Hawk's Way Grooms. Joan Johnston

seemed to notice suddenly that she had left. “What did I do?” He shook his head. “Women. They’re mysterious creatures, old buddy. Don’t ever try to understand them. It’s a waste of time.”

      “Why did you tell her about me wanting to fly?” Colt asked.

      Huck looked chagrined. “We were talking about the future and…it just came up.”

      “Make sure it doesn’t come up again,” Colt said. “That’s my business, and I don’t want the whole world knowing about it.” Especially when he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to make his dream come true.

      “Jenny isn’t the whole world,” Huck argued. “She’s my girlfriend. I have to tell her things.”

      “Just don’t tell her things about me,” Colt insisted.

      “That’s hard to avoid when you’re my best friend,” Huck said. “Besides, if we’re going to be jet pilots—”

      “When did my plans become yours?” Colt asked.

      Huck grinned and pulled an arm tight around Colt’s neck in a wrestler’s hold. “We’re friends forever, pal. Where you go, I go. If you fly, I fly. Enough said?”

      Colt wished it were that simple. He wished he could express his desire to be a jet fighter pilot and expect his parents to be happy about it. He had never said a word to them, because he knew they would hate the idea.

      He might be one of eight adopted kids, but his mom and dad had made it pretty clear over the past couple of years that he was the one they expected to inherit Hawk’s Pride. They already had his life planned for him. They expected him to come back home after college to manage the ranch.

      He was grateful to have Zach and Rebecca Whitelaw for parents. He loved them enough to want to make them happy by fulfilling their expectations. It just wasn’t what he wanted for himself. He wanted to fly.

      So he made his plans surreptitiously, meanwhile letting his father teach him everything he would need to know to run the cattle and quarter horse end of the business. His father had told him his sister Jewel was taking over Camp LittleHawk, and that was fine with him. Although he kind of liked the ranching business, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with a camp for kids with cancer.

      Not that he didn’t have sympathy for the plight of all those sick kids. But he had learned his lesson early. He had befriended a couple of them when he was old enough to make friends. It was only later, when he asked why they hadn’t returned the following summer, that he learned the awful truth. Sometimes sick people died.

      It was a sobering lesson: Illness could rob you of people you loved. He had found a child’s solution to the problem that had stood him in good stead. He stayed away from sick people. Which was why he hadn’t been to Jenny’s house much, even though Huck went there a lot. Her mom was dying slowly but surely of breast cancer.

      Colt might have argued further with Huck, except he caught sight of Mac Macready coming around the corner of the house with his sister, Jewel.

      “Hey!” Colt called. “Ready to catch a few passes?”

      “You bet,” Mac called back.

      Colt looked for signs of reluctance or resignation on Mac’s face. After all, Colt was just a kid. He didn’t see anything but delight.

      “Just give me a minute,” Mac said with a smile and a wave. “Be right with you.” He turned and said something in Jewel’s ear, then headed in Colt’s direction.

      JEWEL HEARD THE KITCHEN SCREEN DOOR open and called, “Is that you, Mac?” “Jewel?”

      “Colt?” At the sound of her brother’s frightened voice, Jewel hurried from her bedroom wearing an oversized plaid Western shirt, jeans and boots, her hair still wet from her shower. She met Colt halfway to the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

      Her brother stood white-faced before her. “It’s Mac. He fell.”

      Oh, dear God. “Should I call an ambulance?”

      “I don’t know,” Colt said, his hands visibly trembling. “I thought maybe you ought to come and see for yourself first. It was awful, Jewel. One minute Mac was fine, and then Huck tackled him and…he didn’t get up.”

      “Huck tackled him? What on earth were you boys thinking, Colt? You know Mac’s recovering from surgery!”

      “We thought it would be more fun—”

      “Did he hit his head when he fell?”

      “I don’t think so. I think—”

      Before Jewel could make the decision whether to call 911, Mac appeared at the kitchen door, one arm around Huck’s shoulder, the other pressed against the thigh of his scarred leg.

      Colt had been pale, but Mac’s face was completely drained of blood. His teeth were gritted against the pain, and he was leaning heavily on Huck Duncan’s shoulder and favoring his leg. It took her a second to realize it wasn’t his poor, wounded and scarred left leg he was favoring, it was the other one. Now both legs were injured!

      “What happened?” she asked as she crossed quickly to hold the screen door open for him. As soon as she moved, Colt seemed to wake from his shocked trance and took a place on Mac’s other side. The two boys helped him keep his weight off both legs as they eased him through the kitchen and onto the sofa in the living room.

      While the boys stood awkwardly at her side, Jewel dropped to her knees and eased Mac’s foot up onto a rawhide stool that Grandpa Garth had given her one Christmas, a relic of bygone days at his ranch, Hawk’s Way. Then she started untying the laces of Mac’s athletic shoe.

      “I can do that,” he said, trying to brush her hands away.

      “Sure you can, but let me,” she insisted. She eased off the shoe and the sock beneath it and immediately saw the problem. His ankle was swelling. “Can you move it?” she asked.

      Slowly, hissing in a breath, he rotated the ankle. “Doesn’t feel broken,” he said. “I’ve had enough sprains to recognize one when I see it. Damn. This is all I needed.”

      “I’m sorry, Mr. Macready,” Huck said in an anguished voice. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

      Mac looked up at the boy and said, “Call me Mac. And it wasn’t your fault, Huck. Your tackle wasn’t what caused the problem. I just didn’t see that gopher hole soon enough.”

      Jewel watched him smile at the boy, pretending it was no big deal, when she knew very well it was. This was a setback, no doubt about it.

      “But your leg—” Huck protested, his eyes skipping from the awful scars on Mac’s left leg to the swelling on his right ankle. “How’re you gonna walk now?”

      “One step at a time,” Mac quipped with an easy grin. “Fortunately, I brought a cane with me. That should help matters some.”

      Jewel turned to Colt and said, “Wrap some ice in a towel and bring it here. You go help him, Huck.”

      When they were both gone, she gently moved the ankle. “Are you sure it isn’t broken?”

      He sighed. It was a sound of disgust. “It’s a sprain, Jewel. Not even a bad one.”

      “I should have warned you about gopher holes,” she said.

      “I didn’t step in a gopher hole,” he said quietly, looking at the hands he held fisted against his thighs.

      “Then what—” She saw the truth in the wary look he gave her. His leg—his right leg—must not have supported him. She reached out a hand, and he clutched it with one of his.

      She didn’t offer him words of comfort. She could see from the grim look on his face that words wouldn’t change what had happened. She didn’t point out the obvious—that his football career was over.