Page 67 of Marrying Mr. Majestic

By the time we returned to the barn, I was keeping my seat by sheer force of will.

Sheridan saw me first and frowned, but before she could ask what happened, Silas came running, yelling over his shoulder at Dev to call an ambulance.

Thankfully, Sheridan cautioned him to wait until they could find out what happened.

I fell out of the saddle into Silas’s strong arms and felt my eyes burn in relief. “Fuck,” I whimpered. His grip on me was both painful and desperately reassuring.

“I got you, Way. What happened?”

I couldn’t get the words out past the sudden emotion clogging my throat. Instead of answering, I tucked my face into his chest and tried to focus on breathing. Thankfully, Taza and my sister relayed the story.

Dev approached and asked pertinent questions about my injuries, and Sheridan headed to the barn for ice and painkillers. Silas carefully moved me over to a nearby bench and sat me on it before crouching down in front of me.

“Do you want to go to the hospital?” His voice was solid but tender, and I could tell by the look in his eyes he was struggling not to boss me around.

I shook my head. “Need to finish?—”

“Absolutely not,” he snapped. “You can forget that right the fuck now.”

I caught ZuZu’s wide-eyed stare and noticed Sheridan trying to hide a smirk. Dev simply looked on in concern.

“But I?—”

Silas’s eyes were even more intense than usual. “Hospital or bed, Mayor. Your choice.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d been this tired and sore, but it was the first time in a long while that I had a crew in place I could trust to finish the job without me.

“Bed.”

Silas stood and began barking orders. He put Sheridan in charge of double-checking the stock that was being loaded, ZuZu in charge of pulling the next group from the paddock to the tie bars and checking them all over in the process. And then he charged Taza and Dev with gathering the next group of horses from the pasture.

I slumped on the bench and tried to think through anything we might have been forgetting, but my brain was too busy assessing my pain and discomfort to focus on the details of roundup.

When Silas came to escort me to the vehicle, I leaned more heavily on him than I’d hoped.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “I’ll be okay in a bit.”

Silas grunted his disagreement and settled me into the passenger seat before moving around to the driver’s side. Sheridan approached and said something to him. They talked too softly for me to make out, and then we were on our way home.

Silas helped me into the house and urged me to sit so he could help me off with my boots. I tried pulling off my shirt, but my shoulder complained too much. My head spun, and I wondered if it would be acceptable for me to simply throw my sorry, filthy ass into the bed as I was. Silas grumbled under his breath as he finished removing my clothes, revealing red bruises and a few scrapes from the rocky ground. With every visible injury, he winced, blew out a frustrated breath, or cursed.

When he yanked off his own clothes, I blinked at him. Was he getting into bed with me? “I… don’t think I’m up for…”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m washing you off, cowboy. Come on. I promise not to get fresh with you in the shower.”

Well, that was a first. While my libido was disappointed in the news, my stamina was vastly relieved. Silas led me to the shower and held on to me while gently soaping the dust and sweat off me. He handled me with such tenderness I couldn’t help but fall for him just a little bit more than before. More than I should have.

No one had ever taken care of me like that. Even my mother had never been the soft-hearted or coddling type. She’d been practical and traditional, raising her boys to “man up” and “get on with it” whenever we’d fallen or been hurt.

“Where’d you learn how to mother people?” I mumbled, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the stew of emotions I was experiencing.

“It’s called basic human decency,” Silas said, but he didn’t meet my eyes with the words, and I wondered if he even believed them. Basic human decency would have been helping me into bed. Or helping me to the bathroom and then leaving me to my own devices.

This was something altogether different. As I watched his strong hands move along my skin, I couldn’t stop wondering what he was thinking.

Did he feel more responsibility for me because I was technically his husband? Was that triggering something in him, like a protective instinct or sense of obligation? Or would he have behaved this way with any other friend?

Had it been Dev who’d fallen out in the pasture…

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