The Bull Rider's Homecoming

Ruby opened her file folder with an infuriatingly clinical air. “Left leg, nerve root injury close to the spinal cord. Concussion, loss of consciousness at the time of injury. Ongoing symptoms include loss of muscle strength and neuropathy.”

Luke despised the clinical terms they used—why couldn’t they just say that a mean bull threw him against a fence at an event in Montana, knocked him out, and busted up his back. He remembered the ride, but any memory of the grisly fall came from video tape—he only woke up afterward in an ambulance with several panicked people poking and asking urgent questions.

“How would you rate your current level of pain?”

She’d have read every page of his file, so she knew that was a trick question. This new Ruby Sheldon wasn’t playing nice. “Ain’t nothin’,” he drawled, omitting the wink he usually gave the buckle bunnies. Those pretty, love-struck rodeo fans usually cooed and pouted over his collection of bruises and scratches after a show. They’d showed up at the hospital the first two days, then trickled off as the tour moved on.

Her eyes narrowed, and she clicked her pen. “On a scale of one to ten, please.” He had to admit to a shred of surprise that she could produce such a hard shell in his presence. Maybe hate really was more powerful than love, like Dad always said.

“Point-five.”

“Do you have difficulty with any limbs other than the involved leg?”

He sat back against the couch cushions. “I’ve been told all of me works just fine.”

That irritated her—those kinds of lines always did. She stood up and put her hands on her hips.

“Stand up.”

He glared at her. “You know, I believe I’m fine right here.”

Something shot through her eyes, a stubbornness that surprised him. “Stand up. I’m not going to be scared off, so how long this takes is entirely up to you. Let’s try standing for eight seconds. That ought to be a time frame you know well.”

Eight seconds. The length of a qualifying bull ride. Whenever she’d worried about how much risk or pain was involved in bull riding—which had been often—he’d always said, “Honey, I can take anything for eight seconds.” He hadn’t expected her to use their history against him.

Luke Buckton had burned a heap of bridges on his way out of this tiny town, and now it felt as if he was going to have to fight to keep the pile of ashes from rising up and choking him.

* * *

Ruby made herself look straight at Luke as he pulled his long body up off the couch. He was trying hard to hide every single weakness—physical and otherwise—but she wouldn’t allow it. I’m as stubborn as you are, Luke Buckton. And I have just as much riding on this as you do. Lana was right; success with a high profile client like him would bolster business. But right now, Ruby mostly just wanted to show Luke up. Who’s stronger now, cowboy?

She spied a straight-backed chair up against the wall and dragged it to his side. “Hold on to this and put all your weight on your good leg.”

Luke shot her a look, and she suspected he was concocting some remark about all of him being more than good, but he simply grabbed the chair and rocked back on one hip as if leaning against a bar in an Old West saloon.

“Raise your left leg as far as you can and hold it there, please.”

Effort tightened the corners of his cocky smile. He got the injured leg up about as far as his knees, and she noticed a tremor near the top.

“Like the boots?” He pointed toward his expensive-looking cowboy boots. Ruby guessed they cost as much as her used car. “Custom work. Gift from a sponsor.”

“Very nice,” she replied. “Take them off.”

“What?”

“I can hardly see how your ankle rotates if you’ve got it locked up inside all that fine, hand-tooled leather now, can I?”

He frowned. “None of the other gals made me take off my boots.”

Ruby wasn’t backing down. “None of the other therapists,” she emphasized the correction in terms, “got that far before you drove them off.”

There was a long, prickly pause before he said, “I can’t.”

It must have cost him to say that. His bitter tone made her hair stand on edge. He looked like a porcupine, defensive spines sticking out in all directions, warning the world to keep its distance.

Her heart twisted at the anguish she wondered if only she could see. Luke was deeply hurting, but scrambling to keep it hidden. It gave her only one way forward: if she was going to treat him, she’d have to meet his defenses head-on.

But this was Luke. Luke with those eyes and all that history. Ruby made herself hold his gaze despite the monster-sized flip it caused in her stomach. “You can’t what?” she asked as directly as she knew how. Do not back down.

He stared at her for a long moment. “I can’t get ’em on and off without...help.”

The last word stuck, as if he’d had to drag it up from some pit to say it out loud.

Cowboys pulled their boots off every day. Most did it without even thinking, either heel-to-toe or with a fancy little hook-like gizmo set up beside many Texan doorways. Way back, she’d seen Luke do it hundreds of times. Of course, such maneuvers required standing on one leg—something Ruby was pretty sure Luke could no longer do.

Ruby carefully turned the straight chair so that the seat faced forward. If getting him to receive help came in the form of this near standoff just to remove his boots, then this was as good a place as any to start.

Grace. Was she strong enough to extend grace to the man who had hurt her so deeply back then? The moment suddenly struck her as equally important to her as it was to him. If she claimed to come as far as she had from the teenager Luke had left behind, the proof would come in what she did next.

Slowly, Ruby kneeled down at the foot of the chair and motioned for Luke to sit. “Well, then, help it is.”

The gesture startled him—she watched the astonishment flash across his features before he hid them behind that famous grin. A deep resolve settled into place under her breastbone, the same resolve that had gotten her through all her therapist schooling with record speed and exemplary grades despite a mountain of obstacles.

She folded her hands in her lap and stared up at him. I’ll sit here for an hour if that’s what it takes, Luke. I expect you know that. I expect that’s why I’m here. So come on, cowboy, what’s it gonna be?

The long, tall body still held an athlete’s lines. The take-on-the-world planes of his shoulders, the try-and-stop-me set of his jaw. And yet, despite his strength and determination, all his features seemed to tip on the knife’s edge of a man in doubt. Ruby found herself doing what she’d never thought she’d do again: praying for Luke Buckton.

Slowly—excruciatingly slowly and with all the ferocity of a bull fixing to charge—Luke sat down.

Chapter Three (#u469d60a5-5bb2-5165-bc90-08a27085c2e4)

Ruby drove a bit down the road before she eased her little car to the shoulder. She let out the breath she’d been holding since pulling the guesthouse door shut behind her and allowed her head to sink against the steering wheel.

The longest hour of my life.

Once Luke sat down, Ruby had expected things to smooth out. Having broken down the barrier and earned that one shred of compliance, she’d expected to gain more.

She’d forgotten who she was dealing with.

Oh, she’d gotten the boot off all right—albeit with a comical sequence of yanks and tugs—to expose the injured foot. When she asked him to use that foot, to show her his range of motion with the ankle or anything else, Luke turned mean. His frustration nearly darkened the room, it was so intense.

Luke had always had a temper—it was probably half of what made him such a good rider. Something came over him when he got angry, a laser-sharp focus and determination that plowed through anything standing in his way. He’d spent most of his teenage years angry, primarily at his father, and that anger had driven him not just to succeed but to excel. Now that anger was directed at his own body, which made it much more vicious as it spilled out onto anyone foolish enough to be in range. Lord, Ruby sent up a moan of a prayer, he’s a wounded animal—twice as mean and four times as dangerous.

It wasn’t as if Ruby didn’t know how to handle an ornery patient. Difficult patients were, in fact, a specialty of hers. Lana said, “Your greatest talent is seeing through the hard actions to the wounded soul beneath.” When Lana grafted Ruby into her agency, setting up Martins Gap Physical Therapy as an affiliated partnership of Lana’s own practice in Austin, she’d said it was because of Ruby’s gifts. “You always find the one gesture that will open up a crack in the walls patients build around themselves.” Ruby could always find a crack and pry it open.

Today that gift felt more like a curse. The true torment of the last hour wasn’t Luke’s behavior—that was just a coping mechanism, the battle weapon of a man at the end of his rope.

No, her real problem was her ability to see through him. To peer under the gleam of the brilliant shell he showed the world and see a man who wasn’t sure he could pull off the recovery he needed. A massive cauldron of doubt and pain boiled under that cocky disregard. She’d seen it for just a moment as he sat down, but within minutes of that glimpse he’d slammed the shell back on with the ferocity of the bull bison who wandered the Blue Thorn pastures.