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Long Way Home
Gena Dalton
The only man Jo Lena Speirs had ever loved had finally come home. And though she hadn' t seen Monte McMahan for years, she recognized him the instant she saw him. She would have known him anywhere, just by the way her heart left her body. Jo Lena knew she still loved him, but she had more at stake this time than just her heart.…After six years on the professional bull riding circuit, Monte McMahan had returned to the Rocking M Ranch. Wounded, Monte thought he sought solitude but instead found himself drawn to Jo Lena and the precocious niece who called her Mom. Would the love of the woman he' d left behind be strong enough to heal his broken spirit?
“Monte?” Jo Lena’s eyes were not deceiving her. It was Monte—all cleaned up and looking better than he ever had a right to.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“You’ll have to if you want to talk to me,” she snapped. “I was expecting the new buyer for this place.” She turned on her heel and headed back to the kitchen.
Monte’s boot heels sounded on the hardwood floor right behind her as she went into the kitchen. They were still uneven—he was still limping. But he seemed to be getting around much better. He sat down as she filled a mug of coffee.
It occurred to Jo Lena that he must’ve changed his mind about selling the horse. “So let’s talk about the horse.”
“We’ve said all we have to say.”
Had he come here to talk about them? About six years ago? About now?
“Then what do we have to talk about, Monte?”
“I’m the new buyer.”
GENA DALTON
wanted to be a professional writer since she learned to read at the age of four. However, she became a secondary school teacher and then a college professor/ dean of women instead, and began to write after she was married and a stay-at-home mother. She entered an essay contest that resulted in a newspaper publication, giving her confidence she could achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a “real writer.”
Gena lives in Oklahoma with her husband of twenty-four years. Now that their son is grown, their only companions are two dogs, two house cats, one barn cat and one cat who belongs to the neighbors but won’t go home.
She loves to hear from readers. She can be reached c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017.
Long Way Home
Gena Dalton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
But it was only right we should celebrate and
rejoice, because your brother here was dead and
has come to life; he was lost and is found.
—Luke 15:32
This book is for my friends,
Jill and Sheila
Dear Reader,
This story of Monte, the third McMahan brother and Bobbie Ann’s prodigal son, is one we can all relate to from our own experience. Who among us hasn’t felt separated from those we love by our choices and actions? At those times when we are farthest away, we all long to go home.
Monte takes the long way home, for he not only has stayed away for six years while rarely communicating with his mother, brothers and sisters, but he has also denied his yearning to see Jo Lena Speirs, the only woman he has ever loved. He believes he is past redemption, in God’s eyes and in Jo Lena’s, because of the death of her brother, Scotty. He bears a burning guilt that he has not been able to escape, even by traveling thousands of miles and putting himself in constant danger.
From the instant that Monte gets thrown from a bull and is hurt too badly to ride, he knows that he can no longer bear to be so alone. He sneaks onto the Rocking M, and dreads seeing anyone there, especially Jo Lena, but from the moment he arrives on the ranch, he knows that at last he has come home.
If you haven’t read the stories of Monte’s brothers, Jackson and Clint, please look for Stranger at the Crossroads and Midnight Faith, both also published by Steeple Hill. I would love to hear from you. You can reach me c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42
Street, New York, NY 10017.
All warm wishes,
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Chapter One
For maybe half of his ride on the brindle bull, Monte McMahan believed.
That he could stay on for the whole eight seconds.
That he could score high enough to put him back in the running.
That his injured back had healed enough to let him keep going on down the rodeo road.
Then the wily old Brahma dropped his head, shook his ugly horns and spun hard to the right when he’d definitely been looking to the left ever since the first jump out of the chute.
Pain clamped on to Monte’s spine like a coyote’s teeth around a rabbit. It twisted the breath out of his lungs one second before it sucked the strength from his arms and legs and tore the rigging from his hand.
He flew through space with the bright lights sparkling and the dust shimmering across his vision. He couldn’t close his eyes. He would not. If he closed his eyes, he’d be giving up and if he gave up, he’d be dead when he hit the ground.
The impact made him believe he was. But then the pain exploded inside his head and took the place of his last gasp of precious air. He decided a man could live without breathing because a dead man wouldn’t be hurting.
A dead man wouldn’t be hearing the true concern in the announcer’s voice. Good old Butch, he was worried about Monte.
“Folks, put your hands together for Monte McMahan,” he boomed. “He’s one tough Texas bull rider and he’s been ridin’ through the pain for a lot of months now. Y’all may’ve just had the privilege of seeing his last ride, right here in Houston tonight.”
The applause started, but it didn’t grow. It was hesitant, it died and the fear-filled hush fell over the arena again.
“He’s not moved a muscle since he hit,” Butch said. “Let’s hope Old Brindle hasn’t sent him back to the Rocking M for good. As you all know, Monte’s one of the fourth or fifth generation of McMahans from that famous ranch in the Hill Country.”
Good old Butch needed to get another line of patter. It was nobody’s business where Monte was from.
Faces, blurry and worried, bent over Monte.
“Boys, get that ambulance on out here,” Butch called. “And we need a big thank-you, friends and neighbors, for our brave bullfighting clowns. They’ve got Old Brindle outta here, now. There he is, joggin’ down the run, already lookin’ for his next victim.”
Monte cringed inside, in spite of the fact he couldn’t move a muscle. Victim. Butch coulda talked all night without calling him that.
Fool, maybe. That’d be more like it. And now he was a crippled fool.
No, he was not. He would not be.
Calling on the raw willpower that had carried him through many a scrape, he tried once, twice, then he caught his breath and he could force his arm to move. He lifted his hand. He waved to the crowd. Their noise returned, instantly surged into a roar.
He would come back. It might take him a little while, but he’d come back.
All the time the guys from the sports medicine trailer worked on him and examined him and then clamped the stabilizer around his neck and slid him onto the backboard, he held that thought.
Jo Lena Speirs sat her horse on top of the hill and let him blow. She loved this spot overlooking the entrance to the Rocking M. The river bridge glinted in the dying sunlight, far up the narrow highway, and the bluffs on the other side of it lifted green trees to the sky.
“This is getting to be our routine, isn’t it, Scooter?” she said, patting his sweaty neck. “Prayers at the old chapel, and then a nice run across the Rocking M before dark.”
Which, to be honest, was what was keeping her sane. Trying to be a mother without a husband, a business owner without employees and a daughter without siblings kept her busy every minute.
She’d already prayed this prayer at the chapel, but she said it again, her heart filled with gratitude.
“Bless Bobbie Ann, Lord. Bless her for offering this horse and this place of peace to me.”
An old truck and trailer slowed on the highway and turned off onto the Rocking M road. Idly, she watched it. Dexter Hawkins, Bobbie Ann’s old neighbor.
Strangely, Dexter didn’t follow the road toward the house. He pulled across the entrance and stopped. He must be having trouble. With a truck that old, anything could be wrong.
Jo Lena touched the cell phone she wore on her belt—Dexter, famous for his stinginess, certainly wouldn’t have one. She’d ride down there and offer to call for help.
But as she picked up her reins and started to turn, the passenger door to the truck opened. The instant the man stepped foot on the ground, even though he wore a battered hat pulled down, she knew him.
Monte. Monte McMahan. The only man she’d ever loved.
Even though he was stove up and stiff, she’d have known him by the way he moved. She’d have known him in a dust storm, in the dark or in a blizzard.
She’d have known him by the way her heart left her body.
Her eyes strained toward him painfully through the gathering dusk, hungrily watching him limp toward the back of the trailer. Her whole body had gone weak as water.
But the real trouble was her heart. It was pounding like hoofbeats at a gallop—except that her heart had really leapt out of her chest and left her far behind.
It had wrapped itself around Monte. He looked so sore and so completely defeated that she couldn’t stand it. Just the sight of him was breaking her apart all over again.
Dear Lord, You’re going to have to help me now. Please, please, help me remember everything Monte did wrong.
He had done her mightily wrong and she had done everything right. Her mind knew that. But there went her heart, anyway, welcoming him home as if her choice had been wrong and his had been right.
Yes. There went her heart.
And then, when he painfully held on to the trailer and pushed himself up onto the fender so he could crawl onto the horse, he wrenched her very soul. He took her hard-won peace that had been six years in the making.
It wasn’t just that he was physically hurt. Or that it killed her to see the hopeless set to his shoulders.
It was simply that he was Monte and she loved him.
She’d thought the fire was long since cold, but there were embers hidden in the ashes. She still loved him.
Dear Lord, give me strength. With Your help, I can handle that. What I can’t handle is getting involved with him again.
But that, too, was a forlorn hope. At that instant she recognized the horse he was riding at that painfully slow walk.
The mare was heavier—maybe pregnant—and scruffier, but she knew her, too, by the way she moved. It was Quick Way Annie, favorite friend of her childhood. The horse she’d been trying to find.
Her mind raced in circles. Had Monte heard, somehow, that she was searching for Annie? Had he bought her for Jo Lena, maybe to apologize, to try to make amends for leaving her without a word of goodbye?
All breath left her body. Monte had brought back her long-lost mare. He intended to get involved with her.
Monte gritted his teeth against the slight jarring of the mare’s soft steps and gripped her mane to stay on. His body ached to fall forward and stretch out along her neck, but riding that way would hurt even more. He’d just have to hold on.
He tried to get his mind off his pain.
Soon as he rested up a little, he had to get back in shape. Why, Dexter, old and slow as he was, had had the mare out of the trailer before Monte could even get to the door.
And he’d be in the back room at Hugo’s playing dominoes with the rest of the old men if he didn’t watch it. However, right now, with the pain pounding him like a hammer on an anvil, that sounded pretty good. Maybe he should’ve stayed in the hospital until the doctor let him out.
He was stiff as starched jeans and hurting like crazy. All he wanted was to crawl into a cool, dark place, ease his wreck of a body down and sleep for a week.
He jerked his mind away from that. Not yet. Not yet. He’d be horribly sore tomorrow if he slept out on the damp ground. If only he could avoid seeing anyone tonight.
