That Burke Man

“My wife Meg’ll teach you if you want to learn,” Tim said, volunteering his wife with a grin. “She likes young people. Never had any kids of our own, so she takes up with other people’s. When you’ve settled, come on over to the house. We’ll have sandwiches and something to drink.”

“How’s Miss Parker?” Cherry asked.

Tim grimaced. “Lying down. She’s not well. I’ve called the doctor.” He shook his head. “I told her not to get on that horse, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Never could do anything with her, even when she was a youngster. It took her papa to hold her back, but he’s gone now.”

“She had no business on that horse,” Todd said, pointedly.

“That was a bad attack of pride,” Tim told him. “Some newspaperman wrote a column about the rodeo and mentioned that poor Jane Parker would probably come out to accept the plaque for her father in a wheelchair, because she was crippled now.”

Todd’s face hardened. “Which paper was it in?”

“That little weekly they publish in Jacobsville,” he said with a grimace. “She took it to heart. I told her it was probably that Sikes kid who just started doing sports. He’s fresh out of journalism school and fancies himself winning a Pulitzer for covering barrel racing. Huh!” he scoffed.

Todd mentally stored the name for future reference. “Will the doctor come out?”

“Sure!” the wizened little man assured him. “His dad was Jane’s godfather. They’re great friends. He has an assistant now, though—a female doctor named Lou. She might come instead.” He chuckled. “They don’t see eye to eye on anything. Amazing how they manage a practice between them.”

“The doctor isn’t married?”

He shook his head. “He was sweet on Jane, but after the accident, she cut him dead if he so much as smiled at her. That was just before Lou went into practice with him. Jane doesn’t want to get involved, she says.”

“She won’t always be in that chair,” Todd murmured as they walked toward the house.

“No. But she’ll always have pain when she overdoes things, and she won’t ride well enough for competition again.”

“That’s what she told Cherry.”

Tim gave him a wary glance. “You won’t hurt her?” he asked bluntly.

Todd smiled. “She’s very attractive, and I like her spirit, but I’ve had a bad marriage and I don’t want to risk another failure. I don’t get serious about women anymore. And I’m not coldhearted enough to play around with Jane.”

Tim sighed. “Thanks. I needed to hear that. She’s more vulnerable than she realizes right now. I’m not related to her, but in a lot of ways, I’m the only family she’s got—well, Meg and me.”

“She’s a lucky woman,” Todd replied.

He shrugged. “Not so lucky, or she wouldn’t be in that chair, would she?”

They walked up onto the porch, avoiding the broken step. “Meant to fix that, but I never get time,” Tim murmured. “Now that you’re here to tear your hair out over the books, maybe I’ll be able to get a few odds and ends done.”

“I can help, if you need me,” he volunteered. “I do woodwork for a hobby.”

“Do you!” Tim’s face brightened. “There’s a woodworking shop in the back of the barn. We built it years ago for her dad. He made all the furniture in the house. She’ll like having it in use again.”

“Are you sure?” he asked doubtfully.

“You can always ask her.”

They walked into the living room. Jane was lying on the sofa, putting up a brave front even though her face was stark white with the effort. Cherry was curled up in an armchair beside the sofa, her cheek on her folded arms, listening raptly to her idol.

“Doctor should be here soon,” Tim told Jane. He paused to pat her gently on the shoulder. “Hang on, kid.”

She smiled at him, and laid her hand briefly over the one on her shoulder. “Thanks, Tim. What would I do without you?”

“Let’s agree never to find out,” he returned drily.

“Okay.” She glanced toward Todd Burke. The expression on his lean face made her angry. “I’m not a cripple,” she said belligerently.

He knelt by the sofa and pushed back a strand of her hair. It was wet, not with sweat, but with tears she’d shed involuntarily as the pain bit into her. He felt more protective about her than he could understand.

“Don’t you have something to take?”

“Yes,” she said, shaken by his concern. “But it isn’t working.”

He tucked the strand of hair behind her small, pretty ear and smiled. “Guess why?”

She made a face. “I wouldn’t have tried to ride out into the arena if it hadn’t been for that damned reporter,” she said gruffly. “He called me a cripple!”

“Cherry and I will rush right in to town and beat the stuffing out of him for you.”

That brought a pained smile to her face. “Cover him in ink and wrap him up in his newspaper and hang him from a printing press.”

“They don’t have printing presses anymore,” Cherry said knowledgeably. “Everything’s cold type now…offset printing.”

Jane’s blue eyes widened. “My, my, you are a well-spring of information!” she said, impressed.

Cherry grinned smugly. “One of my new teachers used to work for a newspaper. Now he teaches English.”

“She knows everything,” Todd said with a resigned air. “Just ask her.”

“Not everything, Dad.” She chuckled. “I don’t know how to do barrel-racing turns.”

“I hear a car,” Tim said, glancing out the window. “It’s him.”

Todd frowned at the way Jane’s eyes fell when he looked into them. Did she have mixed feelings about the doctor and was trying to hide it? Maybe Tim had been wrong and Jane had been sweet on the doctor, not the other way around.

Todd got to his feet as a tall man with red hair came into the room, carrying a black bag. He was dressed in a nice gray Western-cut suit with a white shirt and a black string tie. Boots, too. He removed a pearl gray Stetson from his head, and tossed it onto the counter. Pale blue eyes swept the room, lingering on Todd Burke, who stared back, unsmiling.

“This is Dr. Jebediah Coltrain,” Tim introduced the tall, slim man. “When he was younger, everybody used to call him Copper.”

“They don’t anymore. Not without a head start,” the doctor said. He didn’t smile, either.

“This is Todd Burke and his daughter, Cherry,” Tim said, introducing them. “Todd’s going to take over the book work for us.”

Coltrain didn’t say much. He gave Todd a piercing stare that all but impaled him before he nodded curtly, without offering a hand in greeting. He was less reserved with Cherry, if that faint upturn of his thin lips was actually a smile.

“Well, what fool thing have you done this time?” Coltrain asked Jane irritably. “Gone riding, I guess?”

She glared at him through waves of pain. “I wasn’t going to let them push me out into that arena in a wheelchair,” she said furiously. “Not after what that weasel of a sports reporter wrote about me!”