She drew her head back to fix him with a mutinous look. “That was the entire point of building the sling, so I could go riding without help.”
“That was before. This is now, and if you ever risk breaking your neck again, I’ll warm your fanny until you can’t sit for a week.”
Bethany pushed away to sit up and straighten her shirt. “Don’t be silly,” she said, brushing straw from her sleeve. She flashed him a bright smile. “I almost did it, Ryan. All by myself. Next time, I’ll know not to unfasten the hooks before I get my leg sheathes buckled. I wouldn’t have fallen but for my own stupidity.”
Ryan gathered her up in his arms, pushed to his feet, and started to leave the stall to take her to the office. She stopped him by pressing a slender hand to his chest. “Not yet. I want to try again. Just put me in my chair and leave, please. This is something I have to do.”
“Over my dead body.”
She held his gaze with hers. “I won’t fall again.”
“You can’t know that.” He imagined her breaking one of her legs or being accidentally stepped on by the horse. The very thought made his blood go icy. “I meant what I said. Take a chance like that again, and I’ll—”
She touched a finger to his lips. “I know I frightened you, and I’m sorry for that. I was afraid of falling myself, which made me so nervous I didn’t think everything through clearly.” She smiled again. “But now it’s happened, and it wasn’t as awful as I thought. I fall quite nicely, half of me being limp. It didn’t even hurt all that much. Just knocked the wind out of me for a second.”
Ryan thought of possible bruises on her legs that she wouldn’t be able to feel. His heart squeezed at the flame of pride he saw burning deep in her eyes. Sweet Jesus, help me. He knew this was something she wanted and needed to do without anyone’s help, that being self-sufficient was one of the most important things in the world to her. But at what price? There was such a thing as carrying pride too far.
“Please, Ryan? Try to understand. I have to do this without you. I have to.”
He glanced at her wheelchair, which in that moment represented all the reasons why she shouldn’t. He almost wished he’d never had his family help him build the damned sling. But, no. He’d built it for just this reason, so she could be free of the chair and all the other constraints in her life. He just hadn’t counted on her being so stubborn and taking this do-or-die approach.
Do or die. From the first, he’d always loved the stubborn lift of her small chin. This was who she was. How else could she have become a champion barrel racer? She had probably taken a do-or-die approach to that as well, pushing herself beyond her limits until she became the best. Recalling how she’d trounced him in the swimming race, he suspected she did everything full out. Since that was one of the things about her that he loved, did he really want to change her?
Feeling as if he’d just swallowed ground glass, Ryan said, “Will you let me do just one thing before you try to mount her again?”
“That depends on what it is.”
“You’ll see soon enough.” He forced himself to lower her into her chair. After glancing at the remote control tucked into the waistband of her jeans, he said, “Promise me you won’t move until I get back?”
She heaved a sigh. “Don’t take very long. The longer I wait to try again, the more nervous I’ll get.”
Ryan glanced at Sly, who lingered in the open doorway. “Can you lend me a hand real quick, Sly?”
The foreman nodded and followed Ryan down the center aisle to the bunk room, where they sometimes slept when a mare was due to foal. A few seconds later, when both men returned to the stall carrying cot mattresses, Bethany burst out laughing.
“Those should make my landing a little less jarring,” she observed.
Ryan smiled weakly as he positioned one mattress beside the mare. As he relieved Sly of the other one, he said, “That’s the general idea—to keep you from breaking your stubborn little neck.”
“Thank you,” she said softly after the padding was in place. “I’ll feel better knowing it’s there.” Then she looked expectantly at both men. “You can leave now.” When they hesitated, she smiled. “I won’t fall again, I promise. Now, go!”
Ryan gestured for the foreman to follow him, and he left. He only went approximately three feet. Sly drew up beside him. They stared worriedly at the open stall doorway. The hair on the back of Ryan’s neck curled when he heard the sling motor start to hum. Where was the harm in her accepting just a little help this first time? he wondered. Once she got the hang of it, he’d happily leave her to do it alone.
He started to step toward the stall. Sly snaked out a hand to grasp Ryan’s arm. “Don’t,” he said softly. “This is something she needs to do by herself, son. You built the damned sling just so’s this could happen. Don’t spoil it for her.”
Ryan knew the foreman was right, but, damn, it was hard to just stand there. Those mattresses weren’t that wide. If she fell and missed one of them, she could be hurt. His heart felt as if it was going to pound its way out of his chest. What was happening? Was she on the horse yet? He strained to listen, but he couldn’t tell anything by the sounds.
“I did it!” she suddenly cried. “I did it, Ryan! Come and just look at me. All by myself! I’m ready to ride!”
Ryan and Sly almost ran each other down to reach the doorway. Then Ryan forgot everything but the sight of Bethany. She wheeled Wink around to face them, her eyes glowing, her cheeks flushed with joy. In that moment Ryan caught a glimpse of the feisty, dauntless girl she’d been before the accident. Her hair was a wild tumble of dark, silky curls around her small face. She sat erect in the saddle, looking perfectly capable.
For the moment she was gloriously free, the wheelchair forgotten. The look on her face reminded him of the night that he had waltzed with her behind the grange, and a lump came to his throat. This was why he’d bought back her horse, ordered the saddle, and fashioned the sling. So he could see that inexpressible joy in her eyes. He wouldn’t spoil the moment for her now by trying to coddle her.
He glanced at his watch. “The doctor said no more than ten minutes today. You’re wasting precious seconds.”
She snapped the reins and clucked her tongue to get the mare moving. “Out of my way, gentlemen! I’m going for a ride.”
Ryan watched her take off down the center aisle. “Take it easy crossing that cement!” He couldn’t resist yelling after her. He glanced at Sly. “Christ! I never knew love was such a pain in the ass. Am I going to live through this?”
Sly sighed and shook his head. “Same with kids. You gotta let ’em go. I remember the first time you went riding by yourself. Damn near gave me a heart attack. It ain’t easy to turn loose, son, but you have to do it. That’s life.”
Ryan nodded. He’d told Bethany’s father almost exactly the same thing. People had been wrapping her in cotton for far too long. He suspected that was the main reason she’d stayed in Portland, to escape the well-intended but stifling love of her family. He didn’t want her to feel that way about him.
Eleven minutes later, Ryan wanted to saddle up Bucky to go find her. Sly stopped him. “She’s only running a minute over. Give her a few more to get back. It’ll ruin it for her if you go charging to her rescue like the dad-blamed cavalry.”
The longest two minutes of Ryan’s life passed before he heard the clop of Wink’s shoes on the cement outside. He hurried over to grab a bucket from a hook, trying to look busy so she wouldn’t know he’d been standing there sweating the entire time she was gone. Sly grabbed a feed bucket as well. Then the two men looked questioningly at each other, wondering what they meant to do next. It wasn’t time to grain the horses.
“Hi!” Bethany called gaily as she rode the mare through the front entrance. “It was fantastic! You just can’t know. And I did it, start to finish, all by myself, you guys. Isn’t that phenomenal?”
She wasn’t down off the damned horse yet. Ryan swallowed to stop himself fro
m pointing that out.
“I’m so proud of myself.” She rode Wink into the stall where her sling awaited. Then as if she had eyes in the back of her head, she stopped both Ryan and Sly dead in their tracks by saying, “Stay out of here. I’ll get off of her by myself.”
Ryan glanced at the foreman. Sweating as if he’d been hard at work, Sly took off his hat to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. Ryan sympathized. The hum of the sling motor made his guts knot. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from calling out precautions.
Seconds passed that felt like multiple eternities strung endlessly together. Finally she yelled, “Okay! I’m off. You can come fuss over me now.”
Ryan’s knees felt a little weak as he covered the distance to the stall doorway. Bethany was in her wheelchair again and was tugging at the sling girdle to get it off. She glanced up and smiled as the nylon pulled free from under her rump. “We should patent this gadget. We’d become millionaires.”
“I’m already a millionaire,” Ryan reminded her grumpily. It irritated him no end that she could be so cheerful when she’d just scared him so badly. “When we’re married, half of that money will be yours.”
“I ain’t rich,” Sly pointed out. “Maybe I’ll patent the thing. If I had me a big, fat bank account, I just might get myself hitched.”
Ryan cast the foreman an amazed look. “To who? Are you seeing someone I don’t know about?”
Sly cocked a gray eyebrow, scratched his ear, and then said, “What if I am? I’m of age and then some. I reckon it’s not just young fellers who can git bit by the lovebug.”
Ryan was so startled by the revelation that he nearly forgot his concerns about Bethany. “I never said it was. I think that’s great, Sly. Who’s the lucky woman?”
The foreman smiled. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. Just know when you finally do that I love the lady.”
With that, the wiry foreman left the stall. Ryan turned a bewildered gaze on Bethany. She smiled and sighed. “Isn’t that romantic? Sly is in love with someone.”
Ryan frowned. “He makes damned good money working for us. He doesn’t need millions to get married.”
Bethany turned toward the doorway and wheeled out into the aisle. “Come on, Wink. Time to put you back in your stall.”
The mare followed her mistress like a dog trained to heel. Ryan stared after the pair for a moment, then hollered for Charlie, one of the stable hands, to come unsaddle and walk Wink to cool her down.
En route to the office a few minutes later, Bethany flashed him a teasing smile over her shoulder. Once inside the small room, she was the one who locked and bolted the door this time. She turned, gave him a sultry look, and flicked the fringe on her shirt with a fingertip. “Hi, cowboy. Did you miss me while I was riding?”
Ryan’s pulse hadn’t returned to normal yet. As happy as he was that the sling episode had ended well, he still couldn’t get that picture of her on the ground at the mare’s feet out of his head. “I’m not really in the mood for that right now.”
She only smiled and started unsnapping her shirt. “I’m sorry for giving you such a scare. I won’t make the mistake of unfastening the hooks until I’m secured to the saddle again. I promise.”
Ryan averted his gaze, determined not to get sidetracked. “I think we need to talk about wise choices and the necessity of taking the proper precautions.”
He heard cloth rustle, and his eyes were drawn back to her as if they were metal shavings attracted by a magnet. Two magnets. God help him. Her bra was unfastened, and both breasts were trying to spill out. One rose pink nipple peeked around the scalloped edge of lace at him. At the sight, the insides of his cheeks sucked fast to his teeth. He couldn’t have spit if she’d yelled, “Stable fire!”
“Please don’t be mad,” she said softly. As she spoke, she grazed her dainty fingertips over the hardening tip of her now bare breast, her eyes beckoning to him. “Come here and let me make you feel better.”
Holy hell. She’d gotten a late start at sex, but she was a fast learner. Ryan was across the office before he realized he’d moved. He quickly forgot all about being upset with her. How could a man hold onto a rational thought?
By the following Thursday when they began their trip to Bear Creek Lake for the wedding, Bethany had conditioned herself daily to the saddle and was ready for an hour and a half ride. She was feeling so happy and optimistic about her future with Ryan that it almost frightened her. Cleo had settled in at the ranch as if she’d been born there, spending her days on T-bone’s shoulders and her nights in the house, snuggled in her kitty bed. Bethany had used her new stable sling regularly, mounting and dismounting Wink without any help. Ryan was talking about her opening a riding academy in the near future, not only to train aspiring barrel racers like Heidi, but to work with paraplegic youngsters as well.
It all sounded too good to be true. A handsome, loving, wonderful husband. Being able to have babies. Working full-time with horses. Being free to wander the pathways that networked the property. She felt as if her world had been magnified to gigantic proportions, and she sometimes felt almost giddy. Surely no one could be this happy without something happening to spoil it.
When she confessed her fear to Ryan, he fell back to ride abreast of her, looking so incredibly handsome in the saddle with June sunlight glinting off his breeze-tousled black hair that he made her heart sing. The jingling, almost musical sounds of their camping paraphernalia on the packhorse mingled with the clop of hooves striking rock as they rode along.
“Sweetheart, that’s silly,” he said. “You deserve to be happy. Nothing’s going to happen to spoil this for us. Nothing.”
Bethany let her head fall back to gaze at the sky. “I know I’m being silly. It’s just—oh, Ryan, I’m so happy. You know what I’m saying? I’ve lived so long, always telling myself to be practical, always scolding myself for wanting what I could no longer have. And now, all of a sudden, I’m getting every single thing I ever wished for. Nobody should be this happy. It has to be a sin or something.”
He chuckled and leaned sideways on his horse to steal a quick kiss. “Bethany Ann, I can’t imagine you committing a real sin, and I’m sure God would agree with me. I’ve never known a person with a purer heart. I think He sent me an angel.”
Her eyes danced with mischief, and she plucked a pinecone from a tree bough to chuck at him. “Angels don’t think about what I’m thinking about right now. Let’s stop and take a rest under a tree.”
Ryan knew what that warm gleam in her eyes meant, and he was sorely tempted to stop. But if they lingered along the trail for too long, it would spoil his plans.
He sighed and reached over to ruffle her hair. “As much as it pains me, I have to pass.”
She frowned and pouted her bottom lip. “We’re not even married yet, and you’re already tired of me.”
“Not a chance. There’s just something special I want to do this afternoon. When we stop and get our camp set up, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
She threw him a bewildered look. “Today? How can we do that? The minister won’t be coming up until Saturday.”
“We don’t need a minister,” he assured her. “Remember telling me that for you, the wilderness was your church? Let’s say our private vows today. Just you and me, on a mountain ridge, making our wedding promises to each other with only God as our witness. Who else really counts?”
After thinking about it for a moment, she nodded and flashed him a smile. “I’d love that. I think it would be even more meaningful than the official ceremony.”
Two hours later Ryan knelt at the feet of a dark-haired angel in a wheelchair and vowed to love, honor, and cherish her for the rest of his life. As he said the words, he looked into those beautiful pansy-blue eyes of hers and knew that loving her was what he’d been born to do.
When he finished saying his vows, she tremulously followed suit, her eyes sparkling as she whispered each word, promisin
g to love him forever. Bethany. She was surely a gift from heaven. To himself, Ryan vowed to be the man she deserved, to spend the remainder of his days protecting her and trying to make her happy. If anyone on earth deserved to be happy, it had to be this woman.
He drew their rings from his shirt pocket. Before he slipped hers on her finger, he held it up to the sunlight. “They say a ring is a symbol of eternity—of pure and everlasting love. I think a lot of people forget that. I never will. I promise you that.” He slipped the ring on her finger and then bent to kiss it. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
She smiled as she gazed down at the ring on her finger. Then, after hauling in a deep, shaky breath, she held up his ring to the sunlight. “Whenever you look at this ring,” she whispered, “remember I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to love you more than I love myself. Because you are who you are, I don’t think that will be a tall order.” She leaned forward to kiss him. As she drew away, tears sparkled on her cheeks like diamonds. With his help she slipped the ring onto his finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
Ryan framed her face between his hands as he bent to settle his mouth over hers. A burning desire flowed through him, setting his blood afire. “Now for the best part of a private, mountain ridge ceremony,” he whispered as he drew back. “Instead of just kissing my bride, I can seal our vows by making love to her.”
Her eyes widened. “Here?”
Ryan glanced around and chuckled. “One nice thing about mountain ridges, the neighbors mind their own business and aren’t given to gossip.” He pushed to his feet, lifted her into his arms, and carried her to a sun-dappled grassy place under a pine tree. After clearing away the needles with the side of his boot, he carefully laid her down and made passionate love to her in the golden sunlight, giving the squirrels something to chatter about.
Afterglow … Ryan had heard the term hundreds of times, but the feeling itself was incredible. He held his wife close to his heart, too exhausted to move. Sunshine played over their nude bodies in a warm caress that felt so good he wanted to remain just as they were. Only a fear that Bethany’s sensitive skin might burn finally prodded him to move.