“We’ve been unhappy for a while, Cass. Things have always been tight financially because of our large family, but we’ve also always made it work. I coupon, he packs his lunch, we have all these little tricks for stretching our dollars. But a few weeks ago, Jeff was laid off.”
“Oh no, Jenny! I’m so sorry!”
“He’s been having trouble finding another job, and I can’t work like this.” She motioned to her ever-expanding belly. “He’s around all the time, and we just bicker. Not in front of the children, mind you, but pretty much all the rest of the time. I’m starting to wonder if we ever really had anything in common besides the kids. I want to work things out, but it’s so hard. Jeff is in so much pain, and I know he doesn’t see how he’s hurting my feelings left and right, but I can’t not see it, you know?”
Cass squeezed her sister’s hands. Her life had taken a very different course from Jenny’s, and she didn’t really know what to say to help. Instead of trying to come up with the right words, Cass just nodded and waited for her sister to say more.
“I don’t want to leave him, but I can’t live like this. I thought maybe if we could sell Saddleback, we’d have enough of a buffer to make it until he finds a new job. I know you think selling the ranch is destroying our family, but it could actually save it, Cass. I hate having to hurt you like this. You don’t deserve it, but neither do my kids. I’d give anything for them, Auntie C, and I know you would, too. That’s why I figured I’d come here and ask for your help instead of trying to force you into something you don’t understand like I have been. If there were any other way…”
Cassie choked back the tears that were beginning to form behind her eyes. She needed to be strong for her sister—there was no way Jenny could carry the weight of all these problems on her own. But maybe they could carry them together, just as they’d done when they lost their parents too soon. Just as they’d done when Jenny’s first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. Just as they would do now, do always. She both loved and hated her sister more than any other person in the whole world—that would never change.
Cassie took a deep breath, her last lungful of air before she officially decided to stop fighting for their legacy and start fighting for their progeny.
“You don’t have to ask, Jenny. I’ll sell the ranch. End of discussion.”
Jenny started to weep again, but still managed to make it out of her chair and over to wrap Cassie in a tight hug.
“But, without the ranch, what will you do?” she asked pulling away.
Cassie thought about that for a minute, knowing she needed a good, believable answer to help assuage her sister’s guilt. “Maybe I could go back to college, become a vet like Judy. I’ve always had a way with animals, you know, and just yesterday I delivered Maybel’s calf. It was amazing!”
“Really?” Jenny sniffed. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.” She needed to be strong, needed to be sure, even if she wasn’t. She did love her animals, and even if she had to say goodbye to poor Maybel and her new calf Babybel Cheese, along with Susie Ann and all the others, perhaps she could still find a way to help other animals, to keep doing what she loved—if not where she loved to do it.
“Okay then… Cassie?”
“Yeah?”
“Do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Tell me all about that beautiful man who looks at you like you’re the sun and stars.”
Chapter 9
The next day, Rhett arrived at the stadium in a daze. As much as he normally looked forward to his games, he just wanted to hurry up and get it over with so he could return to Cassie. Dutifully, and because his contract left him no other choice, he suited up and joined the team for pregame workout, running on auto-pilot from the countless other times he’d played. Luckily, his body knew what to do, because his mind couldn’t be torn away from the angel he’d left waiting for him.
Maybe if his team hadn’t won the coin toss, he wouldn’t have had so much time to think about Cassie. Their opponents fought hard for every inch and the defensive line was only slowly being pushed back. But the longer the opposing team’s offense was on the field, the more Rhett’s mind wandered. He started thinking about not just the night, but the day he’d spent with Cassie. The memory of birthing that calf with her, her joy at holding that newborn animal, still played in his head.
A sudden cheer snapped Rhett’s attention back to the game. The Bombers’ defense had stopped their rivals just shy of field goal range. Now it was the offense’s turn.
Rhett trotted out onto the field with the offense and got ready. The ball was snapped, and the two lines smashed together with the sounds of helmets crashing together like cannon fire on a distant battlefield. The crowd roared, and Rhett went back behind the quarterback, ready for the hand off. There was the pump pass fake, and Rhett raced past the Bombers QB, deftly taking the pigskin and tucking it into the crook of his arm. He scanned the line for an opening and was surprised to see quite a few. The offensive line had opened up the defense, and the QB’s fake must've worked. Rhett smiled to himself as his legs began churning, tearing up the yards to the end zone.
He began thinking back to the time he’d run beside Cassie as she gracefully maneuvered Susie Ann from astride the saddle. Now that was a run.
He should’ve seen the defender. He should’ve expected them to be farther downfield where the receivers were. Instead, he felt something like a horse kicking him and everything went black.
Time passed, but for the life of him, Rhett didn’t know how much.
His eyes fluttered opened, and he turned to his side—why does it hurt so much?—expecting to see his country angel sleeping beside him. Instead he was met with an off-white plastic rail and a clunky hospital machine.
What’s going on? Where’s Cassie? Where am I?
He tried to sit up, but the intense pain that tore through his lower body kept him down.
A chipper nurse scurried into the room. “Oh, Mr. Rockwell, you’re up! How ya feeling, hun?” she asked while adjusting his IV—an IV he’d only just now noticed.
Parched, he had to struggle to get the words out. “Wh—what happened?”
“Oh, dear.” The nurse clucked her tongue. “You took quite the hit. Were out for a few days, too. Your memory will come back to you. Give it time.”
“Cassie?” he managed.
“What, dear?”
“Has a woman named C-Cassie come to see me?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. We’ve kept security very tight to make sure you’re safe, darlin’. Only close friends and family and people sent by the team. Absolutely no press.”
No, no, no! This was not what he wanted to hear. He needed to speak to Cassie. Now. “Where’s my phone?”
“You just woke up. Take a few minutes for the swelling to—”
“No, I need my phone. Where is it?”
She clucked her tongue and wagged her finger at Rhett as if he were a child, and not a grown ass man. “First the doctor, then I’ll return your phone.”
He sighed and sank back into the tiny hospital bed. He could barely manage to sit up, let alone get out of bed or defy the doctor’s orders and rush out of the room in search for Cassie.
So that left waiting, and waiting felt like forever.
He didn’t even know how long he’d been out or what had happened since he took that hit. The last thing he remembered was saying goodbye to Cassie at the ranch, but now he was here in the hospital after suffering a brief coma for God knows how many days. He wished he could get some answers. He wished he could get in touch with Cassie somehow, but by the time he finally got his phone back he realized that he’d never actually gotten her number.
Why did he keep making this same mistake? How could he be so stupid when having Cassie in his world meant so, so much?
Well, if he couldn’t call her, he’d drive out and see her. Only why did his legs hurt so bad? The doctor said no more football this season and possib
ly ever, that if he were going to get better he’d have to give it his all. No more football, huh. He’d expected such news to hit him far harder than any defensive lineman ever could, but no. Apparently, he’d found something that meant far more to him than football ever had.
And in that moment, he didn’t really care about getting better, only getting to Cassie.
Where was she?
“Please? Please let me in,” Cassie begged the burly security guards stationed outside of First Memorial Hospital.
“Sorry, Miss. No press, no fans. Otherwise how do you expect Mr. Rockwell to get better in time for our next big game?” He took a zippo lighter out of his pocket and began to play with the flame, shutting it on and off repeatedly, watching the fire dance then collapse rather than looking at Cassie’s angry face.
“But you don’t understand,” she argued. “I’m his girlfriend. At least I think I am.”
At this, he shoved the lighter back into his pocket and finally looked at her. His expression, though, was not friendly.
“Ha! You and a dozen other broads. Move along.”
Three days had passed—three!—and on each of them Cassie had tried to get into the hospital to see Rhett. And each time she had been turned away with laughs and insults. She didn’t even know whether he was okay, whether he was asking for her, or—let’s face it, he had gotten hit pretty hard—whether he remembered her.
Oh, she remembered him though, couldn’t get the thought of his accident out of her mind. That whole afternoon kept replaying on a terrible loop she couldn’t shut off.
Cassie had asked Jenny to stay for the afternoon and watch the game with her. It had felt good to go back to their normal ways, even though the dread of losing the ranch weighed heavily on her heart. The end had come—there was no getting around that. But at least now Cassie could step aside with grace rather than doing everything and having it still not being enough. At least now she knew some good would come from its end.
She’d only hoped Jenny would be okay, that her sister was right about what it would take to heal her marriage.
They needed to keep things light, happy. Their confrontation the night before had taken a lot out of them both. “Hey, Jenn. What weird pregnancy cravings are you having today? I’ll whip some snacks up for the game.”
A huge, guilty smile lit across her sister’s face. “Actually, some good old-fashioned nachos would really hit the spot. Can you add some pickles to them, too?”
“I’ll put them on the side and promise not to throw up while I watch you eat them. Deal?”
They shook on it, the way they always had growing up. It felt so nice to return to that familiarity with Jenny. She’d really missed having her sister around lately.
“Oh, look, the game’s starting.” Cassie popped open a soda and thrust a bottled water into her sister’s lap.
“Oooh, there’s Rhett. He can sure fill out those tight little pants!” Jenny whistled like a wolf in some old cartoon, and Cassie could practically see the drool hanging from her mouth.
“Jenny!”
“What? This ring means I can’t touch. It doesn’t mean I can’t look!”
“You haven’t changed a bit since we were kids. Horn dog.”
They broke apart in a fit of giggles, and Cassie swelled with pride. Rhett did look pretty incredible in his uniform, and somehow this gorgeous specimen of a man had chosen her, Cassie Brown, rancher cowgirl nobody. The thought made her giddy as if she were the class nerd who’d landed the most popular boy in school as her homecoming date.
As they watched the game unfold, Jenny explained all about first downs and yards run in and other football stuff that Cassie had been too busy working to learn for herself. But now that she had a stake in the game, she actually enjoyed watching along. When the quarterback pitched Rhett the ball, she and Jenny jumped to their feet and cheered louder and louder as he approached the end zone. Their cheers came a little too soon, because—Whap! A huge hulking man wearing the opposite team’s colors slammed into Rhett and took him down.
Jenny winced. “That had to hurt.”
“Is it always like this? It seems kind of dangerous.”
“Nah, this is what he trains for. He’ll be okay.” Jenny shook her head, but continued to frown.
Time ticked away in a painfully slow drag, and still Rhett didn’t get up. The referee and coach ran onto the field followed by a team of medics. The announcers’ voices droned on in the background as they tried to guess what had happened, but all Cassie could see was Rhett’s motionless body lying on the field. Her mind went blank, save for one thought—she had to get to him.
Jenny wrapped her arms around her sister. “Cass…” Maybe she was going to say she was sorry. Maybe she was going to say it would be all right. Jenny would never know, because she rushed out of the house without another word. She had to get to Rhett. She had to make sure he would be okay.
And so she’d tried, and tried, and tried. Tried visiting multiple hospitals, tried calling the team’s offices, tried… and failed.
For days she watched the news reports, but they were eerily quiet when it came to his recovery. All she knew for sure was that he was still alive but out for the season. Where was he? Why hadn’t he reached out to her?
Meanwhile things on the ranch had gone from bad to worse. The animals needed her, and the land did, too. As hard as it was, she needed to give up on trying to get to Rhett and start preparing the ranch for its inevitable change in ownership.
She’d made her sister a promise, and now the time had come to deliver. At least this she could control.
Resigned to it all, she placed a call to May Genet. “May, I’m not interested in buying my sister out. I want to sell the whole thing as quickly as possible please… Yes, even if it means taking less than our original asking price. I just need a fresh start. Of course. Thanks for understanding.”
Chapter 10
The day after Rhett woke up, Noah came to visit him in the hospital. Last he’d heard his cousin had moved to South Carolina and proposed to some girl in the Army, and now he was inexplicably here in Rhett’s Texas hospital room.
“What’s happening, cuz?” Noah slapped him on the shoulder as if nothing were the matter, and Rhett appreciated that. He felt enough like a pansy already with the way all the nurses and the sports medicine people buzzed around him as if he were some delicate freaking flower.
Speaking of which, a beautiful dark-haired woman set a vase of carefully arranged flowers near the window, then bent down to give him a hug. “Hi, I’m Taylor. How you feeling today?”
Rhett sighed. He didn’t want to see anyone in this condition, let alone meet new people for the first time. “Like a failure,” he told his cousin. “Like my career is over—like my life is, too.”
“That all?” Noah laughed him off. “C’mon, Rhett. You’ve gotten through worse scrapes than this.”
“Name one,” he challenged.
“Okay, so it’s bad. That doesn’t mean your world is ending. Man up.”
“Noah!” Taylor scolded. “Be nice.”
“Nice isn’t what he needs right now. I’m sure he’s gotten enough of that from every other Tom, Dick, and Sally in this place. What he needs is a bit of tough love. He needs to walk it off.”
Rhett laughed to keep from crying. “Walk it off? Haven’t you heard, I can barely walk at all.” He motioned to the new cane lying beside his bed. “How am I supposed to run if I can’t even keep up a two mile pace on the treadmill? What are you doing here anyway?”
“Well, Mandy and Luke couldn’t get away because of their parenting duties, which made me the next closest Rockwell. Your mom called my mom, it was a whole thing… Next thing I know we’re agreeing to come check in on you even if it is a twelve-hundred mile drive.”
Rhett groaned. Of course, the moms had conspired against him. “As you can see, I’m all in one piece, and that piece is hideously broken.”
He thought of Cassie again, wondered if sh
e’d heard the news about his accident, if she was angry with him, if she’d ever agree to speak to him again.
Noah caught Rhett’s eye, then quirked a curious eyebrow. “This is about that girl, isn’t it?”
“What girl?” Taylor asked with a knowing smile.
“He found his Taylor.”
“And lost her again,” Rhett pointed out.
“So, it is about a girl? Is it the same one Oscar told us about?” Noah smiled to himself, then pulled Taylor into his side and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.
The whole display was so sickeningly sweet, Rhett had to look away. “Well, of course it is, but believe me, I’m not happy about the whole walking thing either. My season is over. I’ll be lucky if I can get back in the game at all.”
“Okay, drama king.” Noah rolled his eyes. “Don’t change the topic.”
Taylor pulled away from her fiancé and scooted a chair over so she could sit beside Rhett’s bed. “Yeah, we want to hear all about this woman who’s stolen your heart.”
Rhett smiled despite himself. Already he could see how Taylor kept his rowdy cousin in line. Love looked good on both of them, and love was what Rhett needed for himself if he were ever to recover.
“Cassie,” he answered on a slow exhale. Her name still felt so sweet, so pure coming from his lips. “She’s this gorgeous rancher with as much spit and vinegar as I’ve ever seen in any football player, let alone a woman. She’s strong, sassy, beautiful. And, I don’t know, just kind of perfect.”
“And she likes you, too?”
He shrugged. “She did. The docs told me I was out for a few days there and that no one by the name of Cassie stopped by to see me. I woke up yesterday, found I still don’t have her number, and no one is willing to help me get in touch with her. The team won’t even let me have Wi-Fi in here, said they need to keep things as private as possible, but I feel like they’ve made me a prisoner.”
The Alaska Sunrise Romances: A 9-Book Sweet Romance Collection Page 41
