Linda Goodnight - The Least Likely Groom

“This had to hurt. Didn’t he complain?”

Jackson shrugged. “Cowboys believe if you’re still breathin’ you ain’t hurt.”

“Then why’d you bring him to the E.R.?”

A grin split the big man’s face. “I didn’t want him to quit breathin’.”

Becka shot him an exasperated look.

“The doctor will have to X-ray him and probably do a scan to say for certain, but I’ve seen this kind of injury before. He won’t ride on this knee for a while.”

“Jett won’t like that. He’s only a few rodeos away from the big show.”

“Excuse me?”

“Vegas. Jett’s never made it to the National Finals, but he has a shot this year. A few more rodeos, a few more points, and he’s eligible.”

Becka gave him a doubtful twitch of one eyebrow. “I don’t like to rain on anyone’s parade….”

“That bad, huh?”

“I’m afraid it could be.”

They both stared at the unconscious patient. One with sympathetic eyes. The other with thoughts that the idiot would be better off in traction than to risk his life on the back of a Brahma bull.

Jett awakened that evening with the mother of all headaches. Turning only his eyes because his brain undulated like the curves of a belly dancer, he spotted an overhead television, a bedside table and a wheelchair. He eased his eyelids down again, waited two beats and tried again. He could not be where he thought he was.

“A hospital?” He ran a thick tongue over dry lips. His mouth tasted like the floor of a rodeo arena.

From the corner Jackson unwound his big body from a miserable-looking plastic chair. “You awake?”

“Must be talking in my sleep. I can’t be in a hospital.”

“Rattlesnake Municipal. At least for tonight.”

A little quiver of relief shuddered through him. He was only here for the night. He must not be hurt too badly. Tomorrow he and Jacks would be back on the road. With a win in Odessa tomorrow night, he’d be one rodeo closer to the NFR.

“Did you bring me in here?”

“Yep. But Colt will be back in the morning to take you to Amarillo.”

“Colt?” Jett frowned. What did his brother have to do with anything? “Amarillo?” Jackson was talking in riddles. Maybe he’d been the one to get his head dinged. “We’re riding in Odessa tomorrow night, not Amarillo.”

The brown door swished open and the tiniest redheaded nurse Jett could imagine whipped into the room. If she hadn’t been wearing pink scrubs and a name badge that said, B. Washburn, RN, Jett would have sworn she was a little kid.

She bent over his knee, turning her backside in his direction.

Nope, he thought with an appreciative grin. This one’s definitely not a kid. He was in the midst of a rather nice perusal of her other petite but womanly assets when she laid an ice pack against his leg.

Pain, violent enough to be rated F5 in the tornado world, shot from his kneecap to his head and rattled around inside his brain long enough to make him forget his name.

He clamped down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep his big mouth from squealing like a stuck hog. He’d had pain before, didn’t really even mind pain that much since it was an expected part of his job, but this wasn’t regular pain. This was hot-metal-in-the-eye pain. Steel-toed-boot-in-the-groin pain. Hold-me-down-and-stomp-my-nose pain.

The little nurse looked up with sympathetic eyes. “Would you like me to ask Dr. Clayton if you can have something for the pain?”

“Pain?” he grunted, sucking in air through his teeth. “I don’t need anything for pain. What I need is my pants.”

She cast a sideways glance at Jackson who looked way too serious. And Jacks was not a serious kind of guy. All of a sudden, Jett had a real bad feeling.

“Did something terrible happen to my pants?”

Jackson laughed. “Yeah. She cut ’em off.”

“She did?” The dynamite blast in his leg had subsided a little. He managed a lascivious grin in the nurse’s direction. “And what did she do to me while I was helpless and naked?”

B. Washburn, RN, never even blushed. Guys must come on to someone as cute as she was all the time.

Was that what he was doing? Coming on to her?

Nah. He couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted right now with the NFR within reach. But she was cute.

Maybe later.

“So how am I going to get out of here without any pants?”

A cute little dip formed between Nurse Washburn’s eyes. “Don’t you remember talking to Dr. Clayton?”

That bad feeling came back, stronger this time. He cast a glance toward Jackson, who once more wore a troubled expression.

“’Fraid not. What’s up?”

“We’re sending you to Amarillo tomorrow to an orthopedic surgeon.”

“For a headache?” He refused to think about that teensy-weensy twinge in his knee.

“At the very least, you have a severed ACL that will require surgery.”

“How bad?” He looked to his partner for reassurance, but Jackson got that hang-dog look again.

Ignoring the incessant school of sharks ripping through his kneecap, he thought he’d better listen to Miss B. Washburn, RN, considering how he didn’t recall ever meeting Dr. Clayton. Or having an MRI for that matter.

What she had to say really put a kink in his good mood. He knew all about tears of the anterior cruciate ligament. Every athlete hated them because they sidelined a guy too long. But from the way B. Washburn, RN, told it, a regular ACL tear didn’t sound so bad. His, on the other hand, was way beyond torn. His knee was, as she so blatantly phrased it, “demolished.”

“So, when can I ride again?” He asked when she finished telling him that not only was his dream in jeopardy, but his career, as well.

“That will be for the orthopod to say after he’s done a scope.”

Orthopod? Was that a doctor from outer space?

He thought better of asking. And to tell the truth, if someone didn’t get the sharks off his leg, he was going to lose his sense of humor.

“But you’ll be off the circuit for at least a couple of months, maybe longer.”

“No way.” He struggled up to his elbows. “Get me some pants, Jacks. I can ride.”

To prove his point, he swung his right leg over the side of the bed, but the left one refused to follow.

B. Washburn, RN, caught him by the calf and pushed him gently, but efficiently back onto the bed. The eyes he’d thought of as honey-colored, now looked muddy with anger.

“Don’t be foolish, Mr. Garrett. It’s bad enough to put yourself in harm’s way by riding bulls, but refusing treatment for severe injury is totally irresponsible. It won’t heal and you won’t ride, maybe ever again if you make it any worse.”

He gazed down in amazement at her slender arms. “Hey, you’re pretty strong for a girl.”

She’d tossed him back onto the bed as easily as Sinsation had tossed him on his head. Dadgum ornery bull. “You must know judo or something.”

“Or something.” She favored him with a cheeky grin that sent a little spiral of interest curling through his belly. Darn if she wasn’t making him think of taking a couple days off to hang around Rattlesnake and find out just what that something was—among other things.

“Man, what’s the world coming to? I get stomped by a bull and body-slammed by a girl all in one day.” Moving had stirred the knee-eating sharks, and he was starting to feel grouchy again. “Are you gonna get my pants or do I have to call 911 and report a theft, as well as a kidnapping?”

B. Washburn, RN, pushed the phone toward him. He scowled at her. She stared back with those honey-colored eyes, as solemn and sympathetic as an undertaker. The real bad feeling settled in to stay. He got the unmistakable impression that he was about to take an unplanned vacation to Amarillo.