Cowboy with a Cause (4 page)

Nick looked chagrined. When Nick had left Grady Gulch after their sister’s death, he hadn’t realized he’d left his girlfriend, Courtney, pregnant. He’d been gone a little over two years when Sam was arrested, and Adam had become a drunk, and so Nick had decided to come home to help sort things out. Nick and Courtney had reconnected and had married a month ago in a small ceremony where little Garrett as ring bearer had nearly eaten the rings.

“She’s gorgeous and smart and yet at twenty-eight years old she’s holed herself up in that house, just waiting for death to eventually come,” Adam replied. “She’s completely given up on herself and life.”

“Is it possible somebody has a little crush on the pretty woman in the wheelchair?” Courtney asked in a teasing tone.

Adam laughed and hoped the heat in his cheeks didn’t show outwardly. “I’m not even sure she likes me very much. I think she just puts up with me because she needs the rent money to help pay off some back taxes she owes on the house.”

“It’s got to be tough, though, to be so young and facing the rest of her life in a wheelchair,” Courtney replied. “She’s got to be suffering from some depression.”

“True, but being in a wheelchair isn’t a death sentence,” Adam replied. “She should be getting out of that house, enjoying the feel of the sun on her face, the wind in her hair.”

“You should know better than anyone that you can’t make somebody do something if they aren’t willing,” Nick chided. Adam knew Nick was thinking about the first couple of days after he returned to the ranch, when he tried to get Adam to quit drinking.

“Yeah, but she spends a lot of time looking out the window, like she wants to get out but is afraid or something,” Adam said.

“Does she have a way out?” Courtney asked. “The Brooks house isn’t exactly handicap friendly with the stairs coming off the porch. How does she manage inside the house?”

“Quite well. Tilly Albright comes in a couple times a week to do some cleaning and cooking, but for the most part Melanie seems relatively self-sufficient inside the house,” Adam replied. He took a sip of his iced tea and thought about the past three days.

It was as if he and Melanie had warily circled each other, careful not to step on each other’s toes or get too personal. For Adam the days had been particularly hard as he’d fought against a growing respect and the faint thrum of an unexpected desire for her.

It had begun on the morning he’d frightened Tilly and raced down the stairs to explain to her that she knew him and he wasn’t the serial killer haunting the town. He’d been embarrassed to find himself on the stairs clad only in a towel, but he’d been enchanted when he’d seen Melanie in her dark blue nightgown.

The spaghetti straps had exposed her slender shoulders, the silk material had hugged her curves and the plunging neckline had given him a glimpse of the grace of her long neck and the creamy skin of the top of her small breasts.

He never really considered a real relationship with a woman before. He definitely knew he wasn’t in a place in his life to have anything to offer to a woman. With two months’ sobriety behind him and a need to figure himself out, the last thing he needed to do was drag a woman into the uncertainty of his own life.

“Unc Dam!” Garrett exclaimed and with his cheesy finger pointed at Adam and smiled.

“Uncle Adam loves you,” Adam replied and leaned over to kiss the boy on his dark hair.

“He misses having you here,” Nick said.

“It’s better this way,” Adam replied. “I needed my own space and so did the three of you.”

“You coming back to work on the ranch?” Nick asked.

“Only if you really need me. You were always the real rancher around here. I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

Nick smiled at him. “Anything we can do to help?”

“Nah, I think I need to suffer through this early midlife crisis all alone,” Adam responded.

“If you trade your truck in for some fancy little sports car, then we’re stepping in,” Courtney said, making them all laugh.

A half an hour later, as he drove past the lumber store, part of his conversation with his brother and sister-in-law still lingered in his head. On impulse he turned into the parking lot.

When he’d asked Melanie why she didn’t go out, she’d said it was complicated. Hell yes, it was complicated without a ramp. He could only assume that when she went out to doctors’ appointments, she’d have to leave the house by the back door and go through the side yard and around to the front of the house to get into Tilly’s car.

Minutes later, as he helped load the lumber and nails he’d just bought on the back of his truck, he knew that he was definitely overstepping his boundaries and he also knew he was running the risk of majorly ticking off Melanie. But the truth of the matter was he wanted more for her than she seemingly wanted for herself.

Funny, for the last couple of months Adam had done nothing but look inward and feel sorry for himself. It felt good to actually do something for somebody else.

He had no idea if she’d really use the ramp he intended to build, but he liked the idea that if she decided to venture outside, he was making it a little easier for her.

He arrived back at the house just after two, lumber and tools loaded in the back of his truck. He didn’t go inside to tell her his intentions. He decided it would be easier to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.

He’d just started hammering the nails in the frame when the front door opened and Melanie appeared at the threshold. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

He straightened and eyed her boldly. “Probably overstepping my boundaries.” He knew she possibly wouldn’t be happy, and she didn’t disappoint him. Her nostrils thinned and Adam steeled himself for whatever was about to come.

“What are you doing?” she repeated.

“I’m building a ramp.”

“Why?” There was an unmistakable belligerence in her voice.

He thought she’d never looked so gorgeous, sitting so straight and tall in the chair, with her bright blue eyes blazing.

“Because you need one.” He picked up a nail and hammered it into the wood, acutely aware of her continuing to glare at him.

“I’m not reimbursing you for whatever you spent on such nonsense,” she yelled to be heard over his pounding.

He stopped hammering and straightened up once again to look at her. “I didn’t intend for you to. I just figured if you had to get out of the house, say, in the case of an emergency, a ramp would make it possible. From the end of the wood you have nice sidewalks that will take you anyplace you want to go in town.”

“I don’t want to go anyplace in town!” she exclaimed and then backed up and slammed the door to punctuate her sentence.

Her response didn’t deter him from the task at hand. It took him a little over two hours to build an adequate ramp and finish it off with strips of nonskid material, which he placed every twelve inches to assure her safety in the rain or snow.

When he was done, he leaned back against the side of his truck and looked at the work. He was satisfied. The ramp was solid and wide enough and had a gentle slope that would make it easy for her to maneuver in the chair.
If
she ever decided to try it, he thought ruefully. Eventually, if she wanted, he’d put up solid railings on either side.

He cleaned up his tools and stored them in the back of his truck and then went inside and up the stairs to shower and change clothes. As he passed through to the stairs, there was no sign of Melanie. She’d probably retreated to her room to have a private temper fit.

At least she hadn’t asked him to stop building or to tear down what he’d done, he thought as he stepped into the shower spray.

He’d heard her laughter only once and it was a beautiful sound that he wished he heard more often. She broke his heart just a little bit, not because she was in a wheelchair, but rather because she had decided to stop living.

Just like Adam had done when Sam was arrested. Yes, Adam knew all about hiding from life, denying a reality too painful to endure.

But what he was slowly discovering was that sometimes you just had to adjust your expectations of the way you thought your life should go and grab onto happiness wherever and whenever it could be found.

Sick of his mental journey into the philosophy of life, he got out of the shower, dressed in a pair of clean jeans and a long-sleeved button-up shirt and headed downstairs to face the music.

Music.
Funny that she didn’t want the sound of music in the house. It was a fleeting thought as he found her in the living room, at the window, staring out at his masterpiece.

“It looks steep,” she said, her voice just short of grumpy.

“It’s not at all.”

She turned around to look at him and her eyes were a troubled midnight blue. “I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to see people. When I left here, I bragged about all the things I was going to do.... I was going to be a professional dancer and work on Broadway, and now I’m back where I started and a complete failure.”

Adam pointed to the pictures hanging on the wall. “That’s not failure,” he replied. “That’s success. You did what you set out to do and then you suffered a physical injury. You’re like a football player who won the Super Bowl but then blew out his knee and can never play again. It’s simply time to readjust your goals.”

She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I don’t want to see the pity in people’s eyes.”

Adam walked over to her and crouched down in front of her. He could smell her, a seductive scent of spice and floral that momentarily dizzied his senses. His heart banged as he reached out and took one of her hands in his.

Dainty and cold, it lay lifeless in his own, but he was shocked by the electric connection that sizzled through him at the simple touch.

“People will only look at you with pity if you’re pitiful,” he said. “There’s a man here in town, Brandon Williams. He’s a war veteran, and his face is scarred, he’s bald and he’s in one of those motorized wheelchairs. He runs all around town. He’s pleasant and has a great sense of humor, and nobody feels sorry for him, because he obviously doesn’t feel sorry for himself.”

Her hand slowly warmed and tightened in his. “But I do feel sorry for myself.” She offered him a small smile. “And I’m getting pretty sick of it, of myself.”

“Then have dinner with me at the Cowboy Café tonight. Let people see that you’re in a wheelchair, but you’re just fine. Let them know that you’re dealing with the injury that sidelined you from your very successful career.”

His desire to take her out was palpable in the air as she squeezed his hand even more tightly. He knew he was way too invested in getting her out of the house, out around people who might help her transition into a less lonely existence.

She hesitated for a long moment and then nodded. “Okay,” she finally replied softly.

“Great!” he exclaimed. He gave her hand an answering squeeze and then released it and stood. “Why don’t we plan on heading out of here in about an hour? That will get us to the café around six.”

“I’m nervous,” she admitted and her lower lip trembled slightly.

“There’s no need to be nervous. The people of this town are good people. Besides, I’ll be right beside you the whole night and I would never let anything bad happen to you.” As he said the words forcefully, he realized that Melanie Brooks was definitely getting under his skin and he wasn’t sure that was necessarily a good thing.

Chapter 4

M
yriad emotions whirled through Melanie as she dressed for the dinner out with Adam. There was no question that she was nervous about facing people, but there was also something about him that made her more than a little bit nervous.

She stared at the mirror, and instead of seeing a reflection of herself, she saw herself as she’d once been. The young woman in the mirror was clad in a red costume that sparkled in the stage lights.

She closed her eyes and raised her face as if to seek the warmth of a spotlight. She was comfortable there in the heat of the glare, and the dancer in her mind began to move, raising her leg behind her in a perfect arabesque. The beautiful ballet movement was followed by quick jazz steps that led into more classic ballet.

The music of the dance swelled in her soul, tingled throughout her body and thrummed in her heart. She soared across the stage in leaps, executed perfect battements and developpes. She was one with the music. Her body responded in movement to the beat of the drums, to the throaty voice of a saxophone, to the trill of clarinets, all coming together in an orchestra of beauty.

The audience roared their approval as she finally came to the end of the dance and curtsied.

She opened her eyes and stared at her reflection, shocked to find herself a woman with runny mascara seated in a wheelchair.
A ridiculous flight of fancy,
she told herself as she hurriedly fixed her makeup. Adam was waiting for her and she was wasting time trapped in the past, remembering who she’d once been.

With her face once again in order, she wheeled out of the bathroom and her bedroom to find him standing at the front door.

“Ready?” he asked with an encouraging smile.

“As ready as I’m going to get,” she replied.

Adam took her outside and down the ramp to the sidewalk. Logically she knew she couldn’t hide out in the house forever, and she certainly couldn’t spend all her time lost in the past. Still, emotionally, she wasn’t at all sure she was ready to face anyone.

She ran nervous fingers down the front of the royal blue blouse she’d paired with some navy slacks. She’d actually put on not only mascara but also a touch of pink lipstick for the first time in months for the outing.

“I can take it from here,” she said to Adam when they reached the bottom of the ramp and moved onto the smooth sidewalk.

He let go of the wheelchair handles and stepped beside her. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I like to manually wheel myself. It keeps my upper body strong and fit.”

“How are you feeling mentally?” he asked as they headed down the sidewalk toward the café in the distance.

“A little scared, but I also know it’s past time I get out of the house. I’ve had seven months to mourn and be angry at the blow fate gave me. I’m tired of my own company and sick of my self-pity.”

“That’s the first sign of getting better,” he replied. “When Sam got arrested for attempting to kill Lizzy Wiles, I fell into a well of self-pity that had me hitting the bottle hard. I made a fool of myself a hundred times, wound up in places I didn’t remember going and felt like hell. I finally got tired of being sick and tired and decided to make some changes.”

“Were you always a drinker?” she asked, anxious to think about anything but the café in the distance.

“No, never.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, a habit she’d noticed he did frequently. “I’m not an alcoholic, although I go to the meetings because I like the camaraderie I’ve found there. I went to a very dark place with Sam’s arrest, but alcohol was never an issue before then and hasn’t been an issue since I decided to stop drinking.”

“So what are your plans for your future?” she asked, trying to still the nerves that pirouetted in the pit of her stomach. “I’ve noticed you aren’t working at your ranch.”

“I’m thinking about maybe talking to Cameron about something in law enforcement.”

“Really?” She looked up at him in surprise. “That’s quite a stretch from a rancher.”

He smiled down at her. “Yeah, but I’m ready for a new chapter in my life and I’ve always had a bit of interest in crime solving and peacekeeping.”

She looked toward the café. “You’re forcing me to be ready for a new chapter in my life.”

He laughed. “I’m not the one who changed into that pretty blouse that makes your eyes look gorgeous and your hair shine like an angel’s.” His cheeks dusted with color, he averted his gaze from hers. “I don’t want to force you to do anything, Melanie. I just want good things for you.”

A flutter of warmth swept through her. Was he flirting with her with all those lovely words?
Ridiculous,
she told herself. Why would a healthy, vital man like Adam flirt with somebody like her?

He was just being kind to the crippled girl, she told herself. He probably helped old ladies across the street and nursed sick dogs back to health.

Adam was the type of man who would eventually find a woman who could stand beside him, give him children, and play an active role as wife and mother. She might have been that kind of woman once, but no longer.

Once again her nerves grew taut as they drew close enough to the café that she could smell the wonderful scents that filled the air, see the people getting out of cars and heading for the front door. As a full onslaught of nerves struck her, her arms quit moving and the wheelchair came to a halt.

“Tired?” Adam asked. “I’d be glad to push you the rest of the way.”

“No, I’m fine. I just need a minute.” She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly, just like she used to do before she’d go onstage.

“You said you went to school here, that you once had friends. Don’t you think those people will be thrilled to see you again?” Adam asked.

“Maybe,” she replied tentatively. She drew another breath and then began to turn the wheels to move her forward once again. “It’s been a long time since I left Grady Gulch. I’m sure there are lots of people here now that I don’t even know.”

“I’ll introduce you and you’ll never eat better food than what Mary Mathis offers at the café.”

“Mary Mathis? I think I met her at my mother’s funeral. A pretty blonde?”

“That’s Mary,” Adam agreed. “She’s a widow who moved here with her son about eight years ago. Five years ago she bought the café. Melanie, if you really want to make your life here, then all you have to do is open your heart up and the people of Grady Gulch will welcome you with open arms.”

Within five minutes of entering the establishment, that was exactly what Melanie discovered. Adam led her to a table for two and quickly dispensed with one of the chairs, allowing her to wheel right up.

She was acutely aware of gazes following her progress, but as Adam sat in the seat across from her, she knew she was going to get through this first outing just fine.

Before they’d even placed their orders, people began to stop by the table to say hello and many of them were old friends of Melanie’s.

The first person who ambled to the table was Denver Walton, a boy Melanie had dated briefly in high school. “Hey, Melanie. I didn’t know you were back in town,” he said. “Wow. What happened to you?”

Adam spoke up. “It’s a work-related injury. You know she was a dancer on Broadway.”

“Yeah...yeah, I heard that. I always knew you’d do something great with your dancing. So are you in town to stay?” He shot a quick glance over his shoulder to Maddy Billings, who sat in a nearby booth and glared at Melanie.

Some things never changed, Melanie thought with a touch of humor. Maddy had hated Melanie in high school and it looked like that was still the case after all these years.

“Hey, maybe sometime we could meet up for coffee or something, you know, talk about old times,” Denver said. “You can tell me all about your time in the big city.”

The invitation surprised her and she murmured something non-committal and was grateful the waitress had arrived to take their orders. Denver returned to his booth, rejoining seething blond-haired, attractive Maddy.

Denver wasn’t the only old friend she saw as they waited for their meal to be delivered. Deputy Jim Collins came by to tell her hello, as did half a dozen women she’d run around with when they were all teenagers.

The women all screamed and giggled like the young girls they had once been, and promises were made to call, to plan lunch and get together for a real girls-only reunion.

With each minute that passed, with every person she spoke to, she began to relax more and more. Maybe there was life after wheelchair death. Maybe she’d been attempting to pull the grave dirt over her face far too soon.

She didn’t know what the future held, but at the moment she was satisfied to be sitting in the Cowboy Café, across from a man who made her heart beat just a little too fast in her chest.

“Here we are.” The waitress with a name tag that read Lynette set their plates in front of them. Melanie’s stomach rumbled as she gazed down at the chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy.

“This is positively sinful.”

“You should eat,” Adam said. “You look like a puff of smoke might blow you away.”

“I’ve always been thin, which was a good thing as a dancer,” she replied. “My friends who were also dancers hated that I could pretty much eat anything I wanted and never put on any weight.”

“Must have been a tough life, trying to make it onstage in New York City.”

“It was tough,” she agreed. “It was heartbreaking and exhilarating. It was the best and worst of times and I loved it.” For a moment the grief threatened to take hold of her, but she swallowed against it, refusing to allow the evening to be ruined by all that had been lost.

“Everyone always thinks about the glamour of being a dancer on Broadway, but the truth was I shared an apartment the size of a postage stamp with two other girls. Most nights we were soaking our feet or bandaging bleeding toes. We pooled our money to buy Bengay by the gallon and it was a luxury if we could afford to order a pizza every couple of weeks.”

“It sounds awful.”

Melanie laughed. “It does, doesn’t it? But none of the bad stuff mattered once the music began and the spotlights came on.” She took a bite of her potatoes. “Now, tell me everything there is to know about Adam Benson.”

He grinned. “I’m not sure the meal will be long enough.”

She tried to focus on the conversation as he told her about his parents dying when they were young and Sam getting custody and keeping the family together at the ranch, but it was hard to focus on his words when she wanted to fall into the soft blue of his eyes.

As she’d watched from the window as he built the ramp, she’d wanted to be mad at him for his presumptuousness, but instead something bitter had broken inside her.

What she felt now was a fragile, tentative hope that she hadn’t felt for months...the hope that she could get back some semblance of a life, and it was all due to Adam.

As he began to talk about his brother Sam and the deep betrayal he’d felt at his brother’s crime, Melanie ached for his pain and realized it had been far too long since she’d noticed somebody else’s pain instead of her own.

“Sam harbored such bitterness because the person he thought was responsible for our sister’s death had found happiness with a new woman, Lizzy Wiles,” Adam explained. “Sam decided as long as he grieved for our sister, Daniel Jefferson needed to grieve, as well. Daniel’s wife died in the car accident that Cherry died in. Rumor had it that Daniel’s wife had called Cherry to pick her up after she and Daniel fought. In Sam’s mind, everything became Daniel’s fault, but nobody ever dreamed he’d actually try to hurt Lizzy.” Adam shook his head. “It’s a terrible thing, what that kind of bitterness can do to a person.”

“Is there a possibility he’ll get out of jail?”

“I don’t know. He’s got the best criminal defense lawyer that money can buy, but he needs to pay for what he tried to do and he needs some kind of mental help. It’s like he snapped and went crazy. He’s still not in touch with reality and hasn’t taken responsibility for what he’s done.”

He looked so sad, she wanted to reach across the table and take his hand in hers, somehow console him with a physical touch. But she fought the impulse. She didn’t want to feel anything for Adam except a nice friendship for the man who was renting her upstairs, and she was afraid that with a simple touch she’d want more and that would be the height of foolishness.

They lingered over coffee and the conversation turned to the murders that had rocked the town in recent months. “Tilly sees a serial killer in every shadow,” she said with a touch of humor.

“A lot of women are jumping at shadows right now,” Adam replied. “The sheriff and his men have been chasing their tails on these cases. Two women found dead in their beds and no evidence left behind.”

“I can’t believe that Jimmy Collins is now a deputy. He was kind of a skinny nerd in high school.”

“He’s not nerdy anymore. I’d say he’s one of the most eligible bachelors in town.”

“Next to you,” she teased.

He released a rueful laugh. “Yeah, well, at the moment I’m nobody’s prize. I’m just an out-of-work, nondrinking man renting the upstairs of a house from a lovely lady.”

She knew he was so much more than that, but she realized if she wasn’t careful, she’d develop some sort of hero worship thing where he was concerned. After all, he’d built her a ramp. He’d forced her to get out of the house. He was changing her life and probably didn’t even know it.

Whatever he was going through in his own life was temporary. She figured within two or three months he’d be ready to move on and he’d start reaching for dreams that would never, could never include her.

They could be friends, but she had to remember that she would always just be his landlady. And after he left, hopefully there would be another boarder...and another and she’d live her life vicariously through the people who rented her upstairs.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking about, but I wish you would stop.” Adam’s voice pulled her from her reverie.

She looked at him in surprise. “Why? Was I making faces?”

“Just one face...a sad one. I absolutely don’t allow a sad face at the dinner table!” he exclaimed with a ring of mock authority.