“I’m a bull rider, Evie. Do I look like I listen to teen girl music?”
His own words echoed back at him in the truck cabin. He was going to have to update his job description.
“It wouldn’t hurt you to get more in touch with your feminine side,” she said.
He flipped her the bird and she laughed, the sound so free and joyous he wound up smiling, too.
“Let me see what else I can hook up for you,” she said.
There was a short silence, then the mellow, familiar tones of Johnny Cash filled the car. The American Recordings series, his favorite.
“Better?”
“Hell, yeah,” he said.
“You are such a cowboy.”
He settled back in his seat, tilting his head against the rest, and let the low, pain-filled drawl of Mr. Cash take him away for a while.
They had burgers for lunch at a roadside diner, he and Evie talking about the differences between the Australian and American rural landscape. He learned her family’s cattle ranch spanned more than 200,000 hectares in the north of Queensland, and that she’d been helping to muster cattle ever since she’d learned to ride. Listening to her talk about her home, he could tell she came from a close family. Which probably explained her sunny outlook and the faith she put in people.
They hit the road again, and by the time his internal clock told him it was close to four they were traveling along smaller local roads and Evie was reading out signs and asking for directions. Half an hour later, she spotted the gate for his ranch and turned into the driveway.
“Wow. I love these trees,” she said, and he pictured what she was seeing—the double row of American Sentry Lindens the previous owners had planted either side of the sweeping drive to the main house.
“Can’t take the credit for them,” he said. “They were here when I bought the place.
“Well, someone had great taste.”
He’d called from Tulsa to let Johnny B and Helen know he’d be home this afternoon, and he wasn’t surprised when Evie told him two people were waiting for them in front of the main house.
“That’s Johnny B and his wife, Helen,” he explained.
“There’s a dog, too—a border collie,” Evie said.
“That’s Bandit, their dog.”
“Great dogs, border collies. One of my favorite breeds.”
The car came to a halt. He could hear movement outside the car—gravel shifting beneath feet—and guessed Johnny B and Helen were coming to greet him. Pride made him open the door and swing his feet to the ground.
“Tanner. How are you? How was the trip?” Helen asked, her low, calm voice washing over him.
“Pretty easy for me, harder for Evie, who had to manage me and driving on the wrong side of the road. Wrong according to her, anyway. Evie, this is Johnny B and Helen.”
“Lovely to meet you,” Evie said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.
“You’re Australian?” Johnny B asked.
“That’s right. Visiting Stateside for a few weeks,” Evie said.
“Your room is all ready for you,” Helen said, and he felt an arm on his elbow, guiding him to his feet.
He opened his mouth to tell her he could stand on his own, but managed to swallow the words before they made it out of his mouth. Helen was only trying to help, but it gave him a new appreciation for the way Evie had handled things, talking him through the lay of the land and then giving him the choice of how she guided him from A to B.
“I’ve got those bags, Ms. Forrester,” he heard Johnny B say, and Tanner pictured the other man wrestling with Evie for the right to unload the truck.
“Good luck with that,” Tanner said over his shoulder. “She’s stubborn as hell.”
“Please. You have a Masters in Stubborn, Harding,” Evie fired back at him. “No, make that a PhD.”
“Which makes me an expert on stubborn, and my expert opinion is you’re worse than me,” he responded.
“So…I guess you two didn’t have trouble keeping yourselves entertained for two days on the road,” Helen said dryly.
“We managed okay,” Evie said.
“Come on inside when you’ve finished wrestling with Johnny over the luggage, Evie, and I’ll show you your room,” Helen said.
Tanner could tell she liked Evie already. He suspected there weren’t many people who were immune to her many charms.
Helen guided him into the house, telling him when they’d reached the front steps and when he had to step over the threshold.
“I changed the sheets in your room and set things up as best I could for you,” Helen said as she led him into his bedroom. “I put Evie in the big room, up near the kitchen.”
Tanner felt the press of the bed against the side of his leg and sank onto the mattress.
“I’ve been thinking—you’ve got enough on your plate without me landing on top of it,” he said. “Maybe we should see about getting someone in during the day. A nurse, maybe.”
“What? You’re not hiring in some outsider to come do things me and Johnny can take care of. That’s nuts, Tanner.” Helen sounded outraged.
“I’m not adding to your workload,” he said. “End of.”
Helen muttered something under her breath that he was pretty sure included the phrase “PhD in Stubborn.” He’d have to thank Evie for that one later.
“There’s lasagne for dinner, and salad. Plus I baked bread this morning. I can come over and serve up either before or after I feed the guests.”
While each of the ranch’s three guest cabins had basic kitchen facilities, one of the first things Tanner had done when he bought the property was build a big pavilion at a central point near the cabins where evening meals were provided for guests. The shared table created a sense of community and fostered conversation between guests, something that had proven popular and generated return patronage for the ranch.
“Evie and I will work it out. Don’t worry about us,” he said.
“All right. If you don’t need anything else, I’ll go get Evie settled.”
“All good here. Thanks, Helen.”
Tanner kept the smile on his face until he was sure Helen had left. Then he stood and walked to the door, shutting it to ensure his privacy. Then and only then did he let his shoulders sag.
He’d never been so glad to be home in his life. Four days of trying to pretend he was totally okay with the fact his life was in the toilet had taken its toll. He was sick of forcing smiles and biting back snarls. He just wanted to be left alone.
Making his way back to the bed, he pulled off his boots then lay down, sighing as his aching body sank into the familiar comfort of his bed. He could hear Helen and Evie talking down the hallway, and guilt plucked at him. He should go out there, make sure Evie felt welcome and had everything she needed. She’d put her life on hold for him; the least he could do was make sure she was comfortable.
He started to sit up, then the thought of having to shuffle his way up the hallway, one hand on the wall, made him pause. Tiredness swept over him, bringing with it a tight feeling in his chest and throat. If he was still a kid, he figured there might even be a few tears welling in his eyes, too, but he hadn’t cried in years.
He was spent, beyond the end of his tether. His career was over, he might have permanent damage to his eye, he was an object of pity to all who saw him…
He returned his head to the pillow and rolled onto his side.
For now, he was done. The world could take care of itself for a while.