Page 18 of Last Chance Cowboy
Yeah. This was real.
It was real. She had been saved.
She started to cry again, great piteous sobs.
She felt small and useless and ridiculous, and also just so damn grateful.
Zane had his phone up to his ear. “I’ve got her. She’s allright. She’s talking, anyway. But I think she needs to go to the hospital. Just to get checked out. I’m going to put her back on the horse and ride back to the barn.”
“Why didn’t you drive a truck?” She mumbled as he lifted her up from the ground like she didn’t weigh anything.
Her heart was pounding extra hard at the idea of being put on the back of the horse. She could hardly enjoy the sensation of being in his arms.
But she could enjoy it a little bit.
But when he began to hoist them both onto the back of the horse, her heart nearly left her chest. She clung to him, and he positioned her in front of him on the horse, his arm wrapped securely around her waist, keeping her held in place.
She forgot to be afraid.
Because she was at least with Zane now. So nothing terrible was going to happen to her. All of this was just being uncomfortable. That was a world of difference from being stranded, stuck, and all alone out in the wilderness.
She ended up relaxing against him, fully trusting him to keep her seated on the horse, because she was completely out of strength.
When they arrived back at Cody’s house, Marlowe was standing there, and ran to the horse like she could help lift Cara down. Like she was a child.
She felt like a child at the moment. But Zane didn’t turn any of the work over to tomorrow. Instead, he swept Cara down off the horse in his capable arms and then leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” she said.
He put her down gingerly, and when she put weight on her left ankle, she buckled. “No,” she said, climbing onto his chest, and keeping herself from sliding down all the way to the ground.
He lifted her up beneath the armpits, then picked her back up again. “I’ll put her in the truck,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” Marlowe said. “I don’t know what happened. Your text came in really late. At least, I’m assuming that it was well after you sent it, because I know you didn’t go out after dark. By the time I got it, I was in bed. I only saw it because I got up to go to the bathroom.”
Cara wasn’t really listening to Marlowe’s impassioned apology, mainly because she didn’t blame her sister-in-law at all. Zane put her into the truck and buckled her seatbelt. Marlowe climbed into the backseat, and Cody got into the driver’s seat.
“Thank you,” Cody said.
Cara nodded, hoping that it was enough, because she didn’t have words.
She felt small and silly because she was okay.
She was.
She didn’t start crying again until she got into the ER, and they began to clean the wounds in her legs. She actually did have some gravel embedded in her skin. And she felt very sorry for herself.
They told her she had a grade two ankle sprain, and she got a tight wrap for it, and was told where she could get a brace. They were in the ER for hours, much longer than she would’ve thought was needed for somebody who really was okay.
By the time they emerged into the bright light of day, she had lost all sense of time or space, and she was on crutches.
“How am I supposed to work?”
“How about you take some time off?”
Marlowe had to be kidding. “I guess I could sit down and use a table.”
She was told to expect swelling and pain for at least thenext week, and beyond that, it would take a little more than three weeks to heal.
