“It’s good to see you again, Jenna.”
He smiled warmly, and she could understand why a gaggle of buckle bunnies always vied for his attention.
“You, too. Although I see you on TV all the time at the bull riding events or … or …” She lost her train of thought for a moment. “But this arrangement is going to be … different.”
Jenna could hear the quiver in her voice, and wondered why seeing Dustin up close and personal was unnerving her.
“I guess you’re stuck with me,” he said.
She pulled her hand away from his. Maybe then she’d relax. “I—I guess I am,” she blurted anxiously. Then, realizing what she said, she tempered her statement. “But you need help, and Tom said that you’re going to oversee the ranch, so that’ll help out. Besides, Andy is over-the-top thrilled that you’re going to be here.”
“It’ll be fun to spend time with the little cowboy,” he said.
She avoided his eyes and stared down at his cast and crutches. “I am sorry that you hurt your ankle. Cowabunga walked all over you.”
He pushed back his cowboy hat with his thumb. “Thanks. It wasn’t my best dismount, but I got lucky. It could have been a lot worse.”
Jenna shuddered. “You did get lucky.”
He shrugged. “You know what they say about bull riding—it’s not when you’ll get hurt, but how bad and how often.”
An awkward pause hung in the air between them. Were they doomed to make innocuous small talk the entire summer?
“Let’s go inside so you can sit down,” she said. “I’ll get your duffel.”
“I can get it,” he said quickly, scooping it up from the ground and then trying to get his crutches over the threshold.
She moved closer. “What can I do to help you?”
“Nothing. I can do it myself.” She heard the edge in his voice.
What was she supposed to do to assist him? He seemed put out that she even offered to help.
They’d better figure out a way to exist in harmony. Didn’t he understand that, for the most part, they’d be living together? She’d have to watch out for him, cook for him, do his laundry and help him get around on those crutches.
Would she have to help him bathe, too?
Her face heated in embarrassment and her heart raced at the thought of seeing Dustin Morgan naked.
Well, she’d wanted adventure and excitement, didn’t she?
The cast was so awkward! It felt like he was lugging around an extra thirty pounds of dead weight. To make things worse, his duffel slipped off his shoulder, slid down his arm and crutch, and hit the floor of the porch.
He struggled to pick up the damn thing.
Jenna offered to help, but there was no way he wanted to impose on her—a woman that he barely knew but had adored from afar since high school. No way.
And there was that damn promise he’d made to Tom niggling at the back of his mind. Was this Tom’s idea of a joke, having Jenna and him live together for several weeks? Or didn’t Tom remember their conversation in the ambulance when Tom had saved Dustin’s life?
Dustin remembered it very clearly.
“Thanks for saving my life, partner. I didn’t see that bull heading for me. I owe you big-time,” Dustin said.
“Forget it. You’d do the same to me. And the only thing you owe me is your promise.”
Dustin held his breath. He knew what was coming.
“My sister. I see you looking at her.” Tom winced in pain. “She’s … not as … experienced as you are. She’s been protected her whole life, first by my parents, then by me. You’re like a brother, but you love the women too much. You’ll hurt her, you know. And you know, you’ll never be around for her, riding the circuit. She deserves someone who’ll be home all the time.”
Dustin looked at Jenna waiting for him to enter the house. He’d rather cut off his riding arm than hurt her, but his friend was right about him never being there for her—not when he was still riding—and he figured he had several good years left in him yet.
So Dustin renewed his promise to stay away from Jenna. But, again, maybe Tom had forgotten about it, or why else would he have asked him to stay at the ranch knowing that Jenna would be there?
As if on cue, Jenna snatched the duffel from him, and held the door open, giving him a wide berth to maneuver inside the living room.
Damn. He hated feeling like an invalid.
He should have holed up in his apartment, done things for himself. But the surgeon who’d operated told him that if he took it easy, he’d heal quicker, and he’d return to the PBR quicker.
That was his goal. He was poised to win the PBR World Finals in Vegas, and that was just what he was going to do. With the money he’d win, he could hang up his spurs and finally settle down on a ranch of his own.
That’s what he’d been saving for all these years on the road. His own spread.
But first, he had to heal, and Tom had convinced him that this was the best place for him. Maybe it was—but being with Jenna 24/7 was a bonus.
“Uncle Dustin! Uncle Dustin!”
Andy came running into the living room of the Santa Fe-style house and stopped two feet from where Dustin had collapsed into a side chair and stretched out his leg.
“Hey, partner! How’ve you been?” He held out his hand, and Andy shook it. “It’s been a long time.”
“I see you on TV all the time, you and my dad. Oh, and J.R., and Skeeter, and Cody and Robson and Adriano and—”
Dustin laughed as Andy named the entire roster of riders. The boy couldn’t be cuter. His eyes were bright blue, his hair sandy and he was probably taller than other kids his age. But ever since his mother had left, the spark had faded a bit from the boy’s eyes.
“I think you’ve gotten taller,” Dustin said.
Andy grinned. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
As Andy read what his father and some of the other riders had written on Dustin’s cast, the cowboy eyed Jenna, who was sitting on the couch opposite him.
She was more beautiful than he remembered, all wholesome and not made up like the buckle bunnies he often met on the circuit. Her blond hair tickled her chin, and turquoise stones dangled from her ears.
He glanced at his duffel. It barely had enough clothes for two days. He’d only packed it for the Albuquerque bull riding, not for a stay in the hospital or for a long stay at Tom’s ranch. Beside it lay his crutches.
“I need to go shopping. All my clothes are in my apartment in Tubac,” he said mostly to himself.
“You live in Tubac? The artist colony?” Jenna asked wide-eyed.
“Yep. That Tubac.” He lived two floors above a shop that sold various types of jewelry, pottery and paintings.
“I’d be glad to drive you to your apartment,” Jenna said.
“I don’t want to impose on you any more.”
Tubac was an hour’s drive from Tucson. Maybe he could pay one of the ranch hands to drive him there and get some of his stuff.
He didn’t tell Jenna that he painted western scenes—riders on bucking bulls