COWBOY ROMANCE: Justin (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 1) (84 page)

Chapter 1

Jane Palmer paced the kitchen. Where was Paul? He should have been back from the field by now. It was past six, past suppertime. Paul was
always
back by suppertime. In her heart, she sensed something was wrong.

She called his cell phone. No answer. Again, that wasn’t like Paul. He kept his phone on vibrate so he would know if he had a call because he couldn’t always hear the ring when he was working with the machinery.

Thinking it would save time, she called 911 to let them know that they needed help at the farm. Paramedics could be on the way while she was searching for Paul, and they could already be there when she found him.

“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” the man on the other end asked.

“My husband hasn’t come in from the field, and I can’t get him on his cell. Would you send the fire department and an ambulance? He’s out on his tractor in a hilly area, so I
know
something has happened. He always answers his phone when I call, and he didn’t this time.”

“You haven’t already found him?”

“Not yet, but I know he’s out there and in need of help. I can feel it. I need some help.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we need specifics. I want you to call back if you find out for sure that he needs help.”

Furious, Jane touched the end icon on her cell phone, wishing she had a landline so she could slam it down on the operator. Now it was going to take that much longer for help to arrive. Why couldn’t they at least get on the road? In her mind, though, she understood. They couldn’t keep running out just because there
might
be an emergency somewhere.

She jumped onto the Gator and headed toward the northeast field. On the way, she saw the overturned tractor.

Her heart constricted. She always worried about him plowing this field because it was so steep. Why had he insisted that they not let it lay fallow this year? Last year he had agreed to leave the field unplanted, but he had insisted on it this year. Now look what had happened.

But she hadn’t seen an accident site yet. Maybe Paul was just fine. In her heart, though, she knew that wasn’t the case. If the tractor had tipped over and Paul didn’t answer his phone, he had to be hurt. It was the only explanation.

Then she found the overturned green and yellow John Deere tractor.

“Paul! Oh, my God!” She scrambled from her vehicle and knelt down beside him. “Paul! Is there anything I can do?”

“I love you, Janie.”

“I love you, too. Don’t you
dare
die on me. You fight hard. Emergency vehicles are on the way. I’ll call and give them a better location.”

Taking her cell from her back pocket, Jane placed the second call, gave them exact directions to the field, and sat back to keep Paul awake and talking.

“You’d better fight hard, Paul. You promised me we’d be together forever.”

“I will, sweetie,” he replied weakly. “I don’t want to leave you yet, either.”

Tears streamed down Jane’s face. “I love you so much, Paul. Fourteen months is too short. I married you for many years. So you hold in there.” Sirens wailed in the distance.  “Do you hear them coming, baby? Help is on the way. Hang in there.”

“I’m hanging the best I can, Janie. Tell them it’s my legs. I can’t feel them.”

“You just stay awake and tell them yourself, okay?”

His eyes slid shut, and Jane almost panicked. She forced herself to remain calm. Anything else would be counterproductive to helping Paul.

Jane continued to console and encourage him while scanning the area for the fire trucks. The moment she saw them coming through the field, she rose and waved her arms above her head in a wide arch.

The sirens ended and the trucks came toward her.

“He’s under the tractor,” she told the first fireman to reach her. “We have to get him out.”

“Is he conscious?”

“He was a few minutes ago, but he passed out. He said that he can’t feel his legs.”

A paramedic arrived at the scene with his box, and the fireman pulled Jane back gently by the arm.

“Do you know how long he was here?” the paramedic asked as he attached a blood pressure cuff to Paul’s arm.

“I don’t have a clue. He came in for lunch about noon. Then he went back out to work. It could have been anytime from then to when I found him a few minutes ago. I got scared when he didn’t answer his phone. He
always
answers when I call. We’ve been married a little over a year, and he’s
never
failed to answer when I called.” She knew she was rambling, but she couldn’t stop herself. “He told me that he can’t feel his legs. Please. You have to help him.”

“They’re trying, ma’am,” the fireman said.

“BP is 90 over 50,” the paramedic announced. “Pulse is 53. I’ll get an I.V. in him, and you guys can take over.”

“What do we need?” a female firefighter asked.

“Hydraulic lift,” the first fireman replied. “We need to get this thing off him ASAP.”

While the emergency personnel worked feverishly, Jane stood aside, her heart aching at the thought of losing her husband. The female paramedic gently lifted his head just far enough to put a neck brace around it. Periodically, the paramedic announced Paul’s blood pressure and pulse—86 over 50, 49 pulse; 83 over 47, 43 pulse. Those numbers were terrible. They were losing him!

“Can I sit beside him while you work? I promise I’ll stay out of the way. I’ll just sit there and hold his hand and encourage him to keep fighting. I’ll just keep telling him that I love him. I promise.”

“Frank?” the fireman at her side asked.

“Let her come over,” the paramedic answered.

Jane rushed to Paul’s side and took his hand in hers. “Come on, babe. Don’t give up now. You can do this. Hang in there for me. We haven’t even had time to start our family. I haven’t given you the children you wanted because I wasn’t ready. Well, I’m ready now. I will
never
turn down your desire for a child again. I promise.”

“Seventy-six over 45. Pulse 40.” The paramedic glared at the fireman. “Get this damned thin
off
him.”

The lift made a grinding noise as the tractor raised. A grunt came from deep in Paul’s throat, almost as though the lessening of the pressure on him helped. He gasped for breath.

“Enough?” one fireman asked.

“Keep going. He’s still pinned.”

“Give me his arm, ma’am. We’re going to pull him out as soon as the tractor is high enough.”

“Eighty-six over 48. Pulse 51. The numbers are rising.”

“Thank you, God,” Jane prayed. “Thank you.”

“There we go. Pull him out now.”

Jane scrambled to her feet and backed out of the way while the male and female paramedics pulled on Paul’s arms until he was completely free of the Deere and lying on a backboard.

Chapter 2

“BP 95 over 62,” the paramedic announced. “He’s definitely back.”

“Thank you!” Jane called out to all of the emergency personnel before she returned her attention to Paul. “Come on, Paul. It’s time to wake up.”

Paul’s eyes fluttered open, and he stared up at her. The tractor crashed back to the ground as they removed the hydraulic life from under it.

“What was that?” he asked, startled by the noise.

“The tractor,” the paramedic beside him said. “I need you to try to move your right hand for me.”

“Why?” Paul asked.

“You have some crushing injuries, and we need to see the extent of your range of motion.” He turned to his female partner. “Hand me the neck brace, would you?”

Each time the paramedic requested that he move something, Paul complied. When they got to his legs, Jane was stunned that he was able to bend his knee.

“But he told me he couldn’t feel his legs,” Jane said. “How could he be moving it now?”

Paul followed the paramedic’s instructions and lifted the other knee while the paramedic replied. “It could have been the loss of blood to his limbs. Now that the blood is flowing again, he can feel them just fine. You can feel, right, Paul?”

“Of course, I can,” Paul replied.

“That’s good. We’ll get you to the hospital where the doctors can check you out.”

“I will not to go to a hospital,” Paul insisted as he tried to sit up. But the paramedic stopped him. “I will be fine here.”

“Paul,” Jane inserted, “you
will
go to the hospital. I insist.”

“I refuse to go. They cannot force me, either.”

“That’s true, ma’am,” the female paramedic said. “If he doesn’t want to go, we can’t make him. But you will have to sign a paper saying that we aren’t responsible if you stay here.”

“Fine,” Paul declared. “I will sign whatever I must. Now I plan to sit up, and I want you to let me.”

While Jane protested, Paul sat on the backboard and moved his legs. “If someone would help me up, that would be wonderful. I feel a little weak.”

“Then you shouldn’t be getting up,” Jane declared. “Come on, Paul. Be reasonable.”

Paul struggled to his feet, but once on them, he didn’t even wobble. He stood steady before her, gazing down at her with a lustful gleam in his deep brown eyes.

“I appreciate you getting me out of my predicament,” he told the emergency personnel, “but I am quite fine. You may leave when you finish what you are doing.”

Staring up at him, Jane studied her husband in concern. Something wasn’t right; she could feel it. He looked the same, but he talked so formally. This was something else that he never did. Maybe he had a concussion. If so, he definitely needed to be seen by a doctor. Unfortunately, if he didn’t go to the hospital, that wouldn’t happen.

“Please, Paul,” she said, “just go with them—if not for your well-being, for
my
peace of mind.”

“I will not go,” he declared.

With those words, Jane knew she had lost the battle.

When the emergency vehicles left the scene, Paul draped his arm around Jane’s shoulder and escorted her to the Gator. They got on it and went back to the house in silence. Jane was furious with him at the moment, and if she spoke, it would be in anger. That was something she always tried not to do, but sometimes it was hard. This was one of those times. Right now, she wanted to physically slap some sense into the man.

Once inside, they sat down to dinner as though nothing had happened. After eating, Jane cleaned up while Paul went to the living room and sat on the couch. Before long, she joined him.

“I don’t know what your problem was with going to the hospital,” she said. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? You’re really acting weird.”

“I am not. I simply do not need hospital care.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re talking so formally. You
always
use contractions and speak in a simple way. You would have normally said, ‘I’m not, either. I just don’t need to see a doctor.’ The way you speak right now isn’t you.”

Paul rose and spread his arms. “You can see that I am fine.” He paused and grasped her hands to pull her to her feet. “Perhaps we should go to bed early. We could work on that baby you promised we could have.”

“We can go to bed,” she agreed as they headed toward the stairs leading to the second floor of their farmhouse, “but you need to rest. We don’t know how long you were under that tractor, and since you refused medical care, we don’t know if you have internal injuries.”

Again, neither of them spoke while they prepared for bed. As always, Paul wore nothing, but Jane put on a pair of pajamas to dissuade him from intercourse.

“What is this?” he asked when she got into bed. “You almost never wear pee-jays, only when you have absolutely no interest during your time of the month. I know that is not the case now.”

“It’s not. I told you that you shouldn’t be having intercourse when you were just under a tractor for who-knows-how-long.”

“And I told you that I am fine. Now please take off the pajamas. I want to make love to you. I want to make a baby that will be the culmination of our love.”

Chapter 3

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea, Paul,” Jane said as his hand slipped under her pajama top.

His hand caressed her naked breast, squeezing it gently as he bent over her. “It’s the perfect idea. Do you deny that you promised me you would never turn down my desire for a child?”

“Of course not, but I was trying to keep you alive.”

He kissed her lips for just a moment. “Then you lied about agreeing to have my child?”

“No, but …”

His lips caught hers again, this time in a passionate kiss that always forced her mind to lose track of the topic. He never failed to divert the subject with a kiss like this.

She opened her mouth slightly to admit his tongue. It clashed with hers in a different way, almost as though he was timid about the contact with hers. To show her acceptance, she thrust her tongue into his mouth and grabbed the back of his head to hold him.

He pulled back to gaze down at her. “Are you sure, Jane?”

“I’m sure I can’t deny you,” she whispered. “I’m sure that I love you with all my heart, and I’m sure that I want to show you every second. If that means doing something I don’t think is advisable to make you happy, who am I to refuse you? But if our making love makes you worse, you
must
promise you will go to the hospital and be checked out.”

“All right. I promise.”

With those words, Jane stripped her top over her head while Paul threw the covers off of them and pulled down her pajama bottoms. Jane gazed at his nude body. He had some bruising around his thighs and abdomen, but nothing that appeared to be any danger to his health—thank goodness. That made her less concerned about what would happen.

Reaching out, she tenderly fingered the contusion near his waist. To her surprise, his penis bounced in excitement. She touched it instead, sliding her index finger from the base to the tip.

His finger followed suit with her vagina, drawing forth a moan from deep in her throat. Oh, how she wanted her husband! She couldn’t remember ever having wanted him this much in her entire life. It was almost as though the accident had changed him, almost as though he was a different man.

Then Paul joined with her. Unlike other times, he filled her slowly, as if savoring their moments, as if he wanted to take his time since he’d nearly lost his life. Finally, he joined with her completely and moved within her body.

She felt like this was a new moment in their love, which had nearly been ripped from them. But they were still together, and joy filled her soul as surely as Paul’s organ filled her.

All thought left her mind as her body overtook her. She grabbed his buttocks and gyrated in time with his movements. All the time, their pelvises ground together. Her clitoris rubbed against his excited manhood, increasing her own excitement until she felt as though she could bear it no longer. Finally, he increased his movements.

Jane exploded in an orgasm unlike any other. Even Paul hadn’t previously made her convulse in such ecstasy. As soon as she relaxed, He drove into her one last time with a lusty growl of satisfaction. This was the first time he’d ever made noises like that when he came, but then everything seemed different this time.

A moment later, he collapsed onto the bed beside her and took her into his arms.

“That was magnificent,” he praised. “I cannot believe how much I enjoyed it.”

“It was wonderful, wasn’t it? Maybe your being so close to death, being in so much danger, heightened our senses and emotions to the point that we needed the release like never before.” She laid her head on his chest and listened to his heart beat. “I’m so grateful you survived that accident that I can’t even begin to put it into words.”

“Shall we dress and go to the site? I would like to see what the tractor looks like.”

“All right, if that’s what you want.”

***

As they neared the accident scene, Jane stopped short. It was unbelievable! The paramedics and fire fighters were still there, but she and Paul hadn’t left until after the emergency workers left. What was happening?

Beside her, Paul slipped her arm through his. She looked over at him. But it wasn’t Paul; it was somebody with his looks but with pale fuchsia skin. She looked back over to the scene, where paramedics labored to help someone on the ground. Gazing closer at the prone figure, she saw that it was Paul.

Jane felt numb, as though she wasn’t even present. This whole scenario was impossible! Paul was escorting her past the site, while another Paul was lying on the ground.

“BP 43 over 20; pulse 10,” a paramedic announced. “We’re losing him. Let’s bag him and get CPR going.”

Unable to believe what she was seeing, Jane stared at the events unfolding before her. She moved without thought beside fuchsia Paul while she watched paramedics perform a life-saving procedure on her husband. As they passed the scene, no one appeared to notice them. Everyone concentrated on Paul. She kept her gaze on them, turning her head so she could see.

“Checking for vitals,” the female paramedic said. She put her stethoscope to his chest then checked the machine beside her. “I’ve got nothing. We’ve lost him.”

“We’ll continue CPR for a few minutes.”

“No!” Jane cried out. “He wouldn’t want to live as a vegetable. He wouldn’t want to live in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

“Maybe we should let him go,” the woman said. “He’s a farmer like my uncle. He wouldn’t want to be confined to a wheelchair, because he wouldn’t be able to do his job.”

“Exactly,” Jane said. “He wouldn’t be happy if he couldn’t work the farm.”

“Fifteen minutes,” the man said. “If he hasn’t come around, we’ll call it.”

Jane and Fuchsia Paul continued walking, but they appeared to go nowhere. The entire time she could see her husband receiving CPR; she could see the paramedics working to save him.

“Okay, call it, Sally.”

The female paramedic looked at her watch. “Seven-twenty-two.”

This whole thing was surreal. She was standing near Paul as the paramedics covered him with a plastic sheet, but she was moving away from the site with Fuchsia Paul. She wanted to stay with Paul, not walk away from him. In the field, she collapsed. No, she was still strolling away with …

She looked up at Fuchsia Paul. The handsome male, whose arm was linked with hers, was fuchsia; but he certainly wasn’t Paul. This man had the features of an Adonis.

Staring up at him, she tried to conjure up words to ask him what was happening. All words, however, were stuck somewhere in the back of her mind. This stranger was taking her somewhere, and she had no power to stop him. It was as though he had stolen her soul.