Jo Lena Speirs sat her horse on top of the hill and let him blow. She loved this spot overlooking the entrance to the Rocking M. The river bridge glinted in the dying sunlight, far up the narrow highway, and the bluffs on the other side of it lifted green trees to the sky.
“This is getting to be our routine, isn’t it, Scooter?” she said, patting his sweaty neck. “Prayers at the old chapel, and then a nice run across the Rocking M before dark.”
Which, to be honest, was what was keeping her sane. Trying to be a mother without a husband, a business owner without employees and a daughter without siblings kept her busy every minute.
She’d already prayed this prayer at the chapel, but she said it again, her heart filled with gratitude.
“Bless Bobbie Ann, Lord. Bless her for offering this horse and this place of peace to me.”
An old truck and trailer slowed on the highway and turned off onto the Rocking M road. Idly, she watched it. Dexter Hawkins, Bobbie Ann’s old neighbor.
Strangely, Dexter didn’t follow the road toward the house. He pulled across the entrance and stopped. He must be having trouble. With a truck that old, anything could be wrong.
Jo Lena touched the cell phone she wore on her belt—Dexter, famous for his stinginess, certainly wouldn’t have one. She’d ride down there and offer to call for help.
But as she picked up her reins and started to turn, the passenger door to the truck opened. The instant the man stepped foot on the ground, even though he wore a battered hat pulled down, she knew him.
Monte. Monte McMahan. The only man she’d ever loved.
Even though he was stove up and stiff, she’d have known him by the way he moved. She’d have known him in a dust storm, in the dark or in a blizzard.
She’d have known him by the way her heart left her body.
Her eyes strained toward him painfully through the gathering dusk, hungrily watching him limp toward the back of the trailer. Her whole body had gone weak as water.
But the real trouble was her heart. It was pounding like hoofbeats at a gallop—except that her heart had really leapt out of her chest and left her far behind.
It had wrapped itself around Monte. He looked so sore and so completely defeated that she couldn’t stand it. Just the sight of him was breaking her apart all over again.
Dear Lord, You’re going to have to help me now. Please, please, help me remember everything Monte did wrong.
He had done her mightily wrong and she had done everything right. Her mind knew that. But there went her heart, anyway, welcoming him home as if her choice had been wrong and his had been right.
Yes. There went her heart.
And then, when he painfully held on to the trailer and pushed himself up onto the fender so he could crawl onto the horse, he wrenched her very soul. He took her hard-won peace that had been six years in the making.
It wasn’t just that he was physically hurt. Or that it killed her to see the hopeless set to his shoulders.
It was simply that he was Monte and she loved him.
She’d thought the fire was long since cold, but there were embers hidden in the ashes. She still loved him.
Dear Lord, give me strength. With Your help, I can handle that. What I can’t handle is getting involved with him again.
But that, too, was a forlorn hope. At that instant she recognized the horse he was riding at that painfully slow walk.
The mare was heavier—maybe pregnant—and scruffier, but she knew her, too, by the way she moved. It was Quick Way Annie, favorite friend of her childhood. The horse she’d been trying to find.
Her mind raced in circles. Had Monte heard, somehow, that she was searching for Annie? Had he bought her for Jo Lena, maybe to apologize, to try to make amends for leaving her without a word of goodbye?
All breath left her body. Monte had brought back her long-lost mare. He intended to get involved with her.
Monte gritted his teeth against the slight jarring of the mare’s soft steps and gripped her mane to stay on. His body ached to fall forward and stretch out along her neck, but riding that way would hurt even more. He’d just have to hold on.
He tried to get his mind off his pain.
Soon as he rested up a little, he had to get back in shape. Why, Dexter, old and slow as he was, had had the mare out of the trailer before Monte could even get to the door.
And he’d be in the back room at Hugo’s playing dominoes with the rest of the old men if he didn’t watch it. However, right now, with the pain pounding him like a hammer on an anvil, that sounded pretty good. Maybe he should’ve stayed in the hospital until the doctor let him out.
He was stiff as starched jeans and hurting like crazy. All he wanted was to crawl into a cool, dark place, ease his wreck of a body down and sleep for a week.
He jerked his mind away from that. Not yet. Not yet. He’d be horribly sore tomorrow if he slept out on the damp ground. If only he could avoid seeing anyone tonight.
Dexter never had been much of a talker. He’d been a neighbor to the Rocking M since before Monte was born, but he’d not be likely to call Bobbie Ann or Clint tonight to tell them about Monte being home.
Of course, sometime tomorrow they’d hear by the grapevine that he was back in the Hill Country. By then, he might be able to handle it, but not now.
Tonight all he wanted was to get into a bed of some kind, unheard and unseen.
A prodigal son needed to face one thing at a time when he returned, and for today this prodigal had already dealt with old friends and neighbors at the Bandera Cutting Horse Sale, the surprising sight of Jo Lena’s old mare, Quick Way Annie, on the auction block, and the shock of the feelings roused in him by being even this close to home.
Tears stung his eyes. The arched sign with the Rocking M brand in the middle had torn at him, but this familiar long, curving road with the pecan grove on his left and the bluffs rising to the right ripped away all his defenses. He was home.
For the first time in six years, with dusk falling around him, he was home.
Here he was, the great Monte McMahan, four-time champion of the Professional Bull Riding circuit, sneaking into his lair to recuperate from these injuries that had taken his life away.
Unsure of his welcome from his brothers, loaded with guilt at the sorrow he’d caused his mother and sisters, he was home.
Well, if he had to, he could camp out by the river and eat fish. Anything. Anything but more motels and more greasy spoon diners. Those he could not face anymore.
At the last curve before he could see the main house, he reined the mare off the road. They cut across behind the indoor arena and Manuel’s house, headed for the river. Everything was quiet. Evening feeding was done, everybody had gone to supper.
The thought of food repelled Monte’s stomach, which was sick from the pain. The mare didn’t need to be fed, either, since she was used to being on pasture, the seller had said. He would put her in that five-acre lot behind the old bunkhouse and put himself inside it, assuming there were no hired hands staying there.
A door slammed somewhere and the faint sound of voices floated from the direction of the main barn on the still evening air, but no one saw him and he and Annie plodded on through the shadows of the trees to the river. Its murmuring soothed him a little as they moved upstream, passed behind the guest house and then saw that the old bunkhouse stood dark. At its back door, he dropped the bag to the ground, eased one leg over and carefully dismounted, his teeth clenched against the pain of the landing.
When