Cowboy Take Me Away (29 page)

“They do?”

“Of course. I’m the one they pay. And they’re happy to do it.”

Thinking back, he’d always done well during the hands-on parts of dental school. It was the exams that had killed him. It had always freaked him out to have a numerical score attached to his work, something his parents could point to with a sigh of disappointment and say,
Of course we hoped you’d do better.

“And then there are the patients you give your services to for half price because you tell them you need to practice a particular procedure,” Cynthia said.

“So what’s wrong with needing practice?”

She made a scoffing noise. “Please. You don’t need practice. But it’s sure a convenient explanation for why you do nice things for people with financial problems, isn’t it?”

“So what else am I supposed to do? Turn them away? Half price is better than no price.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I don’t know why it makes you uncomfortable if people think you’re nice.”

Because his father would fall on a sword before he’d charge half price for a procedure. And his mother? She was always looking for a way to charge her clients
more
than the basic six percent.

“Face it,” Cynthia said. “You’re a closet nice guy. It’s time to come out of the closet.”

Russell frowned. “Well, I’m not sure I like the way
that
sounds, but…”

All at once he realized she was staring at him with those big Betty Boop eyes, and for some reason they suddenly looked sweet and charming in a way he’d never noticed before. It was as if he was seeing her through another lens, a lens that seemed to have fire around the edges, bright reds and oranges, so bright it made his face hot.

He swallowed hard. “So does this mean you’re coming back?”

“I said I’d think about it.” She frowned. “You don’t listen very well, do you?”

Being with Cynthia was like having a permanent case of whiplash, but for some reason Russell felt exhilarated just to be going along for the ride.

“I have things to do now,” she said, which he took as his cue to leave.

He dug himself out of her sofa. As he followed her to the door, he realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had somebody in his life who looked at him as if he truly mattered, somebody who cared enough to really know him no matter how horribly flawed he was. He thought back to the cupcake with the single candle Cynthia had given him. If she could remember his birthday, why was it so hard for the people in his life who were supposed to be important to him? He was nothing but a footnote in his parents’ life and an afterthought in Shannon’s. Why couldn’t they be more like Cynthia?

He pushed open her screen door and stepped onto her front porch, feeling just a little bit dazed. He started down the steps.

“Dr. Morgensen?”

He turned back.

“I thought about it.”

“You did?”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

She gave him a little smile, and the elation he felt at that moment nearly knocked him flat on his back. She closed the door, and as he walked to his car, he was smiling, too. So she was coming back tomorrow. That was good.

Very
good.

But he didn’t know why, really. She was just an employee. A good office manager, to be sure, and it would be hard to replace her, but just an employee nonetheless. But for some reason, his heart was still going crazy. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her big, brown eyes, those lush lips topped by that little cupid’s bow, and the way she always smelled like Starlight mints?

He didn’t know exactly. Women confused him. They always had. All he knew was that he couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

And he couldn’t wait to see her again.

B
y the time Luke was four hours outside Rainbow Valley, the highway had begun to hypnotize him, letting his mind wander to places he didn’t want it to go. Never had he felt so utterly exposed, so utterly foolish. The last thing the people in that town had seen of him was the sheriff hauling him off to jail. How much more could he have humiliated himself?

No. Forget him. How much more could he have humiliated Shannon?

It’s done now. Let it go. Concentrate on where you’re going, not where you’ve been.

He forced himself to conjure up his favorite fantasy, the one where they’d hand him that belt buckle, that big check, and everybody would be clapping and cheering and calling him a champion. He’d stand on that stage and take in all the accolades, letting them rain over him like ticker tape during the most spectacular parade the world had ever seen.

This time, though, the picture changed. The fantasy became blurry, out of focus. It began to slip away, replaced by an odd, surrealistic chain of events radically different from anything he’d ever imagined. Just like before, he saw people shaking his hand, slapping him on the back, acting as if the Second Coming would pale in comparison to what had taken place there that night. Then for some reason, their words seemed strangely garbled, their touch ice cold. Women were everywhere, smiling seductively, offering themselves in ways that left nothing to the imagination, but he shrank away from their grasping hands.

Then the applause died down. People began to leave. Soon the arena was empty, leaving him standing alone on the stage. One by one, the lights in the stands went out. The only illumination remaining came from a single spotlight pointing directly at him. He couldn’t see beyond the blinding light. He heard not a solitary footfall, not a single spoken word—only the incessant beating of his own heart. Then…

Click.

The spotlight was extinguished, leaving him standing in darkness.

At first, panic set in. He felt around blindly for a way off the stage. Stumbled down the stairs. His feet hit the dirt, but no matter which way he turned, he couldn’t see light. Soon, though, his panic gave way to resignation. Unable to find his way out, he fell to his knees and dropped his head to his hands, settling into the cold dirt beneath him, darkness invading him from every angle, soaking through his skin, seeping straight into his heart.

A decade of effort, only to end up cold and alone.

He kept driving, the highway stretching out in front of him in a seemingly endless strip of asphalt, those images pounding at his brain. For the first time, he realized the success he’d envisioned all these years might have a different outcome than he’d ever imagined.

Luke heard his text message tone. He grabbed his phone.

Hanson.
Damn it.
The last thing he wanted was to hear anything from that guy. He hit the button.

It’s almost Denver time, Dawson! You can kiss the championship good-bye!

Luke felt a slow burn of anger. As soon as he got to Denver, he was getting right in that little bastard’s face and telling him exactly what he thought of him.

Then all at once, Luke noticed he had another text message he hadn’t picked up earlier. He’d left his phone in the truck a couple of hours ago when he was getting gas. It must have come then. He touched the screen to see the message, and his heart leaped.

It was from Shannon.

He pulled off at the next exit, where he swung into a convenience store parking lot and threw his truck into park. He picked up his phone again, breathing hard, afraid to hit the button to see what it said. With his finger trembling, he finally touched it. A song title appeared.

I Will Always Love You.

Luke stared at the words, and for a moment he had a hard time breathing. He couldn’t fathom that she meant it.

Couldn’t fathom it.

Even if she loved him, even if they found a way to be together, sooner or later it would fall apart because nothing good in this life lasted very long. Little by little her mother and other narrow-minded people in Rainbow Valley would chip away at her, and soon she’d be balancing both things, trying to please them, trying to please him, when she was already a high-stress person who didn’t need one more thing on her plate. Sooner or later he’d become a liability, and the love she professed to have for him would be no more real than the love he thought she was feeling all those years ago.

But what if it was true? What if she really did love him?

He looked at the message again, absorbing every word. Every syllable. Every letter. Then he dropped his phone to his lap, his heart beating double-time.

Christ, he was such a fool.

If he won the championship, it would be a gift from God, a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the stars that wouldn’t be repeated. So it was now or never, and he intended to do it no matter what. But now it seemed to exist in another plane, in a universe where that kind of success was a hollow victory. He’d spent ten years chasing that dream to the exclusion of everything else this life had to offer. A family. A place to call home.

Somebody to love.

In that moment, the love he felt for Shannon blasted away the walls around him until the truth became so real there was no denying it. He would do anything to have her. He would lay himself bare. Risk everything. It terrified him, but he was helpless to protect himself any longer. The walls had come down, leaving him defenseless. It made him sick with apprehension at the same time it showered him with hope, hope that he could finally have the kind of life he’d dreamed of as a child where love was at the center and nothing could hurt him because of it.

She’d told him she loved him. How many more times was she going to have to say it before he believed it?

He couldn’t leave things like this. He couldn’t go to Denver without going back first to tell her how sorry he was for the things he’d said. To tell her what a fool he’d been for leaving.

To tell her he loved her, too.

He pulled out of the convenience store parking lot, made a U-turn under the freeway overpass, and headed back to Rainbow Valley.

A few hours later, Shannon’s phone rang. At first she ignored it, willing whoever it was to go away. Her head throbbed and her body ached and she didn’t want to talk to a solitary soul.

Go away, go away, go away…

It rang again. She fumbled around and grabbed it from her coffee table. Freddie Jo.

God, no. No more sympathy.

She tossed the phone back down again, only to have it ring a third time. Finally she punched the
Answer
button.

“Freddie Jo?”

“Shannon! Thank God you finally answered!”

At the sound of panic in Freddie Jo’s voice, Shannon swung her legs around on the sofa and sat up. “What’s the matter?”

“Go outside. Look to the north.”

“What?’

“Just go!”

Shannon tossed her phone to the coffee table, yanked on her boots, and went outside. Rita and Tasha and some of the other residents were already there, staring at the horizon. And what Shannon saw there made her stomach turn over with dread.

A wildfire.

“I just saw a report on television,” Rita said. “It’s coming this way, and fast.”

Shannon raced back to her apartment and turned on her television to a local news station. She found out that the fire had started in the early morning hours only forty miles north and was heading their way. High winds and dry conditions were causing it to move at least ten miles an hour, so there was already an evacuation order in place for Danforth County, and that meant Rainbow Valley.

Shannon grabbed her phone and called Eve, who had just heard about it. She told Shannon not to worry about their parents. She would load them up in her truck and take them to their vacation house on Lake Travis where they’d be safe.

Shannon hung up, relieved that Eve was taking care of that. But what about the animals? The shelter was between Rainbow Valley and the fire, which meant it would be threatened first.

For a solid minute, panic overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Then she took a deep, calming breath and waited for answers to come.

They did.

She called Marc Cordero, and he agreed to let her bring the animals to the vineyard. It was south of Rainbow Valley on the other side of the river. The drought meant the river was down considerably from where it usually was, but it would act as a firebreak for at least a short while if the flames got that far. Marc told Shannon he and his employees who weren’t threatened by the fire were heading into town to help people who couldn’t evacuate themselves, but that Angela was ready and waiting to help her with the animals. He warned Shannon, though, about staying too long with the fire approaching, about taking too many chances if things got bad. Shannon read between the lines.
You’d better make sure my daughter comes back all right.

With the town being evacuated, Shannon knew every available truck and trailer would be in service, so she and Angela shouldn’t count on any additional help. That was okay. There was time, as long as they got moving
now
.

Freddie Jo called Shannon back to tell her Carl was evacuating them from town, so she could help with the animals. Shannon told her to head to the vineyard so she could watch over the animals as she and Angela brought them there. In the meantime, Shannon asked her to call all the shelters she could get in touch with south of Rainbow Valley, asking them to be prepared to take as many animals from the vineyard as they could should it become threatened, too.

Shannon took Goliath and met Angela at the shelter, where they hooked up the stock trailer to Shannon’s truck. Using their assortment of cages, crates, and boxes, they managed to get most of the smaller animals into the trailer and Angela’s SUV on the first trip. As they were driving to the vineyard, though, Shannon was having a hard time getting through to Freddie Jo. Then she lost phone contact altogether. Either there was too much cell activity because of the fire, or calls were being prioritized in favor of emergency services. The worst possible scenario was that the fire had taken out the cell tower generator at ground level, which meant it could be a long time before phone service was restored.

Shannon tossed her phone aside and gripped the steering wheel. An overwhelming anxiety began to build up inside her, waking up every fear she had that something terrible was going to happen, that she would fail, that the animals she was responsible for wouldn’t make it out alive. Then she heard Luke’s voice inside her head.

The more stressed out you get, the less effective you are. Take it easy, and things will turn out fine.

She took a deep, calming breath and prayed that he was right.

Luke was still an hour and a half outside of Rainbow Valley when he realized something ahead was terribly wrong. At first he thought the billows of gray near the horizon must be clouds, only to realize there was a faint orange glow beneath them.

He clicked off his CD player and turned on the radio. A wildfire had been spotted early that morning north of Hardison County. The deadly combination of dry brush and strong winds had escalated the blaze so quickly that five counties to the southeast had already received evacuation orders. Danforth County was one of them, and Rainbow Valley was dead center in the middle of it.

Luke grabbed his phone, his heart beating wildly. He dialed Shannon’s number. It rang three times, and then he lost the call. He tried again and got nothing. He tried Freddie Jo and the same thing happened. He had no idea if the cell towers were overloaded with people making calls, or whether only emergency calls were being allowed through.

Shannon had to be evacuating the animals. To where, he didn’t know. All he knew was how worried she had to be at that moment. He hit the gas and crept his truck up to eighty. Anything to get back to Rainbow Valley as fast as he could, because he knew she would do whatever was necessary to get those animals out of there or die trying.

He just wanted to make damned sure it didn’t come to that.

On their second trip to the shelter, Shannon and Angela worked their way up to the bigger dogs. They loaded as many of them as they could into Angela’s SUV and the stock trailer. As they headed back to the vineyard, Shannon watched the horizon in her rearview mirror and listened to the radio. The wind was fierce, fanning the flames, and the weatherman said the fire was now moving fifteen miles an hour. Shannon did the math and knew they had to hurry.

On their third trip, they got the rest of the dogs out. When they arrived back at the vineyard, Shannon told Angela to leave her SUV there and ride with her for the last trip to the shelter since the only animals left were the horses, the llamas, and Daisy the donkey. One more trip, and they were done. But as they headed back to the shelter, Shannon could actually see flames on the horizon.

“It’s getting close,” she told Angela. “Once we’re there, we’ll need to hurry. But stay calm. The horses will read your mood, and if you’re too shook up, they might not get into the trailer. Okay?”

Angela nodded.

“And if we have to come back for any reason after that, you’re staying at the vineyard.”

“You know I’m eighteen, right?”

“Yes, and I also know your father would kill me if anything happened to you.”

When they got to the shelter, they grabbed lead ropes from the barn and put the llamas into the trailer. They were going back for the horses when it struck Shannon that one was missing.

“Manny,” she said. “Where’s Manny?”

She scanned the pasture anxiously, all too aware of the dark gray clouds of smoke that were moving closer.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” Angela said. “He must have gone into the trees.”

“I’ll have to go find him. Can you get everybody else loaded up?”

“No problem.”

Shannon raced into the barn, dumped some grain into a bucket, and ran into the pasture in the direction of the trees. She could see flames towering in the distant treetops, chewing up the landscape so fast it wasn’t going to be long before they overtook the shelter.