Unbroken Cowboy Read online

  “Because I am.” Dane shook his head. “Your problem is that you’ve never met a stray you didn’t like. You’re too giving.”

  That made her want to choke him. He acted like she was a child, and she was not a child.

  Bea clucked her tongue. “You’re right about that. I haven’t ever met a stray I didn’t like. There are no bad animals, Dane. Animals want to be fed, safe and warm. Animals are only interested in having basic needs met. And if you do that, they love you. Humans on the other hand are innately selfish and some of them are bad.”

  “Some animals are bad.”

  “They aren’t,” she insisted.

  “What about sharks?”

  “If you don’t go into the water looking like a fish you’ll never have a problem with sharks.”

  Dane shook his head. “I’m not debating the finer points of animals and their morality with you.”

  “No, but you are doing a great job of changing the subject. Are you going to take the job with Wyatt?”

  “I don’t have anything else to do.”

  “I imagine you can keep on doing work here.” Lindy hadn’t asked Bea to broach the topic about the job, but Bea knew it was weighing on her. And Bea wanted to help. Lindy wanted Dane to take the job at Get Out of Dodge in part because she didn’t want Dane to further isolate himself over at the winery, and in other part because she was afraid that without supervision he was going to work himself too hard, whereas Wyatt could tailor the tasks he meted out to his brother-in-law as needed.

  Dane did not look at all cheered by the prospect of working on his brother-in-law’s ranch.

  She supposed a man like him... She could understand that.

  Bea just wanted to live. She loved her little cabin in the woods, loved the sanctuary that she had carved out for herself and her animals. She had learned, when she was a little girl, to keep her head down, to avoid the notice of her parents so that she wouldn’t draw any negative attention to herself.

  They could never understand why she was happier outside than inside the high-polished marble halls of their home in the winery. Could never understand why she didn’t like the parties that they threw, or why she didn’t get along with the acceptable children of the families they preferred to spend time with.

  But she didn’t.

  Her solution was to be sunny, cheerful and generally out-of-the-way. If she was going to be unacceptable, she found it was best to be unacceptable in an unobtrusive way.

  As an adult, she had a few friends, and she had her family—both by blood and marriage, though the marriage was dissolved now—and she loved them very much. They saw her behavior as somewhat haphazard and often in need of commentary. She smiled and then did what she wanted anyway.

  No one ever seemed to notice.

  Dane wasn’t like that. He was a man who had forged his own way. His own destiny. He didn’t like easy, and he didn’t like unobtrusive. She admired that about him, even if it made her want to beat him over the head with one of the heavy hardbound books that were stacked on the coffee table.

  “Just think about it, Dane,” she said. “Lindy is worried about you. And I understand that it irritates you that she’s...” She tried to choose her words carefully. She was getting frustrated and she was forgetting that Dane was like any other wounded animal.

  She just had to figure out how to handle him with the kind of care that he needed. And she had an idea.

  “Do this for her,” she said. “She’s worried about you. And if you... If you do this, she’s likely to ease up. Eventually, you’ll be back on your feet and...”

  The look he gave her was skeptical at best. “Right. Suddenly, you’re very concerned for Lindy’s well-being.”

  “I am. We are...family, kind of,” Bea said, almost choking on the words, because if Lindy was family, then Dane was family, and she had just never felt familial to him. “And I care.”

  The fact of the matter was, whether or not she felt sisterly toward him didn’t change the fact that he felt brotherly toward her. And right about now she wasn’t above using that to her advantage. There had to be some advantage in it. Because there wasn’t in any other corner of that painful reality.

  “And I appreciate that,” he said, his tone so gentle and placating it got her hackles up yet again.

  He talked to her like she was a kid. The little sister she didn’t want to be to him.

  But if she was gaining ground, she couldn’t really afford to be tetchy about it right now.

  “Great. Then appreciate it by doing something for your sister. She’s been letting you stay here...”

  “I don’t really like to rehash all the charity my sister has given me. I have my own money. I can take care of myself.”

  “No one doubts that. But this house is empty, and there’s no reason for you not to be in it.”

  “You could be in it,” he said.

  “I don’t want to be in it,” Bea said.

  “I’ve never understood why you had such an aversion to this place.”

  “Probably for the same reason you have an aversion to working on another man’s land. There are just some things that don’t suit us, right?”

  “I expect so.”

  “So will you do this? Will you help Lindy feel more at ease?”

  “Sure. If it will get her off my back, then I’ll do it.”

  He didn’t say it, but she had a feeling that the unspoken words were: if it will get you off my back, then I’ll do it.

  Bea was nothing if not relentless, and she was not above using it to her advantage when the occasion called for it. She had been described as a dog with a bone on more than one occasion.

  She really didn’t find that as offensive as some people might. Dogs were loyal. Much more so than most humans.

  “Thank you,” she said, leaning forward, and without thinking, pressing her hand over the top of his and squeezing.

  Their eyes locked, that startling blue punching a hole in her chest and leaving her breathless. Suddenly, that rough, masculine hand beneath hers felt like it was burning through her skin.

  She jerked her hand away and rubbed it on her jeans, trying to make the feeling go away. She had made a mistake touching him. She was always making mistakes with him.

  That initial startle in her chest was beginning to settle, and she looked at him clearly for the first time since. And saw that he was oblivious to the whole thing.

  Because of course.

  That simple touch had lit her on fire from the inside out, and he had felt nothing at all.

  But hey, she had convinced him to take the job.

  Maybe she wasn’t like a little sister to him after all.

  Maybe she was more like a faithful retriever.

  That was even worse. Or at the very least it was the depressing same.

  But she was helping him. And she supposed caring about anything else was silly.

  Dane was getting better and that was what mattered.

  Her feelings were a dead end. Dane didn’t want her, and even if he did...it wasn’t like she wanted to get married or anything like that. Not when she’d seen just how miserable marriage made people. Her feelings were pointless, and they were just going to have to stay buried. Like always.

  * * *

  DANE PARKER CURSED the pain that rolled through his body, as he pulled his truck into the driveway of Get Out of Dodge. This damned injury was the one thing he had never been able to use sheer force of will to push through.

  Yet.

  It made him a little bit sorry he hadn’t taken the pain pill that Bea had given him last night.

  Or, tried to give him.

  But he was sick of it. Sick to death of the whole damned regimen. He just wanted to be up and on his feet. He wanted to find normal again.

  It was becoming abundantly clear
that normal was a hell of a long way off, and taking a pain pill and sliding into obscurity was only a reminder of that. A reminder he was in no way interested in.

  He just wanted it to be over.

  Bodies were a bitch.

  But he was determined to make sure his was at least his bitch.

  To the best of his ability, anyway. He got out of the truck and grimaced when his foot made contact with the uneven gravel drive. The impact, the slight twist in his ankle when the rock rolled beneath his boot...all things he would never have noticed before an angry bull had made it his mission to grind Dane’s body into the arena dirt like powder.

  He gritted his teeth, walking over to the house, the shooting pain going up his thigh, rattling around the screw that held his bones together enough to make a typical grown man cry.

  Fortunately, he was something other than a typical grown man. He was a bull rider. And that meant he wasn’t going to cry over a little bit of pain.

  But all this silence, this stagnant existence...was worse than the pain.

  He wanted that life again. That rush. The roar of the crowd and the hot pulse of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

  He wasn’t going to get any of that here.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets, doing his best to shove his hand down as far as possible and discreetly offer some support to his compromised thigh muscle as he made his way up the stairs, using his other hand to cling tight to the railing. Lindy was going to ream him for not being on his crutches and he wasn’t in the mood.

  If he was going to talk to his brother-in-law about doing work, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to show up looking like a damned cripple.

  As soon as he reached the front door he pictured Bea again, standing there holding a pill in his face. Right now it was like the mirage of an oasis in the middle of the desert.

  But a pain pill wasn’t water, and he didn’t have to give in. Because pain wasn’t going to kill him.

  It was just pain.

  Still, when he knocked on the door, he did it maybe a little bit more firmly than was strictly necessary. But it helped a little of the burning feeling in his chest, so maybe it had been necessary.

  It took a couple of minutes, but his sister jerked the door open, looking disheveled and red cheeked. The sight knocked him back on his heels, or would have if he could afford to let go of the railing he was bracing himself on. Lindy was never red cheeked. And she was never disheveled.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she had been messing around with her husband.

  “Hey,” she said, looking breathless, smiling. Then, her smile quickly faded away as she looked him up and down. “Dane...”

  “I don’t need a lecture,” he said.

  “Then why do you do things that are so lecture-able?”

  “I can walk,” he said, brushing past her and limping into the house, forcing himself to walk as straight as possible as he made his way into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He tried to keep the look of relief off his face as he sat. He would be okay by tomorrow. It galled him to admit it, but he really had overdone it yesterday. Apparently, being pissed at injuries didn’t make them lie down and behave.

  “Yes,” she said dryly. “Clearly.”

  “You need to quit sending poor Bea to do your dirty work,” he said.

  “I didn’t send Bea to do anything,” Lindy said.

  “Right,” he said dryly. “So, you don’t have her babysitting me because she’s close and you’re living all the way over here.”

  Lindy rolled her eyes. “No,” Lindy said. “Honestly, Dane, it’s a good thing your head is so hard, because I think it kept you from sustaining more serious injuries than you might have. But you know, she cares about you.”

  “Right,” Dane said.

  “Nobody makes Bea do anything,” Lindy continued.

  “Sure,” he said, sounding as unconvinced as he felt.

  Bea was...sweet. The kid sister he’d never had, really. He had always liked her, from the moment he had first met her when Lindy had started dating Bea’s older brother, Damien. He could not say the same for Damien, who he’d always felt a little bit of skepticism toward. Had a hell of a lot of guilt when it came to everything that had gone down later. Because he was the one who had introduced Damien to Lindy in the first place.

  Damien had done a great job managing Dane’s career in the rodeo in the early years. Had gotten him a lot of good endorsement deals, and had helped him make a decent amount of money.

  But that was all business connections. And just because he was a good guy when he was out with the boys and a good manager didn’t mean he made a good husband. Didn’t mean he was actually a good man.

  That had been a lesson learned the hard way.

  Of course, the two of them had been married for ten years—it wasn’t like it had all gone bad right away. No, it had taken a while.

  Still, Dane felt a certain measure of responsibility for it all. Like he had somehow let it happen.

  Well, he had.

  “Look,” Lindy said. “I know she seems soft.” Her words jerked his thoughts back to Bea. “But you know, she would heal a creature whether or not it wanted to be, and I have a feeling that you fall right under that heading.”

  “Great. Now I’m a wounded creature.”

  “I call it like I see it,” Lindy said. “Anyway, why are you here?”

  “I’m here to take that job offer,” Dane said.

  “Good,” Lindy said, not looking overly happy.

  “Wait a minute, now you’re mad about this?”

  “To be perfectly honest with you I was hoping that you would come and tell me that you couldn’t take the job because you needed more rest.”

  “Why did you offer then?”

  She sighed heavily. “Wyatt wanted me to.”

  “I’ve been resting for eight months. I can’t take any more of this.”

  “But what if it’s what you need in order to heal right?”

  “I’m about to lose my damned mind sitting in that house by myself. So, either you have me do the work here or I am going to be doing it at the winery. But I have to do something.”

  He hated this. Not just the sitting still. The obscurity. The silence.

  He’d spent a lifetime making something of himself. Making himself matter.

  And now he was just down-and-out. Washed-up. And any number of words that lived in his worst nightmares.

  “Okay,” she said. “I mean, that is why Wyatt and I talked about having you here. Because I knew that you had to be going nuts.”

  “Lindy,” he said, suddenly feeling weary. “You know how we grew up. With nothing. A damned lot of nothing. We’ve both managed to make something of our lives. Of ourselves. How would you feel if you just suddenly couldn’t... If nothing worked anymore. If you lost all the power that you had to feel any kind of control in your life.”

  “I’d probably be as big of a pain in the ass as you are,” she said, her tone surprisingly gentle. He didn’t trust Lindy when she sounded gentle. It wasn’t like her. “But just because I understand,” she continued, “doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for you.”

  He had to disagree with that. Because Lindy couldn’t talk about what the best thing was, since she had never spent eight months restricted like he had. He was used to being able to do whatever the hell he wanted. He left home at eighteen and had done just that for the past thirteen years.

  Had it been only thirteen years? It felt like a whole lifetime. And the past eight months felt like another. An eternity. In hell, as far as he was concerned.

  “Are you going to let me work here or not?”

  “Yes,” Lindy said. Her face softened, and that was just as frightening and off-putting as when her tone had gentled. Because it really did make him feel like the sad sc
hnauzer he had told Bea he wasn’t last night. A pathetic creature to be pitied.

  It reminded him of the boy he’d been. Before he’d found a way to make glory cover up the emptiness inside of him, the cheers of the crowd drowning out the hideous crying and pleading that had come out of his weak, boyish body the day his father had driven off for the last time.

  If you make it onto TV, maybe I’ll see you there.

  But I love you.

  And there had been no response to that at all.

  That wasn’t who he was, not anymore. He wasn’t a man anyone walked away from.

  At least he hadn’t been. Now...what the hell was he?

  “Good,” he said. “I assume that you want me to talk to your husband about what I might be doing? I also know he’s here because it was very obvious to me that you were in the middle of something when I showed up.”

  Lindy’s face turned bright red. “No, we weren’t.”

  He shook his head. “Believe me, having been caught in my fair share of compromising situations, I know when I’ve caught someone else.”

  “You’re such a heathen,” she said crisply.

  Not lately. But he didn’t say that out loud.

  That was the other thing. Eight months of hospitalization, wheelchair confinement, surgery, screws, halos sticking out of his leg...

  He hadn’t gotten laid in over eight months.

  A phenomenon that had not occurred ever in his life from the moment he had first become sexually active.

  Dane Parker did not go to bed alone unless he chose to.

  And he did not often choose to.

  There hadn’t even been any opportunity in the past six months.

  And frankly, with things like they were...

  Physical labor was his best bet right now. Anything to make this time pass. Anything to get him back out there. He was so close to being off his crutches permanently. And after that...well, after that he’d be back in the saddle. Then back on the bull.

  There wasn’t another option.

  “Yes, I’ll go get Wyatt,” she said.

  “You know this is only temporary,” he said. “Until things go back to normal.”