Falling For A Cowboy

Nope. No way would she ever jeopardize their friendship.

She tore her eyes from Jared and peered at Hank through the steady curtain of water dripping off her hat brim.

“A 13.95 average through ten rounds.” Hank whistled. “Pretty neat day. Brings you that average title. How important was that to you?”

“You know, it was real important to me. Every contestant that comes here dreams of winning and that, of course, is one of my goals, and so to achieve it is huge. Though it’s surprising, I’ve worked really hard for this and I just have to thank everyone who’s helped me get here.”

The rain had turned Jared’s long lashes into dark wet spikes around his golden-brown eyes. He didn’t blink, just stared right back at her for a long moment with an unreadable expression she should be able to decipher. She usually knew almost every thought inside his pretty head. “They all helped me get through this week and all through the year. I just can’t thank them enough.”

Jared mouthed something and pointed to the parking lot where his pickup waited. She didn’t have to read his lips to guess he’d said something like, “Let’s go.”

“Final numbers were one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars on the week, and that leads you to another world title,” pressed Hank.

How many followers did his blog have? Millions? As much as she wanted to please her fans, she needed out of this weather. She felt a sneeze coming on, held it in, then jerked as it exploded in her sinus cavities.

“How does this one stack up?” Hank asked, undeterred.

She took a deep breath and launched into what she hoped would be a good enough answer for him to quote and move on. Please...

“Well. You know. The first one is always special and so unreal and indescribable. But this one feels so much more hard-earned. And that’s what it felt like all this year. Harley got injured right before the season started, so that was a challenge. I didn’t think I had a chance to even be thinking of a world title.”

Especially with her eyes failing.

A tremor lanced through her.

Jared gave her a firm, “you got this” nod that bolstered her. He’d said those words when she’d worried she and Harley wouldn’t be competition ready in time for the season. Every chance he got, he’d come home to work with her and Harley until they got up to speed. She and Jared had always been each other’s number one fans.

Would he still stand by her if she had a serious vision problem? She kicked the dumb thought aside. People her age didn’t up and go blind for no good reason.

“And I have to give credit to all the girls here because they put on a great barrel race all week and they’re tough competition,” she concluded and shot Hank a hopeful look.

Got enough?

“World champion barrel racer Amberley James,” Hank intoned into his recorder. “Congratulations on another great year.”

She ducked her head and sent a shower of water on her rain-splattered boots. “Thank you.”

Please let this be the end. Her heavy lids drooped momentarily, and the ground seemed to tilt a little bit. Or was that her?

“Hank, good to see you,” she spied him now standing just a couple of feet away, shaking hands briskly with the lingering blogger.

“Well.” Hank’s ruddy face turned tomato. “Didn’t expect to get a double scoop here.”

“Oh, I believe Amberley’s done a great job of giving you all the material you need,” Jared drawled, polite, friendly and respectful as ever, with just the right amount of firm. “Y’all have a good night, now.”

He swept an arm around her waist and led her toward the parking lot.

“Any special reason you came out here? Are you two going to make it official?” Hank called.

Jared halted and peered down at her. She blew out a long breath. Why couldn’t men and women just be friends? They’d battled the misimpression they were a couple for years, right down to rumors claiming they dated, held hands, kissed even. She blushed a bit thinking how they’d come close to doing just that right before her father got ill. Luckily, they’d come to their senses and avoided a huge mistake.

“I’d be a lucky man if that were true, but Amberley and I are just longtime friends. If that changes, I’ll be sure to give you the exclusive.” He tipped his hat and pulled her into the unlit, mostly deserted parking lot.

Under cover of darkness, they ran, hand in hand, splashing through puddles, laughing, soaked and breathless when they arrived at his truck.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked, one heel up and back on the step bar.

He placed his hands on the wet body of his truck, boxing her in, and leaned down. The clean, masculine scent of him, leather, soap and a hint of spice, had her breathing deep.

“To rescue you. Plus, I owe you for bailing me out at the bachelor’s auction last week.”

A bright laugh bubbled up from within. It felt good after so much worry. “Still not sure if I got my money’s worth...”

“Chili dogs and chips?” he scoffed, looking not the least bit offended. “That took a lot of effort. Planning.”

She pressed lightly on his muscular chest. “Yeah. Right.”

He trapped her hand against his heart, and for a breathless moment they simply stared at each other.

Tell him about your eyes, urged the angel on one shoulder.

Keep quiet, the devil on her other shoulder whispered.

She cleared her throat and ignored the strange sense of letdown when he released her and stepped aside. “Anyway, I had to even up the score.”

“Never,” she shot back, forcing a teasing tone, needing to lose this strange awareness tugging her from the friend zone.

He angled his head and raised his thick, perfectly shaped brows. “As in you don’t want me rescuing you or pulling ahead in the tally?”

She lifted her chin and ignored the twinge inside about her eyesight. “Neither. Do I look like someone that needs rescuing?”

“Not a chance.” He chucked her gently under the chin and considered her. “It might be what I like about you best.” Her heart flailed at the deep, serious timbre in his voice. “That and your burned grilled cheese sandwiches.”

She laughed, but it didn’t break the intimacy swelling between them. “It’s an acquired taste.”

“Acquired? Maybe. Taste? That’s debatable.”

The air in her lungs faltered at his tease. Strategic withdrawal time.

She hopped into the truck but left the door open. Today had been a strange day with lots out of focus, especially these all-over-the-map feelings for Jared. Friends didn’t look at each like that.

“Get me out of here, you fool.”

“Always a fool for you, darlin’.” Deep dimples appeared in his flashbulb smile, and for a moment, she almost believed him. He winked, then shut the door.

She leaned her forehead against the window and watched her breath fog the glass. Flirting was as natural and necessary to Jared as breathing.

It didn’t mean anything.

And if she ever let herself think so, then she’d be the biggest fool of all.

Chapter Two

“STARGARDT’S DISEASE?”

Amberley strained to bring the wavy lines of her ophthalmologist, Dr. Hamilton, into focus. Shameful tears pricked the back of her eyes. It’d been a long six weeks of appointments and tests since she’d returned home and begun searching for an answer about her failing eyesight, and now this...some strange name that seemed like it had nothing to do with her.

Dr. Hamilton’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “It’s a genetic disorder that causes macular degeneration.”

Her heart dropped all the way to the floor and splattered.

Was there a cure?

Lately, her central vision had deteriorated at a terrifying rate, hobbling her at home, her spirit and independence vanishing with it.

“Should we have discovered this when she was born?” her mother asked in what Amberley called her “Interrogation Voice.” She’d been a Carbondale county judge for almost ten years and a prosecutor for fifteen before that.

Out of the corner of Amberley’s eye, she spied her mother’s white face in sharp detail. A line where she hadn’t blended her makeup. A mole the size of a pencil eraser. A few strands of gray-brown hair that’d escaped her braid and fell across her cheek.

Strange that while the center of her vision failed, her peripheral vision still worked fine.

“Not necessarily. The condition appears, symptomatically, in childhood with some vision deficit that’s correctable with glasses or contacts. However, the loss of sight increases rapidly in the twenties, in some instances progressing to legal blindness.”

Her gasp cracked loud in the ophthalmologist’s office.

A hand—her mother’s—fell on Amberley’s knee. Squeezed.

Suddenly it became hard to breath.

“Am I going blind?”

Dr. Hamilton moved his head toward her. That much she could tell, but if he nodded or made a face, she didn’t have a clue. He appeared as just a fuzzy blob of tan and brown wearing something white—a lab coat she guessed.

“Complete blindness?” He paused—maybe waiting for her to affirm the question? Her mouth froze along with the rest of her, her heart beating down deep in a block of ice. “That would be rare, but we can’t rule it out.”

Panic rose. Would her vision be this way from now on? Forever? The world had morphed into a carnival fun house full of twisted, stretched and squashed reflections.

“There isn’t a procedure that could help? An implant? Gene therapy?” Her mother’s crisp voice turned sharp.

Another knee squeeze.

A drumming sound signaled Dr. Hamilton tapping on his desk. Then a long sigh.

“Gene therapy studies are still too early to be conclusive. Charlotte, I wish I had a better prognosis for Amberley. This is a heck of a thing.”

“So—so that’s it?” Amberley’s voice shook.

“We can arrange for a service dog.”

“I don’t need a dog,” she cried. “I need my eyes back.”

My life.

“The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can handle—”

Easy for a sighted person to say. Amberley shook off her mother’s hand, shot to her feet, stepped forward, then bumped into the desk with her thigh. Hard. Her teeth ground together. She’d become a hermit these last few weeks for this exact reason. At home, she navigated the space well enough, keeping the tormenting sense of helpless, hopeless at bay.

But here—here she couldn’t hide from it. In the real world, her vision blossomed into a bigger problem and she shrunk into someone incompetent, dependent, weak, a person she never wanted to be.

“I can handle a fifteen-hundred-pound stallion at fifty miles an hour. But this—I can’t deal with this. What am I supposed to do with my life?”

She’d been planning on trying out for the ERA Premier tour team again at their end-of-summer qualifiers. Now she’d never be good enough to ride with them.

Or ride at all...

The life she’d always wanted ended before it’d even started, and she had no contingency plan.

“Honey, let’s not think so far ahead.”

Dr. Hamilton made a soothing noise. “Your mother’s right. Take it day by day.”

“And what do I do with those days?”

Unable to pace for fear of smacking into anything else in her obstacle course of a world, she dropped back into her seat. A sense of helplessness washed over her. Crushing. Unfamiliar. Did her life matter anymore? One without riding? Competing? Winning?

If you aren’t first, you’re last. Her father’s words floated inside, stinging.

What am I if I can’t compete?

Nothing.

No. Less than nothing.

You may as well not even exist.

She dropped her head in her hands.

“There’s plenty you can do,” her no-nonsense mother protested. Staunch as her pioneer ancestry.

“Like...”

After a painful beat of silence, her mother cleared her throat. “You could come down and assist my office clerk.”

“Doesn’t that require reading?”

Metal grated on metal. A drawer opened by the sound of it. Then Dr. Hamilton said, “There’s an equine therapy program for people with disabilities.”

“I can’t help people with disabilities,” Amberley protested. “Not when I’m...”

Silence. Shifting in chairs. A light cough from Dr. Hamilton. A short exhale from her mother.

And then it dawned on her. She had the disability. She was a disability. And a liability. The realization settled in her chest like pneumonia, cold, dense and painful.

A strange urge to seek out her gelding, Harley, and share the news seized her. He’d always been her rock. Her confidant. Him and...

Jared.

Suddenly she pictured her best friend’s wide-open smile and his teasing, amber eyes. What would he think of her if he knew her marginalized status, someone without a purpose or real worth? A loser. Not a winner at all.

She hoped she’d never find out.

Sidelined by an injury last season, he’d return to the Broncos’ preseason training in a few weeks. Until then, she’d continue dodging his texts and calls and hole up in her room.

After that...

Her future stretched ahead of her, as narrow, bleak and distorted as her vision.

“So what do I do now?” she asked when the silence in the room stretched to its—her—breaking point.

“I’ll give you the number for the equine program and write you a referral to an occupational therapist. They’ll help you regain your independence and improve your quality of life.”

Her fingers curled around the worn wooden edge of her seat. Her quality of life? That made her sound a hundred years old. Then again, maybe the description fit: someone barely hanging on to a life that was, for all intents and purposes, over.

“No, thanks.”

“Excuse me?” Dr. Hamilton’s chair scraped and he stood.

“We’ll take the number and the referral, Doctor,” her mother interjected smoothly, in a brook-no-argument voice which had secured her status as the state’s most successful prosecutor turned judge.

Amberley’s nose tingled and her eyes ached with the effort to hold back her grief. She needed to get home, crawl into bed and bury herself under the covers.

“Is our time up?” She headed in the direction of the door, unmoored. Her life whirled, out of control, her independence—gone. She couldn’t even take off when she wanted—not when she couldn’t drive. And she missed her other Harley, a 2010 black Breakout that matched the one Jared bought the same year.

No more hopping on her bike and chasing down sunsets, free, the wind on her face, blowing through her hair, as close to flying as any human could get. No. With her wings clipped, she just wanted to duck under her covers and hide.

Her foot connected with the bottom of a tree stand. It tilted forward and fell on top of her.

“Amberley!”

Her mother and the doctor rushed to help, and she balled her hands at her sides.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

You may not have much, but you still have your pride.

A few minutes later, they were out the door and in her mother’s pickup. The warm June air flowed through her cracked-open window as they drove home. She picked out the scent of Smokey’s barbecue, sweet and tangy, and pictured the crispy, white-and-red awning and blue-covered picnic tables instead of the passing color smear.

Would she ever see it again?

No.

Another loss, one of the many ahead to grieve. Her future rose black and immutable, her past a cemetery filled with everything she once loved and now lost.

“Listen, sweetheart, I’m going to be with you every step of the way. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t want to be taken care of.”

The faint twang of a country song crooned through the radio. “No,” her mother said gently. “I suppose you don’t. You never did.”

Amberley let out a breath. “I love you, Ma. It’s just that I need not to need you right now.”

“Of course.”

They rode a while more in silence. Amberley dropped the back of her head to her seat and shut her eyes. When the air turned thick with pine scent, she imagined them crossing out of town and onto the highway that led to their home, a small log cabin with a deep porch that her father had built himself.

What would her dad say to her now?

He’d be so let down.

Sorry, Daddy.

Three more turns and the truck bounced on rough track. When the right side dipped, she imagined the ruts that marked the halfway point up her packed-dirt drive. Then her mother pulled to a stop and Amberley jerked open the door.

“I’m going to bed,” she called once she found the porch banister and stepped up the stairs.

“Shoot!” her mother exclaimed behind her.

Amberley stopped and turned—a pointless gesture since she could make out only her mother’s tall, thin shape. She pictured the narrow oval of her face, the long brow and upturned nose that’d always given her comfort as a child. Her heart squeezed. She’d never see her mother’s face again.

This was real.

Not temporary.

Not fixable.

Forever.

The porch step creaked, and her mother’s soft hand fell on Amberley’s wrist. “I completely forgot. We have company coming for supper.”

“I’ll just stay in my room. Tell them I have a headache.” A deep ache now clawed her brain.

Her mother guided her up to the porch, then paused by the front door. In the distance, chickens squawked and the American flag atop a flower bed’s pole snapped. The warm wind carried the scent of newly blooming wildflowers. “I don’t think he’ll accept that.”

“Why?” she asked through a yawn. Her heavy-lidded eyes closed. Sleep. She just wanted to sleep and not wake up for a long, long time.

Or ever.

“It’s Jared.”

* * *

“JARED!”

Jared Cade waved at a former high school buddy, then swept chalk over the tip of his pool stick. “What’s up, Red?”

“Not much.” Red clomped over in heavy boots, hitching up drooping work pants, a faint burnt odor preceding him. His short auburn hair stuck up around his smudged face.

“Phew.” Lane, one of their Saturday night poker buddies, wrinkled his long nose. “You come straight here from a cookout?”

A couple of the guys guffawed at their long-standing joke with the lone firefighter in their group. Many worked on ranches or in rodeo and gathered at this pool hall most nights.

From corner-mounted speakers, a George Strait tune blared. Pictures of local and state sports teams covered every inch of the wood-paneled walls, jockeying for space. Jared had signed a few of them, he recalled, eyeing a framed eleven-by-sixteen photo behind the cash register. It featured his senior year, record-breaking catch during a state division championship.

One thing he liked best about Carbondale, he’d always be its hero.

“Just finished toasting marshmallows on I-77,” Red drawled, referring to the location of a small wildfire that’d broken out over the weekend. He lifted a finger and waved it in a circle, signaling the waitress for a round of drinks. “What can I get you fellas?”

“I’ve got this,” Lane insisted. “Plus, it’s my turn to buy.” He turned to Jared, eager to please, a fan of Jared’s since high school. “Another beer?”

He shook his head, then eyed the striped balls remaining on the pool table. “Heading out to Amberley’s in a minute.”

Roseanne, the pool hall owner’s daughter and part-time waitress, hustled over. She laid her hand on his arm and peered at him beneath lashes so long he guessed they were either fake or she was an alien.

“You goin’ to hear Back Country play at The Barnsider next weekend?”

His lips curved into a smile at the flirty look she shot him. She was short and thin and kind of twitchy, filled with the kind of restlessness that set her earrings swinging. A long sweep of cropped platinum hair fell in her face—pale with clean quick features, eyes covered in a haphazard blue.

Roseanne no longer interested him, exactly, seeing as how they’d already been out a couple of times and that’d gone nowhere, but he wouldn’t turn his nose up at the attention.

“Could be.”

“I might be goin’,” she said, coy.

“That a fact?” he answered lightly, shooting for a tone that was friendly but not encouraging.

His brothers, and especially his younger sister, Jewel, teased him mercilessly about his “girl problem,” calling him lady-killer or heartbreaker. But the women, they came to him. He never aimed to hurt anybody. Just wanted to keep things light. Fun. No strings roping down this cowboy. If they got their hearts broke, well, he did feel bad about that, but he’d never done it intentionally. That would have required him to put effort into it, which, like most things in life, he didn’t since everything came kind of easily to him. Sports, friends, ladies’ hearts...

Roseanne finished taking drink orders, snapped her pad closed and turned to him again. “Wouldya like to go with me? If we get too drunk, we could just crash at my place after.”

He shot his buddies a quick side eye to stop the guffaws he sensed coming. Roseanne might be misled, but she didn’t need to feel bad for it.

“Well, now, I appreciate that offer. I do. But I might have already promised to take Amberley, so...”

“Oh,” Roseanne nodded fast. “Of course. You and Amberley, I mean...”

She scurried away, her face aflame. He hung his head a moment. Now he did feel bad. Although he and Amberley were just friends, everyone assumed more. Here he’d gone and added fuel to the fire.

“Thought you two broke up,” Red taunted as the guys exchanged knowing, irritating looks.

Jared shrugged, then stooped over the pool table. It bugged him that Amberley had been ignoring his recent calls and texts. The word friend didn’t describe how much she meant to him. Family neared the mark, but then that’d make her a sister. Given how pretty he found her when he forgot to think of her as just his bud—well, thinking of her as a sister was every kind of wrong.

No. Being his best friend made Amberley one of the most important people in his life. Tonight he’d get to the bottom of her freeze-out. Right after he won this pool game.

His fingers tightened around the stick he now angled over the table. He had two shots, he assessed, doing his level best to tune out his exasperating friends and win the game. Fifty dollars rode on it, but more than that, Jared just plain hated losing, especially to a member of his family’s longtime feuding neighbors, the Lovelands. His opponent, bull rider Maverick Loveland, a middle child out of five brothers like him, and a smug, tight-lipped, mean son of a gun, not like him at all, had stopped by his table and challenged him twenty minutes ago.

He didn’t care about the money. His thirst to win was rooted in decades of fighting with the ranching family that constantly trespassed on their land for nonexistent water access rights, damming up a river that didn’t belong to them, and all because they blamed his family for stringing up one of their own over a hundred years ago.

Yet the murdering, kidnapping, jewel-thieving Lovelands started the feud, putting them squarely in the wrong...not that anyone could ever talk any bit of sense into that mulish clan. The Cades and the Lovelands had struck back at each other for so long it’d become a way of life, despite the fleeting truce they’d called last Christmas. For the first time in generations, the Lovelands had attended the Cades’ annual neighborhood party, a surprise move that’d ended about as well as could be expected—with nearly all of them sharing a jail cell overnight for brawling.

His deputy sheriff brother, Jack, who’d been visiting from Denver, and local sheriff Travis Loveland had agreed to release the disorderly group in the morning if they hadn’t killed each other by then. Somehow, they’d made it through the night without anyone dying. More shocking still, it turned out his brother James’s girlfriend, Sofia, had invited Boyd Loveland to the party because he and his ma wanted to start dating.