He must have tried, though. When Sarah ran out the door he was curled in the dirt at the foot of the ramp, blood pooling around his head. One hand was extended toward the trailer, where Flash stood trembling, glossy with sweat. As Sarah watched, he tried to rear and hit his poll on the top of the compartment, then flung up his back hooves in protest.
Somehow, Roy must have gotten in the way of those hooves. His gray felt hat lay in the dust beside him, its crown crushed by a perfectly shaped hoofprint.
Sarah ran to him, but one look at his ashen face told her he needed more help than a teenaged girl could offer. Slamming the trailer door shut on the trembling horse, she ran to the house to call 911, the newly applied mascara turning her tears black as they streamed down her face.
Chapter 6
Sarah didn’t know where Brian Humboldt was now. For all she knew, he was in charge of the arena, but this was the first time she’d been to the rodeo grounds since the accident. With Roy gone, she’d focused on a new future—one where fortune didn’t turn on the whims of a nervous horse. Once she’d loved rodeo and ridden horses every day. Now even the smell of saddle leather made her shudder.
She stared at Lane’s hat lying in the arena and mouthed a quick prayer as a couple of cowboys ran over and knelt beside the unconscious cowboy. Lane’s hand twitched, then waved away his would-be rescuers.
Thank God, she thought. I couldn’t take it if it happened again.
The minute the thought crossed her mind, she wanted to smack herself. How could she think of her own feelings at a time like this? She forced herself to focus on Lane’s body, lying in the dust. She thought about his eyes, his smile, his face. His butt in those jeans.
No, wait. That was almost worse. Self-preservation and sex—were those the only things she ever thought about?
Yes.
Lane rose to his hands and knees, his head hanging low, his back arched in pain. Silhouetted against the sunbaked arena, the man who’d been the picture of confidence that afternoon looked as utterly beaten as any man Sarah had ever seen. She felt tears prick the backs of her eyes.
That was more like it.
She swatted at her eye with the back of one hand and sniffled. One extreme to the other. What was she crying about? She didn’t know Lane, not really, and what little she knew about him she didn’t like. But he seemed so strong that seeing him hurt was almost physically painful.
His first try at standing failed and he fell to his knees. His chest heaved as he braced himself and tried again, slowly rising to his feet. He lifted one hand over his head and waved to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd, then stumbled a few steps in the wrong direction. Sarah clasped her hands to her chest and watched him fall again just a few yards away from her spot at the fence.
She was jolted back to reality by the pounding of hooves. A pickup man on a sturdy gray gelding loped up and skidded to a halt right in front of her. Sliding down from the saddle, he scanned the crowd and finally nodded to Sarah.
“You,” he said. “Come on through and hold my horse.”
His tone was so authoritative she obeyed without thinking, ducking between the metal poles to stand at the horse’s head. A medical team surged into the arena and the pickup man helped them lift Lane onto a backboard. He seemed to regain consciousness and tried to sit up. Too ornery to die, Sarah thought. But then he collapsed again.
It was hard to watch. Sarah stroked the neck of the horse who stood motionless beside her, regarding her stoically through a pale blue eye set in his white face. She was surprised by the softness of his sun-warmed pelt and how comforting the horsey scent of him felt.
The medics lifted the backboard and she realized with a start that Lane’s eyes were open and fixed on her. God, she was probably the last person he wanted to see. He probably thought he’d died and gone to the Carrigan Corporation version of hell.
Tears threatened again, but she blinked them back and gave him a tentative smile. The medics whisked him away before she could tell if he’d been looking at her