Right Move (Clean Slate Ranch #6) - A.M. Arthur Page 0,128
had done for as long as Robin had worked here. She cooked three meals a day for both guests and staff, and she was a mother figure to many of them.
Robin stood and took a few steps closer to her cabin. She was an early riser, too, and watching her leave her own cabin in the morning to start up breakfast at the guesthouse was another familiar part of Robin’s ritual. About five feet of space stood between each small cabin, and Robin crossed it to stand on Patrice’s porch. That thumping was a constant noise now. And louder.
He took a chance and knocked. The thumping got even louder, and he swore he heard her shouting. With his heart in his throat, Robin turned the knob, grateful she didn’t lock her door, either. Most of them didn’t, because the staff at Clean Slate was a family who trusted each other.
“Help me, please!” Patrice’s shout chilled him to the bone as he raced through the small living space to the bedroom area beyond. The bathroom door was open and spilled out yellow light. Patrice was on the tile floor, a bath towel draped awkwardly over her middle, while she held her right arm tight to her heaving chest.
“Oh, thank God.” She started sobbing, and Robin grabbed another towel to wrap around her damp shoulders.
“What happened?” Robin brushed a tear from her cheek, unnerved at the way her collarbone was already bruising.
“So stupid, I can’t believe I did it. I slipped and fell, and it all happened so fast. My right shoulder hit the side of the sink, and I felt something snap. It hurts something fierce, and I couldn’t seem to get up. Started kicking the wall, hoping someone heard.”
“I heard you. Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
“Lord, no, that’ll just disturb the guests and get folks gossiping. Can you go wake Judson? Maybe the two of you can help me up and drive me to the hospital. Just don’t make a fuss. Especially to Arthur, he doesn’t need the stress.”
Leave it to Patrice to be lying on the floor, half-naked with a possibly broken collarbone, and she didn’t want them to fuss. Not liking her on the cold floor, Robin pulled the blanket off her bed and got her a bit more comfortable, before he took off for the back door of the main house.
He’d never been upstairs, so he didn’t know which room belonged to ranch foreman Judson Marvel. Judson and Patrice had both worked for Arthur Garrett for decades, and the older trio had a unique bond. Arthur was also still recovering from a massive heart attack a few months ago, so no one wanted to stress him out. Robin paused in the downstairs kitchen and called Judson’s cell. He heard it ringing somewhere upstairs.
“Robin, morning,” Judson said in his familiar, gravelly voice. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“I need you. Patrice fell in her bathroom and I need help getting her up and to the hospital.”
“Shit, let me throw some pants on and I’ll be right down.”
“Don’t tell Arthur yet.”
“Won’t, that’s a promise.”
Judson hung up and was downstairs in under a minute. Slipped on a pair of boots from the small row by the door, his sun-worn face a study of worry. “You say she fell in the bathroom?” he asked on their way out the door.
“Yeah.” Robin described finding her.
Patrice’s face was scarlet with embarrassment when they arrived. Robin gave the friends space while Judson got Patrice dried off and into a skirt. Then he helped Judson fashion a sling for Patrice’s arm, hoping to keep it as immobile as possible for the ride, before Robin sprinted toward the car barn to get his ride. He’d never used his restored Mustang convertible to drive someone he cared about to the ER before, but hey, shit happened. Judson sat in the back with Patrice, who was working hard not to show how much pain she was in, especially during the initial drive down the dirt ranch road, which was bumpy and full of potholes. Once Robin hit the paved street beyond, Patrice relaxed a fraction and Judson called Reyes to fill him in on what was happening.
Reyes Caldero was head cowboy and in charge of all the horsemen, so he needed to know. Fortunately, the ranch was closed to guests this week for Thanksgiving, and half the hands had left to visit family, leaving a skeleton crew behind to care for the horses and land. Those remaining hands could scavenge for their own breakfast today, Judson said into his phone, and Reyes must have agreed, because the conversation ended shortly afterward.
“Can’t thank you both enough for this,” Patrice said, her voice fractured by pain, and so soft Robin barely heard her over the roar of his car’s engine. “Hate it when folks fuss over me.”
“You’ve spent decades fussing over us,” Judson replied. “Let us fuss for a while.”
She huffed. “Fine, fine, if you must.”
Robin glanced at the older woman in the rearview, glad to see her sense of humor peeking out around the edges of her agony, and hating that she’d been hurt today. She truly was a mother figure to many, Robin included, who hadn’t spoken to his own mother in...a long damned time. Not since Robin disappointed his entire family by leaving home to work on a neighboring cattle ranch, instead of their struggling hog farm. Following a dream of working with horses as a career.
After a lot of highs and some very low lows, Robin was back at that career again, and he was happy at Clean Slate. As happy as he’d ever be as a single man who longed for a real, human connection again, especially as he watched his fellow hands find love and relationships of their own.
He wanted to fall in love again, but how could he trust himself to keep his partner safe? Especially after what had happened with Xander. But that was a thought for another day. Right now, he had Patrice to look after, and until she was seen by a doctor and squared away, his nonexistent love life could wait.
Copyright © 2019 by A.M. Arthur
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RIGHT MOVE (book six)
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ISBN-13: 9780369701985
Right Move
Copyright © 2020 by A.M. Arthur
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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