“I know what will happen if I don’t do it soon enough.” He went to grab her hand and she dodged away from him, grabbing at her files instead and stuffing them angrily back into her bag. “Look, I know I should have told you before Rachel let it slip. I goofed there. But we had to get the word out to the press as soon as possible and she was coming today.”
She turned to him. “And there are no phones in Martins Gap? Your laptop doesn’t work well enough for you to send me an email? You don’t know where I live?” She didn’t wait for him to concoct an answer. “No, you knew exactly what I’d say to a scheme like that so you didn’t bother to tell me. ‘Oh Ruby, I need you,’ ‘Oh Ruby, I can’t do this without you.’ You expect me to believe it when you do something like this?”
He scoffed. “Hey, this is my career we’re talking about.”
“No. You’re wrong, Luke. This is your life we’re talking about. I wonder, now, if you even know the difference? This is about what happens when you’re forty, and fifty and sixty. After the cameras are turned off and you’ve left the arena and have to live the rest of your life with whatever injuries you’ve taken.”
He waved her words away. “I can’t think about that now.”
She wanted to shake him. “You have to think about that now. I can’t understand why you think bull riding is all there is. This won’t last your whole life. This is one piece of it, and you’re willing to throw everything all away just to hang on.” She made herself say: “when maybe you’re going to have to let go.”
Luke stood very still, staring at her as if she’d just pulled his heart out of his chest. Maybe she had.
Maybe he needed to know what that felt like.
* * *
Luke watched as Ruby stormed across the lawn to haul off down the drive in a cloud of dust.
That hadn’t gone the way he’d planned.
At least she’d pitched her fit after Rachel left. Admittedly, he’d done that on purpose, let her find out in front of Rachel, knowing she wouldn’t throw him under the bus in front of the press. Okay, he didn’t feel so great about that, but if this wasn’t the time to take bold steps, he didn’t know what was.
He looked up to see Gran scowling at him from the big house steps. She must have seen the way Ruby left. She made her way down to him, and he braced for whatever was coming. “What have you done now?”
He told her what he’d done and why, ready to just get the coming lecture over with. Instead, she just closed her eyes and sighed. Luke hated when she did that—Gran angry was always easier to deal with than Gran quietly enduring her disappointment.
“I had to get her to go along with it, Gran.”
“And you think you’ve done that? You haven’t. You’ve manipulated her, and you know it. What’s the matter with you, son? You tell me you need her and yet you treat her like that? That’s not how we should treat people who are important to us—” she leveled her worst glare at him “—people we care about. Where is this changed man you keep telling me you are? I’m not seeing him, Luke. Not at all.”
“She’d have said no if I’d asked, and I can’t get a ‘no’ now, Gran. I can’t.”
She waved his justification away as if it were a pesky fly. “No, you just want to get your way. Always have. Only sometimes getting your way isn’t worth the cost you have to pay to get it.”
He started to walk away, figuring her lecture was over. It wasn’t. “Do you still have that Bible?” she called after him.
He stopped, his own eyes closed. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Genesis. Won’t be hard to find, boy, it’s the first book.”
“I know that, Gran.”
“Jacob. You remember what I used to call him, don’t you?” With that, she turned and walked back into the house. Out of some foggy cloud of memory, the story of Jacob bubbled up. Jacob the trickster, Gran had always called him. How many times had she compared Luke and Gunner to Jacob and Esau—even though Luke was twins with Tess, not Gunner.
Luke didn’t often do what he was told—most especially with commanded Bible readings—but for some reason he couldn’t stop himself from flipping through the first part of the book until he found the heading “Jacob and Esau” and began reading.
Chapter Fifteen
Ruby turned the key in her door Sunday afternoon, Oscar tugging hard on his leash for his weekly romp in the park between church and supper at Mama’s house. He began barking furiously, and Ruby turned to find Luke standing on the sidewalk with a picnic basket in his hands.
“You cancelled on me.”
She had. She’d never done that before, but even Lana okayed the tactic. Ruby was angry and confused and in no fit state to work with him. Luke needed to realize there were consequences to treating a therapist like some kind of adjunct to his public relations campaign. And, quite frankly, she needed time to decide what to do next.
“You didn’t answer my calls yesterday,” he said, shrugging with one hand in his pocket. “Your mom said you usually took your dog for a walk on Sunday afternoons. You’ve got a dog?”
“You sound like you’re surprised.” She stood there while Oscar rushed up to Luke, jumping up against Luke’s shins to sniff at the basket. Usually Ruby trusted Oscar’s instincts where people were concerned, but clearly whatever was inside that bright blue gingham cloth had charmed the mutt out of his good dog sense.
“I pegged you for a cat person, actually. You never really cared for Brick.” With one hand he flipped open one end of the picnic basket and reached inside to produce a sizable bone-shaped dog biscuit. Oscar dissolved into a frenzy of excitement. He’s cheating. Be smarter than that, Oscar. He’s just bribing you. He bribes everyone—or at least he thinks he does.
Oscar paid no mind to her silent advice. “Well,” Ruby replied, frowning at her pushover of a dog, “Brick was a disaster on four legs.” She called an image to mind of the scrappy, disobedient, reddish-brown dog that considered the entire world his chew toy. Luke was right—she’d tried hard to like that dog and failed. His habit of stealing and shredding her shoes made it nearly impossible. Luke—a fellow rebel—had loved him, of course.
Luke raised up the basket like a peace offering. “Can we talk?” He produced a second dog biscuit, tossing it into Oscar’s eager mouth. Traitor.
“I’m not sure what there is to talk about.” She started walking toward the park, not willing to surrender a perfectly good Sunday to the Luke Buckton “I Want My Way” campaign. No matter what smelled so delicious in that basket.
He fell into step beside her. “Come on, Gran helped me make this. Let’s have a picnic like we used to and see if we can’t figure out how to make this work.”
She wished she didn’t notice how smooth his gait had become. He really had made remarkable progress—but that and nostalgic picnics didn’t pave the way for the absurd thing he had already set in motion. “Well picnic or not, you’re off to a poor start. Shoving a timeframe down my throat in front of a reporter is no way to gain my cooperation.”
“That was a bad move, I admit. I boxed you into a corner to get my way. That isn’t the way I should treat you.”
She didn’t reply, but kept walking. At least he’d admitted what a conniving thing he’d done. She wasn’t entirely sure, however, that this picnic wasn’t just more conniving.
“I get that this isn’t how you’d do it if you had a choice. But I need you to get that I don’t really have a choice, either.”
That stopped her. “I don’t believe that. You do have a choice. And you made a bad one.”
He stopped walking, turning to look at her. “I’m not ready to leave the rodeo, Ruby. I will be someday. I know it’s not my whole life. But my exit has got to be done the right way. How I leave determines what I can and can’t do afterward. I need to leave on my terms. It’s going to be me calling t
he shots on my last ride, not the rodeo leaving me behind.”
She resumed walking. “And you think riding JetPak when you’re not fully healed will do that.”
“That hunk of US prime beef does not get the last word on my career. I won’t give that to him. Or at the very least, I won’t walk away knowing I just handed it to him. If he gets it, it’ll be because we fought and he won.”
She didn’t like the way he was thinking about this. Hadn’t that bull already won? “And what happens if he tosses you a second time? Will it just become about going a third round?”
“It’s not going to come to that.”
He sounded all too certain. “How do you know?”
“I’ve gone eight seconds on JetPak twice before. That last ride was a fluke—a mistake on my part because Ray Knight got into my head and rattled me. That will never happen again.”
She hadn’t known that. Well, of course she hadn’t known that—Luke wouldn’t openly admit a weakness. She’d always assumed that Luke simply found the bull he couldn’t ride. It hadn’t really occurred to her that maybe that fateful ride had been more about Luke losing than about JetPak winning. It certainly explained his thinking. “You never told me that.”
“You never asked. You’ve never asked me about that ride at all.”
She looked at him as they turned the corner into the little fenced-in park where she loved to let Oscar run free. “You told me you didn’t remember the accident.”
“I don’t remember what happened after the accident, no. But I remember every detail of that ride. I knew exactly how I let Ray get to me, how I let him mess with my focus. I could tell you exactly what mistake I made and when. To be honest, I think it’d be easier if I didn’t remember it, but then there’d be all that videotape to remind me.”
It explained his massive levels of frustration and impatience. It was he who defeated himself that day, not JetPak. No wonder a rematch meant so much to him. She knew that Luke had probably worked out precisely how to correct his errors. The only thing left was retraining his body to comply.
Luke pulled a turquoise-checked tablecloth from the picnic basket and spread it on a soft patch of ground under the shade of a live oak. “So,” he said as he lowered himself down on the ground with a fair amount of ease and only a little grunt, “I know what happened. I know why. It wasn’t lack of ability that sent me sailing into that railing, it was lack of focus. I dropped my guard for a moment and paid the price. Now I want it back.” The words came hard, his eyes fierce. Ruby was staring right into the truth that kept him up nights, the misstep that served as the ground zero of his bitter impatience. It was an immovable path he was on, one from which he could not stray and live with himself.
She was glad when Oscar began to nose his way into the basket—the moment needed a bit of comic relief. “Hey there, buddy,” Luke laughed, “you already got yours. These are for us.” He grinned at her as she settled opposite him on the cloth. “I went all out. All your favorites.”
He had way too much ammunition to wage his campaign. “Gran’s brownies, of course, but that’s for later—unless you want to ditch convention and eat dessert first. But I know how much you loved Gran’s buttermilk fried chicken.” He waggled his eyebrows playfully as he pulled out a container of the savory dish.
“That’s not fair,” she said as the aroma washed over her. Lots of Texans were passionate about their barbecue, but to Ruby it had always been about the fried chicken. And no one made fried chicken like Gran. Ruby could have just eaten a twelve course meal and the smell of Granny B’s chicken could still make her hungry. “You know how I feel about Granny B’s fried chicken.”
Luke grinned. “I was counting on that. Oh, and what’s chicken without...” He unfolded a napkin to reveal a half dozen biscuits.
Some women loved ice cream or chocolate. Ruby loved biscuits. Warm with honey butter or jam or smothered in gravy, biscuits were her comfort food. It was a red-letter day the afternoon Granny B trusted her with the Buckton family biscuit recipe. They’d been sitting on her front steps with a handful of biscuits stolen from Granny B’s kitchen when Luke had told her he loved her for the first time.
She hadn’t made them in years, feeling as if Luke’s departure severed her from the Buckton family and the rights to that recipe.
Ruby stared at the display, the memories, emotions, and scents combining to overwhelm her. She felt out of control in the best and worst ways. “You really did go all out,” she gushed, unsettled by how smitten he could make her feel. It was a talent of his—pulling out all the stops to get what he wanted. He could do it to lots of people, to a degree. Unfortunately, he knew her well enough to be render her nearly helpless at the moment.
“I need you, Ruby. I need you enough to make me pull something stupid like revealing the news at the interview with Rachel. I’ll keep saying it until you believe me because you can get me there. JetPak took a lot from me, but I can win it back. If you help me.”
She wanted to believe him. She understood how he needed to regain what he’d felt he lost. It didn’t make sense—it was still a monumental risk—but things like this didn’t always make sense. This was a final, essential showdown to Luke, and he would never let this go. He’d come back at it until he came out on top—only each round of the showdown would cost Luke more.
The smart thing to do would be to walk away from his irresponsible obsession, to remove herself from the situation. Even Lana had suggested it—again.
Only she couldn’t. And not because of the picnic in front of her. This was Luke. And he was right: he needed her. She doubted anyone else would be able to get from him what was needed to meet this challenge. She couldn’t shake the notion that to walk away now would be tantamount to the same abandonment he’d done to her, and she wasn’t that kind of person. Crazy as it sounded, Luke’s ride was a showdown of sorts for her as well; a way to leave this relationship behind on her terms rather than his.
Luke held her gaze. “I’m sorry. And I’ll change. No more stunts, no more timeframes shoved down your throat. From now on, you’ll call the shots on my treatment. Get me there, Ruby. Get me back on JetPak so I can have the rest of my life.”
* * *
Ruby gave him a disbelieving look. “Luke Buckton, there isn’t enough chicken and biscuits in the world to make me think you’ll keep a promise to do what you’re told.”
She wasn’t wrong. He was known for many things, but ready compliance had never been one of them. But if that was the price he had to pay to make this work, he’d pay it...even if it would chafe him. A lot. “I will. Do as I’m told, I mean.” He pulled a plate from inside the picnic basket and handed it to her.
“You won’t.” She took the plate from him, giving him a skeptical look.
This was going to take some work. He’d expected it, and had a plan. “Test me.”
She laughed at that as she added chicken, two biscuits, and a brownie to her plate. “How can I test something like that?”
“Tell me to do something—anything—and I’ll do it.”
He heaped his own plate while he let her think. When she finally made up her mind, she surprised him. “Sing.”
Yeah right, he thought as he bit into a breast of chicken, wouldn’t that be funny? He’d left her all the drumsticks, knowing they were her favorite. “You know I can’t,” he said with his mouth full.
One corner of her mouth turned up in a way that made him nervous. “Sing anyway,” she said. “Stand up right here and sing the Martins Gap Mustangs fight song. At the top of your voice.” When he balked, she added, “I’m not kidding.”
She wasn’t. She’d called his bluff. This was a whole new Ruby, and he was coming to realize his old tactics were likely to turn on him—and just had. He stared at her for a second, then put his plate down. “You aren’t kidding, are you?” He scratched hi
s head, stalling until he could think of a way out of this one. “I’m not sure I remember the words.”
“Hail the Mustangs, fear the Mustangs...” she cued, singing the first line of the song that echoed through every high school pep rally. Of course he knew the words. They’d be burned into his brain forever—and she probably knew that.
“Fall to the stampede,” he finished soft and off-key, hoping that would suffice.
It didn’t. “See? Comes right back to you, like riding a bicycle,” she said, pointing at him. “Up. Now. And loud.” When he hesitated, she gave him a glare worthy of a Sunday school teacher. “You said you’d do anything.”
Luke shook his head, then bit back an unsavory exclamation as he pulled himself to a standing position. He could do it with ease now, but it still hurt. Oscar, the excitable little mutt who was supposed to be helping him win Ruby’s partnership, began yapping at his feet until Ruby commanded him to sit in her lap as part of the “audience.”
He looked around to see who was within regretful earshot, counting six poor souls who ought to be warned of what was coming. Ellie always said he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and she was right. This was going to be humiliating.
Humiliating, but worth it. Luke took a deep breath and launched into a loud, off-pitch rendition of the Martins Gap Mustangs fight song. Even Ruby cringed as she laughed, and an older couple at the edge of the park stared and pointed.
Might as well make the best of it. Luke began strutting, conducting an imaginary marching band, compensating for his lack of musical talent with rampant enthusiasm and sheer gutsy volume. When he finished the first verse, he went right on into the second. Oscar actually began howling along. He was glad to see tears in Ruby’s eyes from laughing so hard. Making Ruby laugh had been his second favorite thing back in the day.
Making Ruby sigh had been the first. She could sigh at him in a way that made him feel King of the World.
His task completed, Luke crumpled down to lie flat on his back on the blanket as Ruby, and even a few of the puzzled spectators, broke into applause. He laughed himself, one hand over his face, as amused as he was mortified. “See what I mean? Nobody can push me to extremes like you can.”
The Bull Rider's Homecoming Page 12
