Book 12: Lucky Number Thirteen (Three Rivers Ranch Romance™)

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“Tanner!”

Tanner Wolf turned at the sound of his name in a female voice. A blond man strode toward him, his hand secured in a dark haired woman’s.

A smile warmed his soul. “Brynn.”

She laughed as he embraced her, and Ethan’s grin seemed as wide as the sky over Montana. “Hey, Tanner.” He slapped Tanner on the back. “That was some impressive roping.”

“Thanks.” He brushed some invisible dust from his hands and a lot of very visible dirt from his chaps. “Nothin’ like me and you, but Dallas does all right.”

“All right?” Brynn scoffed. “You’ll take first with that, and from what I hear, you guys won’t be beat this year.”

Tanner tried to shrug off their compliments. Since Ethan had chosen Brynn over rodeo, chosen Three Rivers over Colorado, chosen his faith over everything, Tanner had searched his soul. It wasn’t easy, and he’d found a lot of darkness inside. He still wasn’t all the way where he wanted to be, and being humble didn’t come naturally to him.

After all, he’d spent the last thirty years of his life trying to be the best and celebrating when he was.

“You’re comin’ out to the ranch for the picnic, right?” Ethan asked. Tanner had been in touch with him over the past couple of years, and when his manager had added the Three Rivers rodeo to his schedule, Tanner had called Ethan first.

“Yeah, of course. Tomorrow at four. I’ve been to the ranch before.”

“You haven’t seen my training facilities,” Brynn said as a group of cowgirls walked by. Her gaze followed them, and Tanner wondered if she missed the rodeo circuit. She’d quit and never looked back, but a glint rode in her eye that Tanner recognized.

“I’ll come early,” Tanner said. “Will you guys be out there?”

“We can go out whenever we want,” Brynn said.

“I want to see your place too,” Tanner said. “Ethan’s been bragging about how he built it from the ground up.”

“I haven’t been bragging.”

“I believe you said, ‘with my bare hands, Tanner. I built a whole house with my bare hands.’”

Ethan chuckled, and a wave of gratitude washed over Tanner. He couldn’t believe Ethan’s forgiveness had come so quickly, had healed him so completely. But it had done both, and though he’d never told Ethan, it was his forgiveness that had set Tanner down the path toward a relationship with God.

Of course, that had meant his relationships with women had cooled considerably as he navigated his way toward becoming the kind of man he wanted to be. In fact, his last date had been over a year ago, and that relationship had fizzled before the end of the evening.

“Mister Wolf, you’re up in twenty,” a rodeo volunteer said, stepping into their conversation.

Tanner took a deep breath, his nerves blossoming into a hill of ants. “All right, wish me luck.”

“Who’d you draw?” Ethan asked.

“Lucky Number Thirteen,” Tanner said, his voice a note higher than normal. “I’ve never ridden him to the bell.”

Brynn’s dark eyes caught on his and her hand landed on his forearm. “You’ll get ’im this time.” She added a smile to her statement, and Tanner couldn’t detect a hint of falseness in her voice.

He managed to smile, mash his cowboy hat further down on his head, and follow the volunteer to the loading chutes.

He’d ridden hundreds of bulls over his twelve-year career. He’d drawn easy wins and nasty animals. He’d never had a bull he hadn’t been able to ride. Eventually, they all succumbed to Tanner and the eight-second bell.

He eyed Lucky Number Thirteen, the black and white bull he’d come up against in San Antonio earlier this year. He’d only made it three seconds on the animal, and that disastrous ride played through his mind as the other riders took their turns.

Finally, he sat on the bull’s back. He pulled the rope across his palm tight, tight. He drew breath after breath to calm his heart, relax his muscles. None of the calming techniques worked, and he had a brief second to wonder if he should’ve asked for a helmet before the bell rang and the gate opened.

The crowd blurred as it always did while he rode. He only felt the bull’s muscles beneath his body. Only listened for the alarm signaling he’d made it to eight seconds. Only breathed once the ride ended.

Lucky Number Thirteen reared, driving right back into Tanner’s chest. He slipped, and he knew he was going off despite his strong muscles and iron will trying to hold him on the bull’s back.

His feet didn’t hit the dirt first; his back did. Hard. The air in his lungs seized, and he couldn’t take another breath. The bright lights in the arena went dark as the bull kicked, loomed above him, and all Tanner saw was dark sky and dark animal flesh, and a horrifying dark hoof as it crashed into his ribs.

He instinctively curled into himself, protecting his most vital organs. Around him, he heard shouts, silence, the announcers, the snuffling of the bull, the call of the clowns. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, and pressed his chin to his chest and kept his elbows up as another lightning hot pain shot through his back, down into both his legs.

Time seemed to slow and everything felt shrouded in darkness.

Finally, everything brightened again, and Tanner relaxed. His brain seemed to be working just fine, but every cell in his body screamed in pain. He groaned as he started to uncurl.

“Don’t move,” someone said, his hand landing lightly on Tanner’s forehead. He said something else, his gaze darting away, but Tanner closed his eyes and focused on breathing. Breathing was good. Breathing was necessary.

Movement happened around him. Men spoke in calm voices. Tanner felt the summer air turn cold as something pooled beneath his head. He tried to reach for it, but someone stopped him.

“Lie still, Tanner.” A familiar face, with bright green eyes and that shock of blond hair, filled his vision.

“Ethan,” Tanner moaned. Help me, he prayed, and though he was new to the whole communicating with God idea, the thought felt natural.

“You’re fine, cowboy.” Ethan’s eyes said otherwise, and Tanner tried to focus on them. But they turned lighter and lighter, going into seafoam and mint before they faded into whiteness.

“Stay with me,” Ethan commanded, but Tanner couldn’t. He closed his eyes against the pain and let unconsciousness take him somewhere where he wasn’t lying in his own blood in the middle of the rodeo arena.

* * *

When he woke, a pair of eyes the color of the ocean blinked at him. “There you are, Mister Wolf.” The woman spoke in a slow cadence, her accent Texan and sweet. She glanced down at his chart, wrote something, and looked at him again. “How are you feeling?”

He couldn’t vocalize the words he used to, and his back and arm muscles seemed to have forgotten how to shrug.

“My name’s Summer, and I’ll be your nurse today. Now Jean said you slept all night, and came through your surgery just fine.”

He blinked at her, a searing pain in his throat. He could only think, Surgery?

“Now, you’ll have to get up in a few hours and take a walk around.” She grinned at him, and he thought she had the most wonderful pink lips, the most beautiful white teeth. His first instinct was to smile back, and he tried, but something seemed to be wrong with his mouth.

“I don’t want any complaints when I come back,” she said, her eyes dipping to his lips. “I’ll go get Margie, and we’ll get that tube out of your throat.” She disappeared from his line of sight, and Tanner found pain in every part of his body. How Summer thought he could answer her questions with a tube down his throat, he didn’t know.

She returned lickety split, and before he knew it, the two nurses had removed the tube from his throat.

“He’s making urine,” the other nurse said. She beamed at him, and he’d never been prouder of his body for functioning the way it should. She was closer to his mother’s age, and panic pounded through him.

“My…mom?” His throat hurt, and Summer was there, holding out a glass of water. He gulped it greedily as Margie explained that she’d been notified and that she should be here soon.

“There’s a couple of friends out in the waiting room,” she said. “Should I send them in?”

“How much pain are you in?” Summer asked before Tanner could answer Margie.

“Is ‘about to die’ on your chart?” he croaked.

She grinned. “Yes, we call that a ten. I’ll bring you something.”

“A lot of something,” he said as a pain in his leg fired on all cylinders. “Something strong.”

Margie met Summer’s eye and the two nurses exchanged a glance. “Something strong, Mister Wolf,” Summer said, her voice full of fun and flirtation.

Tanner sat back in bed as they left, warning himself to maintain distance from Summer. He didn’t live in Three Rivers, and she’d go home—maybe to a husband and a family—later that day.

She sure is pretty though, he thought as he waited for his medicine and his friends. The friends came first, and Ethan and Brynn looked like they hadn’t gone home to sleep.

Tears tracked down Brynn’s cheeks as she leaned over and gave Tanner a light hug. He couldn’t help the groan of pain from the movement and she jerked back. “Sorry.”

“I’m fine.” He pushed himself up in bed, a flash of discomfort spreading through his right leg. “Aren’t I fine, Ethan?”

He watched his friend for the signs he needed. Ethan kept his face a blank slate, but the intensity of his swallow told Tanner everything.

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “You’re going to be just fine, Tanner.”

Tanner looked away as emotion surged up his throat. He knew by Ethan’s reaction that he’d never ride bulls again.

With that swallow, Tanner knew his rodeo career had ended, right there in the Three Rivers arena.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I have enjoyed each book in this series so far and eagerly look forward to the next. The cowboys and their various trials are believable as well as the women they fall in love with. I appreciate the values expressed and shared between characters and how they affect other story people by their faith in God. It's so refreshing to read about men and women relating to one another in loving ways without jumping into bed!” ~Donna N.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I enjoy all of Liz Isaacson books immensely. I am not afraid if my great granddaughters happen to see a few sentences, when they pick up my kindle to read their books, as Liz writes clean romance novels. She makes the characters come alive and you feel you know them. This one was no exception.” ~Majorie