Falling For A Cowboy

“Heard Amberley dumped him stone cold,” Lane guffawed.

The eight ball jerked forward and smacked into the lone solid ball left on the table. Loud laughter followed on the heels of a brief stunned silence when it sunk into a pocket.

Maverick Loveland clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, dude. Though if you wanted to give me fifty bucks, you could have just handed it over. Saved me some time.” He plucked the cash off the table and ambled away, as sarcastic and conceited as every other rotten Loveland.

Jared swore under his breath, stung.

“Sorry, Jared!” Lane jittered around him, shoving his hands in his pockets, then yanking them out again. “That’s on me. If I hadn’t distracted you, you would have won it for sure.”

The rest of the crew nodded quickly, and Jared relaxed a tad. Lane was right. He hadn’t lost. He’d been sidetracked by thoughts of Amberley.

Why was she avoiding him these past few weeks?

He fitted his stick back in the holder. “Loveland got lucky.”

“Yeah, he did,” Red vowed. He lifted the mug Roseanne offered him and sipped.

“Exactly,” murmured another friend.

“Heck, yeah,” said a third.

The tight group, former high school football teammates who’d won the state division championships together, shared plenty of glory days. He’d missed them when the NFL drafted him out of college. After last year’s injury, an ACL tear that sidelined him from his starting Broncos position, they’d rallied around him, supportive of their hometown hero.

Life was simpler in Carbondale, where he wasn’t some nobody with nothing much to offer. What good was being in the middle of the pack? When his agent called recently with the Broncos’ offer: a one-year contract, at a lower salary—basically a benchwarmer position—he’d turned it down.

He’d rather be here, where people knew him, appreciated him, where he could fulfill his vow to his dying father.

“Later.” With a wave, he headed outside, hopped on his motorcycle, donned his helmet and roared out onto the two-lane route that cut through Mount Sopris’s eastern side. He let out the throttle and ripped through the dark night. Around the edges of his light beams, a dense forest crowded each side of the road. Each breath dragged in the spring-fresh scents of fresh earth, pine and growing things mixed with gasoline fuel. Waves of heat rippled up from the engine, and the wind rushed past.

Life was lived for moments like this, he thought, effortlessly guiding his Breakout around a fallen branch from this morning’s storm. Astride his Harley, listening to the rumble from his straight pipes, seated in his low-slung seat, he felt in control of the elements regardless of their severity because only the ride mattered. Sure, not returning to professional football bugged him, but he’d made that call, not the team. An important distinction. One that preserved his status as a winner. Not a failure.

He slowed at a flashing red, then stopped, peered side to side, and peeled off the line with a deep burrrrrooomboomboomboom. At the top of a steep incline, his Breakout went slightly airborne, and for a quick second he imagined himself flying. Nothing above or below him. Just moving through space, wind, and its feeling of force on his face and body.

Dad would have enjoyed this ride, he thought, glancing up at the full moon crowning over a distant peak. Growing up, his father called Jared a star. He’d attended every football game, cheered the loudest and told Jared nothing made him happier than seeing Jared win, especially during his final months of life when he’d battled liver cancer.

Jared’s wins on the football field distracted his family and gave them moments to cheer in a dark time. His pa insisted Jared was the glue that held the family together. Before passing away, his father told Jared his siblings would need someone to look up to after he’d gone. He made Jared promise to be that hero.

Since things came easily to Jared, he’d had no trouble fulfilling his pledge until his injury. When he’d tried, and failed, to make a full comeback, however, he realized he’d never fulfill his designated role as family hero if he remained a bench warmer. He opted, instead, to return home. At least here he remained a small-town hero, his reputation intact. Much better than enduring seasons as a second-stringer with little chance of making it back under the big lights.

Or worse, getting cut.

Still. Returning to the ranch hadn’t fulfilled him either, no matter how much the community treated him like the “big man” in their small town. A champion. Maybe because such treatment left him feeling like a fraud. He needed something to take his mind off wondering what he’d do with his life now that he couldn’t play ball. He sped faster. Amberley was just the distraction he needed.

A few minutes later, he pulled up beside Amberley’s cabin, cut the engine and lowered the kickstand. Something immediately seemed off about the place. Light streamed from every window, and the front door hung open.

“Hello?” he called, swinging his leg over the bike seat. His boots clattered on the porch steps. “Amberley?”

He swept off his hat, ducked inside the cabin and peeked at the kitchen. No signs of cooking. No evidence of anyone anywhere. Huh.

Striding across the small space, he stopped at the start of a short hall that led to the back bedrooms. “Amberley?” He listened. Nothing.

“Charlotte?”

Concern brewed along with his confusion. He’d spied Charlotte’s white pickup outside. They were here. Just not in the house.

He paced back outside and tramped down the stairs, his heart picking up speed when he spotted Charlotte walking his way, her hands cupped around her mouth.

“Amberley!” she called.

He caught up to her and his breath whistled fast, pulse thrumming. “Something wrong? Where’s Amberley?”

“I don’t know!” Moonlight reflected on her damp cheeks. “She ran off when we got back from the doctors. I tried following but I twisted my ankle. Now there’s no sign of her.”

He peered at the shed where Amberley stored her bike.

“She go for a ride?”

“No. She can’t because—” Charlotte stopped and clamped a hand over her mouth. So many expressions collided on her face, and he couldn’t read any of them. She didn’t seem to breathe.

Neither did he. Worry punched him in the gut. Hard.

“Because why? Charlotte, what’s going on? I don’t see...”

“She can’t either.”

“What?”

“She’s going blind. We just learned about it today and—”

“Blind,” he cut in, repeating a word that suddenly made no sense. Not when it came to Amberley.

A rising wind lifted the hem of Charlotte’s long skirt and ruffled her sleeves. She twisted at the waist, eyes darting every which way.

“It’s a genetic disorder that starts with blurring of her central vision. She’s been having trouble with her eyes for a while but she didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t want to worry us.”

A short burst of air escaped him. “That’s Amberley.” As tough as they came and not one for sympathy. He’d never met a stronger woman. Or a more stubborn one. He had to get to her. Darn it. She needed him. Whatever the issue, they’d work it out together like they always did.

“She was upset when she found out I’d invited you to dinner.” Charlotte’s voice kept taking on air, getting higher and higher, thinner and thinner. “Jared, what if she’s hurt? Trapped out there?”

A long low howl rose in the dark night, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Wolves. And they weren’t the only animals a person had to worry about in the Rocky Mountain wilderness.

He slammed his hat back on, mind racing, thinking as Amberley would. He knew her as well as he knew himself. Maybe even better. Where would she go?

The answer smacked him full in the face.

Of course.

Dirt sprayed from beneath his boots as he sprinted down a familiar trail.

“I’ll find her, Charlotte!” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll bring her home safe and sound. Promise.”

Chapter Three

AMBERLEY STUMBLED ALONG a rutted path, her gasps of breath harsh in her ears. Her boots sunk into puddles forming atop the hard-baked soil. Soaked, her plaid shirt clung to her like a frigid second skin. It’d begun drizzling only ten minutes ago. Then, in that unpredictable way of Rocky Mountain weather, the sky turned on the world with what appeared to be crack-white flashes of lightning. Thunderous booms shook the electric air and thick sheets of rain pelted the earth, shaking her from the inside out.

Worst of all.

She was lost.

Clamping her chattering teeth, she trudged on, one foot in front of the other. Where was she? She’d run off a half hour ago, she estimated, and should have reached her destination: a small, abandoned one-room schoolhouse that had once served the local ranching families a hundred years ago. Its shape should have caught her attention by now. The dirt path that ran from her cabin led straight there, yet somewhere along the way she’d gotten turned around. Now she didn’t recognize which path she followed since staring straight at anything was like looking through a smudged, cracked, warped windshield. Reining in her mounting panic, she used her side vision to guestimate her location.

The waterfall of sky blurred the dim landmarks worse than her slipping eyesight. Skyscrapers of pitch-green trees, pines she supposed based on the smell and shape, loomed to her right. To her left, the land turned to beige shale and seemed to slope down. In fact, it seemed to disappear—

Her foot encountered air and she teetered for a gut-cramping moment on the edge of a drop-off. Her arms pinwheeled. A flash-thought forked in her mind. Would it matter so much if she tumbled right off this mountain? What difference would it make?

A wild shriek flew from her, voicing her anguish, her fear, her hopelessness, her rage, her despair.

Then a strong arm snaked around her waist and yanked her back. Hard. She and her rescuer smacked to the boggy earth with a sploosh. The man grunted, the air knocked out of him, and she blinked up at the shifting, whirling sky, winded herself.

An instant later, she scrambled away and rocked back on her heels. A tall, lanky man leveraged himself up on his elbows, then shot to his feet in a smooth, agile move she’d recognize anywhere.

Jared.

He opened his mouth to say something, but just then a deafening flash-bang splintered the fizzing air. The sky lit up and lightning burned through a nearby tree, amputating a crane-sized branch. It crashed with deadly force inches from their feet. Burnt wood and sulfuric fumes rose.

The sky growled, low and ferocious, readying for another salvo. Goose bumps broke out across her skin.

Jared gestured. “Come with me!”

Amberley nodded. No time to argue. He laced his fingers in hers and together they slid and stumbled through the howling tempest. The streaming air launched debris at them, hard bits of wood whizzing fast enough to strike with maximum impact. When a trail marker sign winged at them, she didn’t spot it fast enough to duck and it bashed straight into her forehead, sending her to her knees. She clutched her stinging face, and her fingers came away a sticky, blurred red.

She felt dazed. She shook her head to clear it, but the move only shot a bolt of pain through her. Without a word, Jared scooped her up in his arms, held her tight to his broad chest, and jogged down the trail until the outline of the old schoolhouse appeared. She grasped her thrumming head, afraid it’d either fall off her shoulders or explode if she didn’t.

Without pausing, Jared kicked open the door, shoved it closed behind them, strode inside the dark interior, then lowered to a tottering wooden chair at the front of the room. All at once, the world muted itself. The now-muffled rain snare-drummed softly on the roof. The fangless wind batted against the rattling windowpanes. The dank, musty space closed in. Their ragged breaths mingled. Beneath her ear, Jared’s heart galloped and the hands smoothing up and down her back shook.

She’d never sensed Jared flustered a day in his life, and for some reason this scared her as much as anything.

“Shhhhhhhhhhh,” he murmured, low in her ear. “I’ve got you, darlin’.”

She stiffened.

“You’re safe,” he crooned in a rumbling, husky voice.

Enough. She didn’t want to be safe. Least of all because of someone else rescuing her or seeing her at her weakest. Even worse, that person was Jared.

She wriggled free of his arms and faltered back a couple of steps. Her hands groped the emptiness behind her, a new habit, to feel for what she couldn’t see. Frustration and helplessness brewed in her belly, toxic and nauseating. When her fingers encountered the soft edge of an old desk, she leaned on it, testing her weight partially, before trusting herself to sit atop it.

“Let me.” Jared brushed back the hair sticking to the gash on her forehead. Something dripped from her temple. Warmer than water.

She’d never fainted in her life. Yet suddenly, a light-headedness stole over her, and she grasped the edges of the desk with both hands.

“Stop.” She jerked away and nearly cried out from the pain. A red drop splattered on the dusty floor.

Jared pivoted with her. “Hold still.” He flipped off her hat, grasped her chin in one strong hand and studied her. A deep longing to see his amber eyes seized her. Yet if they held pity, she’d rather not know. “This is going to need stitches.”

She started to shrug and realized that even the slightest movement made her head whirl and her stomach revolt. “A flesh wound,” she said, trying to joke, a reference to one of their favorite Monty Python movies, but her voice cracked like a thirteen-year-old boy’s.

“Not funny, Amberley,” Jared growled. “You could have gotten yourself killed out there.”

He pulled something from his back pocket, wrapped it around her head and tied it in the back. It smelled like him, she thought, breathing in the crisp cotton, clean soapy smell. His lucky bandanna, she guessed.

“So what if I had?”

He knelt in front of her and gathered her hands in his. Though she tried to stop them, tears of pain welled. She didn’t cry easily. In fact, she could count the number of moments on one hand. The time her glasses got knocked off and she’d had to crawl around on the playground looking for them while other kids laughed. And once when she’d dislocated a shoulder during a barrel racing accident. Then the day they’d buried Daddy.

“Well, if you’d gotten yourself killed, then I would have lost my mind,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, almost a croak.

Her frog prince. Back.

Only she didn’t want him anymore.

She didn’t want anyone.

Not even herself.

At least not who she was now.

She screwed her eyes shut. Jared brushed at her damp lashes with his thumbs, the gesture so tender it ached. “Your mother told me about your eyes.”

A painful lump formed in her throat.

“Amberley, talk to me.”

She stood. Halting steps carried her to the window. Although she couldn’t see much in the writhing darkness, she imagined the tumult and wished it’d sweep her away, too.

“I want to go home.”

Jared joined her. When his fingers laced with hers, she jerked her hand away. “Charlotte told me you’ve been having trouble for a while now. Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”

She shrugged.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to.”

Because I couldn’t bear for you to think less of me.

To pity me.

“Why? I’m always here for you.”

“I can manage on my own,” she fired back.

“But you don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do.”

“We’re a team.”

Only when they were both equal. But those days were over. “Not anymore.”

“Just tell me what I can do, Amberley.”

“This isn’t about you, Jared,” she snapped.

“The heck it ain’t.” She flinched at his suddenly angry tone. In all their years, they’d never fought. Not seriously. Sure. They’d had their share of good-natured arguments from time to time. Squabbles. Bets. Competitions. Rivalries. But this? It was foreign and felt every kind of wrong.

Still. She’d rather he be angry than sorry for her. Angry meant you mattered. Pity? That rendered you inconsequential.

“We’ll get through this.”

“Get through this?” She pressed her burning forehead against the cold glass. “I’m going blind, Jared. I’m never getting through this.”

He cupped her shoulders and turned her slowly. “There’s got to be a cure,” he insisted. “Surgery. A donor list. Didn’t I hear once—something about cadavers...”

“Stop.” She put her hands over her ears. “Just stop. Everything comes easy to you. Heck. You’ve never had to work for just about anything in your life, so I get your not understanding this. But I.” She poked a finger in his chest. “Am. Not. Getting. Better.”

“So you won’t even try?”

“I just want to be left alone.”

“What’s that mean? Holing up in your room? Hiding out from the world? Ignoring your friends?” He cleared his throat. “Me?”

“It’s not hiding. It’s being realistic. Facing facts.”

“About what?”

“That I can’t do anything anymore.”

“You can do plenty.”

“Not barrel race.”

She angled her head and viewed him from the corner of her eye, using her working, peripheral vision. Those perfect brows of his slanted over his straight nose, and white rimmed his golden-brown eyes all around. He appeared every bit as uncomfortable and confused as she felt.

And she couldn’t bear it.

He surrounded himself with capable, successful people. Winners. She couldn’t blame him for not understanding how to handle someone disabled like her. Disabled. She already hated the word. It meant not able. Who wanted to be known as that—even if it was true?

“You can’t see at all?”

“Not dead on. Everything’s a blur of color in the center of my vision. From the sides, I can focus some.”

“You can’t see my face?”

Her insides shriveled at the pained note that entered his voice. “Not all of it. Not at once. And soon.” Her voice fractured. “Soon I might not be able to see even that.”

He brought her hands to his warm, smooth cheeks. When he swished her fingers over his down-turned lips, she yanked free.

“Let me help you,” Jared insisted.

“Do what? I can’t compete anymore. Can’t ride. Can’t drive. Heck. I can’t even walk alone on my own. I don’t want to depend on anybody for anything. I don’t want to be reminded of—”

“Reminded of—” he prompted.

“Of how helpless I am.”

“No one’s saying you are.”

“But they’ll be thinking it. You’re thinking it.”

The beat of silence spoke volumes and hurt way more than she’d imagined it could. They’d never lied to one another, and she didn’t expect anything less than brutal honesty from her best friend now. Outside, the battering rain eased, then trickled. The thunder and lightning moved off to torment another mountain.

She glimpsed Jared’s chest rise, then fall with a long exhale. “You’re no quitter, Amberley. That isn’t the gal I—” he stumbled, fumbled for a word. “I care about.”

She flushed. What’d he been about to say? Oh. No matter. None of it did anymore. Jared liked being around her because she challenged him. Once it sunk in that those days had ended, he’d come around only out of pity. She didn’t believe for a second he’d abandon her. His decency and loyalty meant he never turned his back on his friends. But she wanted to be his equal, not his charity case. Better she cut things off while she still had her pride. Jared ran with a fast crowd and she’d only slow him down.

“Then stop caring about me,” she forced herself to say, “because that girl’s gone.”

“Not happening.”

She paused, thinking fast. She needed to get rid of him once and for all. For both their sakes. “So as my friend you’ll do anything for me?”

He nodded quickly. “Now you’re seeing sense.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Anything?”

“Name it,” he vowed.

“Alright. Then bring me home and don’t ever come around again.”

“Amberley...” he protested, his voice full of air like she’d sucker punched him.

She shook her head. Firm. “You promised.”

* * *

“AMBERLEY, PHONE!”

At her mother’s call, Amberley roused herself ever so slightly from the 24/7 stupor she’d fallen into these past few weeks. “Tell them I’m sleeping!” she called without opening her eyes. She turned and burrowed deeper under her covers, ignoring the slight bump up in her heart rate.

So far, Jared had kept his word and not called since that night on Mount Sopris, but a part of her, a lowdown, cowardly, traitorous part, still hoped, every time she heard the phone ring, that he hadn’t respected her decision...

Hadn’t given up on her.

She missed him. Missed her friend. Missed that smile. Not that she’d ever see it again anyways.

Oh. Stop bellyaching. It was for the best. If she cared about him, she’d let him go. She sighed and flopped over on her back, arms flung wide, her best thinking position.

What was the saying? “If you can’t fix it, you just have to stand it.”

She glanced over at the bedside table cluttered with cans of pop, bags of chips and dishes left over from eating meals in bed the last few weeks.

Or wallow in it...

Inertia. Another good word for her current state. Suspended animation. That summed it up, too. Maybe she should request to be cryogenically frozen. Least then she’d do something for science.

“Amberley!” shrilled her mother again.

She shoved herself upright, and her covers dropped to her lap in a messy heap. “Can you take a message?” From the corner of her eye, she spied the digital clock with the oversize display her mother had brought home recently. It read 1:20 p.m.

Outside her open window, the sky was a blue so brilliant even her eyes picked it up, the air was still washed clean from recent rain, and birds warbled from the two rustling maples that stood sentinel at the end of their drive. It was the kind of weather that usually woke her feeling elated, glad to be alive, wishing she could belt out some musical number like “Oklahoma” or the “Sound of Music.”

Not that she could sing a lick, but on days like this she’d always felt anything was possible. Even singing on key. Like maybe she could ride to the end of the earth and back before it’d even had a chance to circle the sun.

“It’s about Harley!”

Harley? She tossed off her covers and stumbled down the narrow hall to the kitchen, hands brushing the walls to keep her bearings. Her wrinkled sleep shirt swung around her knees.

She mouthed “Thanks” to her mother and brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Sorry to bother you, Amberley, what with, ah, all you’re going through and all.”

Harley’s stable owner, Benny Jordan, an asthmatic former champion roper turned rodeo clown who’d retired to this area fifteen years ago, breathed noisily into the phone.

“Is Harley okay?” Her fingers gripped the handle hard, and she dropped into the seat her mother pulled out. Inside her chest, her heart skittered every which way. Although it’d been weeks since she’d seen Harley, not a day passed where she didn’t wonder how he was doing and if the stable was taking good care of him. Prior to her accident, they’d spent most of every day together. Now, the thought of seeing him again only reopened the wound of all that she’d lost.

When her mother pointed at the phone, then her ear, Amberley nodded, fumbled around for the speaker button, then pressed it.

“Well, now. That’s the thing. See. He’s not eating like he should.” More wheezing, then, “Been skittish when folks come near. This morning, I sent in Joan to muck out his stall.”

Joan? A former rodeo pro herself, she’d become the local horse whisperer and founded the equine therapy program they ran out of Harley’s stables. She had much more important things to do than clean stalls.