A Cowboy Worth Loving (Canton County Cowboys 1)

by Charlene Bright

  Whipping around as she dragged her arm across her mouth, she found Gavin in the doorway. He looked like he could hardly stand, and his body shook as though he’d lose control and fall at any moment. “What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be in bed.”

  “I can hear you throwing up from the bedroom window. What’s wrong, Lucy? Do you need some water or something?”

  “Stop it! Stop being nice!”

  “I don’t understand. What’s going on?” As he took a step toward her, she took one back, nearly falling off the two foot high porch.

  “Just stay away from me,” she yelled.

  Gavin drew his brows together. “What the hell happened?”

  Lucy’s eyes went to the folder that was still lying open in the rocking chair. Gavin followed her stare. He leaned over and picked it up, but when he saw what it was, he slid down into one of the chairs, completely beaten.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Is it true?”

  He began shuffling through the papers, his face now devoid of all color, and when he looked back at her, he appeared to have aged ten years in the last ten seconds. He eyes held secret, tortured secrets, secrets that left him feeling ashamed, but did that mean he was guilty?

  “It’s not what you think. It’s not what it looks like. I swear.” Lucy’s stomach began churning again. But somehow, the lawyer part of her began fighting to break through her emotions. Lots of people plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit in order to keep from going to trial. Was she being naïve? She slunk into one of the chairs, unable to stand any longer.

  Gavin started talking, trying to explain, but she knew she shouldn’t listen, she couldn’t listen. She couldn’t listen to his explanation. She should leave and go home to Houston, right now. She had no ties here.

  “I was eighteen years old. I was away from home for the first time in my life, living on my own. It was one big party, and one night my friends and I used our fake IDs to go to this club. I was pretty drunk when I met this woman. She looked like a model. I had never seen anyone that looked like her in real life. Someone so perfectly beautiful that I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that she was interested in me. We danced and kissed. Before the night was over, she’d taken me into the ladies room and we… we had sex.” He paused there. He was either feeling sick or he was a great actor. Lucy had to remind herself that he had just suffered a head injury. Perhaps his pallid skin and sweating and shaking were symptoms of his recent injury.

  “So then what? She claimed you raped her?”

  “Not that time. That was in September. She took my number, and a couple of weeks later, she called me. She had me meet her at a fancy hotel. I spent the day with her. I was so naïve. I thought I was falling in love.” His breathing became labored, and he took a second to try and calm down before continuing. “Before I left that day, I told her I’d fallen in love with her. Remember, I was a young kid, fresh from the farm, as clichéd at is sounds. I’d never known anyone like her, and I honestly thought I was in love. She laughed at me and confessed she was married to a U.S. senator.”

  Lucy heard herself suck in a breath. The wife of a U.S. senator? If he was making this stuff up, he was good. “So was that the end of the affair?”

  “No. I told her it was, but in a couple of weeks she called me again, and I went to meet her. She ordered room service, and we drank champagne. She told me her husband was mean; he beat her and she didn’t love him. She also told me that, because of who he was, she couldn’t leave him. My head was all mixed up, and my hormones were raging. I kept seeing her. On my nineteenth birthday, she took me to New York. We spent the whole weekend together. I was sure I was in love then.”

  “This was in what month?”

  “November. So, when we got back, I had it in my head that I could make her fall in love with me and leave him. She didn’t call me for weeks. I was a mess. I was failing all of my classes. I refused to go home for Thanksgiving, and then I saw this story in the paper. I was so stupid. I was in a coffee shop, and the paper happened to be lying there, open to the society or politics page. I don’t know. I thought it was fate. I saw her picture. She was with an older man. I thought it was her father. As it turned out, it was the senator, her husband. He was like sixty years old, and in my young, arrogant mind I thought that was another plus in my favor. Who wouldn’t rather be with a nineteen-year-old? The article was about a fundraising dinner they were hosting at one of the hotels that she and I used quite a bit. I got it in my head that if I dressed up real nice and went to see her…” He leaned forward and put his head in his hands as beaded sweat began running down his cheeks.

  Damn! “Gavin, maybe you should go lie down.”

  “No. I have to finish. I rented a damned suit and got all slicked up and went to that hotel. I knew because of all the security that I wouldn’t be able to get near the ballroom. But I went anyway. I used my fake ID and rented a room. I waited where the valets were helping rich people out of their fancy cars, and I saw her as she was exiting a limo with her husband. She saw me, and the look of horror on her face should have told me to turn around. I don’t know where I got the courage, but I held up the room key. I was hoping she’d understand I had asked for the same room we’d used before. It was our room. Our rendezvous paradise.”

  “Oh, Gavin!” Lucy sat riveted, trying to remind herself that this was just a story. It could be a set of complete lies.

  “I went to the room, ordered room service, and waited. It was hours later when she softly knocked on the door. When I opened the door, she lunged for me, wrapping her arms around me, pulling me close, and without hesitation, we made love.”

  “Oh Jesus, Gavin!”

  “Yeah,” he said in a strangled voice. “Yeah, we had sex. We had just finished when someone knocked on the door. She looked panicked. When I opened the door, there stood her husband and one of his security guards. The security guard punched me in the face. I was so surprised I couldn’t even defend myself. I don’t know who called the police, but at first when I saw them, I was so relieved. Then I heard her say, he raped me. At first, my brain didn’t process it. I was face down on the floor in cuffs, but when I raised my head, I noticed her lip bleeding, and she had a black eye and red finger marks along her neck. I assume that while the security guard was making a punching bag out of me, the senator was punishing her for her transgression. Lucy, she told them that I had done that to her. That I’d forced myself on her, and when she refused me, I hit her. The knuckles on my right hand were swollen because I’d tried to defend myself from the beating I was receiving from the senator’s security guard. It was perfect. The perfect rape scene.” His eyes filled with tears, and his chest heaved as he fought to continue. Lucy had to remind herself not to feel empathy for him; it was probably all a lie.

  “The police arrested me, and I sat in this tiny little cell all weekend. They interviewed me over and over and kept telling me that if I confessed and agreed to plead guilty, they’d go easy on me. They told me I could get twenty years if I got convicted. For a nineteen year old, twenty years felt like an entire lifetime. They swabbed my mouth to try and match my DNA. I admitted to having sex with her, but it was consensual, not rape. I didn’t hurt her, and I sure didn’t rape her. I loved her. I was so confused and scared to death. I finally called my mom, and when I got arraigned on Monday morning, my parents were there. They were there, but I hardly recognized my father. His face looked so full of pain and anguish. He didn’t look like the man who’d raised me. My mom’s eyes were red and swollen. She looked as though she’d lost twenty pounds overnight. They charged me with felony aggravated assault. The judge set the date for trial and set my bail at a hundred thousand dollars. I had a court assigned attorney who barely spoke to me. I was taken back to jail to wait for the trial. My parents came in to visit me that afternoon. Although, I wished they wouldn’t have. To this day it breaks my heart to think of the look on my mother’s face. We didn’t have much time in the tiny
waiting room, but I told swore to them that I hadn’t done it.

  “My dad explained that he’d take a mortgage out on the ranch and would hire a good lawyer. But I knew that if anyone in our small town ever found out about this, it would ruin my dad’s ranch. There’d be no way he could pay the mortgage, and he’d lose the one thing that had been in his family for generations. I couldn’t let him do that. I wouldn’t let him do that. I told them I’d plead guilty. They both broke down crying. It was the only time in my life I saw my father cry. I talked to the district attorney and my so-called lawyer and took a plea deal.”

  “How long did you spend in jail?”

  “I was sentenced to five years. I spent two months in county and then I was sent to Eastham, maximum security prison. I did my time as quietly as I could, and five years ago I was released and came home. Brance and Colt are the only two living people that know what happened, and now you, and I guess the people who are working overtime to dig this stuff up.”

  “You never saw or heard from her again?”

  “I got a letter from her a few years ago.”

  “Did she mention the rape?”

  “No. But she said something like I’m sorry this happened to you, but he made me or something like that.”

  Lucy realized she was thinking like a lawyer again. She wasn’t sure if that was going to save her or be her demise.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lucy and Gavin hadn’t said another word to each other after his confession. She’d stayed in her room, but she didn’t really sleep. She kept the door locked but felt ridiculous for being so paranoid. If he wanted to rape her, he’d had plenty of opportunity to do it already. She couldn’t shut her mind off. It went back and forth from wanting him to be innocent to absolutely convincing herself he was guilty.

  She finally fell asleep just before the sun came up and woke up an hour later when her alarm went off loudly. As she pulled on her jeans and t-shirt and headed to the kitchen, she noticed Gavin was no longer sleeping in his makeshift hospital bed. She checked the bathroom and living room, but there was no sign of him anywhere in the house.

  Nervously, she started getting things out for breakfast. By the time Mike and Clint walked in with the other volunteers, she had the bacon, pancakes, and coffee ready to go. She served everyone before asking, “Have you guys seen Gavin this morning?”

  “No, but Satan and the dogs and goat are gone, so he’s out riding somewhere.” Damn it! She sighed and rolled her eyes. Mike grinned. “Don’t worry, Miss Lucy; we’ll look out for him when we get out there. He’s got a hard head. If he wanted to do something, you weren’t gonna stop him.”

  “I’m going to take my shower. If you see him, will you tell him that Doc wouldn’t want him to be out riding again so soon?”

  Mike laughed and replied, “I’ll have Clint tell him.” Clint didn’t look up from his plate, but he gestured at his friend with his middle finger.

  Lucy started the shower, and when it was warm, she stepped underneath the refreshing spray and welcomed the feeling of the warm beads caressing her skin. The steam cleared her head and gave her back a little of the peace she was missing in her heart. She closed her eyes and let her mind rest for a few minutes. She didn’t have to make a decision about what to do at this very second. She could just stand there and let herself visualize the water washing away the emotions, the doubts, and all the questions. By the time she finished and was drying off, she’d decided she was going to see this civil suit through. She’d already made a promise to Kayla. She couldn’t go back on that now. Then, she was going home to Houston and forgetting that she ever met Gavin Walker.

  She cleaned up the breakfast dishes and went out to take care of Kayla’s chores. It was good for her to lose herself in the busywork. Thinking about feeding a cute little piglet was much safer that everything else on her mind today. She had just finished mucking out the stalls in the barn when she heard Brance’s pickup coming up the drive. She put away the pitchfork took her gloves off and went out to meet them, anxious to hear what they’d discovered.

  “Hey!” Kayla said, looking fresh and bouncy when she stepped out of the truck. Lucy looked at Brance and saw he was smiling as well. She found herself glad that Gavin wasn’t here to read things into it. Then she reminded herself that she didn’t care how Gavin felt. He wasn’t her problem.

  “Hey!” she said. “How did it go?”

  Kayla had a big white envelope in her hand. She handed it to Lucy and said, “I don’t understand all of it; you can probably decipher it better. Brance and I pored over it for a while last night though, and it would seem that there is a pretty good chance there’s a gas producer down there. They wanted to lease an area that was roughly four acres in size. Two of those acres belonged to Daddy and the other two to Simpson. Daddy refused to sell or lease though, so I’m not sure why he let them come in and even do the assessment in the first place.”

  “I’ll take a look at it and see what I can figure out. Worse come to worse, we can consult with experts if we need to.”

  “So how is my brother?” Brance had already gone inside the house, but he stepped back out as soon as Kayla asked.

  “He’s not in there,” he informed her.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. He gave me the slip early this morning. He’s out on Satan.”

  “Oh, that man! He’s going to be the death of me one of these days,” Kayla said with a sigh. If she only knew. Lucy wondered if Gavin thought he could keep his past from catching up with him forever. When something was a matter of public record, it never went away. They started into the house, and as they did, Clint came driving up in Gavin’s truck like a bat out of hell.

  “We ain’t seen Gavin all morning, but Satan’s roaming around up there on the property line. Mike went over to check on things and banged on the doors, but so far ain’t nobody come out.”

  “Damn it!” Kayla spat out. Brance was already climbing into his truck. “I’m going with you!” Kayla yelled at him.

  “Maybe you should…”

  “I’m coming, Brance, with you or on my own.” He stopped the pickup and Kayla climbed inside with him.

  Lucy was right behind her. Brance gave her a funny look before she added, “He may need his attorney.”

  “True story,” Brance said. He left tire marks on the road as they took off.

  “What is he thinking?” Kayla said. Lucy thought she knew, but she didn’t think it was her place to tell Gavin’s sister something he’d hidden from her all of these years. Gavin had to be livid that Tuck was digging up his past on top of everything else. She hoped that he didn’t do something stupid enough to land him back in jail. As Brance drove up the incline toward Tuck’s house, the three of them could see Mike out front, trying to look in a window. Satan was standing vigil about ten feet from the house. There was no sign of anyone else. He parked the truck, and the three got out.

  “Mike? Is he in there?” Kayla asked.

  “I don’t know. Nobody’s answering.”

  Kayla pounded on the door. “Gavin! Tuck! One of you better answer this door or so help me.”

  “Kayla,” Lucy touched her arm. A big white four-wheel drive was coming up the path toward the house. “It’s Tuck.”

  They all stood and watched the hateful man step down from his truck. As soon as his feet hit the ground, Brance pounced. He had him up against the side of the truck. “Where’s Gavin?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “His horse is here, Tuck. That horse wouldn’t leave him,” Kayla said.

  “Brance, take it easy, okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me, Red. This little punk doesn’t scare me,” Tuck proclaimed.

  “I wasn’t worried about you. I am worried one of these guys is going to have enough of your crap and kill you. Although I’d like to do it myself, you’re not worth all the trouble I’d get into for it.”

  “Let go of me, boy!” Kayla laid a hand on his shoulder, and Lucy saw Brance visib
ly relax the hold he had on Tuck. He finally let him go, shoving him back into the truck as he did.

  “If anything happened to him, so help me God, you will be sorry, old man.” The words came out through Brance’s gritted teeth. Tuck smiled. Lucy wondered if he had a death wish.

  “I don’t need to give that boy no trouble,” Tuck said, adjusting his shirt. “It seems he finds it all on his own. Now y’all get out of here, you’re trespassing. If I find your boy trespassing around here, I’m calling the law on him, and if that hapless Barney Fife cop doesn’t do anything about it, I’ll call the state police next time. Now go!”

  Brance stepped forward again and this time, Mike took hold of his arm. “Come on, he ain’t worth it.”

  Kayla walked over to where Satan stood his vigil and asked, “Where is he, boy?” Then she looked back at Mike and asked, “Are the dogs with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come here!” They all came over and looked across the deep brush. The top of Clarence’s head could be seen and the grass around him was dancing like something was moving around in it. Kayla jumped on Satan’s back and clicked her tongue. As she raced toward Clarence, the rest of them followed on foot. Lucy saw Kayla pull the horse to a stop and slide off. She knelt down and now was almost invisible herself. “He’s here!” she yelled. Lucy, Brance, and Mike moved faster. When they got there, they found an unconscious Gavin on his back on the ground. Bo and Sam were standing on either side of him, guarding him. Poor Satan must have gone for help, not realizing that he was in the enemy’s camp.

  “I’m gonna get the truck,” Mike said. Lucy was already on her phone dialing 911. This time he was going to the hospital, whether he liked it or not.

  “Gavin, it’s Kay. Gavin! Can you hear me?” Tears began streaming down her frightened face.