Karen Rock - Bad Boy Rancher

She made him feel alive, a stinging rush like the return of blood to a limb that’d fallen asleep.

Except he liked—no, needed—to stay numb.

He didn’t want to wake and face reality.

Did he?

CHAPTER THREE

“MY FAVORITE PIZZA toppings are pineapple and jalapeño peppers,” pronounced one of Fresh Start’s patients during their first group therapy session later that week. Brielle jotted down the unusual pairing on a stand-alone whiteboard then turned back to the speaker. He’d introduced himself earlier as Paul, a former artilleryman who’d served in Mosul. Per his intake, he suffered from PTSD and depression.

Paul took up most of one of the chairs circling the center of the converted ranch house’s living room. In his midthirties, he had wide ears, a round, expressive face and a stooped posture that seemed to be apologizing for the sheer size of him. Six inked names scrolled across his forearm.

Lost brothers in arms?

Names of fallen soldiers spun in Brielle’s mind then stopped on one, the thought like an ice pick to her brain.

“Dude. That’s the worst pizza topping combination ever,” a slouchy teenager said. Maya. She was a skeletal, black-haired girl with bruise-purple skin underlining eyes that looked up from the bottom of a deep well. She hailed from Denver and, according to her mother, had spent most of her life in facilities that’d failed to manage her bipolar and eating disorder.

Hopefully Fresh Start would succeed where others had failed. With its real-world immersion program through ranching experiences, it was designed to build confidence and end self-defeating behaviors. The clinic now housed fifteen residents, half its capacity, with eight more expected at the end of the week.

“This is a judgment-free zone,” Craig, the group leader, intoned, mock serious.

Brielle crossed one leg over the other and smiled encouragingly at her latest hire. At fifty-eight, Dr. Craig Sheldon brought decades of experience as well as a deep personal understanding of what it was like to survive a war after his service as a gunner in the second Gulf War. He sported a pointy goatee, long sideburns and thinning hair he’d pulled into a ponytail at the back of his neck. An enamel yin-yang symbol on a leather cord appeared in the open neck of his golf shirt.

“Lame.” Maya flicked her hand. A shower of tinkling silver bangles slid down her forearm and revealed a freshly healed wrist scar.

“Do we get pizza here?” asked a man with white hair that looked electrified. Stew’s children had tracked him down in an Aspen homeless shelter last week and admitted him for heroin addiction treatment. He’d stopped taking his mental health medications and had been suffering from hallucinations.

“Every Friday,” Brielle supplied and the group slowly turned her way, their eyes wary. She hadn’t spoken this whole hour save for a brief introduction. While Craig took the lead and built rapport, she’d stayed at the whiteboard and jotted down group responses while taking mental notes about her charges. “We’ll make them, so you can have any toppings you want.”

Pizza night was one of several activities she and Craig had brainstormed to build trust, confidence and self-esteem. Yet Fresh Start needed to add ranch skills to reach the potential envisioned by its owner. Thus far, no one had responded to her ad seeking a cowboy to run those activities. Did her lack of applicants stem from the disapproval locals had expressed about the clinic?

“Sweet!” Paul quirked an eyebrow at Maya. “If you’re lucky I’ll let you try mine.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’d kill myself first.”

An appalled silence descended. First-time group therapies needed to stay light and upbeat as the clients learned about each other and built trust; Maya’s statement was anything but that.

“Kidding. Jeez,” she muttered, then slid even farther into her seat. Her stick-thin arms crossed against her chest.

“Hey, if you can’t joke about suicide here, where can you?” Craig put in, a twinkle in his hooded blue eyes.

A twentysomething woman with Tourette’s syndrome giggled then clapped a hand over her mouth. Paul mouthed “what?” and guffawed. Stew joined in with an infectious belly laugh that got the rest of the group going, including Maya, who perked up enough to resume picking the rubber soles off her Converse sneakers.

Brielle stood, crossed the room and shot Craig a thumbs-up at the door. Very nice. Exactly the right touch of levity and reality, she thought as she strode back to her office. Her plans were finally coming together.

During the last three weeks, she’d fallen into a comforting routine with predictable schedules and specified activities. Now that she’d inserted order in her world, she’d begun to feel, for the first time since her discharge, she fit in...at least within these walls. Her days flew by at breakneck speed as she conducted staff interviews, oversaw patient admissions, supervised daily operations and provided individual therapy sessions to lighten Craig’s load.

She rounded a corner and her receptionist, Doreen, a petite redhead wearing oversize glasses, waved at her. Half a bologna sandwich dangled from her fingers.

“Call,” she mumbled around a mouthful, then pointed at Brielle’s office. “Mayor.”

The mayor?

Brielle hustled around her desk and snatched up the handset. Outside her open window was a domed blue sky, the mountains crystal clear around the valley. A light wind carried the scent of wild sage. “Hello, Mr. Cantwell. What can I do for you?”

“Hi, Ms. Thompson. I hope your first week’s going well.”

She thought of the missing paper supply order and the wrong-size bedsheets that failed to fit their overlong mattresses.

“Couldn’t be better.” Her eyes wandered to a picture of her parents from a cruise they’d taken during her first deployment. They stood barefoot in sand, their faces red and their smiles wide. She’d been surrounded by sand, too, back then. It hadn’t been a photo op, though. Not that she needed a picture to remind her. She could still see, feel and taste that sand. Grains of it clung and scraped inside her, out of reach.

“As you might have seen in the paper, some of our residents have raised concerns about your facility.”

“I’ve read them.” The one delivered to her house, the one delivered to the center, even the one sitting on the diner’s counter when she ordered her coffee this morning—each one reminding her of how unwelcome her facility was in this close-knit town.

Doreen appeared and set a glass of iced tea and a pile of mail on Brielle’s desk. She smiled her gratitude, passed Doreen completed applicant forms for data entry and picked up the welcome refreshment.

“The town council has taken an interest.”

The iced tea sloshed over the side of the glass and splatted her desk blotter. “And what does that mean exactly?”

“They’re calling a meeting to allow residents to air their grievances.”

“Grievances?” she echoed. “I don’t understand. We haven’t caused any problems...”

“You haven’t, and believe me, Carbondale is happy to have you,” the mayor soothed, then—“Hold a moment, I’ve got to get rid of this other call.”

“Not all of Carbondale’s pleased,” she muttered under her breath, thinking of Justin Cade as she awaited the mayor’s return. A sip of her sweet, lemony caffeine jump-started her jittering knee.

Despite her burgeoning responsibilities, she found herself thinking often about her dark rider, as she’d begun calling Justin after one particularly blushworthy dream. He’d taken her on a moonlight motorcycle ride to a secluded spot and then... She’d woken up.

Luckily.