Luke’s Ride. Helen DePrima

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

       CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

       CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

       CHAPTER THIRTY

       CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

       CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

       CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

       Extract

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      A HAND TOUCHED his shoulder, a gentle shake at first, then rougher. “Luke, you’re dreaming—wake up!”

      He gave a last shuddering gasp and opened his eyes, still seeing the great bulk of the bull hurtling toward him, the dirt slamming up toward his face. He rubbed his eyes with both hands, trying to erase the images.

      “Okay,” he said. “I’m awake.”

      The hand shifted from his shoulder to his wrist as Betsy Fulton, his favorite night nurse at Hill Country Rehab, stepped from behind him to the side of his bed. Smart gal—he’d been known to strike out in the nightmare’s grip, and from the hips up he was still quick and strong as a mountain lion.

      Nights were always bad. All his life, Luke Cameron had worked hard and played harder, able to sleep like a healthy animal. Now he dreaded the hours after the bustle died down in the unit and he dawdled over dessert and coffee—decaf only after 4:00 p.m.—as long as anyone would hang around to gab. Eventually the night staff would chase him to his room, citing the benefits of a normal sleep-wake cycle. Alone in his bed, he fought off sleep with its dreams of running and leaping, laughing with his fellow bullfighters in the face of danger, only to wake pinned to his bed by the weight of his useless legs.

      “Damn sirens,” he said, wiping the sweat of terror from his face with a shaking hand. They didn’t freak him out in the daytime, but the banshee wail of any emergency vehicle grabbed him by the throat in his sleep.

      He’d been transported by ambulance twice before during his career as a rodeo bullfighter, but he’d been out cold both times, coming to in the ER or the recovery room following surgery. This go-round, he’d been awake and aware every second—the grittiness of arena dirt between his teeth and the explosion of pain in his lower spine, trying to drag himself to safety using his elbows and then Doc Barnett’s voice asking if he could move his legs. Followed by the howl of the siren as the ambulance rushed him to the nearest trauma center.

      Betsy sponged his face with a cool cloth. “I thought you might need company—a fire truck just went by. I guess you won’t be hearing sirens much when you get home.”

      “Not hardly,” he said. “We’re the last spread on a dead-end road. Somebody gets hurt, we load ’em up and haul them to meet the paramedics. My dad had a heart attack a while back with a blizzard blowing in. My stepmom drove him an hour to the hospital with the roads closing down behind her. He probably wouldn’t have made it if she’d waited for help to reach them.”

      Betsy flipped his pillow and filled his cup with ice water from the carafe on his nightstand. “I bet you’ll be glad to get back to the wide-open spaces.”

      “You’re right about that, darlin’.” He could have gone from the hospital in Oklahoma City to a rehab facility closer to his family, but the trip from Oklahoma halfway across Texas to Austin, still immobilized in a body cast, had been grueling enough. Hill Country Rehab was Doc Barnett’s home base. Every athlete involved in professional bull riding, cowboy or bullfighter, trusted Doc to deliver the best possible result.

      Luke wasn’t at all sure he was ready to leave. Here was security and a hand to hold in the night when the nightmares struck. He would hate showing that kind of weakness to his family except maybe to his father’s wife, Shelby, who rarely put a foot wrong dealing with emotions. But he’d wanted to adjust to his new reality away from his family’s well-meaning concern. He’d healed as much as he was going to, had mastered all the skills the therapists could teach him. Doc had told him bluntly his odds of walking again were slim at best even with the bone fragments teased from his spinal cord and rods stabilizing his lower back. Maybe Doc was right, but Luke had never been one to take much stock in the voice of authority.

      * * *

      IN SPITE OF his interrupted sleep, Luke was in the solarium at dawn watching, for the last time, as the sun came up across the Texas hills. Tomorrow morning he’d be somewhere in New Mexico and then in Colorado by nightfall the next day. He’d gone home beat up more than once, but always before he’d had a decent expectation of complete recovery.

      Betsy’s reflection appeared in the window behind his. “I was all set to bring you breakfast in bed your last morning with us, but you sneaked out again,” she said. “Trying to make me look bad?”

      From the time he was six or seven he’d groused about rolling out of bed before daybreak on the ranch; now he took a perverse pleasure in getting himself up and dressed before anyone came to help him.

      “Gotta do as much for myself as I can,” he said. “I won’t have you around to baby me after today.”

      “I’m sure your folks will take good care of you. Will you be staying with them?”

      He shrugged. “For now, till I get my feet on the ground.” He gave a short laugh. “So to speak.”

      “Did you have your own place before the accident?”

      “Darlin’, it’s a family ranch—we don’t commute to work. I live at the main house, and my brother built a cabin half a mile up the creek when he got married. Maybe that’s what I’ll do once I figure out what kind of modifications I’ll need.”

      He dreaded being dependent on his folks. Even more, he hated the thought of being useless—dead weight, like his legs.

      He pivoted his wheelchair and headed toward the door. “You can help me pack. If I know Dad, he’ll be ready to roll as soon as I get my final briefing from Doc Barnett.” He propelled his chair down the hall with Betsy following but offering no help.

      Sure enough, Jake Cameron, Shelby and Dr. Barnett were waiting for him when he returned from breakfast.

      “Vacation’s over,” Doc said, peering at Luke over his gold-rimmed half-glasses. “I’m kicking you out.”

      Luke snorted. “Some vacation—I trained harder here than I ever did for dodging bulls.” Images flashed through his mind of himself and his fellow bullfighters performing their split-second choreography to lure away a ton and a half of bucking bull from the cowboy rolling in the dirt. Even with a couple serious injuries, he’d stayed ahead of the game almost fifteen years until the odds finally caught up with him.

      “Any last-minute instructions?” Jake asked. “Anything we shouldn’t let him do?”

      “He