The Bull Rider's Homecoming. Allie Pleiter

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       Chapter One

      Luke Buckton stood on the porch of the Blue Thorn Ranch, his childhood home, disgusted at how he needed to grip the handrail to keep his balance.

      Pain came with a life spent trying to stay on top of 1,700 pounds of bucking bull. Every bull rider knew pain went with the territory. Bull riding was dangerous—that’s what made it exciting. And profitable, if done right. Sure, you got hurt—everyone got hurt—but you “cowboyed up” after an injury and got back in there, period. Luke hadn’t come close to winning the Touring Pro Series championship by paying attention to pain. He ignored it.

      The numbness he fought now? That was a whole other kind of enemy. It messed with his mind and defied submission. Luke could ride in pain, could win in pain—he had, in fact, on dozens of occasions. Now, he couldn’t always tell where his leg ended and the ground began. He could think “stand” but couldn’t feel it, even when he was standing. That threatened his career worse than the largest, meanest bull on earth.

      It made him mad. And the anger and frustration made him mean to just about everyone, including his grandmother who’d just come up behind him.

      “How are you feeling?” Gran asked as she approached him with a cup of coffee. He’d left six years ago in such a fury of pride and defiance—and had returned home so full of bitterness and dissatisfaction—that he couldn’t quite understand how Gran found it possible to be nice to him.

      Luke took the coffee and gave Gran the answer he gave everyone: “Better.” Most days it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true today.

      His hometown of Martins Gap was as gossipy as a small Texas town could get. In the days and weeks since he’d returned, he’d heard the whispers, caught the rumors and ignored the stares. Isn’t that Luke Buckton, home on the Blue Thorn? Did you see he limps now?

      Luke had always envisioned his eventual return to Martins Gap as the grandest of victory laps—a homecoming for the local golden boy whose future had always been too big for this place. He’d planned to come home a national champion.

      If Dad was still alive, wouldn’t he have had a field day with how those plans turned out?

      Gran sipped her tea. “The new therapist is due about now, isn’t she?”

      Luke didn’t buy his grandmother’s sugar-sweet tone. He knew full well Gran wanted to take a switch to him for the way he’d treated the last two therapists they’d sent. It was so clear to Luke they weren’t up to the challenge that he’d groused them away in a single session each. He didn’t have time or patience to pussyfoot around with careful exercises or gentle treatments. Luke needed to hit this fast and hard so that he could recover and get back to work. Anyone who wasn’t on board with that strategy was useless.

      Which meant he had a pretty good idea of who was about to come up the drive. Had planned for it, in fact.

      He shifted his foot, reaching to feel the give of the porch boards underneath his boot. Nothing. It was beyond infuriating. “At ten.”

      “So...you think it’ll be her?” Gran asked, as if it were an innocent question.

      Two could play at that game. “Who?” he asked in equally innocent tones.

      Gran swatted him. Hard. For eighty-five, that woman could still hold her own. “You know who. Don’t think I can’t see exactly what you’re doing. If you wanted Ruby Sheldon to be your therapist—and СКАЧАТЬ