Broken Spurs

by BJ James

  “What kind of woman are you?” Steve murmured.

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by BJ James

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Copyright

  “What kind of woman are you?” Steve murmured.

  “A woman who is her father’s child,” Savannah answered. “A Benedict, remember?”

  “I remember.” But she was far more than that. He’d heard it in her voice, seen it in the way she walked, the way she dressed. The way she looked at a man. That cool challenge in her silver eyes that made her a challenge herself.

  Savannah “Hank” Benedict answered to a man’s name, but any fool could see she was a hell of a woman. A woman any man would want. She would love with mind and heart, body and soul. Completely, without reservation. As completely as she fought.

  Catching her hand in his, ignoring her gasp of surprise, he stroked her fingers. They were delicate, but he felt the strength there. Strength to fight the battles of her family and her ranch.

  “Savannah Benedict,” he murmured. “Woman extraordinaire. Enemy mine....”

  Dear Reader,

  The weather may be cooling off as fall approaches, but the reading’s as hot as ever here at Silhouette Intimate Moments. And for our lead title this month I’m proud to present the first longer book from reader favorite BJ James. In Broken Spurs she’s created a hero and heroine sure to live in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page.

  Karen Leabo returns with Midnight Confessions, about a bounty hunter whose reward—love—turns out to be far different from what he’d expected. In Bringing Benjy Home, Kylie Brant matches a skeptical man with an intuitive woman, then sets them on the trail of a missing child. Code Name: Daddy is the newest Intimate Moments novel from Marilyn Tracy, who took a break to write for our Shadows line. It’s a unique spin on the ever-popular “secret baby” plotline. And you won’t want to miss Michael’s House, Pat Warren’s newest book for the line and part of her REUNION miniseries, which continues in Special Edition. Finally, in Temporary Family Sally Tyler Hayes creates the family of the title, then has you wishing as hard as they do to make the arrangement permanent.

  Enjoy them all—and don’t forget to come back next month for more of the best romance fiction around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Leslie Wainger,

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie. Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  BROKEN SPURS

  BJ JAMES

  Books by BJ James

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Broken Spurs #733

  Silhouette Desire

  The Sound of Goodbye #332

  Twice in a Lifetime #396

  Shiloh’s Promise #529

  Winter Morning #595

  Slade’s Woman #672

  A Step Away #692

  Tears of the Rose #709

  The Man with the Midnight Eyes #751

  Pride and Promises #789

  Another Time. Another Place #823

  The Hand of an Angel #844

  *Heart of the Hunter #945

  *The Saint of Bourbon Street #951

  *A Wolf in the Desert #956

  *Men of The Black Watch

  BJ JAMES married her high school sweetheart straight out of college and soon found that books were delightful companions during her lonely nights as a doctor’s wife. But she never dreamed she’d be more than a reader, never expected to be one of the blessed, letting her imagination soar, weaving magic of her own.

  BJ has twice been honored by the Georgia Romance Writers with their prestigious Maggie Award for Best Short Contemporary Romance. She has also received the Romantic Times Critic’s Choice Award.

  Chapter 1

  Dust lay heavy in the air. Dust and heat. Rosin and liniment. The whinny of horses. The pawing of bulls. Excitement. Adrenaline.

  Incense of the rodeo.

  The music.

  The magic.

  A ragged cheer rippled through an anxious crowd as one more fallen cowboy picked himself up from the dirt. Their rumbling ovation greeted the wave of his trampled hat. A signal that any injury was temporary, only to pride, a tender ego, and a bruised and dusty seat.

  Applause dwindled, drifting into silence. Desultory laughter and conversation stuttered to a halt. Oblivious of the peculiar hush and grim-faced in failure, the next to last rider stumped from the arena in a sore and hobbling step. A pickup man, fearless savior of the bareback and saddle bronc cowboy, with no cowboy to save, herded a riderless bronc to the designated chute.

  In the circle pounded to near concrete beneath its dressing of sand and sawdust, a rodeo clown jousted with another garbed in horns and tail, filling a bit of vacant space with comedy.

  No one laughed.

  This was the moment. Time, at last, for the event the dedicated, the true to the bone, rodeo fan awaited. The match of the rodeo, the match of the season—Steve Cody’s ride on Shattered Dreams. In this specialized world of fierce individualism and sheer bullheadedness with its touch of quiet arrogance, only the rare cowboy expected to stay his eight seconds aboard the volatile mare.

  No one had.

  Steve Cody could.

  Neither friend nor fan nor cowboy doubted he could. If a rare streak of good luck held, he would.

  Eager eyes searched for Steve and found him where he could always be found before a ride. Standing a few paces back from the arena, an arm draped over the top rail of a runway fence, head down, his thoughts turned inward. As he played and planned the ride in his mind, he was completely unaware of, completely untouched by the mood of the crowd and the screams of a brute of a horse that hated the chute only slightly less than she hated the men who tried to ride her.

  “Let’s rodeo.”

  The familiar drawl sliced through riveted concentration. Drawing a long, calm breath, he turned and stepped away from the fence. A crooked smile curled his lips, a tug drew his hat firmly over his forehead. Shattered Dreams waited.

  Fringe fluttered at the edge of leather chaps, dulled and roweled spurs spun and jingled over worn boot heels as he took the short walk to the longest eight seconds of his life.

  A quick check of back cinch and stirrup length, a cautious mount, a tight grip on the swells of the saddle, a tighter grip on the rope with its hand hold carefully marked, and all that’s left is to ride. Cool eyed and controlled, Steve nodded. The chute gate burst open, a horse filled with fear and hate exploded into the arena.

  In eight brutal seconds, when Charlie Cowboy scooped him from the bowed back of a screaming, maddened whirling dervish, the rodeo knew they’d seen a ride to remember. The ride of a champion whose dogged bad luck had surely changed.

  Eight seconds more and a tired horse stumbled, a cinch broke. Steve tumbled with Charlie beneath the pounding hooves of the horse that hated men. As the announcer blurted a call for help, a silent crowd watched in helpless horror and cursed a lady called Luck.

  Chapter 2

  He was awake.

  Totally, unremittingly awake. H
is eyelids lifted abruptly, like the shutter of a camera. Eyes, narrowed and staring, focused on nothing as murky shapes swam in and out of the nebula of an odorous gray haze hovering over his bed.

  Bed? Tanned and chafed fingers crumpled the sheet at his waist. Why the devil was he in bed? Why was he alone, and why in this place?

  This place? A frown pulled at the rigid muscles of his face. Where was he? Why? The questions sang in his brain, a monotonous litany without answers.

  He meant to turn his head, to search out something real, something of recognizable substance, to orient himself. That was his intention, until the barest move sent a bolt of pain rocketing through his head like an ax. An ax, he was certain, determined to cleave his skull in half.

  His head spun, his stomach lurched. Sweat beaded his forehead as he clutched the sheet in a savage grip. “Where?” he muttered grimly. “Why?”

  He had to think, had to remember. Thinking hurt almost as much as moving, but he’d hurt before and survived. With burning gaze fixed and nerves straining with effort, he probed the darkness of the void in his mind.

  “Where? Why?” The words became his anchor, his lodestar, the channel to remembering.

  Sweat ran in rivulets now, over his bare torso, soaking coarse sheets. Tendons in his neck pulled taut, his jaw rippled over clenched teeth. The ax in his skull backed out a tom-tom rhythm. Slowly, with monumental effort and by sheer will etched in pain, his senses began to clear. Silence became the silence of dawn. The gray haze coalesced into tiles of a ceiling discolored with age. Cloying scents permeating every shallow breath were the stench of medicines. Brutally starched sheets at peril in his tortured grasp were cold, unyielding linens of one more hospital bed.

  “Okay, that answers where.” His voice was rough from disuse, an alien sound echoing hollowly in the empty room. Drawing a long, cautious breath, he risked a subtle turn of his head and discovered a whole new collection of aches. A lovely accompaniment for the timpani of the murderous ax.

  A familiar pain in his shoulder sparked a glimmer of memory. In a flashback of quickening ingrained responses, he was in the chute, aboard the devil mare. Sunlight burning down on a dusty arena glinted off scarred and battered rails of the claustrophobic cage. The band of his Stetson lay like a weighted circle low over his forehead. His shirt clung damply to his back, his palms were wet, his throat dry. In an aura of deadly calm, a thousand pounds of savage horse flesh bunched between his thighs. Ready. Waiting for his nod.

  Waiting to be rid of him.

  “She threw me.” He lifted a hand to his hair in bitter thoughtlessness but stopped short of the habitual gesture, short of discovering bandages swathed his head, as he reconsidered in deference to the ax. Grimacing, he lowered his hand gingerly to his waist. “She did it.” The sheet crumpled again in a convulsive grasp. “The bitch of a horse threw me.”

  Another fragment of recall nagged at him, scratched at his concentration, and almost clicked into place. He tensed, a startled growl rumbled in his throat as his straining mind caught and clung to the lingering remnant. His frown turned thoughtful, the killing grip eased, as softly he muttered, “Or did she?”

  As if all that were needed was this small light in the void, memories suddenly assaulted him. They came fast, furiously, flashing before his eyes in fractured, disjointed snatches. He could find no order in them, no reason, no solace in their mayhem.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he sought the darkness again. Warding off confusion, he concentrated on the pain. Controlling it, exorcising it from his thoughts, he pushed each separate entity of it to the back of his mind as he’d done most of his life. Bit by bit he relaxed. Soothed by the comfort of old habits, he wondered how long he’d slept, and if he could again.

  Once more the void enticed, reaching for him. Gratefully, he drifted into it, letting it draw him down, deeper into its numbing calm, deeper into peace. Deeper into security.

  Calm. Security. Luxury for a man who had known little.

  Solace.

  The scream came without warning, bursting through the darkness. Rimmed by fire, a nightmare thundered out of his memory. A maddened beast tearing his arms from their sockets. Fighting, rearing, slashing hooves flying. Pounding. Crushing.

  “Charlie!”

  Bolting upright, wide-awake and shivering, his own scream reverberated in his head. Again and again, it echoed through the canyons of his mind, the agony of it leeching away the little left of his strength. As he crumpled, weak and weary, back to the bed, he heard footsteps racing down the darkened hall.

  He closed his eyes again and waited.

  “Mr. Cody?” A cool hand touched his arm. “Are you awake, Mr. Cody?”

  “Yes.” The word, borne on a new wave of pain, was barely audible.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Yes. No!” Steve caught a shuddering breath. “It’s passing.”

  “I’ll call Dr. Hayworth.”

  “Wait.” Catching her comforting hand, wondering if she was as lovely as her voice, he turned his head the little distance needed to see her. “What the hell?”

  Two shadowy figures dressed in white, half merged, half separate, leaned over him in the brightening light of dawn. “Two,” he whispered. “Why are there two of you?”

  Brenda Crowley had been a nurse for thirty years, half of them in neurology. Years of practice and instinct told her Steve Cody needed answers more immediately than his physician needed to be informed that his comatose patient had roused. Folding his hand more securely in her own, she offered substance and truth. “You have double vision, Mr. Cody. Don’t be alarmed, it was to be expected with injuries such as yours. But it’s also expected to clear.”

  “Injuries such as mine?”

  “You have a head injury.”

  “How? When?”

  His grip threatened the bones in her hand, Brenda Crowley didn’t flinch. “A horse trampled you, a week ago.”

  “I don’t remember.” His voice faded as he struggled again to penetrate the void. “God help me! I can’t remember.”

  “Shh...” She soothed the tension she heard in him. “You wouldn’t, but that, too, was expected. You’ve been unconscious since you were brought in.”

  “A week?” He couldn’t comprehend the time span.

  “Seven days exactly.”

  “Seven?” It made no sense to thoughts as blurred as his vision.

  “For some, maybe even most, it might’ve been longer.” Brenda offered encouragement. “But your friend insists you can’t be counted like most. He’s been here every day, all day, vowing Steve Cody is one tough cowboy, too tough to die. And a hero in the bargain.”

  “Friend?” Steve searched for a name, a face.

  “He calls himself Charlie Cowboy.”

  “Charlie!” Assailed again by a deluge of unexpected memories of dust and terror, and blood, Steve struggled to rise. The gentle pressure of the nurse’s hand on his chest stopped him.

  “You aren’t quite up to tripping down the hall searching for him, young man. Anyway, he isn’t here. Yet.”

  “Where is he? How is he? Is he—”

  “He’s fine. Hale and hearty. More hale and hearty than you are at the moment. Except for a few fading bruises and a broken rib,” she amended. “But you can see that for yourself. He’ll be here the minute visiting hours start, as he has been every day. Then he’ll stay, until someone shoos him away to get some rest. Between times, he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s here on this good earth, alive to see his first grandchild, because you saved his life, and he owes you one.”

  The sweat on Steve’s body turned cold. The image of Charlie lying beneath the hooves of a frenzied horse bent on death and destruction seared his mind. But Charlie hadn’t died. Steve didn’t know how, but he hadn’t. “I doubt it happened quite like he tells it. Even if it did, the ratio would be one to a hundred or more. If either of us is indebted to the other, I owe him.”

  “Well, now, that isn’t for me to judg
e. How you and Mr. Cowboy keep score is strictly between the two of you.”

  Steve laughed, a low, gleeful chortle. If it hurt, he didn’t care, Charlie was alive. He was alive. That’s all that mattered.

  “I said something funny?” Brenda drawled, marveling that her patient could speak and even laugh. Though he was a man for whom pain was a way of life, she suspected his headache must be beyond bearing.

  “I’ve heard Charlie called a lot of names by the ladies, occasionally even Charlie Abramson, his real name. But never Mr. Cowboy, and not by one as beautiful.”

  “Ahh, a sure sign of recovery—the blarney begins.” Brenda stepped away from the bed, smiling down at the roughly handsome cowboy who had beaten the odds. He was a long way from recovery, and how much he might accomplish was questionable. But he’d taken the first doubtful step. He was awake, when no one had been sure he ever would be again.

  “If you’re certain there’s nothing you need, and if you’ll promise not to go running off down the hall the minute my back is turned, I need to check in with your doctor, Mr. Cody. He really shouldn’t be the last to know that he has another miracle in the making.”

  “All I need is answers, and I assume the doctor will take care of them.” Steve tried for a smile that didn’t quite work. “Go make your call, and have no fear. This miracle, if that’s what I am, has no intention of tripping down any halls.”

  “That’s what I like, a cooperative patient. Now, if you need anything, anything at all, there’s a bell at your side. If you call, ask for Brenda Crowley, and I’ll be here before you know it.” Her name was on the tag clipped to her breast pocket, but she knew he couldn’t read it. It would be some time before he read anything. Squeezing his hand one more time, she hurried to the door.