Mary Leo – A Christmas Wedding For The Cowboy (страница 2)
Carson couldn’t move his left leg, his shoulder burned with an intensity he’d never felt before, and even though he’d spit out dirt and blood, he still couldn’t catch his breath. All he could think of was getting out of there, of standing and walking off the arena floor, but his leg was still pinned under Red Comet. Panic began to creep up his spine. He refused to let it take hold, and as his horse continued its struggle to stand, Carson somehow managed to roll free. The quick movement brought on a wave of intense nausea that he tried desperately to control. No way was he going to vomit for somebody’s home video.
He told himself to calm down, that help was on the way, but the fact that he couldn’t take a deep breath kept him on edge, kept the panic knocking around in his head.
Then, as thundering hooves shook the ground, and a flash of bright green crossed his path, Carson’s entire world faded into black.
Three months later: December
Carson Grant emerged from yet another sleepless night with one thought on his mind: Marilyn Rose Connor, his fiancée, had called off their wedding. Not only was his body bruised and battered from the bronc riding accident in the arena, which almost killed Barney, a rodeo clown who had tried to save him, but now his heart had been hung out to dry.
He’d known things hadn’t been good between him and Marilyn Rose for months. But he thought they could work it out, talk it over, see a counselor or, at the very least, argue.
Apparently, that wasn’t what Marilyn Rose had thought. She wanted it over, plain and simple. No talks. No therapy, and under no circumstances would she argue. Going over the past two years of their love affair, he couldn’t remember one moment when she’d fought with him over anything. Even when he’d forgotten their anniversary and inadvertently stood her up for dinner at some fancy restaurant in Las Vegas. When he’d finally caught up with her, she’d merely pouted for a few minutes and let it go.
He had expected a bit of fire, a few harsh words, a verbal slap, but Marilyn Rose didn’t believe in arguments of any kind. She viewed an argument as a failure in the relationship and therefore under no circumstances would she fall into the trap of angry words.
Carson had mustered up a few of those angry words last night when, cool as a breeze coming off a snowcapped mountain, she’d handed him his engagement ring, which he had refused to accept. Instead of lashing out or pleading like a puppy dog, he’d left her sitting at a table inside Sammy’s Smokehouse at the edge of town and somehow managed to walk the five blocks home, in the icy snow, alone, totally dependent on his cane to see him through. She’d followed him, calling out to him to please get in her car, but eventually, after he ignored her pleas the entire way, she drove off right before he opened his front door.
“Dang fool,” he mumbled to himself.
Carson rolled over on his back and stared up at the blank ceiling wondering why he’d never taken the time to do something interesting to all that emptiness. When he was a kid, he’d taped every poster he could find of his favorite saddle bronc rider or bull rider or generic rodeo flyer on his bedroom ceiling. He’d spend hours lying on his bed, staring up at the rodeo stars, dreaming of the day when he’d be one of them. Why was it that when you grew up posters on your bedroom ceiling became taboo? Who made up the adult rules, and why? He would have liked to stare at something right now other than white nothingness. To be able to focus on something positive instead of all the negative crap that spun around in his head, keeping him from thinking straight and keeping him from sleeping.
He blew out a sigh and shoved a hand under his head, realizing that posters of saddle bronc riders would only make him more stressed right now, especially if they were of him, which was one of the reasons why he rented this house in town. The walls at his parents’ ranch house were littered with framed photos of his rides, his awards and his “promising future” as a saddle bronc rider from the time he’d won his first buckle to just before his last ride.
He stopped himself from musing any further. He wasn’t going to think about that last ride. Not now. Not this morning when he’d just been dumped with less than a month to go before his wedding. Couldn’t she have called it off before they’d sent out the invitations? Before all those people had started sending gifts?
He thought about his sister Kayla’s wedding day and what a fiasco that had turned out to be, and decided this was probably some kind of cosmic payback...that he fully deserved. He still felt bad for Jimmy Bartley.
“Poor sap probably never saw it coming.”
At the time, Carson had been focused on his sister’s misery and her not wanting to go through with the wedding. Now, after being dumped, he knew exactly what Jimmy Bartley had felt: total humiliation.
He knew his sisters could change their minds on a dime, but he’d never thought any one of them would actually change her mind minutes before one of the biggest decisions of her life.
But then this wasn’t the first potential marriage for Kayla. He’d been the one who’d rescued her out of the first one, as well. Seemed he did a lot of rescuing for his sisters over the years. Probably more than his fair share. And where did it get him?
“Dumped by your fiancée, that’s where,” he said out loud.
He could use a little rescuing right about now.
Unfortunately, he knew he wasn’t the type to accept it or he’d be recovering comfortably at home with his mom and sisters doting on him day and night.
The mere thought of all those women bringing him food and fussing over his battered body was way too much for him to think about much less allow. Nope, he’d much rather be sulking on his own until he could figure out his next step. He didn’t want or need anyone’s care, apparently not even his own fiancée’s.
Careful to not sit up too quickly, he slid out of bed with deliberate care. His head still wasn’t right from the concussion he’d suffered, and he was sure his shoulder would never be the same after the torn rotator cuff and broken collarbone. Even though his doctors had assured him he’d be as good as new in a few months, Carson realized “good as new” wasn’t in the cards for him. Not this time. He’d suffered a lot of injuries since he’d started the rodeo circuit, but none had been this devastating. His ribs still ached from having been cracked, and if he tried to put all his weight on his left leg, the pain in his thigh would sometimes bring him to tears. His thigh bone had been cracked in four places, and if it wasn’t for the metal rod that held it all together, he probably wouldn’t be able to walk.
But none of that mattered this morning.
What mattered was that Marilyn Rose had come all the way to Briggs, Idaho, right before the Vegas Nationals, where she was a shoo-in to win a buckle and a substantial purse for barrel racing, to extinguish the only light that still burned in his otherwise bleak life.
“At least she’d had the decency to tell me to my face,” he said as he slipped on a robe over his T-shirt and pj bottoms to keep warm in the chilly, essentially empty house.
He’d rented the two-bedroom bungalow a couple months back thinking he and Marilyn Rose would furnish it together, would call it home for the next year or two when they weren’t on the road pursuing championships to keep their dreams alive. Unfortunately, Marilyn Rose had never stepped one foot into his house and even last night she’d insisted they meet at a restaurant.
He should have known something was up as soon as she’d suggested Sammy’s, but he’d been so excited that she was finally flying in for a visit that he hadn’t considered anything other than a heart-to-heart conversation on how they could make their relationship work.
“Dang romantic chump,” he mumbled as he made his way out to the kitchen, rubbing his two-day-old beard while walking past the stacked wedding presents that had begun to arrive on a daily basis. He’d opened the outer boxes on a few of them, but hadn’t unwrapped anything. Now there they sat as a reminder of his failed attempt at love.
He really needed that first cup of strong black tea and a dose of his drugs to ease the pain that still racked his body.
He’d stopped taking heavy pain meds about a month ago, replacing them with over-the-counter types that at least allowed him to move around freely. He wondered if he could find something on the drugstore shelves to help ease his broken heart...or was it more his broken ego? Nothing made much sense anymore. It was almost as if his emotions had somehow gotten tangled up with his physical discomfort and he could no longer tell which was hurting more.
The doorbell rang before he could get to the kitchen and instead of answering it he proceeded to his destination, put the teakettle on, poured a glass of orange juice and dumped out his pills on the cluttered counter. He wasn’t much for keeping things tidy and had hired a cleaning service to come in once a week to manage the place, which seemed to make him only more careless.