Head lolling crazily, Jett gripped it with both hands and steadied the wobbling. “Nope, sorry, can’t do it. I promised Melissa…”
For once in her career Becka was actually glad to see a patient pass out. Jett and his women were legend, and she really didn’t care to hear about the latest flame.
While lifting his feet onto the wheelchair’s foot support, she saw what she’d missed before.
“Good grief.” Dropping to her knees beside the chair, she yanked a pair of bandage scissors from her uniform pocket.
“What?” Jackson squatted beside her.
“No wonder he passed out when his feet touched the floor.”
Quickly cutting Jett’s jean leg up the inner seam, she exposed the dark-muscled knee and thigh. The notion flickered through her head that he would be this rich tan color all over his body, a notion she squelched instantly. Jett needed her expertise, not her admiration, though heaven knew it was hard not to admire such an athletic, blatantly masculine body. Her husband’s body had been like this, all hard-cut muscle without an ounce of fat.
But even Chris’s perfect, athlete’s physique hadn’t been strong enough to stand up against the damage she’d unwittingly done it.
The familiar pain of guilt and loss twisted in her stomach. She glued her attention to Jett’s injury. She could help Jett. She couldn’t do a thing to help Chris. Not now. Not even then.
To her dismay, Jett’s knee looked more like a softball than a body part. Gently running expert fingers over the hot, misshapen flesh, Becka chastised herself for missing so obvious an injury. She hadn’t handled anything right today. Between the worry over her car, the nagging fear for her son’s safety, and these unwanted reminders of her dead husband, she wasn’t thinking straight at all.
“Oh, man,” Jackson murmured. “The bull must have stepped on him.”
“This had to hurt. Didn’t he complain?”
Jackson shrugged. “Cowboys believe if you’re still breathin’ you ain’t hurt.”
“Then why’d you bring him to the E.R.?”
A grin split the big man’s face. “I didn’t want him to quit breathin’.”
Becka shot him an exasperated look.
“The doctor will have to X-ray him and probably do a scan to say for certain, but I’ve seen this kind of injury before. He won’t ride on this knee for a while.”
“Jett won’t like that. He’s only a few rodeos away from the big show.”
“Excuse me?”
“Vegas. Jett’s never made it to the National Finals, but he has a shot this year. A few more rodeos, a few more points, and he’s eligible.”
Becka gave him a doubtful twitch of one eyebrow. “I don’t like to rain on anyone’s parade….”
“That bad, huh?”
“I’m afraid it could be.”
They both stared at the unconscious patient. One with sympathetic eyes. The other with thoughts that the idiot would be better off in traction than to risk his life on the back of a Brahma bull.
Jett awakened that evening with the mother of all headaches. Turning only his eyes because his brain undulated like the curves of a belly dancer, he spotted an overhead television, a bedside table and a wheelchair. He eased his eyelids down again, waited two beats and tried again. He could not be where he thought he was.
“A hospital?” He ran a thick tongue over dry lips. His mouth tasted like the floor of a rodeo arena.
From the corner Jackson unwound his big body from a miserable-looking plastic chair. “You awake?”
“Must be talking in my sleep. I can’t be in a hospital.”
“Rattlesnake Municipal. At least for tonight.”
A little quiver of relief shuddered through him. He was only here for the night. He must not be hurt too badly. Tomorrow he and Jacks would be back on the road. With a win in Odessa tomorrow night, he’d be one rodeo closer to the NFR.
“Did you bring me in here?”
“Yep. But Colt will be back in the morning to take you to Amarillo.”
“Colt?” Jett frowned. What did his brother have to do with anything? “Amarillo?” Jackson was talking in riddles. Maybe he’d been the one to get his head dinged. “We’re riding in Odessa tomorrow night, not Amarillo.”
The brown door swished open and the tiniest redheaded nurse Jett could imagine whipped into the room. If she hadn’t been wearing pink scrubs and a name badge that said, B. Washburn, RN, Jett would have sworn she was a little kid.
She bent over his knee, turning her backside in his direction.
Nope, he thought with an appreciative grin. This one’s definitely not a kid. He was in the midst of a rather nice perusal of her other petite but womanly assets when she laid an ice pack against his leg.
Pain, violent enough to be rated F5 in the tornado world, shot from his kneecap to his head and rattled around inside his brain long enough to make him forget his name.
He clamped down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep his big mouth from squealing like a stuck hog. He’d had pain before, didn’t really even mind pain that much since it was an expected part of his job, but this wasn’t regular pain. This was hot-metal-in-the-eye pain. Steel-toed-boot-in-the-groin pain. Hold-me-down-and-stomp-my-nose pain.
The little nurse looked up with sympathetic eyes. “Would you like me to ask Dr. Clayton if you can have something for the pain?”
“Pain?” he grunted, sucking in air through his teeth. “I don’t need anything for pain. What I need is my pants.”
She cast a sideways glance at Jackson who looked way too serious. And Jacks was not a serious kind of guy. All of a sudden, Jett had a real bad feeling.
“Did something terrible happen to my pants?”
Jackson laughed. “Yeah. She cut ’em off.”
“She did?” The dynamite blast in his leg had subsided a little. He managed a lascivious grin in the nurse’s direction. “And what did she do to me while I was helpless and naked?”
B. Washburn, RN, never even blushed. Guys must come on to someone as cute as she was all the time.
Was that what he was doing? Coming on to her?
Nah. He couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted right now with the NFR within reach. But she was cute.
Maybe later.
“So how am I going to get out of here without any pants?”
A cute little dip formed between Nurse Washburn’s eyes. “Don’t you remember talking to Dr. Clayton?”
That bad feeling came back, stronger this time. He cast a glance toward Jackson, who once more wore a troubled expression.
“’Fraid not. What’s up?”
“We’re sending you to Amarillo tomorrow to an orthopedic surgeon.”
“For a headache?” He refused to think about that teensy-weensy twinge in his knee.
“At the very least, you have a severed ACL that will require surgery.”
“How bad?” He looked to his partner for reassurance, but Jackson got that hang-dog look again.
Ignoring the incessant school of sharks ripping through his kneecap, he thought he’d better listen to Miss