Chapter 9
RILEY
“ H aving any pain?”
He shifted on the crinkled paper that stuck to the back of his thighs. They really should make these hospital gowns longer. Folding his hands on his lap and giving up on fixing the way that paper bunched, Riley shook his head in response.
“Not really,” he answered.
“Not really? What is that supposed to mean? Paisley gives better answers at her appointments,” his sister scolded, crossing her arms. Looking down at the small girl leaning against her leg, she asked, “Don’t you, honey?”
A wild grin spread across his niece’s face as she bounced up on the balls of her feet. “Yeah, Uncle RyRy!”
He fought the smile that pulled at his lips. It’s not that he had a soft spot for her. It’s that Paisley was his soft spot. But he couldn’t give his sister the satisfaction. “Why are you two here?”
“To make sure you answer the doctor’s questions accurately.” Piper looked towards the other man in the room who had been watching the interaction with amusement. “I’ve noticed that he does seem to reach for his back when he stands up sometimes.”
“Would it be accurate to say some pain then, son?” the doctor asked.
“Sure,” he conceded.
“Tingling? Numbness?”
Yes .
“No,” Riley lied. “Nothing like that.”
“That’s good to hear. What about weakness in your limbs, or pain that runs down them?”
“No, everything has been fine,” he insisted, the sound of tearing paper echoing around him as he shifted on the table once again.
“Muscle spasms?”
“None that have been noticeable.”
“ Riley, ” Piper hissed. “Explain that answer.”
Dragging out a long sigh, he rubbed his thumb across the small stubble forming once again on his upper lip. “Sometimes after a long ride… there might be a twitch or something. But I wouldn’t call it a spasm. And not anything more than before the fracture.”
The doctor nodded, taking down his response. “And what about difficulty controlling bowel movements?”
Paisley scrunched her nose, “Ew, I know what that means.”
“Smart girl,” Riley chuckled. “And no, everything is perfectly under control.”
Closing the laptop before him, the doctor wheeled his standing desk towards the door.
“Okay, well this all sounds good. And I didn’t see anything particularly alarming during the physical exam.
I still want to keep a close eye on you though.
After that fall—and a vertebrae fracture like yours—it’s extremely rare that someone forgoes surgery.
We need to be sure you don’t run the risk of another spinal fracture, which is a real possibility. ”
“Three weeks again?” Piper asked on his behalf. As if he wasn’t in his late twenties and perfectly capable of handling this on his own.
“Yes ma’am,” his doctor agreed, adjusting his white lab coat. “Just schedule it on your way out.” Then he disappeared into the hall.
Piper reached for Paisley’s hand, pulling the six-year-old towards the door as well. “Meet you in the lobby?”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” he grunted.
Paisley stood firm as her mother tried to pull her out of the exam room. “And then pancakes, right?” she asked urgently.
Softening his tone, Riley replied, “And then pancakes.”
Satisfied, the tiny girl turned and led her mother out. The metallic click of the door closing rang out before he was engulfed in silence. Finally. He dropped his head to his hands, a stress headache threatening to settle in above his brows.
Yes, he was having pain.
Yes, he was having numbness and tingling.
Yes, he was having spasms.
And difficulty standing and walking at times. That is what his sister was noticing, his inability to move positions with ease. Not necessarily pain, but immobility.
The writing was on the walls, he should have gotten surgery. And maybe soon, he’d be facing the need once again.
Riley peeled himself off the exam table and dressed quickly, snapping his buckle into place and stepping into the hall. This was a problem for another day. Right now, all he cared about was getting to the ranch. There was a certain strawberry blonde with whom he was eager to see.
“Uncle RyRy!” Paisley cheered as he rounded the corner into the waiting room. He reached out for her, giving one of her blonde pig-tail braids a tug.
“How ‘bout those pancakes, squirt?” he asked her, leading his family out to the parking lot. Piper’s husband was in the Air Force, and when he managed to get stationed back in their home state, they found a home halfway between Sterling Ridge and the base.
Meaning his sister was less than an hour from him.
It worked out especially well when her husband was deployed, and Piper needed a hand with Paisley. Uncle RyRy was able to be there.
“What are you getting on your pancakes?” he asked as they piled into his truck.
But before Paisley could answer, he was distracted by his phone vibrating in his pocket.
He worked to bring his attention back to her answer.
Something about strawberries, chocolate chips, and sprinkles.
But he couldn’t help wondering who was trying to reach him.
Brett and Grey knew about his appointments, they weren’t expecting him for a few more hours.
Maddie had even made a plan to stick around this morning and take care of things with Jules.
Checking his text, he learned that apparently Jules hadn’t gotten the memo, though.
Juliette
Okay, this time you actually are late. Are you coming in today? Or are you leaving me alone with our horses already?
His chest erupted with a small round of fireworks as he read the word our . Our horses. Ignoring the way Piper was studying his grinning face, he typed back quickly.
Riley
Missing me, Juliette?
Riley
I had to do something this morning. Be there soon.
“Who’s that?” Paisley asked. So, they were both being nosy. Go figure.
“Just a friend of mine.” He put his phone away and started driving through the parking lot. They could be friends, that would still be professional.
Piper was far from satisfied by his answer, though. “What kind of friend? You don’t smile at Cooper’s messages like that.”
“She’s new at the ranch, Maddie’s friend. With Laurel on bed rest, she came in from Colorado to help out for the time being.”
“And you like her, don’t you?” His sister beamed at him.
“She seems alright,” Riley offered nonchalantly. The truth was that this whole situation seemed better than he could have imagined. And it was taking constant effort to remind himself of why getting involved with her again would be an awful idea.
“Is there something going on with you two?”
“She only showed up on Saturday, nothing to tell there.” At least, nothing he would tell his sister and the little ears that sat between them at the moment, even if he was allowed to discuss their first meeting.
A skeptical hum escaped Piper’s thinly pressed lips.
She had been able to see right through him since they were kids.
“I can wait until you’re ready to tell me the truth about her.
But what I can’t keep waiting on is for you to stop messing around with this injury.
You heard the doctor, it’s a real possibility that you end up with another fracture. ”
“I’m not a roughie anymore. It’s not going to happen again.”
Piper shook her head but didn’t say anything else on the subject. Instead, she crossed her arms and glared out the window. Wasn’t he supposed to be the younger sibling? “You look exactly like Paisley when you pout, Pipes,” he said with a quirk of his brow.
“Yeah, Mommy!”
“See.” He pointed to his niece who was now mimicking her. They all had the same blonde hair and blue-green eyes, though his hair was a darker shade. “Listen, I swear everything is fine. Besides, the doctor wouldn’t have let me walk out if there was a concern.”
Which is why I lied through my teeth , he added to himself. He just needed time for them to figure out a permanent plan. He couldn’t leave Jules alone while he received treatment. Once summer was up and a new set of hands were in place, then he’d go back to the doctor and figure everything out.
He parked beside the classic black muscle car that signified the presence of his temptress and stepped out of his truck, a creak sounding from the aged door as he closed it behind him. Depositing his hat atop his head, he strolled up to the stables to find them empty.
She wasn’t in any of the stalls. The tack room. The feed room. No Jules anywhere.
Wandering out to the nearest pasture next, he was greeted by silence—save for the occasional sweet call of a meadowlark. But off in the distance, he finally spotted her.
Crouched down in the tall blades, Jules seemed oblivious to her whisps of hair that curled upward in the breeze, dancing around her face.
She was fully focused on whatever she was capturing with the lens she held before her.
He hadn’t seen her camera since she arrived in Sterling Ridge, and a sensation similar to a shaken bottle of soda bubbled up in his chest. She seemed so natural out here like this.
As if she was a part of the scenery, not simply a spectator.
Treading as lightly as he could, Riley crossed the field to her and knelt down at her shoulder. He pressed in close, those same whisps of hair tickling his lips as he murmured, “Hello.”
With a jolt, and something between a yelp and a curse, she lowered her camera and turned over her shoulder. “Oh my gosh, where did you come from?”
“Well, I parked next to you and then I went into the?—”
“Got it,” she deadpanned. But the corner of her lip twitched, fighting a smile.
When she didn’t pull back to put space between them, his pulse thrummed with satisfaction. He reached out and caught the wild strands of hair, pulling them back from her face and gently tucking them behind her ear.
“What are you capturing?” he asked, his eyes studying her trail of freckles crossing from cheek to cheek.
She handed her camera over in response, sitting back in the grass and draping her arms over her bent knees. “You can look, if you’d like.”
“I would.” He accepted the camera and sat back at her side. Clicking the viewing screen to life, Riley was greeted by the ranch, but in a whole new light.
The first scene highlighted the horses in the distance, just past the gradual slope before them. From her low angle, she’d captured them through the wild greenery of the meadow. As he scrolled, he moved backwards in time, seeing little snippets of everyday life at Hayes Ranch. And it was beautiful.
Grey’s cattle dog Pip chasing after him and Bullet in the morning light. A row of equine faces peering over the fence at the camera. A close up of the floral tooled saddle hanging in the tack room.
“These are amazing,” he said, almost to himself.
“I have some great subject matter here.”
He looked up and met her gaze. “I think it’s more than that. Why haven’t I seen you taking pictures this week?”
“We’ve been busy,” she shrugged. “But Brett and Grey ended up coming out to help this morning too. So, I had some free time. Turns out it takes three people to replace you.”
His smile hitched up at the compliment. Handing her camera back to her, Riley leaned back on his elbows and sighed. “I think we can make some time for this moving forward.”
Without warning, Jules lifted the camera, pointed right at him, and clicked her finger down. He watched curiously as she lowered it again and studied the image she just captured.
“I like when your smile gets a little crooked,” she murmured. “When you’re really relaxed.”
“I didn’t even know I had different smiles.”
“You do.”
She made a living noticing things, he reasoned. But logic didn’t reach that bubbly feeling that had returned to his chest.
“Anyway,” Jules cleared her throat, “where were you this morning?”
“I had an appointment for my back.”
“Because of the injury?” she asked hesitantly, as if testing the waters of this topic.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Is everything okay?”
Holding her gaze, he ignored the tension that pricked down his spine. The tension that seemed to be there more often these days. Then in a light, breezy tone, he replied, “Never better.”