Vaughn's Pride: California Cowboys

by Selena Laurence

  Katie jumped into Ty’s waiting arms, where he kissed her on both cheeks while she laughed and tugged on his hair.

  “You need a haircut, Daddy.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Now tell Uncle Vaughn we’re coming in for a landing.” Ty held Katie in the air and swooped her around the barn a couple of times, making a zooming noise at the same time. Vaughn looked over his shoulder, legs spread shoulder width apart to give himself more stability. He shifted slightly from side to side, tension coiling in his chest as Ty brought Katie closer. Then she was against his back, her little legs wrapping around his waist and her arms around his neck. He felt Ty step away, and the weight settled on his hips. Her little face brushed his cheek as her baby smell—shampoo, sugar, and clean sweat—drifted around him.

  “See, Uncle Vaughn,” she said in his ear. “I fits perfect.”

  His eyes burned for just a moment, and he swallowed as he held on to her little legs, relishing the warmth that cloaked his back where she pressed against it.

  “You do, bug,” he answered, his voice thick. “You fit perfect.”

  She bounced up and down. “Let’s go! Giddyup!”

  Vaughn heard Ty’s calm certainty from behind him. “You got this.”

  Then he took a step, feeling a very slight wobble as she bounced, mimicking a rider on a horse. One step was followed by another, and then a third. His left leg gave a touch, and his heart sped up, but then he shifted the tiniest amount and it popped right back, his strong thigh muscles taking the extra pressure easily.

  “We’re doing it!” Katie yelled into the air around them as they made their way to Ty’s pickup truck with the booster seat installed. “You’re my horsey again!”

  He chuckled as he took a faster step. “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  She squeezed his neck harder and whispered in his ear, “I loves you, Uncle Vaughn.”

  They reached the truck, and he opened the door, then turned around so that she could slide off onto the seat. When he turned back to face her, she climbed onto her booster, and as he buckled her into place, he kissed her softly on the cheek.

  “Thank you, bug,” he said. “I love you too.”

  As they pulled out of the driveway, Vaughn thought he saw his brother wipe a tear from his eye before he turned and ambled back into the barn.

  “Hey.” T.J.’s office mate Janelle slid into her desk chair before handing T.J. an iced mocha latte.

  “Bless you,” T.J. murmured as she took a healthy swallow and closed her eyes at the cold, chocolatey goodness.

  “I thought you had Vaughn until four?” Janelle asked.

  T.J.’s heart throbbed. “No. We’re, uh, done.”

  Janelle stopped fussing with her keyboard and looked at T.J., whose desk was set up facing hers, their computer monitors back to back. “He hasn’t been doing PT long enough to stop.”

  “Yeah. I know that.”

  “So is he refusing to finish? I know he’s been difficult, but I thought he wanted to, you know, be able to do stuff.”

  “Yeah, I really wouldn’t know. He walks great, he can do stairs, and he’s gaining strength and balance every day.”

  Janelle pushed her chair away from the desk and leaned back, examining T.J. like a bug under a microscope.

  “Yet…we both know that he hasn’t done enough work to be really competent on that leg. He needs more variety of movement, plus learning the other prosthetics his brother got for him. He’s got a running blade and an aqua leg, right? He needs to have help adjusting to those, learning the differences in how to make them do what he wants them to.”

  T.J. mentally shook off the natural reaction to give in, call up Vaughn, and tell him she’d be back out there tomorrow. Because she wanted him to succeed. More than she’d ever wanted anything for herself, she wanted Vaughn Jenkins to be happy, healthy, and whole. But he wasn’t, and he hadn’t been since long before the accident. Vaughn hadn’t been whole since his parents died, and she knew it. She suspected he did too, which was why he’d been shutting her out of the most important parts of himself since they were seventeen.

  “Well, maybe you can help him with all that. I won’t be, however,” she said.

  Janelle continued to observe her, sipping her own Frappacino something or other. Finally, she declared, “So it’s time to introduce you to my best friend from college?”

  T.J. glared at her friend. They’d gone to Big Sur High together but weren’t close until they both ended up back after college as physical therapists. However, anyone who had gone to high school with T.J. and Vaughn knew the pair, knew their history, and knew that they were a legendary story of star-crossed love, circumstances always against them, something standing in their way for years on end. Yes, T.J. was Big Sur’s very own Juliet to Vaughn’s Romeo.

  “I’m serious,” Janelle said, putting her drink on the desk, where it began to sweat onto the glass top, making T.J.’s fingers itch to move it onto a coaster or a napkin.

  “If you’re really not going to be his therapist anymore, then there’s nothing else between you, am I right? Just last week, you told me that you were his PT and that was all. You said that as soon as the therapy sessions were over, so were you and Vaughn. For good this time. No more being best buddies while he screws every woman within sixty miles except you, no more putting up with his drunk dials where he almost admits that he loves you but doesn’t quite. No more going out on dates with guys you know you’ll hate so that you can have an excuse to stop dating them and go back to pining for Vaughn. You said it yourself. You’re done.”

  T.J. sighed, standing and walking to the window that looked out over a parking lot and the town’s coffee shop beyond. Vaughn’s Aunt Lynn owned the shop, which was fitting, as nothing in the whole damn town didn’t remind her of Vaughn somehow. When she walked by the park, she remembered the time he’d kissed her on the swings when they first started dating senior year in high school.

  When she ate at the burrito place on the beach, she remembered how they used to go surfing in the summers and his brother Cade would ride the biggest waves, sticking with them until he could simply step off his board as it washed up to the shore.

  And when she drove by the high school, she remembered that night of Senior Winter Ball when Vaughn had stormed up to her on the dance floor, told her date that he needed a minute with her, and dragged her outside like a caveman hauling around his woman by her hair. Lance had been so surprised at having his date virtually kidnapped, he’d just stood by and watched. Meanwhile, T.J. had laid into Vaughn outside in the parking lot, telling him what an asshole he was, pounding on him with her fists until he pulled her against his chest, his breath coming hot and hard, an erection already bulging in his dress slacks. Then he’d kissed her, and she’d known her world would never be the same again.

  Yes, there was nothing in Big Sur that didn’t remind T.J. of Vaughn.

  “Okay,” she finally answered Janelle. “I’ll meet your best friend. I’ll meet your cousin, or your neighbor, or some guy you find on the beach and think is perfect for me. You’re right. I’m done. I’ve wasted half my life waiting for Vaughn Jenkins to pull it together. I can’t wait anymore.”

  Janelle smiled, and T.J. couldn’t help but notice the gleam in her friend’s eye. “This is going to be fun,” she said. “We start Friday night. I’ll be at your place at seven. We’ll be at the Shark Tooth by nine.” She stood and walked to T.J., hugging her around the shoulders. “Leave everything to me, baby. We’re going to give you a whole new life.”

  4

  “Come on, Dad, please?”

  “You understand that if I let you two go out alone, you’re the one who’s responsible, right, son?”

  “Yeah, Dad, of course. But T.J. rides just as well as me, and she’s the same age too.”

  “She is, but she’s also not as big as you and not as strong, so you have an obligation to make sure that she’s always safe.”

  “Do you think T.J.’s a better rider than me?”
<
br />   “No. I think she’s a very good rider. In fact, I think she’s good at pretty much any sport she tries, but you have a special sense of the horses.”

  “So can we go?”

  “Yes, but no farther than the trail that splits off to the east acreage, and I want you back by five for dinner. You have your radio?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Go find T.J. and get a move on.”

  “Thanks, Dad, I love you.”

  “I love you too. Both of you.”

  Vaughn squinted at the computer screen. Numbers swirled in front of him—inventory, shipping, auction proceeds, payroll. It all boiled down to one thing—numbers. And he hated math. With the passion of a thousand burning suns. He could do it just fine, but it didn’t come naturally the way things like painting and writing did, and when he saw all those numbers, his head froze, and he had to work really damn hard to unfreeze it.

  Unfortunately, it seemed all those numbers were what his future held.

  Before the accident, Vaughn had spent most of his days out on the land, working alongside the ranch hands, moving cattle, checking fence lines, camping under the stars. It was what he loved about living on his family’s land. But now all that was in his past, not his present or future.

  Oh sure, he could take four-wheelers out instead of riding Jetson. He could opt out of camping so that he didn’t have to take his leg off in front of his own employees. But really, what was the point? He’d never be able to do the kind of activities the guys did out on the range. The serious riding, the cutting and herding. Jumping on and off a horse all day long. He’d be a deficit; they’d all have to baby him, accommodate him. He couldn’t bear it.

  So he was left to learn the office side of the operation. Something he’d avoided like the plague since he graduated from college with an art degree two years ago.

  Cade had encouraged him to major in whatever he enjoyed. He’d told Vaughn that as one-third owner of one of the state’s largest ranches, he had the luxury of studying for love and not income. “You can decide if you want to work here after you’re done with school. If you do, we’ll teach you what you need to know. In the meantime, enjoy yourself and study something you love.”

  As far as older domineering brothers went, Cade wasn’t half-bad.

  But Vaughn had decided to come home to work for the family business, and when he’d had two functioning legs, that had been fine. Cade and Ty took care of the boring numbers shit and he worked with the guys.

  Now? Now he was wondering if he should have gone into an art job after all.

  “You get those auction proceeds input?” Cade asked as he came into the office that was connected to the barn.

  “Uh, still working on it,” Vaughn muttered as he refocused on the screen in front of him.

  “Dude, you’ve been at it for three hours. It’s a thirty-minute task.”

  “Maybe for you. The math isn’t really my thing, you know that.”

  Cade sighed in that way that only older brothers who were exasperated with their younger siblings could. Then he flung himself down into the armchair in front of the desk.

  “Look, I know you don’t like this stuff. And I don’t expect you to do it all the time, but you need to understand it.” He cleared his throat. “There may come a day when Ty and I aren’t around, and I want you to be comfortable with this stuff so it won’t be a burden.”

  Vaughn knew that Cade was thinking about the year their parents had died. He’d been away on the pro surfing circuit with no plans to ever work for the family when they’d suddenly been killed in an auto accident. He’d had to quit surfing, come back home, and learn to run a multimillion-dollar ranch overnight. Cade had shouldered the burden for all three Jenkins sons for a very long time. Until Nina had come along and given him a new outlook on his life.

  And speaking of his brother’s spitfire girlfriend, the pretty blonde strode into the office carrying Katie on her hip.

  “Hey there,” Cade said, his entire face softening when he looked at the two girls. Vaughn could relate. The Jenkins women were pretty special.

  “Hi. We were about to make a trip into town and wondered if you wanted to come along. I heard you saying you needed some things at the hardware store for the guesthouse repairs.”

  Cade coughed awkwardly, and Vaughn tried to stifle the grin that wanted to take over his face. Nina and Cade stayed in the guesthouse behind the main house, and somehow one of the windows directly above the bed had been broken in the middle of the night two nights ago. The story as to how it happened had been incomplete and disjointed. Aunt Lynn, Vaughn, and Ty had decided it was a matter better left undiscovered.

  “Uh, yeah,” Cade grumbled. “I’ll come with, just give me five minutes. I’ll meet you at the car.”

  “Yay!” Katie cheered. The kid had enough enthusiasm for three normal people. “Now we can make Uncle Cade take us to the ice cweam paw-lah.”

  Cade rolled his eyes as Nina smirked. “You’re training her in your evil ways,” he said fondly.

  “We earned it, didn’t we?” Nina asked Katie.

  “Yes! We cleaned the kitchen and the bathwoom, and I fed all the dogs.”

  Vaughn chuckled. “Sounds like they schooled you, bro.”

  “As usual,” Cade said, although his tone was anything but a complaint.

  Nina and Katie left and Cade refocused on Vaughn.

  “You understand why I want you to learn this stuff?”

  Vaughn’s breath shook as he released it slowly. “Yeah,” he answered quietly. “I get it.”

  “It doesn’t mean I don’t think you should go out with the guys too. This day would have come soon no matter what. Your accident just gave us a perfect opportunity while you were recovering.”

  “You know I can’t go out with the guys anymore. It’s this or go work at Lynn’s coffee shop.”

  Cade sighed. “Maybe if you’d keep doing your PT like you’re supposed to, you’d feel more comfortable with the idea of riding. Amputees do all kinds of things, dude. Including run Olympic races. I know it may not seem like it right now, but if you want to get back on a horse and run cattle, you will. It’s your choice.”

  Vaughn knew better than to argue. And really, it didn’t matter. Cade couldn’t understand. In his world, determination got you whatever you wanted. Surfing championships, a global business, a beautiful girlfriend. But his brother had never had a piece of his body taken from him, so how could he possibly understand that all the determination in the world couldn’t bring back the lower half of his left leg?

  “Now,” Cade continued without giving Vaughn time to answer, “I’m going to run these errands with the girls, but Ty suggested we all go out to the Shark Tooth tonight, grab a few beers, do the guy thing. I think Gavin Chase will be there too.”

  Gavin was Ty’s best friend from high school, so between Cade and Vaughn in age. His family owned the hotel in town, and he’d come back after college to take over when his father wanted to retire. He was in the process of turning a nice local hotel into a world-class resort.

  “I don’t know—”

  “Great! Be ready to go at eight. And try to finish that spreadsheet by then, will you?”

  Cade winked at him and walked out, leaving Vaughn to struggle with the world’s dullest task until Lynn decided to take mercy on him and ask him to help prepare dinner.

  T.J. stood and stared at herself in the full-length mirror. Her legs looked even longer than usual in the short dress, and her cleavage was on display in a way she seldom resorted to. She wasn’t full figured, but her breasts were bigger than the rest of her would indicate. Her mother said it was the blessing of the Taylor women. T.J. wasn’t sure it was a blessing, but she knew how to use it when she had to, and tonight seemed as good an opportunity as any.

  Her eyes drifted to the photos lined up along her dresser. Her and Janelle at a concert in Sacramento. Her with her parents at Mother’s Day brunch. One of her dad sitting behind her in the sa
ddle, aboard a ferry in the Boston harbor with her junior class in high school. And she and Vaughn senior year in high school before his parents were killed. It was taken a few weeks after they’d finally started dating. Both their families had taken it in stride, remarking that they’d been expecting it for some time.

  The photo was printed in black and white, and they were standing with T.J.’s horse, Cupcake. Two seventeen-year-olds and a horse, T.J. laughing at something Vaughn had just said, her face lit up, teeth flashing, eyes sparkling. And Vaughn, caught in a moment that was so rare, so special, it nearly broke T.J.’s heart every time she looked at that damn picture. His gaze was focused entirely on her, his hand reaching out to touch a strand of her hair that blew in the breeze. His smile was soft, his eyes gentle, and the affection—the love—virtually spilled out of him.

  But it was something that had died a brutal death a few months later, on Highway One when his parents’ car tumbled down a cliff, coming to rest on its roof twenty feet below the road.

  She reached out and snatched the photo from the dresser, biting her lip in determination. No matter what had gone on between them, she had always kept the damn thing, always insisted on torturing herself with the memory of what it felt like to be loved by him. No more, though. It had to stop. She had to stop. He’d stopped long ago, after all.

  With the frame and photo clutched in her hand so firmly it hurt, she marched into the kitchen, muttering to herself the entire way. She got to the sink and opened the cabinet underneath, pulling out the small trash can that sat on a rolling shelf.

  “Done,” she whispered to the image of two people who no longer existed. Then she dropped it into the trash, where the glass in the frame cracked as it hit a beer bottle lying in the bottom.

  “Done,” she said again. If only her heart didn’t feel as broken as that damn picture frame.

  5

  “What the hell, Vaughn?!”

  He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Me? You were the one on the dance floor with—with him—letting him put his hands all over you!”