Page 51 of His First Baby Rodeo

Keith made a sympathetic face. “If you really think you have it in you, far be it from me to tell you otherwise,” he said.

Mac rolled his eyes. “Believe me, you wouldn’t be the first to tell me I can’t hack it in the competitive ring. My ex-girlfriend felt the same way.”

He choked a little on the words as he was saying them. He hadn’t planned to refer to El that way — as hisgirlfriend— but now that he’d said it, it was obvious to him that he had been thinking of her in those terms for a while now. It was terrible to have that realization just in time for it to do him no good. What difference did it make that he had feelings for hernow? Things were over between the two of them, and there was no recovering what had been lost.

“Women don’t understand the rodeo,” Keith said sagely.

Mac stared at him. “There are women on tour with us, Keith. There are women who compete at the top level. What are you talking about?”

“Well,thosewomen understand, maybe,” Keith allowed. “But I’m talking about the kind of women you’re talking about.”

“What kind is that?”

“You know. Wives and girlfriends. That’s why I can’t be tied down,” he said, puffing his chest out a little bit. “I don’t need anyone trying to tell me how to live my life.”

“Keith, you were the one who just said I wouldn’t be able to go back to the competitive circuit,” Mac pointed out. “All I’m saying is that my ex would have agreed with you.”

“Well, don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t do,” Keith said. “Not a woman — and not even me. If you really want to go back to competition, that’s what you should do, and never mind anyone who says otherwise. I mean, look at you now. You’re here, aren’t you? And no one thought you would be ready for this in any capacity so soon after your accident. That’s what you told me.”

“You’re right,” Mac said. “No onedidbelieve I was ready for it.”

“And tomorrow night you’re going out in the ring.”

Mac flexed his arm again. Oddly, this conversation wasn’t making him feel better or more confident about what he was facing tonight. He wished he was doing this while in the physical shape he’d been in a few months ago — but then, if that were the case, he’d be doing competitions. He wouldn’t have stopped competing in order to go on tour.

Maybe Keith was right. Maybe this was where careers went to die. Maybe joining the tour circuit meant that he would never get back in the ring competitively, that he would never again push himself the way he once had. Maybe this was how it ended.

In a way, it was worse to imagine spending the rest of his career doing this than to think of just ending things now. He wanted to be a part of the Classic, of course, but he had always thought of it as a temporary thing — something he’d do until he was ready to return to competition. Now he was confronting the idea that it might not be that way. Maybe his arm would never heal. Maybe he would spend years traveling around the country as a shadow of his former self, wondering whether the people who came to see him perform were whispering about his fall from grace.

Probably he wouldn’t even have to wonder. There would be reviews of the show, articles in the paper. No one would keep their opinions secret. And besides, every time he went out into the ring, he would know it himself. He could feel, just standing here, how far away from peak condition he still was. It was a terrifying thing to know — and when he went out into the ring, everyone else would know, too.

He was risking getting hurt to do this. He had never felt quite so vulnerable. And for the first time, he wondered whether it was all worth it. Everything he had given up to be here today —El… Maybe he should have stayed home. Maybe this was all a mistake.

But he couldn’t turn back now. He was here. And there was one thing El had been indisputably right about.

If he wasn’t Mac Palmer, rodeo star, he didn’t know who he was.

He couldn’t give up the greatest love of his life. Not for anything. Not even if there was a part of him crying out, even now, that there might be someone else he loved more.

CHAPTER23

EL

“El?” Marilyn stood in El’s doorway, a troubled expression on her face. “Can I come in? Would that be all right?”

“Of course you can,” El said, scooting over on the bed so that her sister-in-law could sit down beside her. “I’m not going to tell you where you can and can’t go in your own house, Marilyn, you know that.”

“And you know your privacy will be respected as long as you’re living here,” Marilyn said gently. “This room belongs to you. And I don’t want to pry into your private business, either. But I get the feeling you could use a big sister right about now.”

El looked at Marilyn. The expression on her face was full of understanding.

“I was an idiot not to realize, wasn’t I?” Marilyn asked. “The moment you left the house for the drugstore, everything fell into place. There I was, talking about how your symptoms reminded me of my own pregnancy, and yet I didn’t make the connection. I feel really foolish.”

El sighed. “Not as foolish as I feel, I’ll bet.”

“So you are?”

El nodded.

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