by Lori Wilde
Joes gave him a crooked smile. “Oh, I’d already decided to do that.”
“Perfect. I’ll get moving on that for you.” He began to rise.
Joe reached out to stop him. “But I want you to do something for me.”
Eli nodded and lowered back to the stool. “If I can, sure.”
“I’ve done the reading, and I know it’s going to take this summer to get good on my new legs.”
“That sounds about right, but the prosthetist will be able to tell you more.”
“I know, but while I’m learning to walk, I want you to learn to ride horses.”
Eli’s stomach dropped. “Excuse me?”
“Man, you’re missing the best high. Being on a horse, racing through the pastures is the coolest thing ever. You can’t live in Texas and not know how to ride a horse.”
Eli pushed a smile onto his face. “I don’t know, Joe. I’m only going to be here a few more months.”
Joe laughed. “So you’re telling me that I can learn to wear fake legs, learn to walk, run and even ride a horse but you, with two good legs, can’t learn just one of those things?”
His heart pounding against his chest, Eli said, “I’ll think about it.”
Joe raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? You promise?”
“I promise.”
Did a promise count if he crossed his fingers at the same time?
Marti had been on her air cast for a whopping four days and was already sick of it. Oh, she could walk just fine. And the pain was getting better, but she hated the damaged image she presented to her ranch hands and herself. You’d think she’d broken her back and was paralyzed the way her family and ranch hands treated her. Someone was always handing her stuff, or asking how she was doing. Argh. She’d had enough. But it was Friday, so maybe tomorrow she could get away from all the caring eyes for a while.
She was still using her grandfather’s cane occasionally to stabilize herself, and keep as much weight off her ankle as she could. From what the nurse had explained, and from online research she’d done, keeping her full, one-hundred and thirty-five pounds off her ankle could help the speed with which her ankle healed. Heaven knew, she wanted to be back to normal as soon as possible. She pushed up from the chair in her bedroom, established a good balance, and made her way down the stairs to the kitchen and a cup of coffee with her name on it.
“Oh, honey. What are you doing down here?” her mother exclaimed. “I would have brought you coffee.” She held up the walkie-talkie on the counter. “All you had to do was ask.”
“I didn’t want to ask,” Marti said through clenched teeth. “I’ve been looking at the walls in my room for days. I’ve got to get outside or go crazy.”
Her mother laughed. “Please. Days? You spent yesterday in your room, but only because I hid your air cast. You shouldn’t be going out to the barn or the pastures. You need spend another day in your room resting.”
“No way, no how. I need to get down to the barn. Check on the new calves. And we’ve got those two teens from the Whispering Springs Police Department program starting. I need to make sure everything is ready.”
Her mother shook her head. “You don’t have to do everything around here, you know.”
Marti sat at the table and rolled her eyes up to where her mother stood. “I know, but with you and dad planning to take the summer to travel, you need to know you’re leaving the ranch in good hands.”
Her mother hugged her. “We know we are. You don’t have anything to prove to us. Besides, we don’t leave for another week, and if need be, we can delay the trip.”
“Absolutely not,” Marti said. “You won’t have to. My ankle’s already feeling so much better.”
“We’ll see,” her mother said, raising a brow.
After a quick breakfast, Marti climbed onto the ATV parked at the backdoor and rode it down to the barn. Any other morning, she would have walked, but Dr. Boone—the scorching hot Dr. Boone—had stressed, as did his nurse, that she should put as little weight on her ankle to help the healing. She wasn’t supposed to be on a horse, dangling legs and all, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help out with the daily barn chores.
She checked in with the ranch foreman and took over the grooming that needed to be done. Pedro was reassigned from grooming horses to literally shoveling shit from the stalls. The job switch was met with groans and protests, but he winked at Marti as he left Rascal’s stall. She was just laying out her combs and brushes when the foreman called her back to the barn office.
“You’ve got a call,” he said, handing her the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Martha? This is Dr. Boone. I wanted to see how you were getting along with the boot.”
His deep voice jabbed her gut, making her pull in her abdomen in response.
“Call me Marti,” she said. “I’m doing fine. Swelling’s down. Pain’s better. Overall, I think I’ll be back to normal before you know it.”
“That’s great. Good to hear. I, um, like to check on my patients to make sure they’re doing okay.”
“I am. Thank you for calling.” She paused. “Is there anything else?”
She crossed her fingers this call was a ruse to ask her out. What woman wouldn’t want to be seen with the attractive new doctor in town? Not a relationship sort of thing. She didn’t need the hassles that went with those, but some male attention would be welcome. After all, her handheld shower massager was beginning to show signs of excessive wear and tear.
“Well, now that you ask, I wonder if I might drop by and discuss a project with you.”
“A project?” Her fingers uncrossed.
Damn it. Why did she seem to draw the attention of men who needed something from her? Besides sex, she amended.
“I…” She hesitated. “Sure, why not?”
“Great. This afternoon work? About four?”
“Sure,” she repeated. “See you then.”
She went back into Rascal’s stall, picked up a grooming brush and began running it along the horse’s side.
“So,” she said to Rascal. “Guess who I just talked to?”
He shook his mane, which she interpreted as, “Tell me more.”
“Dr. Hottie.” A ripple ran along Rascal’s back, which could have been the brush, or maybe Rascal had a sense of exactly how sexy the doctor was.
“Oh,” a suspiciously Hispanic male voice said through the wall from the next stall. “I bet he wants to kiss you.” This statement was followed by loud kissing noises and a giggle.
“I don’t know, Rascal,” she said, playing along. “But I know one thing. Pedro is going on the mucking list for the rest of the week if I see him in the next two minutes.”
“This isn’t Pedro,” the voice said. “This is Rascal.” This was followed by a girl’s giggle.
Marti rolled her eyes. Her latest police department offenders were a couple of seventeen-year-old girls who’d been caught throwing toilet paper into the trees in the high school yard. They’d been sentenced to the ranch for a month of stall mucking.
“Uh-huh. Now that I’m done with you, Rascal, I’ll be moving to Jack’s stall.” She dragged her feet in the straw to make extra noise as she moved toward the door.
She heard four feet shuffling hurriedly in the next stall, the creak of Jack’s stall door, and pounding as Pedro and one of the girls ran for the exit. Still, she couldn’t keep from grinning. Hot Doc was coming, even if he had an agenda. It was possible his “project” was an excuse to see her.
She didn’t know, but that sounded so much better to her ego.
About three, she called it a day and headed up to the house. She stepped into the outdoor shower, securing the door behind her. After a day covered in manure, dirt, blood, and a number of unidentifiable splotches, she was glad to shuck her clothes for a shower. She rolled up everything and shoved it through the chute into the laundry room.
Years ago, her mother had gotten tired of the smells and muck that came in on her husband’s clothe
s. For Christmas one year, she’d requested a shower that could be accessed from the outside and be adjacent to her laundry room. Of course the various odors still filled her laundry room when the clothes went through the chute, but she’d assured him the addition was exactly what she’d wanted, keeping the various ranch aromas from the rest of the house.
As the warm water sluiced down her body carrying away the evidence of her day, Marti decided her mother was one intelligent woman. Now that she was keeping house and doing her own clothes, she appreciated the idea of having a home that didn’t smell like the barn.
After wrapping in a towel, she opened the door that led to an interior hall and made her way to her bedroom. She wasn’t putting on fresh clothes because of Dr. Boone. She would have done this even if her afternoon visitor had been old man Hopkins.
Right, Marti. No one would be fooled with that story, especially herself.
A little before four, she poured a glass of wine, grabbed the latest Cattlemen Magazine and snapped it open to a pasture management article. It didn’t hold her interest. She tossed the glossy magazine on the sofa and picked up today’s paper to do the crossword. That would distract her, not that she was anxious about seeing Dr. Boone.
At ten minutes past four, her cell phone buzzed. The screen readout was Riverside Orthopedics. Ah. He was running late. How like a doctor.
“Hello?”
“Martha Jenkins?” a female voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Ms. Jenkins. This is Debbie Watts from Riverside Ortho. Dr. Boone asked that I call and let you know that he was called into emergency surgery and wouldn’t be able to keep the appointment for this afternoon.”
“Oh.” The bottom dropped out of Marti’s heart. “Well, I guess these things happen.”
“All the time,” the nurse said.
“Thank you for the call.”
“Sure thang.”
Well, shoot. Here she was on a Friday night, all cleaned up with nowhere to go. No use letting all this makeup go to waste. Two calls later and she was meeting Delene Younger and Tina Baker at Leo’s Bar and Grill for some dinner, drinking, and dancing. Oh, and she might throw in a little Dr. Hottie gossip just for Delene.
Chapter 3
Saturday morning, Marti woke with a pounding headache, throbbing to the beat of the country song blasting on her alarm. Groaning, she rolled to her side and put a pillow over her head. Right now, being a Monday through Friday office worker seemed like the ideal job, and she didn’t even know what an office worker did. It just had to be better than getting up at the crack of dawn on a weekend with a hangover.
Of course, the reality was that ranchers didn’t have weekends. They worked seven days a week.
When her second alarm went off at five a.m., time for lounging around in bed was done. Cattle liked breakfast as much as she did.
Later that morning, she saw her parents off on their summer trip, after swearing and crossing her heart that she would call if anything came up. While she was crossing her heart, she was also crossing her fingers. It would take a problem of massive magnitude before she interrupted their trip. They had worked hard their whole lives and deserved some fun.
Throughout the day, she kept her cell phone with her, expecting Eli Boone to call and reschedule, maybe even apologize for having to cancel their…what was it anyway? Date? Appointment? Whatever it was supposed to be, he didn’t call and reschedule—not for tonight, not for tomorrow, not for anytime.
Ranching meant early hours, with some late nights not unusual. Tonight was penciled in for early bed and a good book. So, she told herself, it was just as well he didn’t call for today.
As the next week rolled by, the call to apologize and reschedule never came. She did get calls from Zack Marshall, a local cowboy, and Chad Jamison, a cute firemen from the city. Both of them asking her out for Saturday night. She’d been out with them both in the past, and while they were drop-dead handsome, she didn’t feel like dressing up and heading out on a date with either of them.
She’d known Zack since first grade, so it was hard to not picture him without his front teeth. Besides, he had some on-and-off thing with her friend Delene.
Chad was a different story. He’d moved to Whispering Springs as an adult, so he’d always had his front teeth. But he had a complicated relationship with Tina, and Marti didn’t want to get sucked into their vortex of break-ups and make-ups. She figured the date invite was probably an effort on his part to make Tina jealous. She wasn’t interested in being a player in that play.
By the following Friday, she’d spoken with her parents every day. She told them that from now on, she would only accept their calls on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Her mother had laughed and apologized. But Marti understood. Letting go was hard for them, even if was for only three months.
Monday morning, as she studied the two hospital auxiliary fundraiser tickets stuck beneath a magnet on her refrigerator, she realized the dinner-slash-dance was the coming Saturday evening, as in only five days away. Even though she’d walked past those tickets for two months, she’d let the event slip up on her. She had no date, and to be honest, no one she wanted to ask. At two-hundred and fifty bucks a pop, she would go eat rubber chicken with or without an escort. Her grandmother had founded the auxiliary and the Jenkinses had always supported the auxiliary’s work. This year, she would be the family’s sole representative, so not attending wasn’t an option.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time she went solo. Last May, her fiancé had been too busy to attend, with what, she’d never found out. He’d only said he had “a thing” to do with his friend Scott. It was only later that she’d discovered their secret.
The event was black tie, and most of the guys in her dating pool would rather eat their cowboy hats than put on a tux for an evening of schmoozing and dancing. Too bad she had the perfect dress that would knock a date’s eyes out. Plus, she was out of that blasted air cast and ready to dance again.
She was sure the Montgomery family would be there. They always supported events such as this. The wives were happy to share their guys, but on the dance floor. She could snag a dance or two that way.
Tuesday evening, just as she was exiting the shower, her cell phone rang. With water trickling down her body onto the shower mat, she considered letting it go to voicemail. It’d been a rough day. She was tired and more than a little grumpy. Still…
“Hello?”
“Marti? It’s Eli Boone.”
Stunned, she almost dropped the phone. She pulled the phone away and looked at the caller id. Riverside Ortho. “Well, surprise. I thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”
“I know, I know. After eight hours of surgery and spending the night in the hospital, I had just barely enough time to get home, grab my suitcase, and make my plane.” He paused. “You did get the message about the emergency surgery?”
“I did, but that was ten days ago. Hard to believe that emergency surgery lasted that long. Must be a new surgical record.”
“Darn it. Debby was supposed to tell you I was leaving for Europe in the morning and wouldn’t be back until yesterday. I attended an international symposium on bone grafting in Copenhagen.”
“Can you hold on a minute?” Setting the phone on the lip of the sink, she whisked the towel over the water droplets, and then wrapped it around her and moved into her bedroom. “Sorry. I’m back. No, I didn’t get that message.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m horrible. First, I ask for a favor and then never call.”
“I been pretty busy around here, so I honestly haven’t given it much thought,” she lied.
“Now I feel even worse because I need two favors.”
“Really?” She sat on the edge of her bed.
“I know it’s late notice, and you probably already have plans for Saturday, but I’ve got these two tickets for the hospital fundraiser on Saturday night. I was hoping you might go with me. It’s a worthy cause. The aux
iliary is trying to raise funds for some badly needed equipment.”
She thought about the five-hundred-dollar tickets stuck onto her fridge. “I am aware of it, yes.”
“Would you be interested in going with me? To the fundraiser, I mean.”
Her breath caught as nerves quivered in her gut. As she was thinking, he added, as though it were an enticement—which it wasn’t—“It’ll give me a chance to talk about what I wanted last week. Plus, I’m new in town. It’d be nice to have someone everyone knows with me.”
He was asking her out because he could use her to introduce him around? Surprisingly, her house smoke alarms did not begin blaring from the smoke she was sure poured from her ears.
“I’m messing this all up, aren’t I?” he asked. “Let me be honest. I haven’t dated in years. I married the last girl I asked out, so…” His voice drifted off.
“You’re married?” she asked with a gasp.
“What? Oh no. I’m not any longer.” He blew out a breath. “It’s a long story. Say you’ll go with me. I promise to explain everything.”
Hadn’t she just been lamenting her lack of date just yesterday? And she really did hate to go alone.
“You realize it’s black tie, right?”
“Tux is cleaned, pressed, and ready to go.”
“And about this pesky issue of a doctor dating a patient?”
“Oh, you’re not my patient any longer. I’m discharging you from my care. Shoot, I didn’t even ask. How is your ankle? You said it was doing okay.”
“I’m fine. Ready to dance even,” she said. “I’d love to go with you.”
“Great. I haven’t been to your house yet, so I’m not sure how much time to allow for the drive.”
“Why don’t I just meet you there? It’d be easier.”
“Absolutely not.” He sounded aghast. “Will seven-fifteen work?”
“It’ll work fine. I’ll see you on Saturday.”
She hung up and flopped back on her bed with a giggle. She felt like a sixteen-year-old getting asked to prom instead of a thirty-year-old being asked to a stuffy dinner.
