How to Kiss a Cowboy (14 page)

Suze woke reluctantly to the poking and prodding of a nurse who said she was “taking her vitals.”

Yeah, she was taking her vitals, all right.
Sleep
was vital, and the nurse was taking it
away
.

Suze took some medication and said she felt okay, which was a lie. When the nurse left, she lay in the half dark, listening to the sounds of the hospital waking up—a faint blend of voices from the nurse's station down the hall; the soft squeak of nurse's shoes up and down the hallway; her own breathing, steady and slow but ragged with pain.

She stared up at the ceiling. She hated sleeping on her back, but with all the tubes coming out of her arms and the bulky brace around her neck, it was the only choice she had. They'd said the neck brace was a precaution, as she hadn't actually broken anything there. She felt like she'd been put through a meat grinder and pounded into patties, but they said her injuries were mostly sprains, strains, and torn ligaments. The only thing broken was one foot, her wrist, and some fingers. Her ankle was sprained, but that wouldn't be a problem. She'd be back in the saddle in no time.

She flicked through all the television stations, but she hated
SpongeBob
SquarePants
and wasn't too fond of the Kardashians, either. For a while, she watched a mixed martial arts fight on Spike TV. The fighters were women, and she settled on that. Maybe she'd pick up some tips to use when she got a chance to beat the crap out of Brady Caine.

* * *

Brady finished with the horses and looked around the Carlyle place for something else to do. He'd go hunt for Speedo if he had any idea where to look, but he'd have to count on the cowboy network for that. Meanwhile, he'd lose his mind if he didn't get busy.

If Earl didn't go to see his daughter, he'd lose his temper. Or, more likely, he'd go to the hospital himself. Suze had made it clear to Brady that she wanted him to leave her alone, but he'd tried that once before, after the night of heaven they'd spent together. He'd regretted it ever since.

With age had come wisdom, and he realized now that she'd completely misunderstood his reason for leaving. She thought he'd gotten what he wanted and didn't care about her anymore. She thought she was nothing more than a notch on a bedpost.

He wasn't sure where she fit into his life, but she was more than that. She'd burrowed deep into his subconscious from the moment he'd first seen her.

He leaned against the hitching post in the sun, watching the house for signs of life and pondering the fact that this was his one chance to show Suze he was something more than some jerk who lured women into bed and then walked away.

The sun felt good on his face, and he could smell sage on the breeze that stroked his cheek. There were acres of wild country beyond the Carlyle house, acres that had never been tamed. It would have been better for Earl Carlyle if it had all been cleared and turned to pasture, but Brady loved the wildness of it, the toughness of the rocky land and the twisted trees that managed to grow from the sandy soil. Oddly enough, the trees reminded him of Earl. There was a toughness about the old man that made it seem like he could survive anything. So why was he so weak in the face of his grief?

Brady plucked a daisy from the tangle of flowers that grew alongside the fence. It was wildflower season, and there was a festival of color hidden in the tall grass. Asters showed their shy faces in the shady spots, while dame's rocket grew even where the sun had baked the soil brick hard.

This was Suze's world, when she wasn't on the road. Every morning and every evening, she smelled this sweet-scented air and listened to the grasshoppers clicking in the tall grass. She carried buckets to the rusty faucet by the barn and checked the fence along the weedy pasture.

He looked down at the daisy smiling up from his work-worn hand. It didn't look like Earl was going to go anywhere today, and Suze wouldn't be happy to see Brady arrive in his place. But she might welcome a little piece of her ranch, since she was trapped in the sterile world of the hospital. Those harsh white lights, the gleaming linoleum floors—it was all so artificial.

Half an hour later, he had a healthy fistful of wildflowers picked, and they were even arranged in some sort of order, with the little ones around the edge and the big, showy ones dead center. He found a length of twine in the barn and wrapped it around them, then fumbled the ends into a sloppy bow with his big, clumsy fingers.

Pleased with his work, he climbed in his truck and did a quick and very noisy K-turn in the turnout, raising as much of a dust cloud as he could. As he sped down the drive, he could see the dust billowing up behind him. He pictured it settling on Earl Carlyle's shiny pickup and smiled at the thought of the old man cussing up a storm while he cleaned off his vehicle.

Hell, Earl probably wouldn't bother. The old man was such a do-nothing stick-in-the-mud, he'd probably leave the dust. Brady was surprised there wasn't a layer of it on the man himself.

* * *

“Well, look at the pretty flowers. Are those for me?”

The woman manning the nurse's station on Suze's floor was just pretty enough to make Brady stammer, and he felt his face flush even as a response rose to his lips.

“If I'd known you were here, I would have picked more, ma'am.”

The nurse laughed. “You were doing okay until you called me ma'am.”

“Sorry, ma'am.” Now he was really blushing.

An older nurse behind the counter shot him an appraising glance over the wire-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. When she spotted the flowers, she broke into a smile wreathed in wrinkles.

“Well, who are those for, young man?”

“Um, Suze Carlyle?”

“Oh, that poor girl. She's in room 320,” the older nurse said. “But, Charlotte, why don't you find something he can put them in? He doesn't get them in water, those flowers won't last an hour.”

“I guess I should have thought of that,” he said.

The younger nurse—the one he'd called ma'am—examined the bouquet, touching a daisy at the edge that already showed signs of wilting.

“We've got some vases in the break room,” she said. “People are always leaving them behind. Come on, we'll find something.”

Two more nurses were in the break room, finishing up early lunches or a midmorning snack. Brady was touched by their determination to make sure Suze received a proper bouquet. They searched the top cabinets over the room's small sink and microwave, putting half a dozen vases on the counter for him to choose from.

“I think that one,” Brady said, pointing to a simple but graceful vase of clear glass.

“But what about this?” One of the women turned around with a cobalt-blue number in her hands and displayed it with all the grace of a game-show hostess. “This would show off the blue in those asters.”

The discussion went on, with Brady patiently clutching his bouquet. He might get on well with women, but he never felt like he truly understood them. To him, any of the vases would have been fine, but if these women thought it was important, Suze might think so too. Although she was the least girlie woman Brady knew.

They finally settled on the clear vase he'd chosen originally. With much fussing and a little fighting, it was filled with water. The baling twine was untied, and the flower arranging symposium began, dominated by the first nurse he'd spoken to. In her teddy bear scrubs, with her perky ponytail bobbing with every move, she reminded him of a kindergarten teacher.

“Did you pick these?” she asked.

He nodded. “Sure did. From her pasture. I thought she'd like a little bit of home.”

“Did you hear that?” She fairly squealed the words to the others. “He picked them himself. Said she'd like a little bit of home.”

The older nurse beamed at him. She had a nice, honest face, and a wide smile that made him feel blessed somehow.

“That
is
sweet,” she said. “My Harley thinks a dozen red roses is all a woman wants. I appreciate it, but I wish he'd put more thought into it.”

Brady hated to think he'd got Harley into any kind of trouble. “He's probably a hard worker, though,” he said. “It's hard for a working man to find time for picking flowers. I'm just a saddle-tramp rodeo bum, so it's easy for me.”

She beamed again, and he thought Harley might get lucky tonight.

“I knew it.” The teddy-bear nurse had thin, artistic fingers that deftly arranged the flowers into a shapely bouquet. “I knew you were a real cowboy. I told Alice. Didn't I, Alice?”

Another nurse, dressed head to toe in
Toy
Story
characters, nodded agreement. “You called it, Annie.”

Annie handed Brady the vase. It looked like a bouquet from the best florist in town. She gestured with the baling twine and he held out the vase. Carefully, she retied it around the outside of the arrangement, finishing it off with a perfect, multilooped bow that added just the right rustic touch. Brady hadn't realized how crude the original bouquet was. This was more the effect he'd been going for.

“Where'd you learn to make 'em look so pretty?”

“I don't know.” She shrugged and gave him a shy, sideways glance. “I just like doing stuff like this.”

“Well, you're good at it. Thank you.”

She smiled at him, her face suffused with a very becoming blush. “You're welcome.”

Aw, shoot. Things were starting to feel uncomfortable. She was a nice girl, but Brady wasn't looking for a girlfriend, that was for sure. He had more important things to do.

Like finding a missing horse.

“Are you a friend of Suzanne's?” she asked.

“You'd have to ask her about that. I suspect she'd say no right now, but I've always thought of us as friends.”

“
Just
friends?”

He looked down at the shiny white floor and thought about lying, just to keep himself out of hot water. But as he stared down at the nurse's hot pink Crocs, he knew the lie would follow him into Suze's hospital room and make all kinds of trouble. He shook his head.

“Just friends,” he said. “Suze wouldn't have it any other way.”

“Oh.” She thought a moment. “Would you?”

Brady was surprised at the answer that rose to his lips. “Yeah.” He looked her full in the face and smiled. “Yeah, I would.” He looked at the other nurse, the one who wanted wildflowers from her Harley. “Room 320, you said?”

She nodded, and Brady headed down the hallway. When he reached room 320, he paused, sucking in a deep breath. Oxygen gave you energy; deep breathing was calming. And he had a feeling he'd need all the energy and calm he could muster to face Suze.

Suze looked longingly at the plastic pitcher beside her bed. She'd tried to manage a drink of water on her own, but her splinted wrist wasn't strong enough to hold the mug and she ended up pouring half a cup into her lap. She wished a nurse would come and check on her. She'd dropped the call button while she was trying to pour the water. You'd think they'd notice she was kind of quiet, but they probably thought she was asleep.

Like that was going to happen. She'd spent the night racked with pain, relieved only by ibuprofen. She'd refused the stronger drugs the nurses offered; she kept her body clean and never took anything stronger than an aspirin. She was starting to reconsider that policy as she lay in bed throbbing from head to toe, her only entertainment the sharp pains that sped through her nerves to emerge in various locations—her wrist, her knee, her neck, her ankle, her foot.

Where was the doctor? Weren't they supposed to do rounds in the morning and check on their patients? They did on
Grey's Anatomy
. Maybe Dr. McDreamy would show up and ease her pain with his sympathetic eyes and perfect hair.

Yeah, right.

She didn't want a doctor anyway, or even a nurse.

She wanted her dad.

She felt tears rising, threatening to overflow, and blinked them away. It was okay to cry from the pain, but tears of self-pity were not allowed. Not in her world.

When she finally heard footsteps outside her room, she smoothed her hair, grateful for any kind of distraction. She'd been flicking channels all morning, restlessly rotating through inane cartoons and even more inane reality shows. She'd tried a news channel, but it was even worse, with talking heads screaming at each other about food stamps and farm subsidies.

She was expecting a nurse to take her vitals again or maybe, just maybe, her father. So she was stunned into silence when Brady entered, followed by the floor's entire nursing staff.

Funny,
he
didn't have any trouble getting a nurse to help him.

“Hey.” He set a vase full of flowers on the table beside her bed and sat down in the plastic chair provided for visitors. “Thought you might like a little bit of home.”

She wanted to tell him to get out of her room. The whole incident in the rodeo arena had come back to her now, and she knew it was Brady who'd landed her in the hospital. She might have urged him, even dared him, to do the stunt, but he was the one who'd held on to the rope a second too long. If he couldn't do it right, he should have said so.

She wanted to tell him she never wanted to see him again. She wanted to ask him how he had the nerve to come here after what had happened, and she wanted to grab that vase of flowers and throw it at him, water and all. But she couldn't throw anything at him with all the nurses watching, their hands held prayerfully together as though they expected some romantic scene to play out.

So she burst into tears.

It must have been something they put in her IV, because Suze was
not
a crier, and these were big, fat, hot tears that wouldn't stop no matter how much she hiccuped and swallowed and choked. Huge sobs wracked her chest, making her bruised ribs ache. She hated herself for them. Her dad said tears were for sissies, and she was
not
a sissy.

So how could she cry in front of Brady Caine, of all people? Literally, figuratively, every way you looked at it, Brady had bashed her to bits. He'd broken her heart and bruised her body. It was hard to face him laid out in a hospital bed, helpless as a newborn calf. It was even worse to have to lie there and mop her streaming eyes while he handed her tissues.

She finally got ahold of herself and sniffed, then wiped her nose on the arm of her hospital gown. Now
that
was attractive.

The gaggle of nurses that had followed Brady into the room finally figured out they weren't going to get the warm fuzzies they were hoping for and left.

Suze plucked self-consciously at the neck of her hospital gown. The thing was hideously uncomfortable and the ultimate enemy to modesty. Half the time it gaped in the worst possible places, and the rest of the time it wrapped around her like a mummy's shroud and wouldn't let her move. The ties at the back kept coming undone, and she couldn't tie them herself, so right now she was barely covered. If it weren't for the sheet, she'd be practically naked.

Why were hospitals so determined to make you feel helpless? Weren't they supposed to make you feel
better
?

She let out a particularly loud and unfeminine
honk
into one of the tissues Brady had handed her and shot him a glare, daring him to comment. He smiled gently, his brown eyes soft and caring, and she hated him even more for being the only person she could ask for help.

“Could you do something for me?” she asked. Crying had stuffed up her nose and it came out “subthing
.
”

“I'd do just about anything for you,” he said.

The nurses had apparently left the room, but she could swear she heard a collective sigh coming from the hallway. Yeah, they thought it was all romantic that he'd said that. But they didn't know what he'd done. They didn't know he was the reason she was here.

“Go to my house and ask my dad to pack up some of my clothes, okay? And maybe some shampoo. I don't like the kind they have here.”

“I can go get it for you.”

Right. That was all she needed—Brady Caine going through her panty drawer.

“No. Just ask my dad.”

“Okay.”

“And tell him to bring them here, okay? You don't need to be running back and forth. My dad and I can take care of ourselves.”

He paused, as if he had something difficult to say, but then he just nodded. “Okay.”

She looked back at the TV and flicked the channel, then stared up at a reality show as if Khloé and Kourtney held the keys to the universe. She had the sound down on the TV, so the room was quiet except for the hum of the machines that were keeping track of her heartbeats or whatever.

Brady didn't seem to mind being ignored. He just sat there with his dirty old hat in his lap and watched her like she was some kind of exotic bird. His pose was relaxed, his eyes bright and interested. She'd have thought he didn't care about anything if it wasn't for the way he twisted the hat in his hands, rotating it around and around.

“How's Speedo?” she asked.

“Fine.” He spun the hat faster. “He misses you. So does Bucket.”

“I know.” She thought of her horses and wished she could somehow teleport herself to the corral outside the barn. She'd lean against Speedo's solid side, resting her head on his sun-warmed fur, breathing in his musky scent.

“I'll take care of 'em,” Brady said.

She must look terrible. He was too polite to look at her bruised face, and spoke to the wall beside her. She nodded, swallowing hard. Her throat still ached, as if she was going to cry again.

She was
not
going to cry again.

A sudden thought struck her, and she forgot about the pain. “You didn't put Bucket in the big pasture, did you?”

“Nope. He tried to convince me that was where he was supposed to go, but I knew he was lying. Judging from what you're feeding him, that grass is way too rich for him. I put him in that little corral beside the barn.”

She almost smiled at that. He was right. Bucket was an incorrigible liar. Whenever she took him on the road, he'd lean out of the trailer and try to convince passersby they should feed him all kinds of terrible things, like ice cream and beer and French fries. When he didn't want to work, he'd fake lameness so convincingly that she once took him to the vet for nothing.

She reached over and touched the flowers, feeling the warmth of her home pasture lingering on the blooms.

“Those are actually from the horses,” he said. “Bucket helped me pick 'em this morning, from around the outside of the corral.”

She knew he wasn't making that up. Bucket would have followed him all around the corral, getting in the way, while Speedo would have kept his distance and his dignity by watching from the shade under the cottonwoods.

The tears were coming dangerously close to the surface. She'd give anything to rest her face against Speedo's warm neck and tangle her fingers in that platinum mane he was so famous for. She missed silly, affectionate Bucket too, and the cool patch of grass under the tree in the pasture, and the peace of the dimly lit barn. She didn't know if the scent of the flowers was making her homesickness better or worse.

She also didn't know how she'd manage to take care of her horses if she ended up in the hospital for long. Both of them needed to be worked, or they'd lose condition. And her father hadn't done that kind of thing since last year, when she'd won her second championship. Maybe he figured she ought to be able to do everything herself now that she was a two-time champ.

Not that that made any sense.

She'd have to hire somebody. But who? And with what? All her winnings went toward the mortgage and her dad's medical bills. If she hired someone to help with the ranch, she'd probably end up going broke and losing it.

Losing the ranch her mother had picked out was unthinkable. Her father had told her over and over how he'd thought the house was too old, the land too rough, but Suze's mom had fallen in love with it and had to have it. That made it sacred ground for Suze.

She felt a tear slipping down her cheek and dashed it away.

“I'll bring you some clothes, then, or send 'em with your dad,” Brady said. “You want some magazines to read?”

She nodded, biting her lip. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone, but nobody else was volunteering to help her. Apparently the man who'd put her in the hospital with all these injuries was the best friend she had right now.

How pathetic was that?

* * *

Brady left Suze's room an hour later. She'd finally fallen asleep, but he'd sat there awhile, wishing he could somehow trade places with her. It would have been kind of funny if Suze had roped him and dragged him off his horse. His brothers would take care of him, and his only trouble would be the teasing he'd have to endure.

He plucked a daisy from the flower bouquet and laid it on her pillow as he left, hoping the little reminder of summer sunshine would be the first thing she'd see when she opened her eyes.

He paused as he passed the nurses' station and tipped his hat to the little nurse who'd been so eager to help him with the flowers. The manners Bill Decker had drilled into him wouldn't let him leave without thanking her, but he planned to skedaddle as soon as he'd said the words. He didn't want to discuss how Suze had welcomed him—or rather, failed to welcome him.

“Thanks for your help,” he said. “I sure appreciate it.”

“
She
didn't seem to appreciate it.”

“Sure she did. She just isn't feeling good.”

“Well, I thought she should have been nicer to you.”

There was an undercurrent beneath her words that made Brady uncomfortable. He wondered where the other nurses had gone. First there was a whole herd of 'em, and now there was nobody else around.

He wondered if they'd done it on purpose. He'd noticed women could be sneaky that way.

He rested his forearms on the counter, folding his work-roughened hands together. These women had the power to make Suze's life miserable. He had to set the record straight.

“I'm surprised she'll talk to me at all,” he said. “I'm the reason she's here. There was an accident, and I screwed up and got her hurt. So if she's not nice to me, it doesn't mean she's not a nice person. It's just what I deserve.”

“Oh.” The little nurse still looked at him like he had a halo on instead of a cowboy hat. He hated that. It was so hard to convince some of these girls that he wasn't who they thought he was. All those romance books and Wild West movies made rodeo cowboys seem wild and glamorous, when really he was a bum who barely worked for a living and spent half his spare time in bars and the other half in bed with women he barely knew. He was no hero, and this girl needed to know it.

“I lassoed her and pulled her off her horse,” he said, his eyes steady on hers. “I didn't let go of the rope in time and she got flung into a gate. She could have died because I messed around and screwed up. I've been a cowboy all my life. I know better, but I was trying to prove something.”

She glanced away, and he waited until she looked back at him before he said more.

“That's why she doesn't want to see me or talk to me. Got it?”

The nurse nodded. Her eyes were wide now but a little less warm.
Mission
accomplished
.

He stepped back shoving his hands in his pockets.

“You'll take care of her, won't you?”

She nodded.

“Good care?”

She cleared her throat. Evidently his admission had shocked the voice right out of her.

“Sure,” she finally said. “We'll take the best care of her we can.”

“She's not always easy,” he said. “But she's got good reasons to be tough, and underneath it all she's—well, she's a sweetheart.” He glanced around, as if listeners might be lurking in the hallways. “Just for God's sake don't tell her I said that.”