Luke Buckton stood on the porch of the Blue Thorn Ranch, his childhood home, disgusted at how he needed to grip the handrail to keep his balance.
Pain came with a life spent trying to stay on top of 1,700 pounds of bucking bull. Every bull rider knew pain went with the territory. Bull riding was dangerous—that’s what made it exciting. And profitable, if done right. Sure, you got hurt—everyone got hurt—but you “cowboyed up” after an injury and got back in there, period. Luke hadn’t come close to winning the Touring Pro Series championship by paying attention to pain. He ignored it.
The numbness he fought now? That was a whole other kind of enemy. It messed with his mind and defied submission. Luke could ride in pain, could win in pain—he had, in fact, on dozens of occasions. Now, he couldn’t always tell where his leg ended and the ground began. He could think “stand” but couldn’t feel it, even when he was standing. That threatened his career worse than the largest, meanest bull on earth.
It made him mad. And the anger and frustration made him mean to just about everyone, including his grandmother who’d just come up behind him.
“How are you feeling?” Gran asked as she approached him with a cup of coffee. He’d left six years ago in such a fury of pride and defiance—and had returned home so full of bitterness and dissatisfaction—that he couldn’t quite understand how Gran found it possible to be nice to him.
Luke took the coffee and gave Gran the answer he gave everyone: “Better.” Most days it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true today.
His hometown of Martins Gap was as gossipy as a small Texas town could get. In the days and weeks since he’d returned, he’d heard the whispers, caught the rumors and ignored the stares. Isn’t that Luke Buckton, home on the Blue Thorn? Did you see he limps now?
Luke had always envisioned his eventual return to Martins Gap as the grandest of victory laps—a homecoming for the local golden boy whose future had always been too big for this place. He’d planned to come home a national champion.
If Dad was still alive, wouldn’t he have had a field day with how those plans turned out?
Gran sipped her tea. “The new therapist is due about now, isn’t she?”
Luke didn’t buy his grandmother’s sugar-sweet tone. He knew full well Gran wanted to take a switch to him for the way he’d treated the last two therapists they’d sent. It was so clear to Luke they weren’t up to the challenge that he’d groused them away in a single session each. He didn’t have time or patience to pussyfoot around with careful exercises or gentle treatments. Luke needed to hit this fast and hard so that he could recover and get back to work. Anyone who wasn’t on board with that strategy was useless.
Which meant he had a pretty good idea of who was about to come up the drive. Had planned for it, in fact.
He shifted his foot, reaching to feel the give of the porch boards underneath his boot. Nothing. It was beyond infuriating. “At ten.”
“So...you think it’ll be her?” Gran asked, as if it were an innocent question.
Two could play at that game. “Who?” he asked in equally innocent tones.
Gran swatted him. Hard. For eighty-five, that woman could still hold her own. “You know who. Don’t think I can’t see exactly what you’re doing. If you wanted Ruby Sheldon to be your therapist—and I certainly can’t imagine why she’d ever agree to such a notion—you should have just asked for her.”
As if it were that simple. Luke didn’t truly know if he wanted Ruby to be his therapist. He’d hoped there was another way. It’d be much simpler with someone else, that was sure. Only the two others his doctor had sent clearly weren’t up to the job, at least not by his estimation. And that left going all the way to Austin to get treatment, or putting up with Ruby.
Putting up with Ruby. As if she was a nagging itch or an uncomfortable chair instead of the biggest regret and saddest chapter of his life. He’d never quite forgiven himself for how he’d broken Ruby’s heart, despite six years of steady effort to keep all thoughts of her firmly out of his head. It stuck in his craw to need her help now, and he wasn’t sure he could choke that down even if she might be the only person in twenty miles who knew him well enough to get him where he needed to go. “I was hoping to avoid this.” He grumbled. “I think I’d rather cut off my leg than give Ruby the chance to order me around.”
Gran’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you ever talk like that.” He knew Gran loved him, but she’d never minced words about what she thought of his choice to leave home to join the bull riding circuit. It didn’t matter how good he was at it, or how he rose in the rankings, Gran still thought it “dangerous nonsense that took him away from family” and told him so. Of course, that was only when he bothered to call her, which had been woefully rare until the gut-wrenchingly humble call of “can I come home?” three weeks ago. Had there been any other way...
Had there been any other way, he wouldn’t be standing on the Blue Thorn Ranch waiting to see if Ruby Sheldon dared to show up back in his life. Suddenly, he wanted to do this moment on his own terms, not under Gran’s scrutiny. “I’ll be waiting in the guesthouse.” With that, he took his coffee and his cane and made his way across the clearing to the closest thing he had to “his own turf” on Blue Thorn land.
* * *
The Blue Thorn Ranch.
Ruby couldn’t quite believe she was back here, about to see Luke Buckton. Funny and sad how life worked in circles.
The physical buildings and layout of the ranch hadn’t changed. The big house still boasted the front porch swing where she and Luke had plotted his dazzling rodeo career. The horse barn where he’d first kissed her—a stunning surprise of a kiss she hadn’t ever dreamed could really happen—still stood facing west across the pastures. The ranch had come back to life since her high school days dating Luke. Back then it had had a desperate sort of taint, like fabric fraying around the edges. A once-prosperous ranch sliding down in decline despite the desperate efforts of Luke’s father to hold it together.
Now, the ranch gave off the air of new life, of the fresh start Luke’s brother, Gunner, had launched after taking over a few years earlier. The place struck her as both familiar and different.
And soaked