The Bull Rider's Homecoming. Allie Pleiter

the chair and rocked back on one hip as if leaning against a bar in an Old West saloon.

      “Raise your left leg as far as you can and hold it there, please.”

      Effort tightened the corners of his cocky smile. He got the injured leg up about as far as his knees, and she noticed a tremor near the top.

      “Like the boots?” He pointed toward his expensive-looking cowboy boots. Ruby guessed they cost as much as her used car. “Custom work. Gift from a sponsor.”

      “Very nice,” she replied. “Take them off.”

      “What?”

      “I can hardly see how your ankle rotates if you’ve got it locked up inside all that fine, hand-tooled leather now, can I?”

      He frowned. “None of the other gals made me take off my boots.”

      Ruby wasn’t backing down. “None of the other therapists,” she emphasized the correction in terms, “got that far before you drove them off.”

      There was a long, prickly pause before he said, “I can’t.”

      It must have cost him to say that. His bitter tone made her hair stand on edge. He looked like a porcupine, defensive spines sticking out in all directions, warning the world to keep its distance.

      Her heart twisted at the anguish she wondered if only she could see. Luke was deeply hurting, but scrambling to keep it hidden. It gave her only one way forward: if she was going to treat him, she’d have to meet his defenses head-on.

      But this was Luke. Luke with those eyes and all that history. Ruby made herself hold his gaze despite the monster-sized flip it caused in her stomach. “You can’t what?” she asked as directly as she knew how. Do not back down.

      He stared at her for a long moment. “I can’t get ’em on and off without...help.”

      The last word stuck, as if he’d had to drag it up from some pit to say it out loud.

      Cowboys pulled their boots off every day. Most did it without even thinking, either heel-to-toe or with a fancy little hook-like gizmo set up beside many Texan doorways. Way back, she’d seen Luke do it hundreds of times. Of course, such maneuvers required standing on one leg—something Ruby was pretty sure Luke could no longer do.

      Ruby carefully turned the straight chair so that the seat faced forward. If getting him to receive help came in the form of this near standoff just to remove his boots, then this was as good a place as any to start.

      Grace. Was she strong enough to extend grace to the man who had hurt her so deeply back then? The moment suddenly struck her as equally important to her as it was to him. If she claimed to come as far as she had from the teenager Luke had left behind, the proof would come in what she did next.

      Slowly, Ruby kneeled down at the foot of the chair and motioned for Luke to sit. “Well, then, help it is.”

      The gesture startled him—she watched the astonishment flash across his features before he hid them behind that famous grin. A deep resolve settled into place under her breastbone, the same resolve that had gotten her through all her therapist schooling with record speed and exemplary grades despite a mountain of obstacles.

      She folded her hands in her lap and stared up at him. I’ll sit here for an hour if that’s what it takes, Luke. I expect you know that. I expect that’s why I’m here. So come on, cowboy, what’s it gonna be?

      The long, tall body still held an athlete’s lines. The take-on-the-world planes of his shoulders, the try-and-stop-me set of his jaw. And yet, despite his strength and determination, all his features seemed to tip on the knife’s edge of a man in doubt. Ruby found herself doing what she’d never thought she’d do again: praying for Luke Buckton.

      Slowly—excruciatingly slowly and with all the ferocity of a bull fixing to charge—Luke sat down.

       Chapter Three

      Ruby drove a bit down the road before she eased her little car to the shoulder. She let out the breath she’d been holding since pulling the guesthouse door shut behind her and allowed her head to sink against the steering wheel.

      The longest hour of my life.

      Once Luke sat down, Ruby had expected things to smooth out. Having broken down the barrier and earned that one shred of compliance, she’d expected to gain more.

      She’d forgotten who she was dealing with.

      Oh, she’d gotten the boot off all right—albeit with a comical sequence of yanks and tugs—to expose the injured foot. When she asked him to use that foot, to show her his range of motion with the ankle or anything else, Luke turned mean. His frustration nearly darkened the room, it was so intense.

      Luke had always had a temper—it was probably half of what made him such a good rider. Something came over him when he got angry, a laser-sharp focus and determination that plowed through anything standing in his way. He’d spent most of his teenage years angry, primarily at his father, and that anger had driven him not just to succeed but to excel. Now that anger was directed at his own body, which made it much more vicious as it spilled out onto anyone foolish enough to be in range. Lord, Ruby sent up a moan of a prayer, he’s a wounded animal—twice as mean and four times as dangerous.

      It wasn’t as if Ruby didn’t know how to handle an ornery patient. Difficult patients were, in fact, a specialty of hers. Lana said, “Your greatest talent is seeing through the hard actions to the wounded soul beneath.” When Lana grafted Ruby into her agency, setting up Martins Gap Physical Therapy as an affiliated partnership of Lana’s own practice in Austin, she’d said it was because of Ruby’s gifts. “You always find the one gesture that will open up a crack in the walls patients build around themselves.” Ruby could always find a crack and pry it open.

      Today that gift felt more like a curse. The true torment of the last hour wasn’t Luke’s behavior—that was just a coping mechanism, the battle weapon of a man at the end of his rope.

      No, her real problem was her ability to see through him. To peer under the gleam of the brilliant shell he showed the world and see a man who wasn’t sure he could pull off the recovery he needed. A massive cauldron of doubt and pain boiled under that cocky disregard. She’d seen it for just a moment as he sat down, but within minutes of that glimpse he’d slammed the shell back on with the ferocity of the bull bison who wandered the Blue Thorn pastures.

      Ruby’s cell phone buzzed beside her, and she fished it from her handbag to peer at the screen.

      Been praying for you. Call me when it’s over.

      Lana was the best instructor and mentor Ruby could ever ask for. Mama and Grandpa were supportive, but Lana often knew just how to bolster her spirits. It was probably due to Lana’s prayers that Ruby had lasted as long as she had with Luke.

      Forgoing a text, Ruby dialed her mentor, taking a deep breath as Lana clicked on the line before the first ring even finished.

      “And how was the Buckton beast?”

      “Beastly,” she replied, glad to feel a damp laugh bubble up from all the tension in her chest.

      “Does he look like you remember?”

      “Oh, his looks have improved with age. Those eyes are still...those eyes. I’d forgotten how dark they could turn. That man’s angry glare could set a tree on fire.”

      “That charming, huh?”

      “Let’s just say I’m not so sure the Blue Thorn bulls have the worst temper on that ranch. If he’s the charmer of the bull riding circuit, I didn’t see any of it.”

      “A mean son of gun, hmm?”

      Ruby let her head fall back against the seat rest. “He was mean—but not in the way you might think. He didn’t yell at me or call me