Cowboy with a Cause

by Carla Cassidy

  “You’re changing,” Tilly said, a hint of pride in her voice. “You’re getting stronger and that’s good. Your mother would be so proud of you, Melanie. I just want to make sure I’ll always have a place in your life.”

  “That’s a given,” Melanie said gently.

  Tilly nodded and straightened. “And now I’m going to finish the dusting upstairs so I can head out of here.”

  When she left the room, Melanie leaned back in her chair and thought about Tilly. Matilda Graves and

  Melanie’s mother had been more like sisters than friends. Olive had never remarried after Melanie’s father left and Tilly had never married at all.

  Tilly had sat beside Melanie’s mother at every dance recital Melanie had ever danced in, the two women had been together on the night of Melanie’s prom and Tilly had grieved as deeply as Olive had when Melanie got on a plane to move to New York City to realize her dreams.

  Within thirty minutes Tilly was gone and the evening stretched out before Melanie. She expected Adam to be gone until after she went to bed, and as she moved to the living room, she realized she’d come to look forward to his company whenever he was around.

  He’d now officially been her tenant for two weeks, and with each day that passed, she found herself drawn to him more and more.

  She didn’t want to fall in love with him. She was even made uncomfortable by the fact that she liked him so much. Her cheeks warmed as she thought of the rumor that she and Adam were lovers.

  The very idea was ridiculous. Or was it? There was no question that Adam felt a crazy desire for her, a desire born of close proximity, or of boredom or pity. It had to be one of those three.

  She didn’t believe his desire was anything real, but the desire she felt for him was very real. His kisses had stirred something in her that she’d never felt before.

  But she also knew it was possible that her desire for him had been born from gratitude, and that if she followed through on it, he would eventually break her heart. Therefore she would deny him and herself any acting out on that passion. They shouldn’t kiss again and she had to maintain some sort of emotional distance.

  She was in a wheelchair and it was quite possible she was losing her mind. She would never be the kind of complete woman Adam would want or need in his life. No matter how self-sufficient she might eventually become, she would still always be a burden on any man.

  Her mother had lived a full and happy life alone. Melanie would do the same. She’d rather be alone than allow somebody into her life who would eventually come to resent her for all her limitations.

  Still, that didn’t keep her from dreaming about Adam, from occasionally falling into fantasies of what it would be like to make love with him.

  In the living room she settled herself on the sofa and grabbed the remote to turn on the television. She tuned to a favorite crime drama show and for the next two hours lost herself in the world of actors and actresses in life-and-death situations.

  By the time ten o’clock rolled around, her eyes were drifting closed with sleepiness and so she got back into her chair and went into her bedroom.

  Her nightly routine of washing her face and changing into her nightclothes had become second nature to her and within minutes she was in bed, with the only light in the room the moonbeams drifting in through the window.

  The light created dancing shadows on the ceiling and she watched them until she was half hypnotized and finally fell asleep.

  Almost every night since the day she’d gone into the wheelchair, she’d dreamed of dancing, but on this night her dreams were filled with Adam.

  She remembered how it had felt to be held in his arms as she cried, the warmth and strength of his embrace comforting and yet enticing and exciting.

  The kisses they had shared had heated her body to the extent that she forgot all about the pain in her leg, the cold deadness in her foot. She’d felt completely alive and whole, and all she’d been able to think about was the fire of his kiss, which warmed her from head to toe and left her wanting more of him.

  His hand as he stroked up and down the length of her leg had pooled heat in her stomach, had warmed her blood, and she’d felt like an addict...wanting more...more.

  Even in her dream she knew he was not hers to keep but was only borrowed for the time being, until he moved on. And he would move on.

  If he decided to follow his dream and become a deputy, there was no work here in Grady Gulch. He’d have to leave town, start building a new life, and there was no way that life would include a nutty, crippled woman.

  Still in her dreams he was in her bed, holding her, making love to her with blue fire in his eyes and hot passion on his lips.

  She came awake suddenly and for a moment she thought it was an overwhelming sadness that had pulled her from her dreams. But it took her only an instant to realize it was something else.

  A glance at the clock let her know she’d been sleeping for only an hour or so, but she had the strangest, craziest feeling that she was no longer alone in the room.

  She told herself it was some sort of weird feeling left over from a half-remembered dream. Knowing that further sleep was unattainable, she sat up and leaned over to grab the arms of her wheelchair.

  In stunned disbelief she realized her wheelchair wasn’t there. But it should be there...where it always was when she got into bed.

  Frantic, her state of half drowsiness jerking away, she shot her gaze around the room. She gasped as she saw the gleam of the metal chair in one corner of the room.

  Dear God, had she gotten so crazy that she’d parked her wheelchair over there and somehow hobbled to her bed?

  She clutched her hands on both sides of her head, wondering when this would all end...how this would all end for her. She was desperately afraid that not only would she never walk again, but she’d also wind up being locked up in some hospital for the insane.

  * * *

  Adam sat in the all-night café, nursing a cup of coffee and listening to some of his fellow AA members. He didn’t always join them after the meeting for a cup of coffee or something to eat, but he’d decided to do so tonight.

  He was still seeking a balance between wanting to be with Melanie and needing to get on with his own life. It was difficult, because he’d rather spend all of his time with her.

  “Here we are,” the waitress said as she placed a piece of warm apple pie in front of Adam and a slice of cherry in front of Jason Murray.

  There were a total of four men who sat at the table. Jason Murray was a twenty-five-year-old who worked at a video store and had begun drinking when he was fifteen. Lawrence Connors was a fifty-year-old man who had finally realized he had a drinking problem after three failed marriages. Jack Rogers, the final member at the table, was about Adam’s age and had also spent most of his time ranching. Too much isolation and too many lonely nights, Jack had confessed, were his reasons for drinking.

  “I don’t know why you keep coming to these meetings,” Jason said to Adam as he cut into his pie. “We all know that you aren’t like us, that alcohol isn’t a driving demon in your head.”

  “Maybe I just come because I like the company,” Adam countered.

  Lawrence laughed. “Yeah, there’s nothing that’s as much fun as hanging out with a bunch of recovering alcoholics.”

  “Coming to the meetings is good for my soul,” Adam replied easily. “It reminds me of how fragile all of us are and how we have to be accountable for what we do with our lives.”

  “I think if my old man had been around when I was growing up, I wouldn’t have started drinking in the first place,” Jason said.

  “Accountability,” Lawrence repeated firmly. “That’s what we’re talking about here. You’re responsible for the choices you made, and whether your old man was in your life or not, you chose to raise a bottle to your mouth over and over again.”

  “You’re right,” Jason agreed and then smiled at the three older men. “But I’m also making the
choice to get it right now.”

  “And we’re all proud of you,” Jack replied.

  As they drank coffee and ate their pie, the conversation turned to normal man things...hunting, farming and sports. Adam always enjoyed these conversations, the subject matters ones he had often talked about with Sam and sometimes Nick.

  Now Sam was incarcerated and Nick talked about nothing but Garrett’s funny antics and the charming little things that Courtney did. His life completely revolved around his family, as it should, but talking to Nick often made Adam feel very lonely.

  He thought of the phone calls he’d resisted taking from Sam and the twelve steps of recovery. When he came to the step that called for each individual to take a personal inventory, he knew he fell short. He needed to let the judicial system take care of Sam, but more than that, Adam needed to forgive his brother.

  As the others continued to talk, Adam found his thoughts drifting back to Melanie. He was worried about her. The thing with the pictures had unleashed a rivulet of both shock and sorrow through him.

  Was she too damaged to move on and have a real life? Had the accident that had stolen her ability to dance taken out the very heart of her, leaving nothing left inside her?

  He didn’t want to believe that, but in the days since the picture incident she’d been almost impossible to read. She’d been so closed off, no hint of welcome in her eyes, whenever he was around.

  In the time he was home, she either sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window, as if lost in thought, or was in her room alone.

  Suddenly he was ready to head home...to her. She’d probably gone to bed long ago, but he would smell her scent when he walked through the front door, would feel her presence as he made his way up the stairs to go to sleep. Just knowing she was beneath the same roof as him somehow made him feel good.

  “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure as usual,” Adam said as he stood. “But I’ve got a thirty-minute drive back home and it’s way past my bedtime.”

  The others ribbed him good-naturedly and then Adam paid his tab and left the café. As he got into his truck for the drive back to Grady Gulch, his mind was filled with thoughts of both Sam and Melanie.

  How could he make Melanie understand that she needed to somehow find a way to forgive the fates that had put her in a wheelchair when he couldn’t even find forgiveness in his own heart for the brother he’d loved? For the man who, when their parents died, had stepped up and stepped in to make sure that all four siblings were able to remain together.

  Sam had been barely an adult when he’d petitioned the court to gain custody of his three younger siblings. The idea of any of them going into foster care had been untenable to him.

  He’d given up whatever hopes, whatever dreams he might have once entertained for himself to keep the ranch running and profitable, to manage his sister and brothers, who depended on him. He had sacrificed himself for them and finally had snapped.

  A piece of brittle hardness against his brother cracked inside his chest and fell away. He would never condone what Sam had tried to do. He would never understand the rage and demons that had driven him to attempt to kill a woman, but he could forgive him for being sick.

  Maybe it was time to let Sam know that Adam still loved him. He vowed that the next time Sam tried to contact him, he’d take the call.

  A lightness filled his heart with the decision, confirming that it was, indeed, the right decision, and as that particular subject left his mind, Melanie filled it once again.

  He was getting in too deep with her, wanting her with a desire that had become a distraction each time they were together.

  He knew he wasn’t ready for a relationship, wasn’t sure he’d ever be good husband material. But there was no question that Melanie made him think about such things. Something about her made him want to be a better man, to be good husband and father material.

  Her laughter filled his heart with the music that was missing from her life. The strength and will she displayed in accomplishing all the things that other people took for granted awed him.

  He’d never known anyone like her before, a woman who was both incredibly vulnerable and yet possessed a steely strength and a need for independence.

  Yes, he was definitely getting too close to her. He awakened each morning with the firm commitment to gain some distance, but when they shared a breakfast or had a brief morning conversation, he found himself reluctant to leave.

  He felt like a teenager enjoying his first real crush. He wanted to know what she was thinking, how she was feeling, at any given time of the day or night.

  He was captivated by her sharp mind, entranced by the sense of humor she’d only begun to display as they grew more comfortable together.

  Even when she was sitting in her wheelchair, he found her incredibly sexy. Yeah, he was definitely developing a mad crush on his landlady. There was a part of him that wanted to follow through and see where things went between them and another part of him that believed doing so would be the biggest mistake of his life.

  He clenched and then unclenched his hands around the steering wheel. Sometimes he thought his problem was that he ruminated on everything too much.

  Sam had always made a decision and then stuck to it. Nick had led with his heart in every life choice he’d made, while Adam had always been the cautious one, carefully weighing the pros and cons until he felt frozen and too afraid to make any kind of meaningful decision.

  He was finally beginning to trust his instincts, to go with his gut. Checking out the community college had felt right, and his desire to become a deputy felt just as right. He was finally on a course of action to become the man he wanted to be.

  But, as much as he cared about Melanie, he was beginning to wonder if maybe she didn’t need some sort of help that he couldn’t give her. Maybe the illness that had made her leg useless had infected her soul to the point where nobody would ever be able to heal her.

  Chapter 9

  Melanie’s brain worked to try to make sense of it, but there was no sense. Surely it was impossible that she’d left her chair by the window and then crawled into her bed. It simply wasn’t physically possible, was it?

  She didn’t remember doing it, rather had the distinct memory of wheeling out of the bathroom and to the side of the bed. Was her memory faulty? Was she even crazier than she’d feared?

  She was certain Adam hadn’t sneaked in to do it. He would never play such a cruel trick on her. It simply wasn’t in his character. So what was happening? What on earth was going on?

  Terror tightened her throat as she heard a deep, heavy breathing that wasn’t her own, felt an alien presence nearby. She wasn’t alone. Somebody was definitely in the room with her.

  “Adam?” she whispered softly, hopefully, as her heart banged painfully hard in her chest.

  “Adam isn’t home. Guess again.” The deep, unfamiliar guttural voice came from the dark corner of the room opposite from where her wheelchair sat.

  Alarm fired off in a dozen screams inside Melanie’s head. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am. I’m here. You want your wheelchair? Crawl to it,” he said and then laughed.

  Sheer panic surged up inside her, choking her throat and for a long moment making her unable to draw a breath. Who was he? What was he doing here in her bedroom in the middle of the night? What did he want?

  Was this the serial killer who had been stalking women in town? The man who had already murdered two women in their beds, slashing their throats while they slept? Was he here to make her his third victim?

  A scream rose to her lips, but she knew she could scream her fool head off and it wouldn’t do any good. Her house was sandwiched between businesses, businesses that had closed hours ago. She could scream, but there would be nobody close enough to hear her.

  Still, she released a scream that pierced the night, that shrieked of the utter terror that possessed her as she realized the depth of danger
around her.

  Escape. The word thundered in her brain. She had to escape; she had to move. Somehow she had to get off the bed. She was a sitting duck here.

  A sob escaped her lips. But how could she escape? She was crippled, unable to leap from the bed and run out of the room, unable to fight back when he decided to attack.

  One thing was certain. She wasn’t going to just sit around in the bed and wait for death to come to her. Drawing a deep breath, she rolled over and fell off the side of the bed and to the floor.

  The man in the corner laughed again. “Like a fish out of water, flopping around on the floor.”

  She didn’t recognize his voice, which he was obviously trying to disguise. She didn’t even want to listen to him as he taunted her. Instead she focused on a plan formulating in her head.

  The room was dark, and as long as he stood in the corner, teasing her, he couldn’t see her as she used her arms and one good leg to move as silently as possible across the carpeted floor.

  Ignoring rug burns and the ache of muscles scarcely used, she had only one goal in mind...to get into the closet. If she could just get inside the small enclosure, perhaps she could hold him off until Adam arrived back home.

  The door to the closet was open slightly, just enough for her to grab it, slide in and pull it closed behind her. All she had to do was get there before he decided to stop talking and get serious.

  “I can hear you slithering around on the floor like a snake,” the voice said, this time sounding closer than it had seconds before.

  With a new burst of terror, she increased her efforts, crawling backward like a crab as she dragged her bad leg across the floor. Three more feet. If she could just manage to go three more feet before he pounced, then she might be able to save herself.

  All other thoughts left her head. She was aware of the man taunting her, getting closer and closer still, but her sole focus was on the closet.

  Two more feet. Terror mingled with silent prayers as she pulled herself forward. Help me! Somebody help me! The words cried out inside her, but she knew nobody could help her but herself.