A Cowboy Christmas: Snowbound Christmas / Falling for the Christmas Cowboy. Linda Goodnight

Except that my heart is trying to escape my rib cage. “Yourself?”

      “Great. Other than this broken leg.” She motioned to the black boot.

      He wanted to ask what had happened. Was that too nosy? Too intrusive? But she already knew he was an uncouth country bumpkin, so he asked anyway. “What happened?”

      “Skiing accident a few weeks ago.” She made a cute face that got his pulse pinging like a pinball. “I’m on the mend now that I’m home again.”

      She was back in Refuge? For good? He didn’t know whether to shout hallelujah or break down and cry. It was so much easier to ignore her when he didn’t run into her on the streets of small-town Oklahoma.

      “Thought you were in Colorado.”

      “I was.” Something shadowed her green eyes. She turned her head, swallowed, as if Colorado was a bad subject. He shouldn’t have asked. “Where’s our patient?”

      It hit him then, right in the thick head. Blue scrubs. Medical bag. The nurse they were expecting was Kristen Andrews. He was going to be seeing her often. As in almost every day.

      He hoped his heart could bear it.

      * * *

      It was ridiculous, really, Kristen mused as she and her cumbersome boot stumped behind Caleb to Greg Girard’s bedroom.

      She hadn’t thought about Caleb in a long time, but as soon she’d received the doctor’s orders to set up a care plan and home dialysis for Greg, Kristen had gone all fluttery. She’d told herself Caleb wouldn’t be as attractive to an adult as he had been to a starry-eyed teenager. She’d been wrong.

      She was practically engaged, but her pulse thudded like it had the first time she’d performed CPR in a code blue. The same as it had that one lovely day she’d spent alone with this particular cowboy years ago when she’d been convinced he was her forever and always. But after that one evening and one sizzling teenage kiss, he’d spent the rest of his senior year ignoring her. So she’d moved on, moved away and had almost forgotten the quiet boy with the sketchy background.

      Intentionally putting aside thoughts of Caleb, she entered the sickroom. With a trained nose, she caught the scents of illness and identified them. Though shocked at the change in Greg Girard, she greeted him with her usual cheerful professionalism and kept her observations to herself.

      As she directed Greg through his new care plan, emphasizing diet and fluid intake, Caleb hovered nearby, asking astute questions. Worry emanated from him. And, oddly, she was overly aware of his presence, of his outdoorsy scent, his wide shoulders, his trim form in old jeans. When their eyes collided, she locked in on the color. Gray and turbulent, like a winter’s day.

      “Doc says you can fix me up here at home,” Greg was saying.

      She tuned back in. Weird to be so aware of Caleb. “That’s the plan. It will take several weeks, but you and Caleb can learn to use the machine yourselves.”

      “I don’t know...” Caleb stepped closer to his dad’s chair. “You sure about this, Pops? What if I mess up—”

      Greg waved him off. “You won’t.”

      “It’s only natural to be anxious at first,” Kristen assured him. “I’ll work with you until you’re confident.”

      Caleb looked as if the idea gave him indigestion. “Great.”

      Was that a “good” great or a sarcastic one?

      He spun on his cowboy boots. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

      She turned her attention to Greg, but Caleb’s unfriendly behavior stung.

      Yet the teenage Caleb had barely given her the time of day. Why would she expect the adult version to be any different? He was her brothers’ pal, and she was the annoying little sister. If she really knew him, he’d probably be as big a disappointment as Dr. Dud.

      The sore spot in her heart throbbed. James Dudley, a bright, charming and successful cardiologist who loved outdoors and her—she’d thought. He was everything she was looking for in a man. Until the ski trip. She kept expecting him to call, apologize and pick up where they’d left off. He hadn’t.

      Kristen turned her focus to Greg’s vital signs and physical assessment, jotting notes as she worked.

      When she finished, she returned the blood pressure monitor to her nursing bag.

      “How’s it sound?” Greg asked with a crooked half smile.

      “A little out of whack.” She winked. “Let’s get that machine fired up and get your dialysis going. Then everything will look better.”

      “That’s what they keep telling me.” He twisted in his chair. “Caleb!”

      The other cowboy appeared immediately, a giant baby bottle in one hand. “What is it, Pops? Need something?”

      “Kristen’s about to crank up R2-D2. You gonna watch?”

      Kristen laughed. “R2-D2?”

      “Sure. Look at that thing. Don’t you watch Star Wars?”

      The look Caleb gave his dad was amused and tender. “Let me put this up and wash my hands.”

      * * *

      Caleb hated this. Hated the fear, hated the disease, hated seeing Pops’s blood flowing out of his body and into a machine.

      Somehow Pops put on a happy face and chatted up Kristen as if she hadn’t been gone for six or seven years. Caleb felt like a voyeur as he listened in on the conversation, snatching up bits of personal information about the girl he’d never forgotten.

      That she was a registered nurse with advanced training didn’t surprise him. He’d known she went off to some big college in Colorado on a scholarship. She was smart, classy, a sweet-natured girl who was nice to everyone. Like him. Even though he’d been a troubled foster kid nobody but Pops wanted, she’d acted as if he was every bit as good as her preppy friends.

      Then she’d left Refuge for college and stayed away, a surprise, given her great family. She and her family had always been close. A normal family, like the one he’d never had. He’d envied her and her brothers for that. Probably one of the reasons he’d hung around her house so often. That and his mad crush on Kristen.

      “Watch both wounds for signs of infection,” she was saying.

      Caleb tuned in, loving the sound of her voice. Educated, but not haughty about it. He liked watching her mouth move, too. She had a soft, kissable mouth, as he well remembered. That kiss had haunted him. Haunted him still.

      “What are the signs?” he managed to ask when his brain settled back down.

      “I’ll leave you a list but, in general, call me if you notice anything unusual around either site. Or if he runs a fever.” She pointed to the place where two tubes entered Pops’s forearm. “The fistula takes a while to heal.”

      He nodded, knowing he was in over his head but trying to appear halfway intelligent. “The doc told us. Pops has the chest catheter for now. Until the fistula heals.”

      The wound in his dad’s forearm gave him the creeps. The idea that a thick vessel would develop under Pops’s skin like a gopher tunnel was one he didn’t like to think about. But if it kept Pops alive, Caleb didn’t care if it was as big as the Holland Tunnel.

      “Healing could take several months,” she said.

      Months of watching Pops suffer, watching him deteriorate daily. Yesterday he’d been too weak and short of breath to saddle a horse.

      Caleb squeezed the bridge of his nose, wishing he could turn back the clock. For months, maybe longer, Pops had been sick and hadn’t known it. And even when the symptoms hit, he’d ignored them too long. The cowboy way. Suck it up, be tough, keep going.