Six Weeks to Catch a Cowboy
Autor
Brenda Harlen
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HarlequinChapter One
Spencer Channing felt as if he’d been trampled by a bull.
To a cowboy who’d spent almost half a decade on the professional rodeo circuit, it was more than a figure of speech.
Not that he’d ever actually been trampled, but he’d been tossed up, thrown over, dragged across and stepped on. Even successful rides left their mark on a cowboy in the form of strains and sprains and bruises, and for more than half a decade, he’d loved every minute of it.
But now, he was battered to the depths of his soul.
He’d always prided himself on working hard and playing hard and doing the right thing. But he’d screwed up. In a big way.
So he’d decided to go home to lick his wounds. And work on rehabbing his dislocated shoulder, since licking wouldn’t actually fix anything that was wrong.
Still, he was confident that the injury would heal. In fact, the doctor had assured him that he could be back on the circuit in time for the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas.
If that’s what you want.
Six weeks earlier, there would have been no if about it. Of course, he wanted to be back on the circuit and competing for the biggest prize of the season. Being a cowboy was more than just a job—it was his identity. If he wasn’t Spencer Channing, two-time PBR and PRCA bull riding champion, he was nobody.
He’d worked hard to get to the top and even harder to stay there. And then, it had taken only 6.2 seconds to change everything. Or maybe it was the unexpected meeting that happened before he went into the chute for the fateful ride that was to blame. A meeting he’d been confident he could put out of his mind for eight seconds.
He’d been doing pretty well, too, before his attention had shifted—for just a fraction of a second—away from the fifteen-hundred-pound beast bucking beneath him. That momentary inattention had been rewarded by a quick toss in the air and a bone-jarring thud on the dirt.
And another one bites the dust, the announcer had gleefully informed the crowd.
Coming back to Haven hadn’t been an easy choice, but Spencer knew it was the right one. And yet, six weeks after that life-changing day, he still hadn’t figured out what he was going to tell his parents when he walked through the front door. He’d driven eight hundred miles to get here, but his thoughts were as much a jumble now as when he’d started the journey.
It was almost 9:00 p.m. when he passed the town limits. Main Street was mostly quiet, as was usual for a Tuesday night, though there were several vehicles parked on the street near Diggers’. On impulse, Spencer steered his truck into an empty spot.
Stopping for a drink would only delay the inevitable, but he turned off the vehicle and stepped out onto the street, anyway. He walked through the main doors, then turned left, toward the bar section of the Bar & Grill. Only a few of the stools at the counter were occupied, and he straddled an empty one and studied the assortment of taps.
“Spencer?”
He lifted his head, his eyes skimming over the brunette working behind the bar. Pretty face with warm, dark chocolate–colored eyes, sweetly shaped lips, a tiny dent in her chin and long dark hair that tumbled over narrow shoulders. She wore a black vest over a white T-shirt tucked into slim-fitting jeans that showed off her feminine curves.
His gaze dropped automatically to her left hand, and he noted the huge diamond weighing down the third finger.
A glittering, princess-cut stop sign.
“Do I know you?” he asked, because that question seemed safer than Did I sleep with you?
Over the years, he’d learned that most females didn’t appreciate being forgettable. Although he’d realized that the forgetting said more about him than it did about the companions he’d forgotten.
There had been a lot of women while he’d traveled the circuit. Too many women; too many one-night stands. A few hookups had lasted longer than that, but he’d had no long-term relationships. It was too hard to maintain a connection when he was constantly on the move to new rodeos in new towns—and when those new towns were filled with a whole new array of willing women. The longest relationship he’d had was with Emily Whittingham, as they’d traveled the same route for a few weeks, and the friendly parting of ways had certainly not prepared him for the chaos she would introduce into his life years later.
The pretty bartender shook her head, yanking his attention back to the present like a lassoed calf at a roping competition. “No,” she said. “But you look so much like Jason, I knew you had to be his brother.”
“And you are?” he prompted.
She reached across the counter. “Alyssa Cabrera—his fiancée.”
As Spencer took her proffered hand, he looked her over again, this time attempting to picture her with his brother. Jay had always had a way with the ladies—a family trait—but he’d usually gone for long-legged blondes. Another family trait.
“I know,” Alyssa said, following his train of thought. “I’m not his type.”
“Not his usual type,” Spencer agreed. “Obviously he raised the bar.”
She laughed softly at that. “I see you have the same glib tongue as well as the same blue eyes.”
Channing blue, his mother referred to the clear, deep shade that each of her children had inherited from their father.
He pushed the distracting thought aside.
“Jay said that you’re a teacher,” he noted.
“I am,” she confirmed. “I also work here two nights a week. I originally took the job because I had too much time on my hands—but since we’ve started planning the wedding, I’ve got none. Now, I’m only working until Duke hires and trains a replacement.
“Or until he fires me,” she suggested as an alternative. “Because I’m not doing a very good job, am I? Gabbing your ear off instead of asking what you want to drink.”
He scanned the taps. “I’ll take a pint of Icky.”
She grabbed a glass and tipped it beneath the spout. “So when did you get into town?”
He glanced at his watch. “About ten minutes ago.”
Her brows lifted. “This was your first stop?”
“As my brother’s fiancée, I’m sure you’ve met my parents and can appreciate the need for a little fortification before facing them.”
She gave him a stern look that probably worked well on her students, but he could see the ghost of a smile hovering at the corners of her mouth as she set the beer glass on a paper coaster in front of him.
Maybe he was surprised to discover that this was the woman his brother had chosen as his bride—and even more surprised that he was choosing to get married at all—but he instinctively sensed that Alyssa would be good for Jay. And though Spencer had never thought in terms of a wife and kids and happily-ever-after, he decided that his brother was a lucky guy.
“Does anyone know you’re here?” she asked, after he’d sipped and nodded his approval of the draft.
“Sitting on this stool?”
“In Haven,” she clarified.
“Nah. I talked to my mom yesterday and told her I was on my way home, but I didn’t tell her when I’d be arriving.”
“You didn’t want her to slaughter the fatted calf in honor of your return?” she teased.
“All the calves at Crooked Creek Ranch were scrawny,” he told her. “Which was probably just as well, because if one had been slaughtered, my mother might try to cook it.”
“More likely she’d have Celeste do it,” Alyssa noted, referring to the Channings’ long-time cook. Then her expression grew serious. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Healing,” he said.
“How long are you planning to stay?”
He lifted his uninjured shoulder. “I’m not sure yet.”
And while it was true that he wasn’t working with a specific timeline—except maybe the end of season event in Vegas—this was the first time he’d returned to Haven since his freshman year at UNLV that he wasn’t already counting the days until he could leave again. This time, it was entirely possible that he might decide to stay. For a while, anyway.
“Are you staying with your parents?” Alyssa asked, her question again bringing him back to the present.
“For now,” he admitted. “Although I’m not sure I’ll last even a week there.”
“Well, if you decide you want to hang around longer than that and you want your own space, you could always stay at my place,” she invited.
“I’m not sure how my brother would feel about me bunking with his fiancée,” he said cautiously.
Her cheeks flushed prettily. “Not with me—just in my apartment,” she clarified. “Most of my stuff has been moved to Jason’s place already, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to get the rest of it out of your way.”
His surprise gave way to curiosity. “Is the apartment furnished?”
She nodded. “It’s not fancy, but it’s got all the essentials.”
“Bed, shower and TV?” he guessed.
“And a fridge and stove in the kitchen, too.”
He didn’t tell her that he didn’t cook, because he knew he was going to have to learn to do more than warm up canned beans to serve on toasted bread. Just one more adjustment to be made in a life he soon wouldn’t recognize as his own.
“That could work,” he agreed.
“Just let me know when you want to see the place,” she offered.
He finished his beer and pushed the empty glass across the bar. “Would now be a good time?”
She laughed. “I’m working now. Plus, you were going to stay with your parents for at least a few days.”
“Only because I didn’t think I had any other options,” he confided.
She smiled at that, then she touched a hand to his arm. “It’s great to finally meet you, Spencer. And I know everyone will be thrilled that you’re home.”
He didn’t know if it was the warmth of her touch or the sincerity of her tone, but with those words, the weight that he’d carried on his shoulders since he’d started this journey began to lift away.
For the past five years, he’d lived like a nomad, not always knowing when he woke up in the morning where he’d be laying his head that night. He hadn’t had a home—just a series of hotel rooms that all started to look the same after a while.
But Alyssa was right—this was his home.
And it was good to be back.
* * *
Spencer Channing was coming home.
The town of Haven had been buzzing with the news all week—and it was only Wednesday!
Kenzie Atkins first heard about the rodeo cowboy’s imminent return on Monday at The Daily Grind, where she stopped for a tall vanilla latte every morning on her way to work.
“He’s coming home for his brother’s wedding,” Lacey Seagram told her.
It was a credible explanation for his return, except Kenzie knew that Jason and Alyssa weren’t getting married until December and the nuptials were taking place in California.
“I heard he was suspended for fighting,” Jerry Tate had reported to her the following afternoon.
He was a twice-weekly patient at Back in the Game—the local sports medicine clinic—who suffered from chronic lower back issues. Kenzie suspected he must be on some kind of pain medication that muddled his brain, because the idea of Spencer Channing ever doing anything that might jeopardize his career was completely outrageous.
The man she’d known seven years earlier had wanted nothing more than to be a rodeo cowboy and would let nothing get in the way of his goal.
Of course, seven years was a long time and people did change. And what did she know about his life now?
Less than nothing.
Because although she’d kept in touch with his sister after Brielle moved to New York City, Kenzie wasn’t pathetic enough to pump her long-distance friend for information about a brother she rarely saw.
When she met Megan Carmichael—another friend from high school—at Diggers’ for lunch on Wednesday, Kenzie was presented with yet another possible scenario.
“Did you hear the news?” Megan asked after Deanna, their usual waitress, had delivered their food.
“If you’re referring to Spencer Channing’s return, then yes—it seems to be all anyone is talking about this week,” Kenzie noted.
“I mean why he’s back,” her friend clarified.
“Either he’s home for Jason and Alyssa’s wedding or he’s been suspended from the circuit.”
Megan nibbled on a french fry. “He wasn’t suspended—he was injured.”
Injured?
Kenzie’s hand trembled as she lifted her glass of iced tea to her lips.
She knew that bull riding—Spencer’s specialty—was both a physically demanding and dangerous sport, but she hadn’t let herself think about the possibility that he might get hurt. Other cowboys, sure, but not Spencer, who’d always been so strong and fearless, seemingly invincible.
Of course he wasn’t invincible, and the knowledge that he’d been hurt tied her stomach in painful knots.
Not that she should care. And she didn’t really. Except that Spencer was her best friend’s brother, and Brielle would be distressed to learn of any injury. Her own angst wasn’t so easy to explain—or even acknowledge.
But maybe Megan was wrong. Maybe this was just another story generated by someone wanting to appear to be in the know about what was happening in town.
She sipped her soda, then managed to ask, “Where’d you hear about the injury?”
“Becky told Suzannah who told me,” Megan said.
And since Becky worked in Margaret Channing’s office at Blake Mining, Kenzie knew this rumor was most likely the right one. “What happened?”
“A bull named Desert Storm at a rodeo in Justice Creek,” Megan responded.
Kenzie swallowed. “How bad is it?”
Her friend shrugged. “I figure it has to be pretty bad to get him to come home. Unless he’s only coming home to reassure his mother that it’s not too bad.” Then she immediately shook her head. “No, the most convincing evidence of that would be to get back on the horse again—or bull, in this case.” Megan smiled at her own joke.
Kenzie couldn’t make her lips curve.
Instead, she picked up her buffalo chicken wrap and nibbled on a corner. She’d been starving when she sat down, but now, thinking about Spencer being tossed like salad by a vicious animal, she felt as if her appetite had been trampled to bits by angry hooves.
Because as much as she tried not to care, she couldn’t deny that she did. Because when Spencer had left Haven seven years earlier, he’d taken a piece of her heart. No matter that he didn’t want it, she’d given it to him and lost it forever.
“But I guess we’ll have to wait and see to know for sure,” Megan continued. “In the meantime—” she winked suggestively “—a girl can only hope he isn’t completely out of commission.”
“I thought you were dating Brett Tanner,” Kenzie remarked.
“I am,” her friend confirmed. “But until there’s a ring on my finger, I’m keeping my options open...unless I’d be stepping on your toes.”
“What? No!”
“Are you sure?” Megan asked. “I know you had a major crush on him in high school.”
Kenzie could hardly deny it. Instead, she only said, “I got over that—and him—a lot of years ago.”
“I had a crush on him, too,” Megan confessed.
It was hardly a revelation. Most of the female contingent at Westmount High School had sighed when Spencer Channing walked through the halls, his hands tucked in the pockets of his Wranglers.
“Of course, he never gave me the time of day,” her friend continued.
“He was already a junior when we were freshmen—plus we were friends with his little sister,” Kenzie reminded her.
“Which meant that we were never likely to get anything more than a brotherly nod of recognition,” Megan noted.
It was true.
Mostly.
There had been the one time, the night before he was scheduled to leave town, that Spencer had looked at Kenzie as if he really saw her.
As if he really wanted her.
And maybe Kenzie had occasionally wondered if her life might have taken a different course if that night had ended differently. But she never dwelled on the what-ifs for too long. Because Spencer had been larger than life, with big dreams for his future, while she’d had much more modest plans.
In the end, they’d both got what they wanted.
Now he was a big-name rodeo star and she was a small-town massage therapist and, as decreed in the poem, “never the twain shall meet”—except maybe in her dreams.
And yeah, there were still times when she dreamed about him, because she had no control over the direction of her subconscious mind. And apparently her subconscious mind believed that sex with Spencer Channing would somehow be different—and better—than sex with any other guy she’d been intimate with.
“But I’m not just a friend of his little sister anymore,” Megan continued, oblivious to Kenzie’s meandering thoughts. “And he’s going to want a date for his brother’s wedding.”
“The wedding’s in Irvine,” Kenzie reminded her friend.
“And I’d love to go to SoCal in December. Going with Spencer Channing would just be delectable icing on the cake.”
“Have you considered the possibility that he might not be all that anymore?” Kenzie wondered aloud.
“Have you not seen the June cover of ProRider magazine?” Megan countered.
“I saw it,” she admitted.
Of course, she’d seen it. Because Spencer Channing was the closest thing to a celebrity to ever come out of Haven, Nevada, and as soon as the issue hit newsstands, all anyone could talk about was the local boy who’d made it big on the rodeo circuit. As if being able to stay on the back of an angry bull for eight seconds was some kind of accomplishment.
Okay, maybe it was. She’d watched some of his competitions on TV, and she’d held her breath and curled her hands into fists, as if doing so might somehow help him hold on. And maybe she’d been excited for and proud of him every time he’d beat the buzzer. But still, it wasn’t as if he was changing the world. He was just playing at being a cowboy, as he’d always wanted to do, so that he didn’t have to grow up and get a real job.
So yes, she’d seen the magazine. She even had a copy of it—and all the other magazines that had featured him on the cover or mentioned him in a footnote—in the bottom drawer of her desk.
“If you saw that cover, then you know the guy who was all that in high school is now all that and a whole lot more,” Megan said.
“The whole lot more could be staging and airbrushing,” Kenzie suggested.
Megan pushed her empty plate aside. “I’m a little surprised by your lack of interest,” she admitted. “Of all the girls in our class, you had the biggest crush on him. If he ventured within ten feet of you, you’d get completely tongue-tied.”
“It was embarrassing,” Kenzie agreed. “It was also a long time ago.”
“You really don’t care that he’s coming home?”
The only thing she cared about was that she might see him, and then have to face the memories and humiliation of the last time she’d seen him. When she’d thrown herself at him and practically begged him to take her virginity.
Not surprisingly, he’d rejected her offer.
She’d been both heartbroken and relieved when he left for UNLV the next day—and certain she couldn’t ever face him again.
Over the years, he’d made regular if not frequent visits home, and Kenzie had always been careful to stay away from any and all of the places he might be.
If Megan was right about the reason for Spencer’s return, and if he planned to stay in Haven for any significant period of time while his unknown injuries healed, it was inevitable that Kenzie would cross paths with him.
But she was confident that when that happened, he wouldn’t detect any hint of the pathetic, lovestruck teenager she’d been inside the confident and capable woman she was now.
* * *
“Your two o’clock is waiting in treatment room four,” Jillian, the clinic receptionist, told Kenzie when she got back after lunch.
She glanced at her watch. “Mrs. Ferris is early today.”
“Mrs. Ferris canceled,” Jillian informed her. “She wasn’t feeling well.”
Kenzie shook her head. “She complains that her treatment isn’t working but refuses to take any responsibility for the fact that she only shows up for half her scheduled appointments.”
“And complains when we bill her for the ones she misses last-minute,” the receptionist added.
“So who’s my two o’clock?” Kenzie asked.
“A new patient rehabbing a shoulder injury.” Jillian sighed dreamily. “And, oh-my-god, does he have fabulous shoulders. And a smile that could melt any woman’s panties from across the room.”
Though Kenzie was accustomed to Jillian’s outrageous and unapologetic objectification of their attractive male clients, the remark made her cringe—and glance around to ensure there were no other clients within earshot.
“Not my panties,” she asserted confidently. Because only one man’s smile had ever had the power to do that, and that had been a long time ago.
“I’m telling you, if you’d been five minutes later, I might have snuck into the treatment room to massage him myself,” Jillian said, then immediately amended her claim. “No, I probably wouldn’t have lasted more than three minutes.”
Kenzie shook her head. “Does Mr. Panty-Melter have another name?”
“As a matter of fact, he does.” The receptionist glanced down at her computer screen, where the scheduled appointments were displayed. “It’s Spencer Channing.”
