All for a Cowboy

by Jeannie Watt

  “Well, you are a bronc rider,” she said, leaning her arms on the fence beside him.

  “Was.”

  “You looked good.”

  “Don’t placate me, okay?”

  “And don’t take your frustrations out on me,” Shae said, stepping away from the fence.

  She was on the verge of leaving, letting him have his space so that he could feed his anger in peace, when he suddenly folded his arms, as if protecting himself, and said, “I always knew you were telling the truth when you said that if you didn’t work on the place, that someone else would...but that Ashley chick...” He shook his head. “That’s the kind of people Miranda plans on surrounding me with, doesn’t she?”

  “Only if she knows it bothers you.”

  He studied her for a moment, his dark eyebrows drawn together in a slight frown. “You’ve finally figured that out?”

  “Yeah. You two truly hate each other. Why?”

  Jordan’s expression instantly shuttered. So much for the direct approach.

  “Sorry,” Shae said. “None of my business.”

  “It’s not,” Jordan agreed. “Not one bit of your business.” He pressed his lips together. “But there’s really no need to keep things secret. Not with Dad dead. It’s just become such a habit....”

  Shae leaned back on the fence, looking out across the field where the poodle was bounding around, chasing field mice. She held her breath, wondering if he was going to continue.

  “Probably not too difficult to connect the dots,” he said, leaning his arms against the fence again so that they were side by side, facing opposite directions.

  “No,” she said softly. “Something happened between you.”

  “It didn’t happen,” he said. “But not for want of the bitch trying. And when she realized I was serious when I said ‘no,’ well, that was probably a hit to her ego, but beyond that, she had to make sure the old man wouldn’t believe me if I told him.”

  “Was she successful?” Shae asked softly.

  “He loved her. Was enamored of her. Honored to have her as his bride.”

  “Enough said.”

  * * *

  IF SHAE WAS shocked at his half-assed confession, she didn’t show it. Jordan had no idea why he’d opened up, let loose the secret he’d kept for so many years, except that maybe it was time. There was really no reason to keep quiet any longer, although he didn’t want people laughing at his old man. Despite everything, he didn’t want Hank Bryan to be the butt of barroom jokes. But with the situation the way it was between him and Miranda, who would believe him?

  Shae. She’d believed him. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d already guessed the truth.

  Had other people done the same?

  He doubted it. Miranda was subtle in her maneuverings—at least until she got him alone.

  His temples were starting to throb. He needed some space.

  “Are you spending the night?” he asked.

  “I’d rather not make the drive.”

  “Just so you know,” he said, “sometimes when things get stirred up like this...” He let out a breath. “Short version—if you hear anything during the night, no need to concern yourself. Just me wrestling demons.”

  “Connected to Miranda?” she asked curiously.

  “Hell, no.” His response was instant and adamant, which was in itself telling. “Just...stress.”

  “Do you have the dreams often?”

  “Often enough,” he said in a tone that did not invite further confidences. Shae ignored the signal.

  “After your accident, you must have talked to people.”

  “Therapy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did.”

  “Did it help?”

  “I think time helped.”

  “But you still have nightmares.”

  His barriers were rising and it took a moment of struggle to say, “They stopped for a while. With the therapy. I thought I was past them, then they started again.”

  “When?”

  Jordan pressed his fingers to his forehead. When he looked up, he saw that Shae was studying his other hand, or what was left of it, resting on the fence. She raised her eyes without one hint of self-consciousness.

  “When?” she repeated.

  Jordan moistened his dry lips. “When I was driving back to Montana.”

  “So what’s the connection?”

  “I, uh...” She propped an elbow on the fence as she waited for him to finish. He grimaced, shaking his head slightly, as if to clear it. “I thought it was just the stress of doing something stupid. Quitting my job and heading home. Choosing to live on disability rather than continue doing what I was doing.”

  “Which was?”

  “The computer-age equivalent of pushing paper in a cubicle. I pushed a lot of paper.” And hated it. “It was a simple job, but it got to where I couldn’t focus. I got things wrong. It got worse and worse.”

  “But no nightmares?”

  He shook his head. “But I wasn’t all there.”

  “You’re all there with the horses.” He shot her a look. “You focus when you train,” she said. “And you’re all here now.”

  “For the most part,” he said drily.

  “You were in the wrong job in Virginia,” she said.

  He gave a short laugh. “It’s not as simple as that, Shae.”

  “I know.” She leaned forward and shocked the hell out of him by touching his damaged hand. He jerked it back. Her breath caught as her eyes flashed to his and for a second he thought she was going to call him on his knee-jerk reaction—she seemed to be calling him on everything else. She didn’t. Instead she continued as it nothing had happened. “But it’s one aspect of the situation that was making life more stressful than it needed to be. Some—” she gestured as she sought out the word “—primitive instinct kicked in and you bolted. Self-preservation, like you said.”

  “Probably,” he agreed on a condescending note, but Shae was not insulted. She simply tilted her head, pressing her lips together thoughtfully, as he’d seen her do in the past when other people didn’t act the way she wanted.

  “Okay, that’s an oversimplification,” she said, “but sometimes, Jordan, people looking in from the outside can see things you can’t.”

  “I’ve had enough therapy, Shae. What I want is to be left alone to work this out.” What he wanted was to not slip into the danger zone with her. He was edging toward wanting her in a way that probably wasn’t possible.

  “In that case, you’d better take Miranda up on her offer.”

  “Isn’t going to happen.”

  “Then being left alone isn’t going to happen, either.”

  True. Very true, although at the moment Jordan didn’t know just how alone he wanted to be.

  He looked down at his hands where they rested on the fence rails. The strong, tanned one on one side, the mangled one on the other. Were these the kind of arms a woman wanted around her? The kind a woman like Shae would want around her?

  He might be drawn in by this side of her that he’d never dreamed existed, but he needed to remain grounded in reality. He had issues, wounds, inside and out. He was not unworthy, but he felt unready.

  He didn’t know if he’d ever be ready.

  * * *

  JORDAN’S EVENING WAS SHOT. When he usually spent time at the ponds or hiking with Clyde along the deer trails, tonight he hung around at the house, where there was no danger of running into Shae. Or of having to talk again.

  Maybe his dealings with Miranda hadn’t been that big a deal in the larger scope of things, but the memories still brought up the feelings of outrage and shame he’d had at the time—at her and at himself. As if he’d done something to encourage her. />
  He paced through the house, unable to settle, and then, around nine o’clock, he heard Shae’s truck start. He went to the window, saw the red glow of taillights as she drove away.

  A respite.

  He had no idea why she’d left, but since she was gone, he didn’t need to worry about waking her up by yelling—or sleeping with the window shut on a hot summer night to keep her from hearing. Given the state he was in, the way thoughts of Miranda and Shae were crowding his mind, the nightmare was sure to come.

  And it did, despite the drug. He jerked upright in bed just after midnight, his breath coming in short gasps, startling Clyde, who crept up along the blanket on his belly and set his chin on Jordan’s chest as he settled back and his heart rate slowed.

  He let out a long, low breath, then rolled over onto his side, scooping Clyde up against him and closing his eyes. These nightmares, the ones he’d had since starting home, were different than the ones he’d had before his PTSD therapy. He didn’t remember images or situations as he had when he’d first dealt with the dreams—just the feeling of being engulfed. Overwhelmed. But they were triggered by the same thing. Whenever he was stressed or felt vulnerable, the dreams came. Just living in the same state as Miranda was enough to make for nightmares. When he’d been traveling, the closer he got to Montana, the more frequent the dreams had become.

  Except that while he’d been traveling, he hadn’t known that Miranda was going to screw with him. Hadn’t known that she planned to breach his sanctuary. He’d been coming home to escape and heal. Why would that make the nightmares come back?

  * * *

  SHAE ENJOYED WAKING UP in the comfort of her own bed, with no worries about errant mice or washing up with freezing water, but she still wished she was at the High Camp.

  Staying there hadn’t been an option. Jordan needed his space, just as he’d said. He regretted confessing to her, even if he hadn’t exactly blurted out the facts, and he needed time to deal with it—without worrying about her crowding him. And then there was the attraction between them....

  How were they going to deal with that?

  Shae started the shower and stood for a moment regarding her reflection. She probably shouldn’t have pulled the amateur psychology number on him, but she’d wanted to help. Wanted him to nail down the source of his problem.

  As if that wasn’t obvious, she thought as she turned away and tested the water before walking under the spray. It’d left him with massive scars that he was self-conscious about. He’d jumped a mile when she’d impulsively touched his damaged arm, which in turn had made her heart break. But it was more than that. The other issue in his life—his deep hatred of Miranda—wasn’t helping matters.

  Shae reached for the shampoo, holding the bottle for a moment as the spray tapped hollowly on the plastic. Would he ever be able to move past hating the woman? The signs didn’t look good, and if he stayed at the High Camp while she built a guest ranch around him...not a chance.

  She was drying off when the phone rang and she walked through the dining room to the glass coffee table to pick it up, toweling her hair as she walked. She was hoping for Mel, but instead it was Vivian, her stepmother.

  “Finally!” Vivian said when Shae answered the phone. “I didn’t know if I’d ever get through to you. I was starting to get concerned.”

  No doubt, judging from the number of messages Vivian had left checking on her. “Sorry I haven’t returned your calls, Viv. I’ve been out of service range.”

  “You’re still staying at the High Camp, then?”

  “It’s easier than driving back and forth.”

  “How is the project coming?”

  Shae gave Vivian a highly editorialized version of the project, focusing on the few positives as much as possible and leaving Jordan’s name completely out of it.

  “And Jordan?” Vivian asked, the omission not getting past her.

  “We’ve found a middle ground,” Shae said matter-of-factly. It might be uncomfortable, but they were communicating. “We’re talking and...actually getting along quite well.”

  “I see,” Vivian said, obviously still dwelling on his “wild” appearance when she’d seen him in the pharmacy.

  “How’s Liv?” Shae asked, changing the subject the best way she knew how. She still felt a pang of jealousy when she thought about her stepsister, but now it was because that Liv had figured out a few things about life that Shae was still getting a handle on. Liv always had been the smart one.

  “Doing well,” Vivian said cautiously, as if not wanting to remind Shae about the bad thing that had happened after Liv’s wedding.

  “I’m happy for her,” Shae said.

  “I know you are,” Vivian said in a voice that made Shae want to say, No, really. I am. She didn’t.

  “I think Reed did the right thing walking away when he did.”

  Vivian gasped. “Shae!”

  “It helped open my eyes to a few things...like the fact that I walked all over him. And he let me.”

  “No—”

  “I don’t think we loved each other,” Shae said. Because if they had, she wouldn’t have been more devastated by having so many bills only a couple weeks after the breakup than she was by losing the relationship. “We liked each other. A lot. But I think I ruined that.”

  There was a long silence and then Vivian said, “If you truly feel that way...then maybe it was—” she cleared her throat, perhaps remembering the months of hell Shae had put her through “—for the best.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Shae whispered into the phone.

  “For what?”

  “Everything. And I’m paying you guys back.”

  “No—”

  Once again Shae cut her off. “Yes. It’ll take some time, but don’t try to tell me not to. I really, really need to do this.”

  “I’ll talk to your father.”

  “So will I,” Shae said.

  * * *

  ALONE WASN’T WORKING. Shae wasn’t there, Ashley had yet to show up, but the anticipation of their arrivals had Jordan on edge.

  Alone hadn’t worked in Virginia, either. Not that he’d been physically alone for a good part of the day, but he’d stayed in his cubicle, worked on his computer and kept to himself, content to be the PTSD guy whom everyone kept their distance from. For all intents and purposes he’d been alone at work, and he’d still be overwhelmed by a need to escape. The mind-numbing job hadn’t helped, but it’d been more than that. He’d needed to be alone in an environment where he felt at peace, so he’d followed the urge, came back home...only to find you can’t go home again.

  Miranda had seen to that. But he also found he couldn’t leave. The woman had drawn a line in the sand and he was stepping over it as many times as it took for her to get it through her head that he was staying. She was not winning.

  Did he want to live his life like this, on edge, waiting for the Cedar Creek employees to show up every day?

  No. But he was going to.

  He whistled for Clyde, who came running from the backyard. The pig also came running, stopping when she saw that Jordan had the door of the Subaru open. She’d made the connection that when the car was involved with whatever Jordan was doing, she was not. Clyde shot into the front seat and sat facing the windshield, shooting a superior look at the pig, who was now snuffling toward the bunkhouse.

  Jordan drove toward the cattle guard, thinking that he really had to find a way to invest in a truck. He could haul mineral block and the occasional bag of pig mash in the Subaru, but he wasn’t going to pull the old ranch trailer with it—once he got the tires replaced, that is. As it was, the trailer was going nowhere.

  As he reached the end of the drive, his cell phone buzzed and he picked it up to see a reminder to reorder his prescription. And there was also that annoy
ing number one over the voice-mail icon, reminding him that he’d yet to return his cousin Cole’s weeks-old call. But he couldn’t bring himself to delete the message. Which, as he thought about it, was telling. Maybe he couldn’t go home, but he could reconnect with the small bit of family he had left. All it took was one phone call.

  Even if it was going to be awkward.

  An hour later Jordan made that call.

  Cole was obviously surprised to hear from him—possibly because Jordan hadn’t answered the voice message he’d left over a month ago—but immediately suggested that he buy Jordan a drink at their one-time favorite watering hole on the outskirts of Missoula. Neutral ground. Jordan agreed.

  Cole was waiting when Jordan got there, and as he made his way to where his cousin sat at the bar, recognition of the fact that he’d been a major asshole amplified with each step.

  He stopped in front of Cole, waiting for the words of apology he’d been working on to surface, but before they came out, Cole pushed a stool out with his foot.

  “Have a seat.”

  “Sorry for being an asshole,” Jordan said as he pulled out his wallet, then sat.

  “No problem,” Cole said. “I know you’ve had some deep shit to deal with.”

  “Miranda or the other?”

  “Is Shae the other?” Cole asked and Jordan laughed in spite of himself.

  “I was thinking more about—” he lifted his left hand for Cole to see “—which is usually what people are referring to when they ask me about my troubles.”

  “Not me. I was talking about the women in your life.” The bartender ambled down the bar, stopping in front of them with a bright smile that faded fast when she saw the scarred side of Jordan’s face, but he had to give her credit for professionalism when she almost instantly pasted it back on again. “Gentlemen?”

  “Whatever nonalcoholic beer you have,” Jordan said. Cole grimaced and ordered a draft.

  “You’ve changed,” Cole said.

  “Had to. Alcohol and painkillers...not good.”

  “Do you still have to take many drugs?”