Taming Rafe (5 page)

“Join the human race, honey.” Cari picked the magazine off the
floor, studied it for a moment, then tossed it back onto the bed. “The guy’s cute, though. And all this press won’t hurt his marketability. A couple months and a few donations and everyone will say this is our fault for having a hotel in his traffic pattern. It’s all about spin.” She gathered up the newspapers. “My take is that you need to escape for a few days.”

“I’m not running, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, I mean . . . go on vacation. Get away from the pressure for a while. The Breckenridge chain has a hotel in the Bahamas, right? Get some sun.”

“It’s June in New York, Cari. I have sun galore.”

“Isn’t there a Breckenridge hotel in Paris? When’s the last time you were in Paris?”

“I don’t like Paris.”

“Who doesn’t like the city of romance?”

“I have romance: Bradley.”

Katherine watched as Cari tried to find words. Apparently she came up blank because a simple “Oh” emerged.

“Don’t start.”

“Did I say anything?”

“I . . . love him. You know, Bradley couldn’t be a better match for me if I picked him out myself. So what if my grandfather introduced us? Besides, Bradley has every reason to be overprotective—can you imagine losing your wife only a month after your wedding? He’s just . . . wounded.”

“And I know your soft spot for wounded souls, Florence.”

“He’ll make a good husband.”

“I only want you to be happy. Maybe find true love.”

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

Cari’s eyes lit up. “Wait—I know! Doesn’t the Breckenridge San Francisco have that spa addition? I’m calling to make you a reservation right now. You’ll come back a new woman, I promise. Maybe one who wants to live life on the wild side.” She held up a finger and dug into her purse for her cell. “Let me take care of it.”

“I don’t do wild—!”

“That’s your problem.” Cari got up and disappeared out the door.

Two weeks at a spa. Aside from the fact that Katherine could use a decent massage, the idea seemed like a colossal waste of time and money, especially when she was trying to
raise
money.

Still, she could use a dose of rest . . . and peace.

No, what she could use was about five hundred thousand dollars.

She glanced at the magazine on the bed.

And she might know just where to get it.

“You’ve really done it now, Rafe.”

The voice brought Rafe out of the place of shadowy quiet into the harsh realities of a sterile hospital room. Sunlight slanted in through the venetian blinds, striping his white cotton blanket. Blocking Rafe’s perfectly good view of the Manhattan skyline was his clearly miffed brother, Nick. He stood with his arms folded over his black T-shirt and wore a white Stetson just like the hero everyone called him. But if Rafe was hoping for sympathy for his injuries, he’d have to find it in some other Noble because Nick’s dark eyes could chill him to the bone.

“Good to see you too, Nick.” Despite his neck brace, Rafe tried
to look the other way, only to find assailant numero dos in his beautiful twin sister, Stefanie. Her black hair tumbled down her back, her eyes sharp, as she tucked her hands into her jeans and shook her head. “Hiya, Sis.”

He thought he saw a glistening of tears and knew he was right when she gritted her teeth and turned away. “I suppose I should just be glad you’re alive.”

That was nice. Rafe gazed at the ceiling, since it seemed to be the only safe place, and sighed. “I didn’t ask you to come out. I don’t—”

“Need help?” Nick cut in. “Well, let’s see. Aside from the barrage of telephone calls and reporters camped outside the hospital, you’ve been charged with reckless driving, you have a manager who says he’s suing you for breach of contract claiming that you jeopardized your marketability, which is true because you’ve been dropped by your sponsors, and I’ve counted four lawsuits for damages from the hotel and property. You’ve shattered your knee, dislocated your shoulder, barely missed losing an eye, and have a hairline crack in your third cervical vertebra. One lower and you’d be in a wheelchair. Your doc says he’s amazed you aren’t bedridden with a tube down your throat. You may as well kiss your career good-bye because you might not be able to walk again, let alone get on a bull.”

Nick shook his head. If Rafe didn’t know his hardheaded brother better, he would have thought he saw a flash of sympathy on his face.

Nick sighed. “You might consider letting us help you, just a little.”

Itchiness crawled over Rafe, a familiar residue of the painkiller they’d doped him up on after surgery. He clenched his jaw against the frustration boiling out of his chest. The IV pinched as he brought his hand to his face, covering his eyes. How had he gone from a guy
who invested his life in learning how to handle a bull to a reckless jerk who destroyed people’s lives?

“Was anyone hurt?” he asked softly.

Stefanie sat on his bed, put her hand on his leg. “A few sprained ankles. Someone fainted. But no serious injuries.”

Oh, thank You, God.
But the words, easily uttered so many times when he’d gotten off a bull or even stayed on for the full eight seconds, seemed insolent now. God had to be shaking His head, as disappointed as Rafe’s mother would be.

For a second, Rafe wondered if it might have been better if he’d just gone flying right through that windshield. At least then Manny and Lucia, his beneficiaries, would get the life insurance.

“I think you’re the worst off.” Stefanie gave him a small, reassuring smile. They’d always read each other’s thoughts, and even now he saw more concern than chastisement in her expression.

Nick, however, wasn’t finished. “Thankfully, you were under the legal limit for sobriety, so be grateful they only charged you with reckless driving. But seriously, Rafe, what were you thinking?”

He
hadn’t
been thinking. Just going on gut instinct, something he’d been doing pretty much all his life. That same instinct had him longing to launch himself at Nick, needing to put his anger
somewhere
. But pinned down by his IV and the awkward arm sling, he could only put bite into his tone.

“I was thinking that it would be great to deep-six my career, alienate my fans, and declare bankruptcy. Oh, and the added bonus is that if I so much as breathe near a bull again, I could land in a wheelchair for life.” He realized how bitter he sounded. “You haven’t a clue what it might be like to be me.”

Nick looked out the window, disgust in his voice. “Yeah, it’s so
difficult to be admired by women around the world and to buy your house with your checkbook. You had it rough, didn’t you? We all feel
so
sorry for you.”

Rafe stared at him, a thousand memories stinging him. He lowered his voice. “It’s easy for you, isn’t it, Nick? You have the perfect life—beautiful wife, the ranch, everyone thinks you’re a such a
great
guy—”

Nick rounded on him, his mouth open. “Where have
you
been for the last ten years? Apparently not in touch with reality because who was the one who gave Dad a heart attack? Who was the one who disappointed him, broke his heart? Yeah, my life is great now, but believe me when I say it came with a price.”

Rafe gave an incredulous huff. That was the problem. No, Rafe had never disappointed Bishop Noble . . . because his father hadn’t invested enough hope in his youngest son to register disappointment when he left home at eighteen to ride the rodeo circuit.

Nick didn’t have the
slightest
inkling what it meant to pay a price for your dreams.

“Go home, Nick. Go back to the Silver Buckle and your perfect life.” Rafe didn’t even have enough energy to glare at his know-it-all brother. He turned to Stefanie. “Thanks for coming to see me.”

“We didn’t just come to see you,” Stefanie said. “We’re taking you home. You need to rest and get better. And the ranch could use you. We have a new crop of calves, and the Buckle has a great chance of getting back in the black if we can sell them fat and healthy in the fall.”

“Unless you missed something, I’m in a leg cast, my arm is in a
sling, and I can’t move my head.” Rafe had no intention of returning to the Silver Buckle. Not now, not ever.

Only, what could he do? He swallowed back a wave of panic. He was a bull rider. At best he could teach others to ride. At worst, well . . . he’d tried his hand at announcing, and it came out in half-finished sentences and a lot of dead air. And maybe Nick was right—after this fiasco, he could kiss his sponsorships good-bye.

“You need rest, Rafe, and time to figure out your future.” Stefanie took his hand, compassion in her touch. “Let us take you home and help you find your footing.”

In her dark eyes he saw understanding, that unspoken way they had of communicating and the uncanny feeling that she could see inside his soul. She gave the slightest of nods, as if she knew that the healing he needed wasn’t in his bones but deeper.

Nick apparently couldn’t stop himself from adding, “You can’t afford anything else. You’re going to be broke by the time this is done—”

“Nick, go easy—,” Stefanie began.

“After all he’s been given, he just throws it away.” Nick closed his mouth, a muscle pulling in his jaw, as if holding back a torrent of words.

Right then, Rafe felt about nine-years-old, watching his big brother shake his head in disappointment as Rafe failed yet again to lasso the dummy steer head in the yard.

Rafe looked away from the two of them, listening to the sounds of frustration thumping in his chest.

The phone ringing cut through the silence.

Stefanie picked it up. “Hello?” She listened, eyeing Rafe. “Uh, yeah, I guess so. . . .” She extended the phone to him. “It’s a woman.
Says that she got your number from your manager, who told her to call you.”

Rafe stared at the phone. “It’s probably a fan,” he whispered in Nick’s direction as he took the receiver. “Hello?”

“Rafe Noble?” The voice on the other end had a New York accent.

“Yep.”

“My name is Katherine Breckenridge. Do you know who I am?”

Rafe tossed the name around in his head. “Uh, I don’t suppose you’re related to the, ah, hotel?”

“I am, Mr. Noble. In fact, I am the president of the Breckenridge Foundation, organizer of the event you totaled last night.”

President? How had this woman gotten his number—hit his manager over the head with something? “What do you want?”

“I want . . . I want amends, Mr. Noble. I want integrity. I want . . .” She cleared her throat, apparently not quite sure what she wanted.

“How can I help you, sweet thing?” Even though everything inside Rafe curdled at the good-old-boy disrespect he put in his tone, Nick was watching, wasn’t he?

“I’m the furthest thing from your sweet thing, cowboy.” He would have guessed a spark in her eyes accompanied those words.

“Spit it out.” Rafe’s arm had begun to ache again, and he just wanted to close his eyes, go back to yesterday or a year ago when he had been at the top of the standings, nothing in his way to victory. To respect. “What do you want?” he repeated.

“I want . . . five hundred thousand dollars. Which will only get you started on the damages, but it’ll be enough to recover what you cost me last night—”

“What?” He didn’t really know the Breckenridge family, had
only agreed to attend the event for his sponsor’s sake, but seriously, was she out of her mind?

“Let me spell it out for you. You eviscerated my event and left me hanging out for my grandfather to pick my organization apart, all before I raised even a nickel for Mercy Doctors.” She caught her breath, and for a second, he thought she might be crying. But she rebounded with both barrels. “So, you owe me. And I need your help. Five. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. I’ll take a cashier’s check.”

Rafe winced. Behind her bold words and the anger that sizzled, he could still hear the faintest threads of desperation.

He knew all about desperation, which was why he softened his voice when he said, “I . . . don’t have that. And I’m pretty sure this is called extortion, so unless you want my next call to be to the cops, don’t ever call me again. I can’t help you.” Only, for a second, he hated being the bad guy and wished—really wished—he could help.

But a guy as bankrupt as he, in too many ways to count, couldn’t even help himself, let alone anyone else.

Rafe leaned over the bed rail and hung up the phone.

Silence hung in the room. Yet in it, Rafe heard the truth. Despite the trophies, the gold buckle prizes, the fans, the fame, and the riches, he would never measure up to the Noble men of the Silver Buckle.

CHAPTER 3

“I
DON’T THINK
this day could get any worse.” Katherine toed off her sandals, cradling the phone against her shoulder.

“Just tell me what happened.” Cari was on the other end.

“Where do I start? The part where instead of throwing the phone against the wall after talking to Rafe Noble, I rip his smug magazine cover into tiny shreds? Or the fact that after I tried to call back to apologize, the jerk nixed my call? Or maybe he checked out of the hospital, with no forwarding address. Hiding, of course.” From responsibility. From
her
.

What had come over her? She’d never talked that rudely to anyone in all her life.

“I spent part of the afternoon arguing with my insurance agent and issuing a press release about the damage to the hotel. Then I joined the board for two hours of recriminations. I’ve inherited six stone-faced men who apparently think I have the brains of a goldfish.”

“I take it your grandfather’s not extending your loan?”

Never had Katherine imagined the dressing-down or the ultimatum delivered by her grandfather over speakerphone via his office
in London. “Raise half a million dollars by next quarter or dissolve the Breckenridge Foundation.”

“Ouch,” Cari said. “Three months to dig up a small fortune?”

If Katherine were thirty, she’d tap into her inheritance. But Walter Breckenridge had an iron grip on her trust fund, and Katherine wouldn’t see a dime more than her monthly allowance for five more years—or until she married, whichever came first. Apparently her grandfather still belonged to the Neanderthal Club.

“Even better, Bradley and I went to The Water Club for lunch, and he not only ordered salmon for both of us but told me again how I was in way over my head.”

“Again, I know you think he’s perfect, but—”

“I’m not in the mood to defend him, so stop. He’s a good man. Just overly concerned about me traveling and spending every waking minute worried about where I’m going to scrape up money. And . . . he told me that he wants us to think about our relationship. I think he’s going to ask me to marry him.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t a proposal, but knowing Bradley, he wants violins and an Italian restaurant and red roses. And photographers.”

Cari said nothing.

Katherine sat on the bed, putting on her running shoes. “Safe isn’t a negative trait, regardless of what you think.”

“Honey—”

“I don’t want to fight about it.” Katherine stood, walked to the window, and stared at Central Park. “My focus has to be on getting that money.”

Rafe Noble might run, but he couldn’t hide. Not from her.
She didn’t care what he threatened—he hadn’t heard the last of Katherine Breckenridge.

However, at this moment, she had no idea how to talk Rafe into seeing beyond himself and his current tragedies. Yes, she could agree she’d been impulsive on the phone with Noble. What would she say to someone who called and asked—no,
demanded
—five hundred thousand dollars? Then again, she hadn’t crashed her pickup into any large, historic buildings. He had the money; she knew it. And probably wouldn’t even miss it—okay, maybe a little, but she certainly missed both the foyer of her grandfather’s hotel and a positive balance in the Breckenridge Foundation investment account. Even so, perhaps she should approach him with her request from a kinder, gentler angle.

“We’ll think of something, Katherine. Don’t worry,” Cari said, as if reading her mind.

“Thanks, Cari.” Katherine hung up, tossed her phone on the bed, and let herself out of the apartment. She took the back stairs of the hotel down all nine flights.

The hot air hit her like a sauna as she stood on the corner, waiting for the light to turn, barely hearing the city traffic or the rush of water from the fountain in the plaza. The light changed, and she crossed into Central Park. The stress began to slough off her as she watched ducks paddling in the pond, as the breeze cut through the heat radiating from the paved path toward Hallett Nature Sanctuary.

She passed Wollman Rink and the Chess and Checkers House and headed for the ancient carousel. An old Karen Carpenter tune met her before she topped the hill, and the stress further uncoiled inside her.

She needed just one ride to sort out her current dilemmas.

The smells of cotton candy, popcorn, and aging wood greeted
her as she bought her ticket to the carousel. Only one child joined her, and he waved to his mother, who stood just outside the ringed circle. Katherine chose her favorite horse—the black one with the wild tail, red saddle, and prancing feet. She had been Wild Kat on that horse. Cari was right—she
did
have a wild side. After all, she’d lit out on Rafe’s trail, her guns blazing. Except she hadn’t exactly rounded up that outlaw, had she?

The carousel started, and as she floated up and down, she hung on to the pole and remembered her childhood daydream. Hornet—her horse—galloped through the fields, her father’s laughter mingling with the wind in her ears. Not the father in her mother’s autographed eight-by-ten glossy professional photos but the father in the cheesy photo strip taken at a photo booth. He was laughing, half kissing her mother, and she was smiling into the camera, her eyes shining, looking so deliriously happy in his arms.

Had Katherine ever looked like that when Bradley held her? Surely, yes.

The ride slowed, and Katherine tried her old silly trick, imagining that if she closed her eyes and wished hard enough, the first person she’d see when she opened them would be her father smiling at her, waiting to collect her from the ride.

Seeing only the darkened, shadowed carousel building, she forced a harsh laugh at the way she backed herself into these moments of pain.

She would never ride a real horse. Never live out West. Never know her father. Only the picture of them—him crouching behind her, one hand on a lasso in her hand, the other on her shoulder, their smiles matching as she posed in a turquoise cowgirl outfit, a pair of red boots, and a red hat—made her believe that she had in
any way been connected to the rough-and-tough cowboy who had won her mother’s heart.

“Another ride, miss?” the attendant asked as she dismounted.

“No, thanks.” Katherine walked up the path, out toward Fifth Avenue, looking for a cold drink. She bought a Bomb Pop from a vendor. Next to him, another sidewalk salesman sold stacks of books. She picked up the new B. J. King novel. The cover featured a silhouette of a man in the distance, watching a woman who stared out at a harsh background of prairie land. “
Unshackled
,” she read aloud as she paid the vendor for the book. She knew all about shackles. . . .

“Go on vacation.”
Cari had probably already booked her ticket for the San Francisco spa. Yet the last thing Katherine needed at the moment was a group of attendants fawning over her, especially while her grandfather’s leeches gobbled up her books, sucking her organization dry.

I don’t know what to do, Lord.

Katherine sat on a bench, staring at the sky feathered with cirri. She had been a Christian for so long—thanks to those early days when Angelina had dragged her to church—that praying felt as natural as taking a breath. She’d begun her dialogue with God in boarding school when the loneliness pressed through her pores, consuming her breath. Even then, it had been spaces with sunshine and blue sky that had called to her, a window to the divine.

I let my mouth run off with my brain. I should never have spoken to Noble that way. I don’t know what to do next, how to get through to him. Or even if he can even help . . .

An in-line skater whipped by, scaring the little mutt leashed to the woman sitting next to her, and he barked, jumping up on Katherine, knocking her book from her lap.

“Sorry,” the woman said.

Katherine nodded, smiled at her, and picked up the book. She traced the cover of the B. J. King book.
Unshackled.

She stared at the woman on the cover, her posture containing such an aura of desperation, it shook Katherine.

Except . . . what if . . . ?

Nothing would pry her from New York. Nothing but . . . a business trip. No, a
rescue
mission. To rescue her organization. Children like Eva . . .

Maybe . . .

Returning to the hotel, Katherine took the elevator up, aware that she looked like she’d just run a marathon, sweat darkening her blue tank top, glistening on her forehead. Despite her fatigue, she felt something alive inside her. Hope, maybe. She’d forgotten the feeling.

She closed herself in her room. Taking the framed photo of her and her father from the bureau, she freed it. The scrawled handwriting on the back had faded, but she could still read:
To Kat, with love from Aunt Laura.

Aunt Laura. Mysterious Aunt Laura, whose name had once made her mother cry. Who had written below her name,
Phillips, Montana
, where Katherine’s uncle Richard Breckenridge, the family rancher, still lived and ran his herd of prize-winning bulls.

Phillips, where Rafe Noble’s family lived and ran a dude ranch, according to last fall’s edition of
Montana Monthly
. She’d bet anything that he would head home to family for healing and hiding from the media instead of his ranch in Texas.

Maybe if she just got close to Rafe, helped him see the children who needed his help, he’d reconsider. However, she could lay bets
that he’d run her off the ranch the second he recognized her name. What had he said—call the cops?

Unless she approached him on his terms—in a cowboy hat and a pair of jeans. Katherine stood at the mirror finger-combing her hair out of the ponytail, imagining herself with a cowboy hat. She didn’t have to be the snooty society princess he expected.

Maybe she’d disarm him just long enough to make him hear her out. To rally to her cause. Wasn’t that what fund-raisers did?

She’d give herself two weeks—the duration of her stay in San Francisco. Possibly she’d even be able to tap into the cowgirl inside, who had her father’s brain and bravado to stand up to an arrogant bull rider and make him see that, contrary to his belief, he could help her.

And that maybe, in fact, deep inside, he wanted to.

John sat on the front steps of his ranch house, cradling a steaming cup of coffee as he briefed his foreman. “Check the fences on the southern end of Butter’s table. This winter I caught a bull on Silver Buckle land, and I think he must have gotten through near the southeastern corner.”

Crockett, a thin man with graying whiskers and a ponytail under his straw hat, had been with John for three years after he’d stumbled into Phillips, down on his luck. John had hauled him out of the Buffalo Saloon a time or two, but the taste of trust, the smell of hard work, and the feel of a paycheck in his pocket had kept Crockett away from the bottle and turned him into a dependable hand. The fact that he stayed on made him valuable.

“What about the water tank in the heifers’ field?” Crockett
chewed on a toothpick, then used it to pick at his teeth. “The windmill’s still not workin’.”

“I’ll use the water truck and fill the tank manually.” John didn’t add that he had no intention of spending hundreds of dollars fixing the windmill that ran the tank. He’d let the next owners do that.

The
next
owners. As soon as he signed the papers in Sheridan to put the ranch on the market, he would feel as if a thousand-pound bull had climbed off his chest.

And with the crew from Tumbleweed Productions due to arrive later next week, the price would skyrocket. He hadn’t yet figured out how to explain Lincoln Cash’s presence on the Big K Ranch. But how could John turn down the production company’s request to shoot location shots at the Big K?

He took a sip of coffee, his enthusiasm fading at the memory of Lolly’s mocking of B. J. King’s newest book.
Unshackled
had been John’s biggest seller yet. Probably because it had been written from the raw and painful places inside his own heart. He intimately knew what it felt like to pine for a woman who didn’t return his love.

The best books were the ones that cost the author a piece of his soul. That much he had learned years ago when he wrote the story of a man trying to stand up to his abusive father. It had been the first time he’d confronted the pain inside, and it had probably taught him everything he needed to finally write the book of his heart,
Unshackled
. But the Book of the Year Award he’d won for his first novel had been worth the pain of remembering the past, and for the first time, John had glimpsed freedom.