CHAPTER 1
ADAM
Even after he managed to hit his thumb with the hammer instead of a nail, Adam Sage was determined to wrestle the day into submission. No matter how bad his luck had been that morning, today was going to be productive.
He cursed loudly and sucked his injured thumb. There was no one around to hear him aside from the horses, so he didn’t need to worry about offending anyone. There were some perks to being alone, after all. He tried to remind himself of those perks as he tackled what should have been a two-man job; fixing the leaking roof on the old barn was long overdue, so he’d decided to take it on alone.
Adam was a strong man, broader and taller than most. Fixing a leaking roof shouldn’t be a problem. He was convinced he could handle everything by himself. Hadn’t he always handled everything in life by himself? He rarely had help from anyone, not even as a child. He was independent to a fault, though it wasn’t a fault that he could see.
Two years ago, when his real estate agent found out he wanted to buy a ranch and actually run it rather than demolish it to builda dream country house, she’d scoffed. “Mountain ranches are difficult to run,” she’d said, “especially when the weather turns. You’ll struggle to get up and down the mountain for supplies, and it won’t be easy to hire help. Who likes living out in the middle of nowhere like this? But any job you post would have to be a live-in position because the commute would be a slog.”
He had answered, “I like living out in the middle of nowhere like this. And I don’t intend to hire help.”
She’d looked at him as though he’d completely lost his mind. But, after some thought, she seemed to decide that a paycheck was a paycheck, no matter where it came from. “Well… don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she’d concluded with a shrug.
That conversation was playing on a loop in his head as he dropped several shingles and cursed again. Even if she’d been right, Adam was not going to admit it, not to himself nor to anyone else. Instead of giving in to despair, he worked even harder. It was how he’d always dealt with situations like this, and it had always gotten him through in the past.
Dark clouds rolled across the sky, signaling the return of the rain that had driven him to fix the roof in the first place. He was far from finished and far from ready to give in. He glared at the sky as though he could somehow intimidate it into changing its mind. Then he dropped his jar of nails, and the horses in the barn whinnied loudly, sounding for all the world like they were laughing at him. “It’s not funny!” he called down to them.
Great. Now he was talking to horses. But no matter. He was determined to finish the job, come hell or high water. His stubbornness had gotten him through more than one crisis in his life, and it had gotten him through his first two years of ranch ownership. Every time he started to doubt himself, he remindedhimself that an ex-military man like him should be able to handle something as simple as a little ranch.
Today, though, the ranch seemed to be winning.
He sat for a moment and breathed, nursing his thumb and listening to the horses laugh and laugh. Heavy raindrops started hitting his shoulders and hair, and he briefly considered calling it a day. But Adam had a little drill sergeant in his head that would never let him give in to weakness. Or maybe it was his father’s voice. They were difficult to tell apart, in any case.
There would be no more work without nails anyway, so he headed down the roof to the ladder. As though it could sense what he was doing, that early drizzle of rain skipped the stage of light showers altogether, and went straight to torrential downpour before he could even make it off the roof. His foot slipped and he thudded down hard against the shingles, sliding toward the ladder, tearing his flannel and jeans as he went. He only just managed to stop himself before he rolled off the roof completely.
Now there’s going to be even more shingles to fix, he thought with a groan. And he decided then and there that the next time he replaced the roof, it would be a metal one. He slid his body down toward the ladder and let his feet touch the top rung. The fall had left him bruised and aching, with a less-than-perfect sense of balance. With no one holding the ladder and not having had the foresight to fix it in place, the whole contraption tilted away from the barn and took Adam with it.
On his way to the ground, Adam thought briefly that he probably could have wrestled the day into submission if he hadn’t been outnumbered by the barn, the rain, and his own bad luck. He twisted in the air, instinctively trying to catch himself beforehe hit the ground. But of course, this could only minimize the damage. He dropped and rolled as he had been taught to do during his years in the military, hoping it would be enough to save him. A pain like lightning in his left forearm told him he hadn’t quite succeeded.
Adam lay on his back in the mud, staring up at the sky for some time before he could find the willpower to move. The rain coated his face and hair and soaked his clothes, leaving him drenched, cold, and in pain. But it wasn’t the physical pain that kept him from getting up right away. It was the knowledge that the real estate agent might have been right after all. If she was right, then he had failed, and Adam’s pride would not allow him to accept any kind of failure.
Finally, he gave himself a stern talking-to, and pushed himself to his feet with his right arm, carefully cradling his left to his chest. You can wallow later, he told himself. Right now, you have to get yourself to the clinic. He took a moment to move his tools inside the barn and check on the horses. They snorted at him contentedly, and he decided they could handle a leaky roof for a couple more days.
Without changing out of his wet clothes, he grabbed the key to his truck and headed down the mountain. He only had one arm to drive with and so he couldn’t change the radio station even though it was playing a song he didn’t particularly like.
How mad had he gotten that morning when he’d spilled his coffee? If only he could’ve warned himself how much worse it would get. The radio station continued to play songs he couldn’t stand, as though it knew he was now a captive audience. This drive was going to be a long one. Maybe he should have taken a painkiller before leaving. No, he could handle the pain. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it, singing along with themost recent song the hostile radio station had chosen to play at him.
By the time he got into town, he found himself actually enjoying some of the songs he used to turn away from.Stockholm Syndrome, he told himself. The radio station had held him hostage, and now he seemed to be siding with it. He pulled into the parking lot of the urgent care clinic feeling like he’d somehow lost a game he’d never agreed to play.
“It’s a hairline fracture,”the doctor at the urgent care clinic said. Adam wanted to ask him if he was sure, but even he knew that would be a bad choice. Anyway, the doctor sounded quite sure.
“Am I going to need a cast?” Adam asked.
The doctor shook his head. “I think a splint will do, as long as you agree to wear a sling to support it.”
“So, am I going to lose the use of my arm?”
“Not if you follow my instructions to the letter,” the doctor said with a wink and a smile.
“Are you sure there’s no other way?” Adam asked, even though he knew the answer was probably no. “I have a ranch to run.”
The doctor shrugged. “I don’t make the rules,” he said, “your bones do. I suggest you get your hired hands to work a little overtime for a while.”
“I don’t have any hired hands,” Adam said rather helplessly.
At that, the doctor gave him a look that was a little too reminiscent of the look the real estate agent had given him two years ago. “That’s a shame,” he said. “Maybe you should hire some help?”
