Counting on Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series: Book 3)

by Amelia Rose

“Well, date would be a loose term around here. It’s not like people can actually go anywhere. But yeah, I’m getting the impression that more than a few people are interested in us having a good breakfast together.”

  Emma sat taller, speechless and still. Everything about her plans had fallen to pieces. She was supposed to get out of town, lay low, and get her head on straight before figuring out where she would go next. Now, here she was, the unwitting breakfast companion for one of the Carson boys, future owners of one of the largest cattle ranches in Texas. That was hardly anyone’s definition of laying low.

  “Look, Joseph, is it? I don’t even know how I ended up in this room, let alone how I became your breakfast date.” She emphasized the last word as though it disgusted her. “I’m just passing through, and two of the girls grabbed me and plopped me in the house. Sorry if that messes up anyone’s plans for true love.”

  “Well, Miss Passing Through, I didn’t realize having some pleasant conversation over scrambled eggs was too much commitment for you,” he answered with a sarcastic sneer. “I had nothing to do with any matchmaking, I just thought we could have a pleasant meal. But if that’s too involved for you, I’ll be on my way.” Joseph stood up suddenly to make his departure, but crumpled to the floor when a bolt of pain ripped through his back at the fast motion. He bit his lower lip to keep from screaming in front of the ranch hands, who were still finishing up the final wave of meal time crowds.

  Emma was on her feet in a flash. She ran around the table and knelt beside Joseph, cradling his head and searching his eyes with her own. At the far end of the table, Carey was on his feet to help his brother, but Casey pulled him back down into his chair, shaking his head and cautioning him silently to let this play out.

  “Are you okay?” Emma asked, her voice shaking as she tried to help Joseph sit up. She was surprised by how much Joseph leaned against her hand as she supported his weight.

  “I’m fine,” he said through pain-clenched teeth. “I just need my medication.”

  “Where is it? I’ll go get it.”

  “No, just let me sit up,” he said, blinking back his embarrassment at having this stranger see him so vulnerable. Instead of releasing her grip, Emma ducked her head under Joseph’s arm so that his weight fell on her as they stood. He took a deep breath when he finally had his feet under him, letting the agony fade throughout his nerve endings.

  Casey, Carey, and Miranda watched in excited awe as Joseph left the kitchen with his arm around Emma’s small shoulders. They exchanged a look of relief, hoping that their plan might actually work.

  +++

  A short while later, the family gathered in Bernard’s office, surrounding a very confused and very scared Emma. She looked at the circle of faces, embarrassment flaring in her cheeks. “I’m not sure I understand. You want me to pretend to date your son?”

  “No, not exactly, not in so many words,” Bernard said uncomfortably. “But we thought you two might understand each other, and maybe if Joseph had someone to think of beside himself, he could snap out of whatever’s bothering him.” The older twins exchanged a worried look at their father’s continued refusal to understand what Joseph was going through.

  “And for some reason, I came to mind?” she demanded, frustration growing in her voice. She was all too familiar with people who thought she would do nearly anything for money, and here she was, in the same situation.

  “Well, no, of course not! But we thought that because you needed a place to stay, and Joseph could use a friend right now, that you two could just buddy up. No strings attached, of course,” Casey said, hoping his version of the story made a lot more sense than his father’s. Emma nodded, then stood up, grabbing her bags and stomping toward the door to Bernard’s office, throwing it open in a rage.

  “I don’t know who you think I used to be, but I know who I am now. And I won’t be a part of this.” She raced out the door, leaving the family to exchange confused looks. Miranda held up a hand to them to wait, then followed her outside.

  “What was that all about?” Emma demanded angrily when Miranda caught up to her. “Did you drag me out of the barn to be some plaything for the family invalid?” Hot shame driven tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.

  “No! That’s not it at all!” Miranda insisted, but Emma wanted no part of her attempts at an explanation. She stormed off, hefting her bag up higher on her shoulder. “Emma! Wait!”

  Emma turned angrily, sniffling through her anger. “I thought you were a decent person. You took me inside and gave me a place to stay. You fed me. But I didn’t know that my reputation arrived here long before I did. If you only wanted someone to play love buddy to your injured brother-in-law, try asking her first next time! I’m outta here!”

  Miranda followed Emma to the porch, jumping down the last few steps to run in front of her. “Please listen to me!” She put a hand out to stop Emma, but stopped just short of actually putting her hands on the girl. “Please! Listen to what I have to say. And if you still want to leave, I will drive you myself. Anywhere, literally anywhere you want to go. Alaska, if that’s what you want. But please, listen to me.”

  Emma stood firmly in place, her eyes closed. When she opened them, her heart dissolved and broke at the look of desperation on Miranda’s face. She clenched her jaw angrily, but nodded, not even releasing her bags.

  Miranda began telling her about Joseph, about his injury in the middle of the cattle drive all those months ago, about the drinking and the desperate need for pain medicine that kept him either crippled or comatose most of the time. Emma’s expression softened at the way Miranda described his physical need for his pills, striking too close to Emma’s own memories of the chains that had kept her tied to her addiction.

  “We were hoping…no, make that praying, because I know I’ve prayed to God for some kind of deliverance for him…that maybe you might be able to help,” Miranda explained tearfully.

  “How can I possibly help him?” Emma demanded, her anger flaring again. “If you remember, the only reason you know my name is because I showed up here so strung out, I was willing to whore myself all over Hale, just to get another fix.”

  “And that’s exactly why you’re the perfect person to help him!” Miranda exclaimed. “You know what he’s going through better than any of us! Please, stay…please help him…”

  “It’s not that simple,” Emma explained, her resolve faltering. “He has to want to be clean. I wanted it more than anything and that’s the only reason I was able to break free out here.”

  “I know! And what better reason to be healed than for someone he cares about?” Miranda asked, hope showing through in her voice.

  “And what do we do when he finds out I was only asked to pretend to care about him? What then?” Emma stormed. “Or did you think that far in advance? Are you only thinking about getting him off his pills today? Because it sure sounds like you haven’t thought past next week.”

  Miranda visibly crumpled at Emma’s onslaught. “You’re right. We haven’t thought past today, because today…we’re losing him. Emma, we’re going to lose him, and we don’t know how to stop it. When you showed up here, it was an answer to prayers. You know what he’s going through, not us. And when you came here needing help, we gave it to you in abundance. Now I’m asking you to help him. No…I’m begging you.”

  The fight went out of Emma. She let her bag fall to the ground as she stood, eyes closed, waiting for the right decision to appear in her mind. Nothing came. The silence in her own head told her that she was on her own in this one. Slowly, she pushed her backpack higher up on her shoulder, and turned back to the house.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The ride to Dallas was painfully slow, especially because of the slower speed of the oversized motor home. Miranda, Casey, Carey, and Gracie took up several of the seats near the front of the coach, while Bernard rode in the front passenger seat. One of the hands from the ranch drove.

  But elsewhere, in the back of th
e vehicle, Joseph lay stretched out on a bunk, nursing his sore back and glaring at Emma.

  “Tell me again why you’re here,” he called out to her, not meeting her eyes. Emma sighed, plastering a smile on her face.

  “I’ve already told you. Your family thought you might get bored on a trip this long, and might want someone to talk to, someone closer to your own age.” Emma was undeterred, answering him in her rehearsed way, without looking up from her magazine. She lay back on her pillow in her own bunk across from Joseph’s, aware that he was lashing out at people one at time now that his medication was no longer within arm’s reach.

  “That still doesn’t explain how you just showed up here,” he argued, baiting her. “You just dropped out of the sky to keep me company?”

  “Nope. I was between jobs, and when the opportunity to come along to Dallas came up, I took it. No big deal.” Emma turned a page and waited, her eyes not seeing the text on the page as she anticipated his next question. Only Joseph didn’t say anything. When she finally looked over at him, she saw him staring at her profile, soundlessly watching her face. “What?”

  “What? I’m just looking at you. I have nothing else to do, so I thought I’d stare at you for the next two days.” His annoying look of fake innocence irritated her more than anything he’d said so far.

  “Well, I’m gonna have to ask you to quit that,” she shot back acidly, pretending to go back to her magazine.

  “Because it unnerves you to have me watch you?” Joseph offered in his attempt at a sexy, husky voice before caving in to the laughter.

  “No, because it’s creepy, and it suggests that you might be mentally challenged.”

  “I’m not mentally challenged,” he shot back.

  “Then stop acting like it.” Emma turned over on her side, her back to Joseph, effectively ending the conversation. She had agreed to go along with the Carsons’ plan to give Joseph someone who understood him, but playing babysitter to someone struggling to even act normal was more than she bargained for.

  At the front of the large bus, things were decidedly less tense. Miranda alternated between talking to her younger sister about their first visit off the ranch together since moving to Texas, and talking to her husband about plans they could make when in the city. Carey just looked morosely nervous about the whole thing, letting his worry for his brother and his fear at being out of his element away from the ranch get the better of him.

  “What’s bugging you, Carey?” Gracie asked, getting up and coming to sit by him. He shook his head, but didn’t answer. “Oh, come on, I can tell something’s bothering you. What’s up?” He still didn’t answer. “Okay then, you leave me no choice. I didn’t want to have to do this to you, but…’Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall’ it is…” She took a deep breath to start belting out the song, but Carey smiled and clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “You win, I’ll talk! Anything but that!” he exclaimed. But his playfulness was short lived. He flopped back against the seat and crossed his arms in front of him, stretching out his legs and looking dejected. “I’m just worried about Joseph.”

  “You’re worried about what the doctor will say? That’s totally understandable, right?”

  “No, I mean, the opposite. What do we do if this doctor says there’s nothing wrong, just like the last guy? I’ve seen his face, Gracie, I know he’s hurting. This isn’t just some ploy to get more pills, that kid is in real pain. So, what if they can’t find out what’s causing it, and they just tell him he has to learn to deal with it?”

  “Then you just have to make the doctor believe you. Even if he can’t find the problem, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Make him understand that Joseph needs help.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that, Miss Smarty Pants?” Carey asked with a weak but joking grin.

  “I don’t know. Just be his big brother. Stand up for him, just like you would have done if this was some bully who wanted to hurt him when you two were kids.” Carey nodded to himself thoughtfully before turning to Gracie.

  “How’d you get to be so grown up? Aren’t you supposed to be a bratty little girl?” he teased. Gracie shot him a knowing look.

  “It’s a girl thing. You wouldn’t understand. We’re just naturally smarter.” That remark earned her a full on tickle assault, which she gladly played along with because it brought Carey out of his dark mood, even if it would only be for a little while.

  The sounds of Gracie’s laughter mixed with the boisterous voices coming from the front of the RV made Emma smile to herself. She still wasn’t exactly sure how she’d become mixed up in this family’s problems, but she knew that she’d never met anyone with as pure a heart as the girl whose screams of laughter filled the vehicle with a sound Emma had never gotten enough of: happiness.

  “Hey,” Emma said quietly, turning to where Joseph lay across from her. “You never did tell me how you were hurt.” Joseph silently turned his face toward her, trying to read her expression to determine if she really cared to know, or if she had just suddenly become bored.

  He let out a long sigh, staring at the bottom of the bunk above his head. “It’s not really a story,” he began. “We were on the drive early last summer, and I was thrown from my horse while bringing back a calf that had run off. I landed wrong, and broke my collarbone, and then one of the broken ribs punctured my lung. I had a small concussion, but it wasn’t serious. The real damage was my shoulder.”

  “And it just hasn’t healed right?” she asked, genuinely interested in what had Joseph in so much pain that he couldn’t even walk far, let alone sit in a saddle or rope steer.

  “We thought it was healing, but then it just started hurting more and more. The worse it became, the more pain medicine I needed, until finally, the doctor told my dad that I was going to ruin my kidneys if I kept taking ‘em.”

  “So what do you do when it hurts?” Emma asked softly. Joseph looked to her for the first time since telling the story. He shrugged slightly, and she noticed that even that small movement made him wince lightly, just a quick flash of hurt across his face, but enough that she noticed it.

  “Carey gave me his old prescription, but there aren’t that many left. I’ve been taking half of one of his pills at a time and chasing it down with enough alcohol to just knock me out.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you in Tommy’s bar a couple of times, being hauled out by the sheriff. I guess it’s a good thing she’s practically your family.” Emma didn’t mean that remark spitefully, and luckily, Joseph didn’t take it that way at all.

  “Yes and no,” he replied. “It’s good that she’s looked out for me and kept me from getting into serious trouble, but I hate that this is the only impression she’ll ever have of me. For the rest of my life, I’m gonna be her drunk brother-in-law, who she had to drag home all those times.”

  Emma didn’t say anything for a while. She knew all too well that once someone had formed an opinion of a person, it usually stuck.

  “But what’s your sob story?” Joseph asked callously, causing Emma to look at him in alarm. She had no way of knowing how much of her story Joseph already knew.

  “I don’t really have a story…” she began, but Joseph cut her off.

  “Emma.”

  She looked over at him, meeting his intense gaze, watching his gray-blue eyes for any sign that he was about to call her out for her past.

  “Emma, you don’t have anything to hide. Everything you went through is over now, it’s behind you.”

  “You know about that?” she whispered, looking away again in shame.

  “Um, I hate to be the one to break it to you, especially like this, but everyone knows. Hale is a small town, and Carson Hill is an even smaller town all its own. But the version we know may not be the one that you carry around with you.” Emma looked at him, wondering what that could possibly mean. “You might be focusing on the things you did, but everyone else sees it from the point of view that you were trapped. I can’t imagine what
it must have been like for a girl like you to basically be a prisoner. Well, actually, now I can. I know exactly how it feels to be trapped by your own body, needing something more and more every day and being willing to do what you never thought you would do, just to feel better for a little while.”

  When tears formed in Emma’s pale, clear eyes, Joseph stretched a hand across the aisle that separated them and opened it, inviting her hand to find his. She tentatively moved her trembling hand toward him, gasping quietly when the warmth of his fingers wrapped around her own.

  This simple act of non-judgmental kindness was more than she could have ever hoped for, from anyone for that matter. Sobs threatened to choke her as she silently cried. Emma was shocked when Joseph shifted in his bunk, a quiet but agonizing mask of pain on his face as he moved over, before pulling on her arm gently, inviting her over.

  Emma came across to lie beside him lightly, terrified of causing Joseph any amount of pain. He pulled her next to him and placed her head in the crook of his good shoulder, wrapping his other arm around her petite frame and letting her cry.

  Emma couldn’t remember the last time any man had touched her for any reason other than his own selfish pleasure. She let the sensation of simply being comforted wash over her and warm her as two years of unshed tears finally fell. She tensed momentarily when she felt Joseph’s hand move against her back, but began to cry all over again when she realized that he was simply rubbing small, comforting circles across her body. Her instinct had been to think he was trying something, and it broke her heart to realize that she couldn’t even let another human being comfort her with thinking he was up to something awful.

  “Thank you for not thinking the worst of me,” she finally managed to say, lifting her head carefully to look at him.

  “We’re in pretty sorry shape, aren’t we?” Joseph asked in a tongue-in-cheek way. “You can’t get over your past, and I can’t make it through the present. But, Emma, I’m really glad you’re here. I don’t know how you found your way out to Carson Hill, but I’m really glad you did.”