Page 45 of The Cowboy Comes Home

He could use some cooling off right at this moment, but he didn’t think getting soaking wet with Emily would be wise. And the images that shot through his mind then took some beating down.

“Why don’t we come back some day when there’s not a bunch of people back at the barn,” he suggested.

“Oh. Yeah. I kinda forgot.”

“Gotta love the selective awareness of childhood,” Emily murmured, and this time he was the one who laughed.

She dropped down, easily, to sit at the edge of the water, watching Jeremy and the two dogs. He took a breath and did the same, carefully, jaw tight until he made it. Only when he was settled did he realize she’d noticed.

Feeling pressured to explain, he said gruffly, “Couple of parts don’t work together like they used to.”

She looked surprised. “I didn’t realize you still had trouble.”

He gave her a half-shrug. This was not something he talked about. Not even to the gently probing Lily Highwater had he talked about the long-lingering consequences.

“I assume this is an aftereffect of that last bull ride?”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry it still causes you problems. Of course, I was amazed you were back on your feet at all, let alone as fast as you were.”

He gave her a sideways look. “It felt like forever to me.”

She looked slightly discomfited, although he hadn’t meant it as a slam. “I’m sure it did. I can’t imagine the pain you must have been in.”

He grimaced, but couldn’t seem to stop himself from going on, about this thing he never spoke of. “It was…bad. Especially at first. But it finally settled into just a low-level ache all the time. Something I could work through. And eventually it either ebbed, or I got used to it. By then it was mostly being tired. Years of not having any energy.”

“Because your body was using all it had to heal.”

“So they told me.” He sighed. “I used to wonder, if I brought it on myself. If I got too cocky after those four wins.”

“Second-guessing, the ever-present downside of being a risk-taker,” she said, sounding painfully familiar with the feeling.

“You, too?” He could only imagine what she might have had to second-guess in her career. But he probably should imagine it, often. It would help him keep a safe distance between them.

“I’ve had a few occasions. But I have to say, I admired you for the way you came back. Even more than for the championships.”

That surprised him. But before he could say something stupid, he heard a loud splash and his head snapped around, afraid he was going to have to dive in after Jeremy. He relaxed when he saw the boy was just splashing the dogs, who were biting at the flying water playfully.

He turned and only then realized Emily had been on her feet, ready to do the same. On her feet much faster than he could have managed it. That old sour feeling bit at him. It usually didn’t bother him much. He’d adapted, knew what not to try. But somehow this stung, that Emily…

His own thoughts trailed off as he realized he was thinking about it wrong. That it wasn’t pretty, sweet Emily who beat him to her feet, it was Officer Stratton—trained, fit, and proactive.

“Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I forget you’re a cop for a second or two.”

She studied him for a moment before she said, her head tilted thoughtfully, “In a way, it’s kind of like what you had to do. Living with that low-level reminder, constantly. Just like that ache is always there, down deep, for you, being a cop is there for me. It makes me look at things differently than most people, see something and mentally prepare for what could go wrong, for what I might need to do in response.”

He stared at her, processing what she’d said. It made so much sense he was a little astonished he hadn’t thought about it that way. “I…get that,” he said with a slow nod.

She smiled at him, and he felt as if he’d won another of those fancy belt buckles he had stashed away back in L.A. “And in a way,” she said, “what you did was a lot more likely to get you hurt than what I do. But you kept riding, kept competing.”

“Until I did get hurt? Yeah, I did. I had to.” He hesitated, then admitted the truth. “Rodeo was…the only thing that kept me going.”

“So you didn’t think about getting hurt, or worse?”

“I didn’t worry about it,” he corrected. He didn’t want to say what came to his mind next, but as had happened before with her, he couldn’t seem to shut up. “Because…I felt like I didn’t have much to lose. Life when I wasn’t competing sucked. So if I got killed, oh well. Sometimes I even wished for it.”

She stared at him for a long, silent moment, while he sat there beyond stunned that he’d said it. He hadn’t admitted all that to anyone, not even Jackson. And here he was, telling this woman he’d spent at most maybe three or four hours with?

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