“I didn’t miss it. We’re not going to Rainbow Valley.”
“But the doctor—”
“The doctor you need to see is in an emergency room in Austin.”
“Austin?” Luke said incredulously. “That’s an hour away. Just take me to a doctor in Rainbow Valley.”
“Waste of time and money. He’ll just turn around and send you to a specialist in Austin.”
“No. It’s probably just a sprain. So driving all the way there—”
“Sprain?” She glanced down at his knee. “Really, Luke? A sprain?”
“I’m not going to Austin.”
“You are if you want proper treatment.”
“Turn this truck around, Shannon.”
“But—”
“Now.”
She shot him a look of frustration, then pulled to the shoulder of the road. She shoved the gearshift into park, and the engine idled softly.
“Okay,” she said. “What’s the deal?”
“I’m not going to an emergency room.”
“Look at your knee. That’s an injury that won’t wait.”
But he knew how expensive ER visits could be. First came the bill just because he showed up and was seen by a doctor. Then came the outrageously expensive diagnostic tests. And if he had to have surgery…
He didn’t even want to think about that.
“You do have insurance, don’t you?” Shannon said.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “For all the good it does me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Insurance companies don’t like to cover bull riders. Too risky. Which means my deductible is so high it’s almost not worth paying the huge premiums.”
“So it’s good only for catastrophic injuries?”
“If I end up in a coma for six months or paralyzed from the neck down, I might see a few bucks. But for stuff like this, I’m pretty much on my own.”
“So this is about the money,” Shannon said.
Yes, damn it, it’s about the money!
Luke hated that crawly sensation in his stomach, the one he always felt when he was at the mercy of circumstances he couldn’t control. For the past several years, it seemed as if for every step he took forward, he took one step backward. There were the ever-present injuries and the outrageous medical bills that went with them. The travel expenses that chewed up a lot of his prize money. The bad-luck draw of bulls that were either deadheads who earned him no points, or crazy ones that slammed him into fences or tried to gore him before he even hit the ground. But this year…this year everything had finally gone his way.
And now this.
“Let’s just say I’d like to keep my expenses to a minimum,” he said.
“Ever been injured before?” she asked.
“Just minor stuff. Sprains, concussions, dislocations. Broken ribs. Fractured shoulder.”
“Good Lord. If all that’s minor, what’s major?”
“Anything that makes them get a stretcher.”
“Seems like a tough way to make a living.”
“It was that or become a rocket scientist,” Luke said, turning away again. “It was so hard to choose.”
But of course she wouldn’t understand about his limited choices. Not when her parents were loaded with money and had given her every opportunity on the planet.
He hated this. He hated telling Shannon North, of all people, that money was an issue. But even more, he hated that she was right about going to Austin. X-rays were good only for bone breaks and fractures. In his sport, he’d seen knee injuries like this one, and MRI and CT scans were the only way to determine the extent of the tissue damage.
“Luke?” Shannon said, her hand on the gearshift. “What’s it going to be? Back home, or Austin?”
He looked down at his knee, then turned away with a huff of irritation. “Austin.”
She put the truck in gear. “Good decision.”
“I see you never got over your bossiness.”
“I prefer to think of it as providing direction to people who desperately need it. I see you never got over your hardheadedness.”
“I prefer to think of it as a logical reaction to bossy people.”
“Just because I’m bossy doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” Shannon said.
“Why didn’t you just tell me you were heading to Austin?”
“Would you have gotten into this truck if I had?”
“Nope.”
“Well, there you go.”
Now he remembered what a challenge it had been to stay one step ahead of Shannon. Her speech had always been filled with one declarative sentence after another, as if whatever words she spoke instantly became law.
He looked out the passenger window, thinking about his predicament and trying to get a handle on it. Even if he was sidelined for a few months, he’d already won enough prize money that he’d stay in the top ten bull riders, and that was all it took to qualify for the World Championship. Prize money was cumulative, though, right through