A Cowboy's Pride

by Pamela Britton

  “I’m not leaving you,” she said again, more firmly.

  Rana smiled.

  Trent and Mac ended up winning the event.

  She wasn’t surprised. Clearly Trent was on his way to a full recovery. Just as clearly he belonged back on the rodeo circuit.

  Someone must have tipped off the press, because when she arrived back at the trailer, a camera crew stood there and a pretty blonde reporter was talking to Trent and Mac. They stood in shadow, but a light shone on their faces. Trent sat back in his chair, probably exhausted, and Mac stood beside him. Saedra waved and smiled while stripping the saddle from Baylor’s back. She watched the interview, saw how Trent was completely at ease in front of the camera.

  And why wouldn’t he be?

  She’d watched him on national television more times than she could count on one hand. To be honest it seemed surreal to be watching him now, live, answering questions about the horse he rode, his injuries, how he felt about winning, all the while knowing that the hands raised in excitement had touched her own, the lips forming words had covered her mouth, the eyes that shifted in her direction stared not into the camera, but into her own.

  For all the wrong reasons.

  He’d been lonely. Terrified. She’d been willing and a comfort to his wounded soul. That wasn’t exactly the best way to start a relationship.

  “Thanks so much,” she heard the broadcaster say. “Good luck, Trent. It’s great to see you back on your feet.”

  Mac wasted no time pulling the reporter off to the side, his flirtatious gaze leaving no doubt which way the wind blew. Trent never looked away. Alana forced her feet to move forward.

  “Congratulations,” she said softly, staring down at him.

  He held out his hand. She clutched it, not surprised when he pulled her to him. Alana smelled sweat and cinammon and all things Trent as she slowly wrapped her arms about him.

  “Can you believe it?” she heard him ask.

  “Yes.” She straightened again, such a mix of emotion filling her up it was all she could do not to cry. Joy. Sorrow. Despair. “I knew you could do it. I always knew.”

  He still held her hand, squeezed it, Alana squeezing back.

  “So, did you ask her?”

  Both of them turned. Mac stood there, his gaze darting between the two of them.

  “No, Mac, I haven’t.”

  “Asked me what?”

  Trent had looked away, and that more than anything alerted her to what was coming.

  “We were thinking of leaving for Colorado tonight,” Mac announced, “and wondered if you wanted to come along.”

  “Mac—”

  The frustration in Trent’s voice was evident. Mac covered his mouth before lifting his hands. “Oops. Guess I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

  “Tonight?” Alana asked, shocked.

  “After we drop off Baylor. Mac says if we drive all night we can make it back in time for another big roping near our hometown.”

  Tonight. Not next week? Not in a few days?

  So much easier.

  “You should come,” Saedra called, slipping a halter over Baylor’s head. “You could meet Trent’s mom.”

  “I—”

  “She can’t leave.” The words came from Cabe who walked toward them. “We have guests arriving next week.”

  “Surely you could live without her for a day or two?”

  It was Saedra who’d spoken, and Alana watched as her friend’s easygoing nature suddenly evaporated.

  “Working at the ranch is her job.”

  “Dad,” Rana said, touching his arm.

  The shadows on the ground were as dark as Cabe’s eyes. “We need her at the ranch,” he said more softly. “Alana knows that.”

  The knot building in her stomach suddenly doubled in size. “I can’t,” she said softly. “You know I can’t.”

  Trent had known. She’d told him as much earlier, but that hadn’t stopped him from wanting to leave. The breath she’d been taking froze in her chest as she waited for him to say he wouldn’t go, that he’d rather stay with her, but instead he released her hand.

  He knew their brief romance was over, too.

  “We can hook up in a week or so.”

  No, they wouldn’t. This wasn’t real—whatever this was—it couldn’t be real. She’d had a crush on him. She could admit that now. Had watched him for so many years on television always wondering... That was why she’d jumped into bed with him. But now it was over. He was going home. She’d always known he’d eventually go home.

  “If you want,” she said softly, “I’m sure we can find someone to haul Baylor home. You could leave right now.”

  “Good idea,” Cabe said.

  “Yeah, that’d be great,” Saedra echoed.

  Some of the fire had faded in his eyes. “But my things.”

  “I can pack them up for you. Send them to your ranch.”

  She would let him go now. Start on forgetting him.

  If you can forget him, a little voice nagged.

  “That would work.”

  For some reason her shoulders fell. She tried to prop them back up, but they refused to move. He’d made his choice. She had made hers. Nothing more left to say.

  “Let’s do it!” Mac said.

  She couldn’t look Trent in the eyes. Cabe drifted off to find someone to haul Baylor home, but not before she heard Trent thank him profusely, the two of them shaking hands. Rana came up next to her, the girl sensing something was amiss, her face a mask of concern.

  It made her want to cry.

  Ten minutes later all was settled. Cabe came and took Baylor off their hands. Rana gave everyone a hug goodbye, Mac loaded up his horse, Saedra loaded hers, too, and soon it was just the two of them, the sound of truck engines roaring to life all around as people prepared to leave the show grounds.

  “I guess this is it,” she said. She would not cry. She just wouldn’t.

  “I’ll give you a call from the road.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  He opened his arms. She took another deep breath before she bent down, slipping into his embrace as easily as she had all week, only this was different.

  “Thank you,” he whispered in her ear.

  “You’re welcome.” She kissed him on the cheek before pulling away, although he tried to hold her to him. She drew back, saying, “Drive carefully.”

  His gaze searched her own, something he saw in her eyes prompting him to say, “Alana?”

  Do not cry.

  “Goodbye, Trent.” She forced herself to walk away.

  * * *

  “DAMN IT,” Trent muttered, flipping his cell phone closed and tossing it on the couch next to him. “What the hell?”

  “Still no answer?” his mother asked from the armchair to his left where she’d been reading, her blue eyes flicking up from her book and connecting with his.

  “Nope.”

  It’d been three days since he left California, and no matter how many times he called, no matter how many messages he’d left, Alana never returned his calls. Oh, his phone had been ringing. Off the hook. But for all the wrong reasons. His interview from last weekend had made national news. Suddenly he was a big headline. Man Makes It Back from Tragic Wreck. He’d become a household name overnight.

  “It’s like she’s trying to avoid me or something.”

  They were in the family room of his single-story ranch house, a place that reflected his mother’s taste in Western decor, although he’d put his foot down when she’d wanted to paint the walls of the kitchen mauve.

  “Honey, I think it’s time you realized she may not want to hear from you again.

  “No way.” He shook his head so h
ard he almost knocked his hat askew. “Impossible.”

  His mother hadn’t aged over the years, not even a little bit. Sure, her long blond hair held streaks of gray now, but her face was as unlined as it’d been the day his father died twenty years ago. How she’d held it together he had no idea, but he couldn’t imagine life without her and he trusted her opinion more than he trusted his own—which was why her words sent such a shiver of fear down his spine.

  “I know you’re head over heels for her, but did you ever consider she might not feel the same way?”

  “What makes you think I’m head over heels?”

  “Honey, you haven’t stopped talking about her since you came home. Of course you’re in love her.”

  Was he?

  He straightened suddenly. Damn. He was.

  “She loves me, too.”

  Didn’t she?

  His mom laughed.

  “Son,” she said. “Sometimes I worry about the size of your ego.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She set her book down. “She was probably just using you for sex.”

  “Mom!”

  “Well, why not? Men do it all the time.”

  “I don’t.”

  She smirked. “Haven’t you?”

  Beneath the collar of his denim shirt, his neck flushed. “I’m not like that, Mom. You know that.”

  “Maybe she is.”

  No, he told himself. No way. He’d seen the softness in her eyes. There could be no mistaking that she had feelings for him. None at all.

  “I’m gonna go see her.”

  His mother’s brows lifted. “When?”

  He pulled his wheelchair closer to him. He was still weak. That roping last weekend had nearly killed him. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so sore. But sore was good. Sore meant he could feel something.

  “This weekend.” He could use his legs well enough that he no longer needed to hoist his lower body into the chair. “That little girl I was telling you about, Rana, she’s competing at a high school rodeo. I’m going to fly in and surprise them.”

  That way she couldn’t avoid him.

  He hated how insidious the thought was. How, once mentioned, he couldn’t get his mother’s words out of his mind.

  Had she been using him?

  That night, as he rode one of his old rope horses around his family’s five-hundred-acre ranch checking fences and the condition of his cattle, he replayed their meetings in his mind. Sure, she might not have said she loved him, but that didn’t mean anything. He knew in his heart she did.

  He flew in on a Saturday morning after checking the California High School Rodeo Association’s website for the location. And, as luck would have it, she was riding in Reno, at the same damn rodeo grounds he’d been at with Alana. Coincidence? Or fate?

  One thing was for sure, it felt amazing to be able to make the trip on his own two feet, although his wheelchair was safely stowed in the back of his dark blue rental car just in case he needed it.

  He arrived just before the rodeo started, just as he had planned, although he’d fretted the whole way there that he’d be too late. The Jensen family had already arrived and as Trent pulled in his second fear assailed him. What if Alana had stayed home?

  Then he spotted her, standing by a trailer parked next to a fence, her long dark hair turning silver in the sunlight. She was smiling up at Cabe, laughing at something he said. Behind them Rana groomed her horse, but the girl must have felt his gaze because she glanced up, her whole face lighting up when she saw it was him.

  “Trent!”

  His gaze returned to Alana. She stiffened. And Trent knew, he knew the moment he spied the dismay on her face, that his mom had been right.

  She didn’t love him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  What was he doing here?

  “You came to watch me ride!” Rana cried out from behind her.

  “I’ll be damned,” Cabe muttered.

  “I can’t...” Alana’s heart felt ready to high-jump out of her chest. “I need...” She swallowed in an effort to lubricate her suddenly dry throat. “I have to go back to the truck for something.”

  “Alana, what’s wrong?” Cabe clutched her shoulders, such concern on his face, and such surprise, she told herself to calm down. “You look like you’ve seen a gh—” He straightened suddenly, his gaze moving to Trent. “What’s going on between the two of you?”

  Had he really not known?

  “Nothing.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I just need to go to the bathroom.”

  She turned away before Cabe could say another word.

  “Alana!”

  But it wasn’t Cabe who called her back, it was Trent. She didn’t look back, didn’t want to know if he stopped for a moment to greet Cabe and Rana. She walked faster.

  It wasn’t fast enough.

  “Alana, don’t make me chase you.”

  She stopped suddenly because it was silly to try to flee. He hadn’t flown all the way from Colorado to give up on seeing her. She could run, but she couldn’t hide.

  “Why haven’t you called me?” he asked the moment she faced him.

  “I...”

  What could she say? That she hadn’t wanted to talk to him. That she’d been afraid if she’d heard his voice on the phone she would have done anything he asked of her—like jump on a plane to go see him for a night. From there it’d be watching him compete. And from there it’d be move to Colorado. After that it’d be give up her career, and she couldn’t, she just wouldn’t.

  And then there was Rana. She could never abandon her.

  “Alana?”

  She swallowed again. “I thought it’d be easier.”

  “Easier how?”

  She didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to hurt him. And she would. She knew she would.

  “To just let things...” She searched for the right word. “Be.”

  The words hurt him. She could see that in his eyes.

  “I love you.”

  The words knocked the breath out of her. Did he? Or was he in love with the woman who’d helped him walk again?

  “Thank you for coming. You just made Rana’s day. Probably her whole year.”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say?” He stood there—actually stood there—and it was a miracle, one she’d helped create. The man walked again. “I tell you I’m in love with you and that’s all?” He shook his head. “Thanks for coming?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “What do you want me to say?”

  “That you love me, too.”

  She did love him. The moment she’d spotted him standing behind her she’d known it, had felt such a throat-clogging sense of panic, that she’d known. Somehow, crazily, she’d fallen for him.

  “Trent,” she said softly, almost telling him, changing her mind at the last minute. It nearly killed her to watch how his face crumbled when she didn’t repeat the words.

  “So what was it then?” he asked. “Back at the ranch? A fling?”

  “No.” She looked away, at the ground, the grandstands in the distance, back up at him again. “Maybe at first, but not later.”

  His face softened. “So what’s the problem?”

  A million times she’d gone over this conversation, knowing as she did that sooner or later she’d have to come clean.

  “I care for you, Trent.” She swallowed, hard. “So very, very much. But my life is at the ranch. It’s everything to me. Rana...” She shook her head. “She’s like a daughter to me. I can’t leave her. She’s right at that age where she needs me the most.”

  “You’re not her mom.”

  “No. I could never be Kimberly, but I can be a close second.”

&n
bsp; “Is it Cabe?” He searched her eyes. “Do you have feelings for him?”

  “No,” she said sharply. “How could you ask that after everything we’ve done?”

  He reached for her. “Because I just don’t understand.”

  She stepped back. Damn it, she felt tears building behind her eyes. “Please understand, this is as hard for me as it for you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Goodbye, Trent.” She tipped up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.

  He jerked her to him, kissed her on the mouth, hard. She tried to wrench away. He wouldn’t let her. It was as if he willed every ounce of his resolve into that kiss, as if he hoped to impose his will onto her own, to somehow convince her without words how much he loved her.

  She twisted away.

  He stood there, breathing hard, and God help her, she could see the confusion in his eyes. Knew in that instant that he’d finally gotten the message.

  “Good luck making it to the NFR.”

  She had no idea where he went. Didn’t know if, in fact, he’d left, or if he’d decided to stick around and watch Rana ride. What she did was apologize to everyone before closing herself off in the living quarters of Cabe’s trailer, pleading a blinding headache and the need for peace and quiet. Cabe and Rana had stared at her oddly, but they’d left her alone.

  Stupid. You knew this was coming.

  And she had, but that didn’t make it any easier. The look in his eyes, she thought. The desperation in them. The way he’d kissed her—

  She began to weep. Stupid, ridiculous vacation romance. That was all this was, she tried to convince herself. They didn’t really love each other.

  Then why do you feel so guilty? And why the hell have you been bawling your eyes out?

  “You okay?” Cabe asked. Alana hadn’t even heard him enter the trailer.

  “Fine.” She wiped her eyes. “My headache’s making my eyes water.”

  Since when do you lie to Cabe?

  He sat down on the bench seat opposite her, his long legs stretched out in front of him.

  “How long were you and Trent sleeping together?”