Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1) (7 page)

             
An unseen hand pressed a rag against Casey’s face, blocking out what little light worked its way into the room. Heavy, dark quilts had been hung on the windows to bar the sunlight, with only a strip of yellow light peeking through at the edge of the blanket. Casey’s hand shot out and grabbed the arm, ready to snap it in two. Only the feel of his long fingers closing together over the thin arm stopped him. He snatched the thick cover off his face and stared into the near-darkness, ready to do battle with this unseen assailant.

             
“Casey, stop. It’s me,” Miranda cautioned. Casey’s tense shoulders relaxed, but she noticed his firm grip on her thin wrist didn’t ease. He breathed heavily for a moment, trying to get his bearings, trying to remember how he had ended up in this room.

             
“Where am I?” Casey demanded.

             
“You’re back in the house. In my room,” she answered quietly, certain that his injuries must have left him with a horrible pain in his head.

             
“Why am I in your room?” he asked, still confused by the events.

             
“Well, it was that, or nurse your wounds in front of your brothers’ snoring bodies,” Miranda said, smiling a little. “I, for one, had no desire to sit by anyone’s bedside, let alone with a crowd like those boys create. Besides, this room already had two beds because they brought one in for my sister. I could keep watch over you better this way.”

             
Casey didn’t say anything for a long moment, so long that Miranda wondered if he had slipped into unconsciousness again. Finally, she asked, “Do you remember what happened?”

             
He nodded a little bit, surprised by how much even that small motion hurt. “I was thrown from my horse this morning, chasing the coyotes away from the Aubrac herd.”

             
“Well, you’re only partly right. Only it didn’t happen this morning. It happened two days ago.”

             
“Two days!” Casey nearly shouted, starting to sit up but then thinking better of it when a wave of nausea hit him full force. “I’ve been asleep for two days?”

             
“Yes and no. You were in and out a good bit, but we had to keep you calm until the doctor could come set your collarbone. It’s broken, I’m afraid. You’ve been asleep from the pain pills he left. They knock you out cold.”

             
“I remember that. I felt a sharp pain after I fell off my horse.”

             
“What else do you remember?” Miranda asked, concern creeping into her voice.

             
“Why? What’s so important about falling off a horse?” he demanded, not very kindly.

             
“Maybe I should let your father speak to you,” she suggested. Casey grabbed her arm again and pulled her by the wrist until she was close to his face.

             
“No. Tell me what’s wrong. I can tell that something’s wrong.”

             
“Um…it would seem that maybe there was an accident,” Miranda began hesitantly.

             
“What kind of accident? Where’s Carey?!” Casey demanded, remembering that his brother had gone with him to protect the cattle.

             
“Oh, Carey’s fine, don’t worry. He actually helped bring you back here. No, it’s the ranch hand who went around the creek with you…Thomas, I think they said?” she asked for clarification.

             
“What about Thomas?”

             
“I’m afraid he was killed.” Miranda waited for Casey to explode but even in the darkened room, she could see that his face was concentrating, processing what she’d said. He shook his head for a moment before remembering how badly that motion hurt.

             
“That can’t be right. Did he fall too?” Casey asked, sadness evident in his voice at the loss of the young hand.

             
“I really should get your father, and let him know you’re awake.” She started to rise up off the bed and turn to the door but Casey grabbed her once again, the intensity in the gesture frightening her more than anything she’d seen since coming west.

             
“NO! Tell me what happened!” Casey roared. Miranda stared, not sure she should say anything else when Casey was so upset.

             
“He was shot. In the back.”

             
In a blinding flash, Casey remembered. He remembered seeing Jack’s face leaning over his, and hearing the gunshot that must have been Thomas’ death blow. He remembered the laughter just before everything went dark.

             
“Jack. Jack shot him,” Casey whispered. Miranda leaned closer, telling him to repeat himself. “Jack was there, he shot Thomas. He’d argued with me just that morning and made some kind of a threat and when I fell, Jack leaned over me and laughed. I heard it, he shot Thomas.”

             
“Unfortunately, that’s not the explanation Jack has given. He claims Thomas made some inappropriate remark to you that morning, and that you lured him away from the group with the excuse of cutting off the pack of coyotes, but that you used that as a way to get Thomas alone instead, and that you shot him in the back.”

             
“No, that’s not true. Jack wasn’t even with us when we set out to chase down the pack. How would he even know? Except he was there, waiting. He shot Thomas, and I can prove it. Where are my clothes?”

             
“They’re over here, where I…”

             
“Where you what?”

             
“Never mind.”

             
“Where you undressed me?” Casey asked sarcastically, fully realizing for the first time that he was covered only by the bed quilt.

             
“Someone had to,” Miranda answered primly, answering Casey’s sarcasm with her own. “It seems that mending broken cowboys who fall off their horses is also on the list of things I was ‘hired’ to do around here, besides breed, of course.”

             
“Go to my belt and bring me my gun. I shot two coyotes. That means there should still be four cartridges in the cylinder.” Miranda crossed the room and fished out the gun Carey had carefully replaced in Casey’s belt holster before carrying him over on his own horse back to the house. She carried it with one tiny finger looped through the trigger guard, wanting as much distance as possible between her and the deadly device. Casey took it from her hand and spun open the cylinder, counting out the four bullets that remained. He breathed a sigh of relief.

             
“See? All four. And I bet the mangy bodies of those two coyotes are still out there on the creek bed, if the buzzards haven’t cleaned the whole mess away by now. I knew there was no way I shot Thomas. That poor man…” With the situation resolved, at least in his mind, Casey had a chance to mourn the loss of an eager, energetic cowboy, gone for good because of one horrid monster’s need for revenge. “You have to fetch my father. We have to tell him what happened before Jack skips the ranch and heads out.”

             
“I believe you,” Miranda said. “I’ll let your father know you need to speak with him. But for now, you have to rest. You’ve got more thread than skin on your face, and you lost enough blood through the cut to the back of your head to sink a small ship. It took me a few hours just to get all your skin back where it goes.”

             
Casey reached up and touched the stitch work, pulling his fingers back as pain shot out from around the cut. “You stitched this? Are you kidding me? Who let you take a needle to my head?”

             
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. And it’s quite nice needlework, if I do say so myself. I actually know how to sew, and since it was looking like a good hour before a doctor could get here, I did it myself with the supplies in the medical kit. I was all for embroidering a lovely floral pattern, and I would have gotten away with it too, if your brothers had their way. But your father thought it might upset you to have a scar in the shape of a hyacinth.” She smiled down at Casey in the dark, and he relaxed somewhat.

             
“So why are you out here in Texas instead of embroidering hyacinths to wear to your fancy office somewhere back east?” Casey asked, his voice dropping again. Miranda looked at him for a moment, gauging whether or not that question was actually intended to ask, “Why don’t you go home?”. Deciding that it was borne out of genuine interest in what brought her here, she answered.

             
“If you must know, I wasn’t actually all that happy in my office back in Newark,” she began. “It was...not the best life, for me or for my sister. I...I told your father some of this, but I didn’t tell him everything. I didn’t want to worry him, but more importantly, I didn’t want to be here because he felt the need to take on a charity case.”

             
Miranda proceeded to tell Casey only the most important parts of the story where Mike was concerned. She told him how she heard Gracie crying and went into the living room to find him on top of her, trying to pull her nightgown up.

             
“And I snapped. I had taken every bit of abuse and anger he had dished out but when I saw him trying to hurt Gracie, I went for the baseball bat he kept in the closet.”

             
“And...”

             
“And I beat the crap out of him. I dragged him to the floor and beat him with that bat until he actually cried like a little girl. And then I got us the hell out of there. I called the police from a payphone and told them everything, then Gracie and I went to the bus station.”

             
“And just like that, you came out here?” Casey asked, a look of disbelief crossing his face.

             
“No, of course not. I didn’t know you—well, your dad—yet. We went to the bus station because we had to have a place to sleep that night. Yes, I parked my baby sister, the one a drunken man had just tried to rape, on a bench in the bus station and I sat watch over her all night, never closing my eyes for even a second, just in case someone far worse than Mike came along.

             
“So, rather than keep living in the apartment where she was attacked and I was beaten on a weekly basis, I answered your father’s ad. Only I discovered upon my arrival that you weren’t as excited about the idea as he was.”

             
Casey’s face fell as he remembered his harsh treatment of Miranda and her sister. Was that only a few days ago? He felt ashamed at having taken out his wrath meant for his father on this poor young woman who braved a cross-country trip to become a stranger’s wife—a ranch wife, at that— to exact some measure of independence.

             
“I apologize for my behavior when we met. I promise it had nothing to do with you. I just resented the fact that I didn’t have a choice.”

             
“I feel the pain of not having choices every day,” she answered softly.

             
“Yes, I suppose you do. But if it’s any consolation, it wasn’t you. I would have been an ugly jackass to anyone who had showed up after answering my father’s ad. Oh, wait, what was it you called me? A ‘brutish lout’? I can sort of figure out that it’s not a good thing to be called, but where did you even come up with a phrase like that?”

             
“Well, let’s just say I’m a big fan of British literature. Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, you name it. And besides, I’ve had more than my fair share of brutish louts lately,” she replied, surprised that he remembered her angry insult. “I know my way around a good lout. First, there was my disgusting ex-boyfriend. Then, there’s a certain cowboy who is too full of his own affairs to look into the needs of others,” she nudged Casey gently with one finger. “and finally, the most disgusting man I’ve yet had the displeasure of meeting. How anyone can abide being in Jack’s presence for more than a few seconds is unfathomable.”

             
Casey fumed with anger again, remembering Jack’s disgusting offer to have his way with Miranda. He thought of other things to avoid throwing off the bed covers and charging down the stairs that very moment.

             
“So, how long until I’m out of this bed and back at work on the fences, Doc?” he asked Miranda playfully.

             
“Well, that depends entirely on the behavior of the patient. You are a perfectly agreeable ward…when you’re unconscious. The times when you’ve been awake, you’ve been quite a handful, what with your trying to get up from the bed and the attempts at ripping out my needlework,” she teased.

             
“I’m afraid you’re going to learn that I’m always easier to deal with when I’m not awake,” Casey said, his voice taking on a serious tone he hoped would serve as the warning he intended. Miranda was quiet, all humor put aside at Casey’s statement.

             
“And I’m afraid you’re going to find I’m always easier to deal with when I’m spoken to respectfully, when I’m treated as an equal, and when I’m not expected to pull the bloody clothing off a near-corpse and try to put all of its pieces back together,” she whispered, dropping the barricade she had first put up around her demeanor and letting Casey know how much his accident had scared her. “I am not too proud a person to admit to you that it was almost heart-stopping to see your pale, still body with the blood dripping off of you, and wondering if I’d come all this way only to become a widow before I even became a wife.”