Taming Rafe (33 page)

She wiped a tear that had escaped. “What if she belongs in both worlds, New York
and
Montana?”

Rafe let one side of his mouth turn up. “Then both worlds it will
be.” His face grew solemn again, and the scoundrel in his eyes vanished, and all she saw was the Rafe she’d known existed, the noble man inside who made her proud to know him. “You’re everything I never knew I was looking for, Kitty. You believed in me when no one else would. And because of that, for the first time I was able to believe in myself, in the man God made.”

Kat let those words sink in, find the empty places, and fill them nearly full. “That guy’s all right, even if he does have a tendency to drive into things.” Her eyes roamed his face, lingering on the scar over his eye that made him seem just a little wild. Those lips that curled into a smile that could turn her to liquid. Those eyes that could see the cowgirl inside her that had longed to be set free.

“Yeah, well, what do you expect? Perfection?”

She laughed. “From you, champ, yes.” Then she wove her fingers into his hair and kissed him. Sweet and long and full of promises.

He pulled her close and kissed her back, the way a cowboy should.

Finally the carousel operator came out and asked them if they wanted another ride.

So the cowboy climbed up behind his cowgirl, on their black stallion, Hornet, put his arms around her to hold her tight, and Kat Russell Breckenridge rode off with her hero into the New York sunset.

An ending that even B. J. King would appreciate.

A N
OTE FROM THE
A
UTHOR

I’m the first to declare that I am incredibly blessed to be allowed to write books. I love to write, to see the story unfold, to get to know my characters and see how God works out His plan for their lives. For me, writing a story is so much about a journey and seeing God provide each step of the way. Every book tests my faith, because when I sit down and stare at a blank screen, I have to trust that even when I don’t have words, God does. Every book also brings me deep joy, because at the end I see how God has worked it out beyond what I can ask or imagine. It is a humbling thing to see God at work in your life, in the process, and in the end product and know that He has done this for His good pleasure and for my joy. To paraphrase Kat, it is no small thing to have the Creator of the universe working
in
you and
through
you to touch others. It takes my breath away.

This was an ambitious book for me—the different story lines, the book-within-a-book idea that I always wanted to try. I even had a song in the back of my mind that I wanted to write.

I started this story with an idea—that often we don’t see the effect we have on others, and yet, as Christians, if we surrender to God and His plan, He uses everything we say and do for His purposes. More than that, everything we do—whether it’s raising money for charity, riding bulls, or even just making our family dinner—can be used by Him for good. This thought has given me great peace over the years, regardless of where I find myself—in Russia, living in a high-rise and planting churches, or in Minnesota, tucked in the
north woods, writing books. I wanted Kat to see that God had made her uniquely Kat and that she only had to be true to herself and let God work through that person to touch the world around her.

Of course, I didn’t have to look too far to find Kat. I was a lot like her growing up—had a horse on springs in my basement, a turquoise cowgirl suit, and bright red boots. I ate up shows like
Bonanza
and
Gunsmoke
and dreamed of having my own horse named SunDancer or Hornet. But I grew up in the suburbs (no horse in sight) and loved letting out my “inner Kitty” for this story!

I was also fascinated with the world of bull riding. I was channel surfing one day and landed on a Professional Bull Riders event. It sucked me in with the danger, the bravado, the thrills, and the wrecks, and I wondered about the kind of man who rode bulls and what God could do with him if he gave his talents to Him. Many of the bull riders I researched are Christians, and for them, riding is a way to praise the Lord, just like writing is for me.

My favorite part of the book, however, was John and Lolly’s story. I loved weaving their backstory throughout the book
Unshackled
and showing the different sides of love, including the biggest part, in my opinion: commitment. I loved setting Lolly free from her shackles and helping her see how John had been her hero all along.

Thank you for journeying back to Phillips with me, for reading Rafe’s story. I hope you’ll join me for
Finding Stefanie
, book three in the Noble Legacy. Meanwhile, I pray that you see God working in your life and through your life to touch people around you. And I pray that it takes your breath away.

In His grace,

Susan May Warren

FINDING STEFANIE

If she could, Stefanie Noble would get on her bay quarter horse, Sunny, ride over the chapped, frozen hills of the Silver Buckle Ranch, and disappear into the horizon. Just keep riding. Because it was only on Sunny that the loneliness, the stress, would slough off, and she’d hear the wind, the voice of freedom, singing in her ears.

After all, with her brother Nick running the Silver Buckle, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the ranch didn’t need her anymore.

Okay,
sometimes
she wondered. But perhaps not at 5 a.m., smack in the middle of calving season.

Singing—that’s what she needed. Something other than the sound of a cow in distress. Her ears ached with the noise as the exhaustion of being up all night pressed down against her, into her bones, her cells.

“C’mon, old cow, push,” she groaned, bracing her feet against the haunches of a weary Black Angus as she pulled on the chains attached to the hooves of a not-yet-born calf.

“She ain’t gonna give.”

Stefanie glanced behind her. Dutch looked as tired as Stefanie felt, his face droopy with skin and white whiskers.

“She’s hip-locked. We’re gonna have to C-section her.” He already wore a pair of blue surgical coveralls.

“I can do this, Dutch.” Stefanie’s arms shook. “Just give me the puller.”

“Stef—”

“It’s almost out!” Even as she said it, Stefanie could feel the little calf slide toward her farther out of the birth canal. “I don’t want to lose another cow!”

She refused to let herself feel those words, to remember watching the cow she’d so laboriously raised slip out of life as it bled to death. Stefanie could only blame a month of night calving for her unsteady hands, the way she had perforated the uterus and left a baby without a mother.

“I’m gettin’ Nick.”

“No!” Stef twisted, looking at him. “I don’t need Nick. I need the puller. Come over here and lift her leg up, please.”

Dutch said nothing, just handed her a long bar that looked much like the handle of a rake. Then he grabbed the cow’s back leg and lifted it with his tree-limb arms.

Meanwhile, Stefanie affixed the bar across the cow’s haunches, hooked on the chains that connected the calf’s hooves to the puller, and started to turn the crank, applying pressure.

Slowly, the calf began to emerge. The cow let out a long moan as her baby slipped out into the straw. The little black calf didn’t move. Afterbirth glistened in its curly black coat.

“C’mon, baby,” Stef said, cleaning its face, its mouth. “Breathe.”
Please
breathe
. She cut the cord and put iodine on it. The calf began to gasp. “Yes, breathe.” She put her hand on his body, began to rub. In a moment, the calf had started to take in air.

Stefanie looked up at Dutch. In the shadows of the barn he looked much older than his fifty-seven years. But that’s what all-night doctoring did. She probably looked about eighty-two instead of what some might call a young twenty-four. Most of the time she sure felt eighty-two.

Dutch gave her a half smile. “I’m going to check the other cows, see if they’ve dropped their calves yet.”

Stefanie sat back in the straw, everything inside her shaking.

How she longed for, needed,
thirsted
for freedom. Just one day without
everything
—the weather, the calving, the bills . . . All of it gnawed at her, rubbing her raw with the weight of the shackles.

But this was her life, like it or not.

Although recently, for the first time in her life she’d begun to wonder . . . maybe not.

Detaching the hip bar from the cow and the calf, Stefanie watched as the mother turned and slathered her baby with her tongue.

“Good mama,” Stefanie said, standing. Grime, sweat, and even blood had long ago seeped into her pores. She reeked of manure and straw, and her hair hung in strings, having escaped her long dark braids. Stretching, she got up and walked past the other stalls, checking the recent mothers and the two heifers who still had yet to give birth. Then, finally, she opened the barn door and slipped outside, letting the wind shear the exhaustion from her face, her limbs.

Behind her, Clancy, their half-shepherd, half-retriever, came up and nudged his wet nose into her palm. She smiled at him and rubbed behind his floppy brown ears.

The thaw had tiptoed in this year, haunting the land, giving the faint taste of spring, then shirking back, hiding under a blast of north wind and sleet. The pallor of today’s sky, stalwart against the encroaching sun, told her that she’d find no hope in the forecast.

No, hope had long ago forsaken this land. Or perhaps it had only forsaken her.

It had returned for her brother Nick and his wife, Piper, now expecting their first child. And for Maggy and Cole, co-owners of the Silver Buckle, now that Cole had regained his health. And it had certainly found Rafe, recent GetRowdy Bull Riding National Champion. He had never looked as happy as he had at his celebration party when he asked Kat Breckenridge to marry him. They’d probably live happily ever after in her New York penthouse while helping raise money for Kat’s charity.

Meanwhile, Stefanie would sleep in the barn and help birth baby cows.

Stefanie, the ranch hand. For some reason, it wasn’t at all who she’d expected to be.

As the wind found her, her own smell made her wrinkle her nose. The ranch at this time of day seemed most forlorn, most eerie, old ghosts alive in the creak of the barn doors, the low of laboring cows. Sometimes she nearly expected her father’s voice to emerge from a hidden stall, calling her to fetch clean water or help him with a calf. For a long time—
too
long—it had only been herself, Dutch, and Bishop, her father, running the Silver Buckle. Somehow even those years hadn’t seemed as lonely as having Nick and Rafe return, to see their lives hook onto their dreams, to watch them turn into the men their father had always hoped they’d be, leaving her sorely behind.

It made a girl wonder: who had Daddy hoped
she’d
be? She’d never even asked. She always figured she belonged to the land. To the ranch. But with Nick and Piper having their first child, they’d need to move into the house instead of living in the hunting cabin on the hill. And then where exactly would she belong?

She stared out into the horizon, where the outline of the Bighorns just barely etched the gunmetal sky.

The horses nickered from the corral across the yard. In the quarantine pen, she noticed that the new quarter horses had huddled up, their noses together as they fought the wind. She’d put them in the shelter last night, but perhaps the draw of hay had lured them out. She should check on Sunny. He’d had a runny nose, a symptom that in other horses wouldn’t register a great deal of concern, but in a horse nearly thirty years old, it made her worry.

The smell of the horse barn greeted her with a hospitality she craved as she opened the door. Call her strange, but she loved everything about horses, from their expressive eyes to the smell of their manure—so different from that of cows, pigs, or any other ranch animal.

The Buckle’s horses stirred little as she entered. The ranch had a small handful of stock horses—lately Nick preferred to take his truck out into the field. Stefanie, however, couldn’t surrender the nostalgia of working the ranch by hand, just her and Sunny, compatriots.

Perhaps that was where she belonged—with Sunny.

The quarter horse had been the first horse she’d rescued, right about the time her mother lay dying of breast cancer. Stefanie had bought him with a year’s worth of chore money after seeing him waste away in the backyard of a house just outside Phillips. She’d
ached with his neglect, how his ribs sawed through his tan hide, the razor bones of his spinelike spears in his back. He could barely walk when she’d led him to the trailer, and it took a full year before he recovered enough for her to start training him. She probably would have lost hope if it hadn’t been for his eyes. They all but begged her to notice him. Begged her to care.

That year she’d brought Sunny back to the beautiful gelding he was born to be and discovered that she had a talent. A way of understanding an animal that ministered to both their broken places.

Nick’s horse, Pecos, raised his head to stare at her as she walked to the end of the row of stalls. A beautiful black-and-white Overo paint, Pecos had a wild streak that at one time had seemed exactly fitting for her oldest brother. But Nick had worked his wild streak out of his system. As had Rafe.

She always thought she’d been born without the Noble propensity to rebel and wander. So why did she suddenly feel so restless, so unfit for the life she’d always known?

She flicked on a bulb midway through the barn, and light pooled on the dirt floor. Funny, she didn’t see Sunny standing in his stall. Coming up to the paddock door, she spotted him lying down fully on his side. As if in distress.

“Sunny.” She opened the door and crept in. “What’s wrong, pal?” She knelt at his side, her hand splaying across his body.

He didn’t raise his head, just opened his eye and looked at her a long moment before closing it. Under her hand, his breath labored.

Oh, Lord, please
. . .

Stefanie ran her hand down his neck, over his withers. “It’ll be okay, Sunny,” she said softly. Had one of her new horses had a contagious disease? Thankfully, she’d quarantined them. But the weather—maybe it was just a cold?

She got up and retrieved her medical kit. She found a thermometer, prepared it, and took his temperature.

The reading dried her mouth—105.5.

Sunny began to cough. Then blood dribbled from his mouth into the straw.

Stefanie took one look at the ooze, turned, and ran from the barn. “Dutch!” She bolted across the yard, nearly tripped, and flung herself toward the calving barn. “Dutch!”

He met her at the door, catching her.

Her breath came in gulps of razor-cold air. “It’s Sunny. I think he’s got the new flu, the one—”

“Calm down,” Dutch said, but he had already started jogging toward the barn. “Call the vet!” he yelled over his shoulder.

Stefanie counted the seconds with her thundering heartbeat as she sprinted inside, grabbed the phone, and left a frantic message with the on-call vet’s answering service in Sheridan. She didn’t care that she left a muddy trail across her kitchen floor, a bloody handprint on the phone. Her gaze never left the barn door. The message delivered, she dropped the phone onto the cradle and ran back outside across the yard.

Just as she reached the door, Dutch met her, a wall that stopped her cold as he grabbed her arms. “No, Stef, you can’t—”

“I have to help him. Dutch, let me go!” She yanked out of his grasp.

He stepped in front of her again.

“No.”

She looked up at him, her heart choking off the breath in her throat as she read his grim face. Oh.
Oh.
She gasped for air and grabbed for the barn door. She missed it and went down hard into the dirt.

Dutch crouched beside her, his big hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. He was probably gone by the time you left the barn.”

Gone?
Gone?

Oh, Lord, please . . . oh no . . .
Her breaths came fast, one on top of another. She clamped her hand over her mouth, as if holding in a scream. Only, she didn’t have one. Instead, a ball of pain scoured her throat, falling down into her belly.

Gone?

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t . . . She moaned, a sound so mournful it made her hurt clear through. She shook free of Dutch and crawled toward the barn. Somehow she found her feet.

Dutch had left the paddock door open. The light on. She stood there for a moment, staring at Sunny, at his beautiful brown hide, his long eyelashes closed over his eyes. He’d always been a magnificent horse in temperament, in form. He possessed an inner strength that had seeped into her soul.

Now he seemed at peace, as if he might be sleeping.

She crept close, dropped to her knees.

She heard Dutch’s heavy steps behind her as she laid her hands on Sunny’s body. The breath no longer lifted it, but she still felt the warmth of the life that had run through his veins.

“Stefanie . . .”

Her voice emerged, just above a whisper. “Once, near the end with Mom, I couldn’t take it anymore. I guess I must have been about thirteen. Everything hurt inside me. I wanted to leave because I couldn’t stand to see her suffer, so I packed a backpack and . . . I left.” She closed her eyes. “I walked all the way out to Cutter’s Ridge, where it runs into the Big K, and just stood there on the edge of the ravine. I thought that if I just threw myself over, perhaps I could fly. I really thought it. Just fling myself over and fly.”

She hiccupped a breath, drawing in another for strength as she opened her eyes. “Sunny found me. I don’t know how he got out of the corral, but as I stood there, ready to jump, he appeared, rubbed his nose into my back, as if to say, take me with you.” She stroked his mane. “Take me with you.”

“Stefanie—”

“Go away, Dutch. Just . . . go.” Stefanie ran her hands over Sunny’s side. Such a strong animal. How could he be gone so quickly?