Cowboy Take Me Away

by Jane Graves

  Shannon looked up Carter’s photo. He was handsome, and probably four or five years younger than Luke. But he couldn’t touch Luke when it came to sheer sex appeal. Buckle Bunny must have been Blind Buckle Bunny.

  Shannon dropped her phone to the tabletop. She never would have dreamed this. Never. Anytime she’d thought of Luke during the past several years, she’d always seen a hazy vision of him, a man still in the shadows, still wild, still angry, still observing life but never really becoming part of it. Now she saw a man with a goal, driven to excel, who let nothing stand in his way.

  Luke might be down right now, but he wasn’t out. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter 8

  Luke let the horses out and went back to the office, where he saw Shannon typing like mad. She held up her finger, telling him to wait, and hit a few more keys. Then she rose, went to the printer, and caught a few pages as they came out. She looked at the top one, then handed it to Luke.

  “This is the new wound treatment and medication schedule,” she said. “We’ll post copies in the cat cottage, the kennel, and the barn as we go through them.” She reached into a nearby desk drawer and pulled out a notebook. “And here’s a copy of our general procedures manual for animal care. I’ll give you the highlights as we do a walk-through, but you can refer to it if you still have questions.” She handed that to Luke. “Did Freddie Jo give you an employee manual?”

  “Uh…no.”

  She reached into another drawer. “Here. This tells you what’s expected of you around here. It includes benefits. Safety issues. Your rights as an employee.” She stacked that on top of the other manual. “And this,” she said, reaching for a green folder in the same desk drawer, “is a copy of each of the forms that have to be signed by anyone who adopts an animal. Freddie Jo and Angela and I will handle most of the adoptions, but I want you to have something to refer to just in case.” She stuck that on top of the rest of the stuff he held. “Might want to look all this over in your spare time.”

  Luke glanced down at the pile in his hands. “I don’t remember Rita having all this.”

  “Different management style,” Shannon said, shutting the desk drawer. “I like everything spelled out so there’s no misunderstanding. Follow me.”

  Luke dropped the notebooks and papers and other crap in his apartment and followed Shannon to the cat cottage. By the time she finished talking about cat litter and poop disposal and claw clipping and ear mite treatments, Luke felt like a private getting the boot camp rundown from a particularly anal drill sergeant. Even as a teenager, Shannon had been goal driven, but the woman she was now put the girl she’d been to shame. He guessed it was because she was in charge now, and responsibility only fueled her burn to get more done than ever.

  Then they moved to the kennel, where the dogs barked like mad the moment they stepped through the door.

  “We have more runs now,” Shannon said. “Fewer small cages. But we have to be careful which dogs we put together. We have plenty of volunteers to walk the dogs. It’s cleaning up after them that they’re not so thrilled to do. That’s where you come in.”

  After a few words about feeding and grooming the dogs, they went to the barn.

  “I think you have the gist of caring for the horses,” Shannon said. “The only one with a medical issue right now is Clancy and his barbed wire cut. Just twice daily antibiotic cream, gauze, and an Ace bandage until it’s completely healed. And I’d tell you to watch out for Manny, but I think you already know that.”

  Then she filled him in on caring for the llamas. “Don’t get too chummy with them or baby them too much. The more they feel like you’re just another llama, the more likely they are to spit.”

  As if he intended to baby a llama anytime soon.

  “Angela will be helping you with all this. But she’s about to go back to school for the fall semester, so she won’t be here nearly as many hours a week.” Shannon took a deep breath and let it out. “That’s about it. Any questions?”

  “Yeah. What’s with that guy you’re dating?”

  Shannon drew back. “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “You asked if I had a question. That’s a question.”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’s with him’?”

  “He’s wrong for you.”

  Shannon blinked. “Excuse me? I don’t remember asking your opinion.”

  “He spends all day with his hands in other people’s mouths.”

  Shannon narrowed her eyes. “He’s a dentist. What do you expect?”

  “And he looked like he spends a little too much time with crap like blow dryers and moisturizers.”

  “It’s a problem that he likes to look nice?”

  “Tell the truth. He gets manicures, doesn’t he?”

  She glared at Luke. “What about the guy who spends his life in dirty rodeo arenas riding big, nasty animals who are trying to kill him?”

  Luke gave her a sly smile. “Now you’re on the right track. Let’s talk about that guy.”

  “That guy,” she said, “is sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Go ahead. Ignore my advice. See where it gets you.”

  “Look, I know what this is about. You didn’t like the things Russell said to you. And I agree. Some of it was out of line.”

  “Some of it?”

  “He was just repeating things he’s heard.”

  “Yeah? And where did he hear those things? At your mother’s house? When I was the subject of dinner table conversation?”

  Shannon was silent.

  “How is Mom these days, anyway?” Luke asked. “I’m betting she just loves Russell.”

  “Okay. I get why you’re angry, but—”

  “Nope. I quit getting pissed off by guys like him a long time ago. You’re the one who needs to think twice about him.” He nodded toward Clancy. “I’ll get that dressing changed now.”

  He went into the storage room to get the bandage and ointment, and when he came out again, Shannon was gone. That was probably a good thing. It irritated the hell out of him that she was seeing a guy like that, and if she’d hung around any longer, he’d have said even more things he shouldn’t.

  Russell might have thought Luke wasn’t paying attention to him when they were in the barn, but he had good peripheral vision and could read a person at twenty paces. It was a skill he’d honed through years of his father hovering over him, his face changing from irritated to angry to dangerously outraged. Sometimes there had been only a single second of warning before he got a fist across the face, so Luke had learned early to read people’s expressions. Russell might look good and have a lot of money, but he wore a blanket of insecurity Luke picked up on at first glance. It amazed Luke that Shannon couldn’t see it, too.

  Luke had come there with every intention of lying low, putting in his time, and then hitting the road. But this was too much. He remembered things Shannon had told him as they sat in the grass outside the barn on those hot, humid evenings. Things he’d bet she’d never told anybody else, even to this day. Things that revealed who she was beneath the good-girl mask she wore for the rest of the world. She’d been taught from the cradle that Russell was the kind of guy she was supposed to go for, and the fact that she still bought into that crap meant she hadn’t learned a thing in the past eleven years. To watch her waste her time with a guy like him pissed Luke off like nothing else. He knew what kind of man she needed, and it wasn’t an uptight, insecure, stick-in-the-mud dentist only her mother could love.

  Luke had told himself he was going to steer clear of Shannon, but that wasn’t going to happen. Already he was dying to cause a few sparks, set her on fire, and burn right along with her. He wouldn’t compromise this job. He needed it too much. And any emotional involvement he’d had with her was a thing of the past. But the first chance he got when they were both off the clock, things were going to get hotter than she could possibly imagine. Before he left this place, she was going to know the differe
nce between a guy who had to spend a thousand bucks to get her attention and one she couldn’t stop thinking about to save her life.

  On Sunday morning, Shannon didn’t set an alarm, because that was the day the caretaker was supposed to handle things at the shelter and let her sleep in. She had good intentions the night before, but could she help it that she woke up at seven thirty, anyway?

  Even when George was there, she usually dropped by just to make sure everything was okay. That’s why Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Rita had told her about a dozen times, but it made Shannon uncomfortable for a whole day to pass without her stopping by at least once. And since George had been gone, showing up on Sunday hadn’t been an option.

  But Luke was there now. He’d proven he could physically do the work, so she needed to roll over, shut it out of her mind, and go back to sleep. In the next ten minutes, though, she managed to accomplish only one out of the three.

  Oh, hell. Who was she kidding?

  She threw back the covers, took a quick shower, and grabbed Goliath. As they left the building, they met Rita returning from her morning walk.

  “You’re back from vacation,” Shannon said.

  “Got in late last night. Thanks for taking care of Ollie.”

  “No problem. He’s a sweet kitty. How was Key West?”

  “Great. It was a fun tour group.”

  Rita took all kinds of vacations, hooking up with any group that struck her fancy. And she always came back with a bunch of stories and a dozen new friends.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” Rita said. “But for now, why don’t you tell me about your new employee?”

  Shannon froze. “You heard about Luke already?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “While you were out of town?”

  “That’s the Rainbow Valley grapevine for you. So…how are things going?”

  “Fine,” Shannon said, as Goliath circled her, wrapping her in his leash.

  “Interesting. You didn’t even want to speak to Luke when he was here for his father’s funeral, and now he’s working for you?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’ll bet. So where are you off to so early?”

  “I need to walk Goliath,” she said, unraveling herself.

  “And then you’re going back to bed?”

  She paused. “Eventually.”

  “Last I checked, this is Sunday.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Isn’t Luke at the shelter? Staying in the caretaker’s apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re paying him to take care of things on Sundays, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then stay home. Sleep in. Have a cup of coffee. Read the Sunday comics.”

  “I will.”

  “If you do those things in the afternoon, it doesn’t count.”

  “This is his first Sunday. I’ll just do a quick check-in.”

  “Sure you will.” Rita shook her head and went into the building.

  Rita was right, of course. But that didn’t make Shannon any less driven to drop by to make sure everything was okay. Just for a minute.

  When she got to the shelter, she didn’t see Luke in the kitchen or the office. She went outside and glanced down at the barn. The horses weren’t anywhere in sight, which meant he probably had them in the barn eating.

  Maybe he’s working out.

  Because of that, she thought twice about going down there. Staring at him one more time wasn’t going to accomplish anything except to make her look as shallow about sexy men as Freddie Jo was. But she did want to check on Molly, a restless saddlebred mare somebody had brought them yesterday. She had ribs like the tines of a fork and the wary look of an animal who still wasn’t sure about her surroundings. The people who owned the property she was found on had vacated the house and abandoned her in the pasture, leaving her to subsist on five acres of scraggly, rain-starved grass. What was wrong with some people that they treated an animal like a pair of old shoes they were tired of and just tossed away?

  When Shannon reached the barn, Luke was nowhere in sight. Molly still had some grain in her bucket, but she moved to the back of her stall when Shannon approached. Shannon sighed. It was going to take months of assurance and endless buckets of food before she was ready to be adopted.

  Then Shannon heard a soft voice.

  She left the mare’s stall and walked around the outside of the barn, where she saw Manny in the small corral behind it. Luke was with him, his back to Shannon, leaning his forearms on the fence and watching him as he ate. Too short for the grain bins in the stalls, Manny had to be fed out of a bucket. And the corral was a better place for him to eat than in a stall, anyway. The smaller the space he was confined to, the more defensive he became and the more likely he was to bite.

  Shannon started to say something, only to hear Luke’s voice again.

  “So how’s it going, buddy?” he said. “Better every day, huh?”

  Shannon froze, then took a couple of silent steps backward and ducked back around the doorway into the barn, then peeked out to watch. Manny continued to eat, but his ears flicked toward Luke with interest.

  “You’re a dinky little thing,” Luke said. “I could dangle you from my key ring.”

  Manny lifted his head, chewing, one eye trained watchfully on Luke, his tail switching nervously.

  “Carry you around in my pocket.”

  Another ear flick.

  “Set you on my dashboard and watch your head bobble.”

  Manny dipped his head into the bucket again, but by the way he snuffed around, Shannon could tell he was finished with his grain.

  “I know what happened to you,” Luke said softly. “But I’m not that guy.”

  Manny raised his head, but that wary look was still in his eyes.

  “Oh, so you want me to prove it?”

  To Shannon’s surprise, Luke reached into his pocket and pulled out a carrot. He offered it to Manny through the fence. Manny regarded it for a moment, then took a few steps forward, stretched out his neck, and closed his teeth around it, chomping off the bottom half and crunching it between his teeth. Miraculously, he didn’t take Luke’s finger along with it.

  “Now, see?” Luke said. “That’s worth coming closer for, isn’t it?”

  Manny swallowed, then turned back to Luke, looking for more. Luke held out the rest of the carrot, which the horse took calmly. As he chewed, the nervous twitching of his tail relaxed into a routine back-and-forth swish to chase away flies.

  “The bad days are over, buddy,” Luke said. “Shannon’s not going to let anything happen to you, and neither am I.”

  Shannon stood motionless, mesmerized by the low, melodic sound of Luke’s voice, its heartfelt tone sending a shiver of warmth between her shoulders. Back when they were in high school, he’d done his job just as he was supposed to, but she’d always thought that the emotional connection with the animals that came so easily to her had been missing in Luke. Even back then she’d had the sense of how hard it was for him to share love and affection with the animals when it was clear he’d experienced so little of it himself.

  But something had changed. Here he was making promises to a defenseless animal that he’d look out for him. Trust me, he was telling Manny. I won’t let you down.

  Tears sprang to Shannon’s eyes. Suddenly the man who’d walked in there a week ago—brash and pushy and more than a little arrogant—slipped to the back of her mind. Now all she saw was a big, strong man acting protectively toward a helpless little horse, and it made her heart melt.

  Luke opened the gate to retrieve Manny’s feed bucket. To Shannon’s surprise, the little horse didn’t back away, teeth snapping. He lifted his head questioningly, and when Luke leaned over and held out his hand, Manny stretched out his neck and sniffed it. Luke crouched down beside him and stroked his face, then eased his hand down Manny’s neck, where it tripped over a long, wicked scar.

  “I’
d like to strangle the bastard who did this to you,” Luke said, his voice low and angry. “If he were here, I swear to God I would.”

  As Shannon imagined him defending this little horse against anybody who tried to hurt him, she choked up all over again. For the first time it occurred to her just how much Luke and Manny were alike. Shannon didn’t know the details of what had gone on between Luke and his father, but when she thought back now to the wary, defensive look she’d seen so often in Luke’s eyes, it couldn’t possibly have been good.

  Manny allowed Luke to touch him for a few seconds more. Then he threw up his head and backed away, but miraculously, he didn’t try to bite.

  “Okay. I hear you. You’ve had enough for one day.” Luke stood up. “We’ll talk again tomorrow, okay?”

  As he retrieved Manny’s feed bucket, Shannon quickly wiped her eyes and went back to Molly’s stall, where she looked over the door and pretended to be checking her out. After a moment she heard Luke’s footsteps behind her. He tossed the bucket into the feed room and walked over, a slight limp marring his gait.

  “She’s a little uptight,” Luke said. “But once she’s used to the place, I think she’ll be okay.”

  Shannon turned around. “Luke. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “I was out back feeding Manny.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Luke looked over his shoulder dismissively. “I swear with those teeth of his, he’s half shark, half horse. Actually, he’s half a horse to start with, so what does that make him now?”

  “He’ll calm down eventually,” Shannon said.

  “I don’t know,” Luke said, pushing away from the mare’s stall and grabbing a broom and dustpan. “He’s pretty messed up.”

  “He seemed to like you,” she said nonchalantly. “You know. Back a few weeks ago at your father’s house. Right before he bit you.”