The Cowboy's Valentine Bride Read online

  Kaitlyn blinked. So that’s the way it was going to be.

  “And if you faint?” she asked pointedly.

  “Men don’t faint,” he said. “We might slip in and out of consciousness, but it’s in a very manly way.”

  Kaitlyn shook her head, ignoring his deadpan humor. “That’s very cute until I have to try and catch you and slip a disc or something.”

  “I won’t faint.”

  He couldn’t actually promise that, especially in his condition.

  “If I refuse to drive you?” she asked.

  “I’ll walk.”

  She had a feeling he’d do just that. She pictured him hobbling down the gravel road toward the barn, then keeling over into the ditch. A body could only endure so much pain before it shut down. She didn’t have much of a choice.

  “I’ll drive you under protest,” she said, then sighed and flipped the omelet in half. “But if you faint, I’m letting you drop like a sack of potatoes.”

  A small smile turned up one side of his mouth. “I’d expect nothing less.”

  Chapter Four

  A half hour later, their breakfast was done and Brody leaned on a crutch and on Kaitlyn’s shoulder as he made his way down the steps from the back door. The pain was intense, and every time his good foot hit the ground, no matter how gently he tried to land, the agony blazed up his wounded leg and his stomach roiled. He paused to breathe.

  “Changed your mind?” Kaitlyn asked, sounding a little more hopeful than he liked.

  “No,” he grunted.

  Truthfully, had his nurse been anyone else, he would have turned back and crawled into the house like the failure he was, but not in front of Kaitlyn. She was different—more than a nurse—and her opinion of him mattered more than he cared to admit right now. She’d called him brave, jokingly or not, and he’d vowed to live up to that.

  “Okay, one last step,” she said.

  There were only three. He held his breath as he came down the last step and let it out in a rush as the pain radiated through his leg once more. But they were done with the stairs. He noticed the worried look on her face, and felt the way her grip on his arm tightened.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Who’s driving?”

  She cracked a smile at last, a sparkle of amusement entering those big dark eyes, and she shook her head. “Funny. I’m driving.”

  He was gratified to see her smile, and he liked the way her cheeks tinged pink. He hated being the patient, the powerless one on his back. If he could make her laugh, then they’d be a step closer to the old dynamic where she’d laugh and roll her eyes at him when he teased her.

  He’d liked that—the way she’d never taken him entirely seriously. But it was sweeter when he’d been her future brother-in-law, and he’d been strong and tough and fun. Now, what was he? Wounded, broken, cast aside. And he probably needed to be taken seriously more than ever before.

  That morning he’d gotten a phone call from an old buddy in Hope, and after a stilted conversation, they’d hung up. No offer to get together. Just plain old duty—you’d better call the guy who went to war, or you’ll look like a jerk. There had been a few phone calls like that since he’d gotten back, and he could feel the distance in their tones. It wasn’t only family who saw him differently, it was the whole town.

  Kaitlyn opened the passenger side door of the old Chevy farm truck. It was rusted and dented, and probably the toughest old dinosaur around. It might not be pretty, but it was reliable. Brody eased himself up into the seat, stifling a grimace.

  “Deep breaths,” she said quietly, and she put a supporting hand under his thigh as he lifted his leg into the cab. She thought she was helping, but that was only making matters worse. This would be so much easier if she looked more like her aunt Bernice.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” he said as he settled his boot onto the floor of the truck. “Let’s go.”

  She slammed his door shut, and for a moment he sat in silence as she circled around to the driver’s side. It felt good to be in a pickup again. It would feel better to be in the driver’s seat, but that would have to wait. This was a good first step. He needed to get out to the barn and smell the hay and the horses. He needed to have a good heart-to-heart with Champ. The old boy would probably be resentful about his lengthy absence, but Brody needed this just as much as Champ did. A homecoming wasn’t complete until he connected with his favorite horse.

  Kaitlyn got up into the driver’s side and cast him a sidelong look as she turned the key and the truck rumbled to life.

  “So, any boyfriends I should be vetting for you?” Brody asked.

  “Not at the moment.” She put the truck into gear and eased forward. “I was so busy with studying and finishing up a semester early, that I haven’t really had the time.”

  Good. Why did he like the idea of her being single? Probably just him being all big brotherly, but he had to admit that the feelings coursing through him when Kaitlyn leaned close to help him into a more comfortable position, or when she helped peel his clothes off that first night...those feelings weren’t brotherly in the least. He’d chalked it up to a natural male response to a beautiful woman. Because Kaitlyn had certainly blossomed over the last year, and she’d gone from kid sister to...well, a whole lot less “kid sister.”

  He glanced over at her, those auburn waves tumbling around her shoulders, setting off her creamy complexion in the watery morning sunlight. Not that it should matter to him. She’d also been capable of effortlessly deceiving him for months on end. He’d best keep that in mind.

  “So, what was the wedding like?” Brody asked.

  Kaitlyn didn’t answer for a moment, steering around a pothole in the gravel drive that led down toward the barn. The rumble of the motor and the icy bumps on the road made him ache in new places.

  “It was small,” she said at last.

  He nodded. It wasn’t like he really wanted to know the details of “the big day,” even if he was curious. He’d asked his sister to help Nina put together a small wedding because his fiancée had seemed nervous. He’d assumed her nerves had been about wedding planning. How wrong could a guy get?

  “You don’t really want to hear about this, do you?” Kaitlyn looked over at him, her expression pained. “It wasn’t a big, happy day. It was small. It was secret. And those of us who knew about it weren’t feeling terribly supportive.”

  “Sounds awkward.”

  Nina had always maintained some pretty big expectations about her wedding day—something she’d made very clear to him, including the size of the diamond she would wear on her finger. Had she maintained those demands with Brian?

  “I don’t know...” Kaitlyn sighed, then shot him an apologetic look as they went over a bump. “Sorry. That one was big... Nina has always been rather spoiled. She got her way all the time. You were probably the worst, you know.”

  He winced in pain, then shot her an exasperated look. “Are you seriously blaming me for this one?” he demanded.

  They were nearing the barn, and she put the truck into a lower gear.

  “I didn’t say that.” She gripped the steering wheel tighter, irritation glimmering in her eyes, which were fixed on the drive ahead of them. “But you were just as bad as everyone else. Whatever she wanted, you gave her. And you never stopped to question anything. She took two hours to get ready to go out, and you just sat around with me, playing cards. Why didn’t you tell her to hurry up? Why did you just take that?”

  Was Kaitlyn seriously expecting him to holler up the stairs at his girlfriend? He wasn’t that kind of guy. There’d be no Ricky Ricardo “You’ve got some ’splaining to do, Lucy” from him.

  She eased the truck to a stop and turned on him. She was ticked off, that was obvious enough. What had he done now? Apparently, he didn’t know women as well as
he thought.

  “You were good company,” he said with a cajoling smile. “Besides, I’m not the kind of guy who orders around his woman.”

  “Not good enough,” she retorted. “You could have talked to her privately and told her how it made you feel—”

  “How do you know I didn’t?”

  He’d mentioned it to Nina a few times. Not that he didn’t like to chat with Kaitlyn, but she was right—it showed where Nina’s priorities lay. Nina hadn’t taken his concerns seriously, though, and Brody had figured it was the price of being with a beautiful woman. Apparently, Nina’s smoky eyes and perfectly fitting outfits took some time. And the other guys thought he was downright lucky to be with her. But, yeah...it bugged him.

  “If you did, she didn’t take you too seriously.” She shot him a knowing look, and he resented how much she could read into the things he didn’t say. “You knew what she was, Brody. You knew that she cared more about her makeup regime than your feelings. You seemed okay with that. You knew that she didn’t care enough about your birthday to even try her hand at making a boxed cake!”

  Brody felt his smile slip. She was right—he’d known that Nina was self-centered, but somehow he’d thought with a family like hers, they’d get through all right. They said that you weren’t just marrying a girl, you were marrying the whole family. Well, with the Harpes, that was a good thing.

  “So I should have realized she’d never wait for me?” he demanded.

  “Yes!” Kaitlyn tugged a hand through her hair. “Look—what she did was wrong. None of us agreed with her, but you actually thought she’d get stronger and more resilient with you gone?”

  A year had made a big difference in the rest of them. Was personal growth such an impossibility to expect from Nina? Maybe it had been, but a year had done something to Kaitlyn that he couldn’t quite explain. She’d gotten a whole lot stronger.

  “You did,” he said.

  Kaitlyn blinked, opened her mouth to say something, then clamped it shut again. He’d surprised her with that, but it was the truth.

  “I thought with you there...” Brody tried to explain. “I thought you’d be able to give her a few words of wisdom if she needed them.”

  “She needed more than words.” Bitterness tinged her tone.

  “I thought if I gave her a ring, a wedding to look forward to—” He didn’t finish the thought. He’d given her everything he could, but it hadn’t mattered. The ring hadn’t been enough, and neither had her family.

  “You weren’t the only one who put up with Nina’s crap,” Kaitlyn said after a moment. “I made excuses for her, too. But at the end of the day, a woman either stands on her own two feet, or she doesn’t.”

  Brody was silent. She was right, of course. He’d been leaving for Afghanistan, and he’d been scared. Proposing was life affirming. It cemented in his own heart that he needed to come back in one piece.

  “And she never told me,” Kaitlyn added. “I had no idea she and Brian had started anything, so I didn’t have a chance to give her any words of wisdom, as you put it. Your sister caught them making out in the movie theater, and that was the first I knew of it.”

  He winced. Dakota had already told him the story—it was tacky, and incredibly beneath Nina, in his opinion.

  “Well, it is what it is,” he said. “I’d better get used to it.”

  That was all he had left, really. There was no saving face in this. Nina and Brian were married and expecting a baby, and that ended it. He reached for the door handle. “I’m going to go get reacquainted with Champ.”

  Kaitlyn came around and helped him down. She handed him his crutches and he took his first swinging steps toward the barn door.

  When he was being flown back to American soil, he’d known that he’d changed, and he’d been counting on a woman to tell him who he was again. She hadn’t been the perfect woman. Kaitlyn had been right about that—he’d known her shortcomings, and he’d put up with her slights. He’d just hoped that when he got back again, having a high maintenance fiancée would snap him back into his old self. Nina wouldn’t have tolerated anything else.

  But now he doubted that would have worked. He’d changed, and he didn’t have the patience for two-hour waits on Nina anymore. They would have fought, and he would have started asking more of Nina, just as Kaitlyn thought he should have ages ago, and he and Nina would have broken up. Because Nina wasn’t interested in giving anything more. She expected the world on a platter in exchange for her beautiful self. That was the silent agreement, and he’d signed on like an idiot. At least a breakup at this point would have been a choice they’d made together instead of a gut-wrenching surprise. In the end, though, he hadn’t had the choice. The breakup, however, had been on its way from the day he proposed. And maybe Kaitlyn was right—he should have seen it coming.

  * * *

  KAITLYN GOT BRODY settled on a couple bales of hay. It wasn’t fair to be mad at Brody. She’d been very clearly angry with her sister this whole time, but this morning that pendulum had swung. Sheltering someone who didn’t want her protection was hard work, and after a while it got to chafing. Brody had proposed to the wrong woman, and he should have been smart enough to know that. Nina wanted to spend her life being beautiful and bubble-wrapped, and frankly, Brody wasn’t going to get that luxury. He was a normal person, just like the rest of them, and Bubble Wrap wasn’t an option.

  She knew that her anger at her patient wasn’t professional or entirely fair, but it was there, no matter how carefully she tried to tamp it out. The handsome cowboy still made her heart lurch as he looked up at his horse, and she heaved a sigh.

  Champ was a bay gelding. He was a good horse—patient and intuitive—and that had a lot to do with Brody’s training. The Masons were known for their horse training, and while Dakota had a reputation of being a Horse Whisperer, Brody had an innate talent with them, too. So what made him so blinded by a woman?

  “It’s been a while, Champ,” Brody said quietly. “I missed you, fella.”

  Champ nickered and bent his head toward his master. Brody stroked his nose, and it seemed to Kaitlyn that Champ sensed his master’s wounded status, because he came right up against the rails and then dropped his head over Brody’s shoulder in a full body hug. Brody leaned his head against the horse’s muscular neck. Tears misted Kaitlyn’s eyes, and she looked away. Why did men have to be so stupid and endearing at the same time?

  She felt as if she were intruding on this unspoken communication between a man and his horse. She opened her mouth to say that she’d be back, but then she decided against it and silently headed outside.

  Kaitlyn squinted and sucked in a chestful of brisk winter air. Snow capped the fence posts, and sunlight sparkled on the stretches of snowfall that remained untouched. Dirt-crusted tracks led around the barn, where workers passed, and she looked back up the road that led toward the house, hidden behind a swell of snow. Out here at the barn, it was easy to imagine that they were alone.

  She needed some space to herself just as much as Brody seemed to. Before agreeing to this job, she’d promised herself that she’d be careful. This wasn’t just a nursing position. And Brody wasn’t just an old friend, either...he was the guy she’d measured all the others against. If she’d had any other moral option, she would have declined, but they needed a nurse, and she needed to atone for her own role in this mess, so here she was, and she kept galloping past the lines she’d drawn for herself. She’d sworn that she’d be professional and controlled, but the minute he said something that annoyed her, all those reserves had been forgotten and all her opinions came out in a flood.

  She shouldn’t have said that in the truck. She was already kicking herself for it.

  I’m his nurse, she reminded herself. Keep it professional.

  Which was easier said than done with their lengthy history. But
he hadn’t been talking to her as his nurse, he’d been talking to his friend. And regardless of secrets kept, Kaitlyn had always been his loyal friend.

  One of her carefully kept secrets was how much she’d longed for something more with Brody—for him to look up one day and realize that he knew her better than he knew her sister. But even if he realized that, it wouldn’t mean that he’d want the same kind of relationship that she did.

  It wasn’t Brody’s good looks, either. He was tall, muscular and had the most playful eyes—or at least he used to. His laid-back jocularity had hidden a deeper sensitivity that Nina had never recognized. Not that it was Kaitlyn’s business to address his deeper sensitivities—certainly not back then. Kaitlyn had no wish to cross any lines with her sister’s fiancé, and she’d curbed those feelings as firmly as she knew how. Brody had made his choice, and Kaitlyn had been willing to live with that choice. But when he seemed surprised that Nina hadn’t been his rock under pressure, that had been too much.

  Stupid man. You should have known!

  “Hey, there...”

  Kaitlyn looked over in surprise to see a ranch hand eyeing her from a few paces off. He was gangly and tall with tobacco-stained teeth and a sparse beard. His gaze flickered up and down her unapologetically.

  “Morning.” She looked away, hoping he’d move on, but he didn’t. He took a step closer and cocked his head to one side.

  “I’m new here. Still getting to know everyone.” He managed to make those words sound suggestive and she shot him an annoyed look. Some men still hadn’t learned that leering wasn’t a compliment. “I’m Nick, by the way.”

  “Don’t let me keep you from your work,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about me.” A smile crept across his face. “I’ve got time.”

  The truck was a few yards away, and Kaitlyn did a quick scan of the area. She couldn’t see any other workers. The ranch hand seemed to come to the same conclusion, because he closed the distance between them, his tongue moving over his lips. He stopped a little too close to her, and his breath smelled of stale cigarettes and not enough brushing. She turned her face away.