Taming Rafe (2 page)

Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

P
HILIPPIANS
2:12
B-
13

P
ROLOGUE

Rafe Noble, two-time world champion bull rider and current king of the gold buckle, had never met a bull that he feared. Oh, sure, he knew well the tension before a ride that buzzed his nerves and slicked his hand inside his taped-tight leather glove. But normally he shook it off the second he wound the bull rope, sticky with rosin, around the animal’s chest and wedged it into his grip. Then the adrenaline, the heat, took over.

And for eight long, harrowing seconds, it was just man against beast.

In Rafe’s world, man usually won.

However, as Rafe straddled the champion bull known as PeeWee—which had to be some sort of joke because the bull was the biggest, orneriest creature Rafe had ever ridden—coldness rushed through him. Something foreign and overwhelming ignited a tremble from deep within his bones.

For the first time since he was thirteen, he felt . . . terror.

Maybe it was just the residual agony of watching one of his fellow bull riders being carried out on a stretcher only minutes earlier. Maybe it was the roar of the crowd hammering at the raging headache he’d nursed most of the day. It could be the fact that he rode in pain, that he’d had to tape his hand and wear his knee brace, and the sports medicine doctor had reminded him that one more fracture to his neck would land him in a wheelchair permanently.

Or perhaps it was just the eerie feeling that hung in the air, along with the smells of animal sweat and popcorn and leather
and dirt, a surreal sense that tragedy lurked right outside the arena of spectators.

Whatever the reason, as Rafe worked his rope around his hand, through his pinkie, then pounded his fist with his other hand to lock it in place, he couldn’t shake the bone-deep feeling that tonight someone would die.

Even the bullfighters, the men who distracted the bull as the riders scrambled to safety, seemed jumpy. Manuel Rodriguez caught Rafe’s gaze. Dressed in a blue and red vest, black cowboy hat, long shorts, and cleats, Manuel had agility that kept him ahead of horns and made the crowd gasp. He’d saved Rafe’s hide on more than a few occasions.

Manuel nodded, and despite the distance between them, the roar of the crowd, the voice of the announcer, and the advice from fellow riders as Rafe settled into his riding position, he could hear Manuel’s mouthed words
—“Get ’er done.”

Rafe returned the slightest nod and refrained from searching for Manuel’s eight-year-old son, Manny, and pretty wife, Lucia, in the audience. Rafe had arranged their tickets and trip up from Mexico to see Manuel perform under the big lights of the GetRowdy Bull Riding World Championship in Las Vegas.

“You’re my favorite bull rider,” little Manny had said as he handed Rafe his hat to sign at the pre-event celebrity showcase.

Behind Manny, a leggy blonde with a black T-shirt emblazoned with the GetRowdy Bull Riding logo gave Rafe a loaded smile.

Rafe winked at her and turned his attention back to Manny. “Are you going to be a bullfighter like your daddy when you get big?” he asked, signing the brim.

“Oh no. I wanna be just like you,” Manny had said, his hero-
worshiping gaze fixed on Rafe, who chuckled and plopped the hat back on Manny’s head.

“Our next bull rider, two-time world champion and overall leader going into the short round . . .”

The announcer brought Rafe’s attention back to the snorting animal he straddled. Clearly, his mind wasn’t in the game tonight. Which probably gave credence to the voice inside. He scooted up tight against his bull rope, blew out several short breaths, and banged his protective vest with his free hand. His biceps tightened against the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt, and he pulled up his fringed black and red chaps at the knees before he set his legs astride the bull, ready to dig in with his spurs.

And right then, the fear rushed him, poured through every cell. Right behind it, words or perhaps an impression.

Don’t ride.

What was wrong with him? Nerves, maybe. After all, his title hung on this ride.

“All the way from eastern Montana, riding the champion bull PeeWee . . . ,” the announcer droned on.

Some men prayed before they got on a bull. Rafe had known plenty of cowboys to shoot up prayers afterward, while stretched out on the ground as a furious animal tried to trample their brains. But not Rafe. He hadn’t prayed since . . . well, God had stopped listening to him years ago. Rafe wouldn’t waste his breath.

Instead, Rafe reached deep, past the fear to the grit he’d been born with, and wrapped his free hand around the smooth top rail of the metal chute.

His sister, Stefanie, never understood why he rode. Couldn’t grasp the fact that sometimes it just needed to be him against
animal. That when he rode the bull for those full eight seconds, he felt, just for a fraction of time, like the king of the world. Invincible.

He’d never even tried to explain it to Nick. His big brother wouldn’t have a clue what it might be like to always feel . . . less.

Don’t ride.

The voice crept up his spine as the bull shifted beneath him. He took a deep breath, focused on the ride.

This is for you, Mom
.

“Go.” Rafe nodded.

The chute opened, and the bull lunged into the arena. Everything inside Rafe went silent. Heat seared his wrist, his arms, his legs. PeeWee writhed in fury as he landed on his forelegs.

Rafe fought for balance while the bull rocked him forward. He barely missed cracking his nose on bone, being speared. The animal bucked again, and Rafe stiffened his arm and realigned his spur position, hooking with his left spur, trying to pull himself back into position and dig himself out of a fall.

PeeWee snorted, throwing back his head.

Rafe’s grip jarred, but he kept his seat.
C’mon, bull, fight me.

He not only needed an eight-second ride but PeeWee needed to fight him hard to up his points and keep Rafe ahead of a feisty rider from Brazil on the leaderboard. The bull stretched out into the air, landing with a jerk that rattled Rafe’s teeth.

The roar of the crowd filled his ears.

PeeWee’s hindquarters changed direction. Rafe knew the bull had won.

Rafe grabbed with his spurs, fought to make the eight-second whistle. His bicep spasmed.

The bull bucked again. And then Rafe was off. Only not quite.
Hung up by the bull rope, the cowbell thrashing on the opposite side, Rafe flopped like a rag doll as he fought to free his hand.

The bull flipped him.

The crowd went eerily silent.

Manuel blurred past Rafe as the bull took him round and round. His shoulder burned, the muscle ripping deep inside, maybe his rotator cuff or his shoulder dislocating. Hopefully he wouldn’t hit his head or snap a c-bone in his neck. He lunged again at his rope.
Please.

Manuel snared it. Rafe fell free. He landed in the dirt, dazed, and threw his arms over his head. The bull’s hooves exploded the dirt beside him.

Get up!
But his wind had been snuffed out. Darkness edged his sight.

“Rafe!” He heard Manuel’s voice, felt hands grabbing his vest.

Rafe looked up, past Manuel’s dark expression. Everything turned black and white.

Don’t ride.

Rafe saw the bull’s hooves crashing down over him and knew fear had spoken the truth.

Tonight someone would die.

The heat slithered through Katherine Breckenridge’s pores, devouring her energy and consuming the last remnants of hope that little Eva would live to see another sunrise. The child lay in a hospital bed, her breath so slight that her chest barely moved, and she’d long ago stopped sweating. Her black hair fanned over the pillow, and she looked painfully innocent and oddly at peace.

An itchy line of sweat trickled down Katherine’s temple and dripped into the collar of her cotton short-sleeve shirt. It stung the burn she’d received this afternoon as she’d toured the village. Now, as dusk entered the grimy, poorly screened windows of the clinic, she longed for the touch of the wind off the Sierra Madre Mountains to the northwest, the smells of pine and oak that seemed to overtake her, even revive her as she drove into the hills earlier this morning. Something to lift the oppressive odor of death that hovered in the room.

A metal fan buzzed in the far corner, and flies landed now and again on the cotton bedsheets, turned gray and thin from decades of use. Fifteen children, all in various stages of cancer, lay motionless in their beds—if that’s what they could be called. A mattress no thicker than one of Angelina’s tortillas could hardly be classified as a bed.

Across from Eva’s emaciated body, Katherine’s housekeeper—which seemed such an inadequate label for the woman who’d practically raised her—Angelina Rivera held Eva’s motionless hand to her own forehead, her lips moving in silent prayers, as if infusing life into the little girl.

Angelina had spent hours in the night lighting a candle, praying in the chapel for the lives of the children under the care of this Mercy Doctors hospital. Just as she’d prayed for years for Katherine.

The prayers of a righteous woman availeth much.

“Katherine, can you change Carlos’s bed?” This from Sister Marguerite—Angelina’s sister and one of the nuns who lived in the clinic, bathing and feeding children. Strong and steadfast like her sister, Marguerite didn’t bother with manners and couldn’t care less that Katherine came from wealth, that she had originally traveled
to Mexico for a two-day fund-raising, publicity-gathering event. Apparently she’d earned points with the nun when Katherine elected to stay with Angelina after the fund-raiser was over.

Not that she had been any great help. No, she fit in here, in a scorching and smelly Guadalajara clinic about as well as she did in Manhattan.

How she ached to be like Marguerite and Angelina. The sisters held the children as they writhed in pain and wept as the little ones slipped into eternity. Angelina had accompanied Katherine’s mother, Felicia, numerous times to this Mercy Doctors clinic—the only one that the Breckenridge Foundation supported. But Katherine had never guessed that Angelina got her nursing skills from tending to the needs of these dying children. If it hadn’t been for her mother leaving the Breckenridge Foundation in Katherine’s not-so-capable hands, Katherine would probably still be attending NYU, getting another useless degree.

Katherine hadn’t cried, but for a week now, her chest had ached, and right in the center, it burned.

She took a fresh, folded stack of bed linens and found Carlos—fourteen yet emaciated to the size of an eight-year-old—curled in the far bed. He didn’t look at her as she untucked his feet. “It’s okay,” she said in Spanish. But how okay was it when a grown boy soiled his sheets?

Katherine rolled the bedsheet under him, tucked the clean sheet into one side, then rolled him onto it. New beds. One more thing on her list of requests from donors. She’d list them right after medicines.

She removed the soiled sheet, then tucked in the clean linen. “There you go,” she said, covering him with a thin top sheet.

A single tear ran over his nose.

There went the burning again, deep and now so consuming it took her breath.