The Cowboy's Courtship (13 page)

He hooked his finger through her belt loop and his first step tugged her back. She glanced to the side, catching the grimace of pain.

“Do you think you need to go…?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s get this camp over, and then I’ll get it taken care of.”

“Right.”

They walked back into the arena and Alyson walked up the steps to where Jenna was still sitting. Jason joined the guys. They had a steer in a chute and an older teen, not from the camp, standing on the platform, about to climb on the back of the animal. The steer, red-coated and thrashing his head back and forth, started bucking inside the chute, before the boy could get settled on his back.

Jason hauled the kid out by the back of his shirt.

“I’m not sure if I can watch.” Alyson covered her face, but she peeked through her fingers.

Jenna’s laughter was soft. “You get used to it. You have to understand that these guys know what they’re doing. And the guys in the arena, they’re tops at keeping a rider safe. They’ll jump between the bull and the bull rider. That’s the job of a bull fighter.”

“They don’t really fight the bull?”

“No, they distract him. They’re in there to keep that cowboy safe. They’ll pull him loose if his hand gets hung up in the rope. They’ll jerk him off the ground and give him a shove if he needs it. I’ve seen them cover a fallen bull rider with their own bodies to keep the guy safe from those hooves.”

“That’s pretty amazing. And the kids from the camp are wearing helmets?”

Jenna nodded. “Helmets and Kevlar vests. Bull riders started wearing the bulletproof vest after Lane Frost got killed. A lot of cowboys have been saved by that vest.”

Alyson let out a breath and told herself to relax. But her gaze kept going to Jason Bradshaw. She kept thinking of him on the back of that bull.

And she realized she would have jumped in there and saved him.

It felt as if he had already rescued her.

Jenna and Alyson left before Jason finished up with the kids. He had walked out of the arena and they were gone. From the distance he heard the piano in the chapel and he thought she might be there.

Rather than going there, to her, he left for the day. He hadn’t been home before dark all week. And tonight he was moving back into his house. He could finish a sentence. He could remember where he was going, most of the time.

And he needed his house, his space.

He parked outside the garage and eased himself out of the truck. Hopping out was no longer the recommended exit strategy. He leaned against the truck for a minute and then turned and walked out to the barn. Someone was already there.

When Beth walked out, she smiled. He breathed out a sigh, because it was easy to see her now. The bruises were long gone. Her arm had healed. He didn’t know about her heart. But she was smiling, and that counted for something.

“What are you doing here?” He stopped at the gate.

“I didn’t know you’d be here so early. I was feeding for you. You have a new foal.”

“The bay mare?”

Beth nodded in the direction of the twenty-acre field south of his barn. “Yeah, and she looks like her mother.”

“That’s what I hoped for. Let’s walk out and take a look.”

“I can’t. I promised Dad we’d run into Tulsa tonight. It’s a little funny, but I think he feels bad for Marcie Ballentine.”

“Dad and Marcie with the five kids?”

“That’s the one.” Beth pushed dark-brown hair back from her face, revealing the one scar that hadn’t disappeared with time, right above her eye. “The kids are all grown. It isn’t like he’d be raising them.”

“Yeah, I guess. What does this have to do with Tulsa?”

“She’s going with us. He says it’s the neighborly thing to do, to take out a neighbor who is down.”

“Wow.” Jason latched the gate they had walked through. The grass was a little long. He’d had fewer horses on it than normal and it hadn’t been eaten down the way it usually would have been by this time of the year.

The mare grazed and her foal, still damp and wobbly, stood at her side, trying to find dinner. Jason stopped, not wanting to interrupt.

“Pretty, isn’t she?”

“She is.” He smiled, because his thoughts took a sudden turn and he wasn’t seeing the foal, it was Alyson’s face that flashed through his mind, taking him by surprise.

Then again, it didn’t surprise him.

A
lyson stuck a needle through the back of the cloth and pulled the thread through, adding another touch of color to what she hoped would be her first finished needlepoint. She’d been working on it all week, each night after she got home from camp.

Her grandmother had told her it was a relaxing pastime. That had sounded good after watching Jason ride the bull at camp.

Alyson poked the needle through again and this time it got hung up, the way it had been doing all evening, tangling thread at the back of what was supposed to be a picture of a cottage.

“You’re supposed to relax when you’re doing this.” Etta laughed, but she didn’t stop the movement of the spinning wheel. She’d bought wool and she was busy turning it into yarn. That was something else Alyson couldn’t do. She couldn’t spin. She’d tried and the ensuing tangle of wool had made her grandmother grumble just a little.

“I’m relaxed.” She jabbed the needle through the cloth again. “Ouch.”

She kissed her finger and put the needlepoint down on the table next to her. She loved this attic room with the tall eaves, the stained-glass window and the window seat. It was a fairy tale room. She hoped she wouldn’t prick her finger and sleep for one hundred years.

Because there weren’t any handsome princes out searching for her—she was sure of that.

Not even a cowboy. Because the cowboy had gone off to a rodeo, just days before camp ended. A rodeo in Oklahoma City, where he hoped to garner points that would help him get back on track for the world championship.

“What’s your mother up to? Didn’t she call earlier?” Etta kept spinning, but cast a look back, over her shoulder.

“She called.”

“She’s been calling a lot.”

“I know. She’s reminding me that I have a career and I can’t be gone forever.” Alyson picked up the needlepoint again, but she didn’t pick up the needle. “She reminded me that I have a concert in Chicago. In fifteen days.”

The same weekend as the fund-raiser for Camp Hope. No amount of needlepoint was going to make her feel better about that, or about leaving.

She was torn between her two lives, and knowing which world she belonged in. She didn’t know how to explain to Etta that Gary Anderson had raised her, and that he had been a fair man, buffering her from her mother’s tangents.

She couldn’t explain to her mother about the faith she had found in Dawson.

“No matter what, Alyson, you have family here. I know you have commitments you have to keep. That can’t be undone, but she can’t take Dawson out of you. You can take the girl out of the country, but you sure can’t take the country out of the girl.” Etta stopped spinning. “And you can’t take her faith, either.”

“I know.” Alyson jabbed at the fabric again, fighting tears that clouded her vision. “It shouldn’t be this difficult.”

She closed her eyes, trying to breathe past the tightness in her throat and then she blinked away the tears.

Where would she put her new life, this new person she’d become, when she went back to Boston? Her heart ached, thinking about how it would feel to lose the person she’d become.

She wouldn’t lose herself. She pulled the needle through the fabric again, adding another block to the chimney of the cottage. She was Alyson Forester. Alyson Anderson had ceased to be. That Alyson had been the creation of her mother.

The new Alyson knew what she wanted from her life. She knew who she was. That wouldn’t change.

“Let’s go downstairs and bake something.” Etta’s other antidote for stress. “Pizza.”

Alyson laughed. “I think not.”

A car rumbled up the drive. Etta got up to go look, “Maybe Andie is home early.”

“That would be good.”

“Nope, it’s Jason Bradshaw. Imagine that.”

Alyson didn’t have to imagine. Not much. She’d been thinking about him all day. She glanced out the window and watched him get out of the truck that pulled a horse trailer.

“What’s he doing?” Etta turned from the window. “I’ve never known that boy to be so hard to figure out. He’s always been a pretty carefree guy.”

Alyson couldn’t agree with that comment. She thought that he’d always pretended to be carefree and that maybe no one had ever figured him out the way she had. Maybe they’d all been so glad to see him smiling, joking, being the great guy they all relied on, that no one had given him the chance to be the man she thought he might be.

Days ago he had whispered that he wanted her to know him. And she thought she did.

Jason led the Appaloosa gelding out of the trailer and tied him to the side. He went back in after his horse. When he turned from tying the big roan to the trailer, Alyson was standing behind him. He grinned and pushed his hat back.

“Thought you might like to go for a ride.”

She looked up, at the dusky evening sky. “It’s late.”

“Only eight o’clock. It’s the only time of day that’s really cool enough for a longer ride.”

He looked down at her flip-flops and back up, catching her smile. Her toenails were cotton candy pink and she wore a toe ring.

“I’d have to change.”

“So change.” He rested his arm on the rump of his red roan. The horse moved to the side a little and stomped at a fly. “I’ll get these guys saddled and ready to go, you grab us a couple of bottles of water.”

“And change.”

He grinned. “Sure, but I really like the pink polish.”

She turned about the same color as her nails and then she recovered. “You can borrow it.”

He laughed and the horse moved abruptly to the right, knocking him off balance. “I think I’ll leave the polish for you. We can share that way. You wear it, and I’ll enjoy it.”

“I’ll be back.”

He watched as she hurried up the sidewalk and then he turned back to the roan.

“Buddy, this isn’t something a guy plans.” The horse looked back and reached to nip at his arm. Jason pushed the horse away. “I don’t think so.”

He was saddling the Appaloosa when Alyson walked out the front door with Etta. He glanced back over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of Alyson and then returning his attention to the horse, tightening the girth strap, fiddling with the stirrups, whatever it took.

“I’m making brownies.” Etta stopped next to the roan. “They’ll be ready when you get back.”

“Sounds great.” His gaze traveled to Alyson. She had changed into a T-shirt and jeans. The toenails were no longer in sight. He was a little sorry about that. Maybe they should have put off riding and just sat on the porch with coffee and brownies.

“Ready?” Her tone was hesitant and she moved a little toward the Appaloosa, a dark almost black horse with a white blanket on its rump. The horse turned, nuzzling at her, a good fit for a beginning rider. He’d borrowed the gelding from Adam and Jenna.

“I’m ready. Do you have the…”

She held up two bottles of water. “Water?”

“Yep.” He untied her horse and led it away from the trailer.

Alyson took the reins and grabbed the saddle horn. He cupped his hands for her foot and she ignored him. She slid her left foot into the stirrup and swung her right leg over the saddle.

“I can do it, but thanks.” She grinned down at him.

He saluted and went to his horse. Etta was at the porch. She turned and watched, waving. And she looked worried. Jason felt that look in the pit of his stomach as he pulled himself onto his horse, settling in the saddle and glancing back at Alyson to make sure she was okay.

She looked as worried as Etta.

“Where to?” She eased her horse up next to his as they took off down the road.

“Church.”

“Okay, that’s strange.”

He smiled a little. “They’re having a trail ride from there.”

“Oh, so it isn’t just the two of us?” She looked away before he could see if the look on her face was disappointment or relief.

“No, not just the two of us. Maybe a dozen.” All couples. He didn’t tell her that part. That he’d made them a couple for this ride.

This was courting, Dawson-style.

The Appaloosa gelding was an easy horse to ride. He poked along, not too doggy, but Alyson didn’t have to
constantly control him, or worry about him. His head was up, ears pricked attentively.

“Nice horse.” She eased into the ride, losing her nervousness, until she saw the crowd at the church. Not a crowd really, but a group, and all couples.

“It’s a couples’ ride.” Jason shot her a grin that remained in his eyes, crinkling at the corners. And she didn’t know what to say.

“Alyson, it isn’t a big deal. It’s just an easy way for people to get together, to do something on a muggy summer night when the Mad Cow—fine dining that it is—is closed. No one really wants to drive to Grove, or to Tulsa. We’ll ride down the road, maybe stop at the creek to water the horses, and ride back.”

“It does sound like fun.”

Because Jason wasn’t afraid of her. He didn’t stumble, trying to find the right words. He wanted to spend time with her.

The others greeted them. One of the riders was Etta’s neighbor. She couldn’t remember his name, but he was rowdy and full of himself. She’d seen him talking to Andie and then he’d hopped in the truck with some pretty brunette and taken off.

Andie said he was her best friend. Alyson thought her sister might be fooling herself. And she was surprised to see him at church. She hadn’t seen him there before.

“If everyone’s ready, we can go.” The guy on a big white horse rode to the front of the group.

Alyson turned her horse, looking for Jason. He rode up next to her, his smile easy, chasing away the nervousness that fluttered in her stomach.

“How was your rodeo?” she asked as they headed down the dirt road behind the church. She’d never seen a dirt road until she came here.

It was magical, riding down that tree-lined road, and dusk falling over the Oklahoma countryside. Horses plodded along, their hooves beating a rhythmic tune on the road, tails swishing.

“I didn’t win.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I think I’m done. It hit me while I was out there. I’ve always been on the road. I didn’t know what else to do with my life. And now I’ve found something else.”

She glanced up, meeting brown eyes that were melted chocolate on a summer night.

“The camp.” He smiled. “And a new friend. Leaving home isn’t as much fun as it used to be.”

When he was running. When it had been too much to be at home, with his dad hurting and his sister in California with an abusive husband. It had been hard to be at home then. She didn’t say it, because it was his story and he knew.

But her grandmother had been wrong about one thing. Finding out his story wasn’t fun. It was difficult, and it hurt to learn what his smile had hidden.

But she had also learned that Jason smiled because he had faith. He didn’t let things keep him down, she realized. That’s what his smile was all about. It was about dealing with whatever was going on in his life and finding the answers.

She wanted it to be that easy for her. But she felt torn, pulled in two directions. She loved her family, both sides of it. God had been working on her, healing her heart,
helping her to remember good things about her parents, not just the deception and the pressure.

“It can’t be easy to walk away from.” She meant his bull riding, but it sounded like she meant her own life as well. They had similar stories. “It’s been a big part of your life.”

He rode close and their knees brushed. His horse bit at hers and he pulled the gelding away. “I’ve had a couple of months to adjust. I’ve learned that it’s okay to give it up.”

“That’s good.”

They rode through an open gate and into a field. A deer jumped out of a stand of trees and raced across the field. Alyson pulled back on the reins and watched. A fawn followed the mother, jumping and darting across the field.

“I have to leave.” There, she’d said it. The words were loud in the silence of that summer evening.

“Leave what?”

“I have concerts that I have to play or it’ll leave everyone in a bind.” Obligations that she’d run from, but she had to stop running.

She’d found herself. Now she had to literally go face the music.

“I see.” He pulled his horse up and she stopped next to him. “What about the concert for Camp Hope?”

“I have a concert that weekend in Chicago. I’m going to try and make it back. I just don’t know if I can.”

The perfect summer evening crumbled in around her. Jason pushed his hat back and then he shrugged, like it didn’t matter. And he didn’t say that he would miss her. He didn’t ask her to stay.

It felt as if he had always planned on her leaving.

It shouldn’t have bothered him so much. Jason was still telling himself that as they rode back to the church an hour later. A perfect summer evening, riding with a woman he’d come to know in a way he hadn’t expected, and now this.

The great escape artist had had the tables turned on him.

She was the one leaving.

“Jason, I don’t want to lose you.”

He pulled his horse up next to the trailer and dismounted. She landed on the ground next to her horse, standing there in her Dawson persona, he thought. She had easily turned herself from Boston to Dawson in a matter of weeks.

And turned his life pretty much upside down in the process. His memory problems had been nothing compared to this. As a matter of fact, he almost wished for memory loss, so he could walk away and close the door on this relationship.

She tied her horse to the side of the trailer and stepped around his horse, putting herself next to him. “I came here looking for my family, and for myself. You were a big part of that journey.”

“Right.” He led his horse to the back of the trailer and turned to look at her. He felt about sixteen and she was the prom queen. But she’d never been to a prom. To a dance.

She’d been everywhere, but nowhere.

“Alyson, I…” He wasn’t about to say it. The words settled in his stomach and crawled around like yesterday’s lunch. He would bite his tongue before he told her he thought he might love her. He wasn’t going to keep her here that way, with words. It had to be more than words.

He couldn’t say it, not without really knowing. But he thought he knew. And the idea of her leaving made it all the more clear.