like a lady right now, she paused inside the office door and took three cleansing breaths.
Her grandfather looked up. “What’s got you in a snit?”
So much for her efforts at self-control. “I’m not in a snit, but we do need to talk. Why didn’t you tell me you’d hired Jackson Kane to work for us?”
Her grandfather laid aside his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Since his heart attack, he’d aged, and though he was seventy, Shannon had always considered him a rock until now. She’d been three when her parents had died in a car wreck and her widowed grandfather had taken her to raise. He was all the family she’d ever known and the thought of losing him scared her half to death.
Now she worried about him constantly. Nagged him to eat better, to rest more, and not to worry over her and the ranch. But she knew he did anyway.
“Now that I’m a useless old goat,” he said, “you’ve got to have some help around here.”
“But why Jackson?”
“Why not? He’s a cowboy, a mighty fine horseman, and seems like an honest enough feller.”
“How can you possibly know all that about a man who’s practically a stranger?”
“Colt Garret.”
“Oh.” Granddad would trust Colt Garret with his life. If Colt vouched for Jackson, her grandfather wouldn’t blink an eye about handing him the keys to the ranch.
She tried a new tack. “I’m the horse trainer. I don’t need him.”
“Now, Shannon, the man’s studied under John Lyons and you know dang well Lyons is the best there is. Horse breakin’ and trainin’ is a rough job, a man’s job. Why not let Jackson take over the horses so you can concentrate on running the business end of things. You’re a whale of a lot better at figures and purchasing than I am.”
“A man’s job!” Shannon hadn’t heard another word after that little jab. Of all the insults, she hated that one the most. A female doing a man’s job. All her life she’d battled ignorant horsemen who thought she should be more worried about breaking a nail than breaking a horse. Her pulse picked up. Anger lifted the hairs on her arms.
Granddad must have seen the fury in her. He raised a gnarled hand. “I won’t argue about this. Kane is hired and that’s that.”
All the blood in her body rushed to her head. “And I won’t allow it.”
“Now, Shannon—” Granddad stood up, reaching toward her, his tone cajoling. But he’d no more than found his feet when the outstretched hand grabbed for his chest.
“Granddad!” Argument forgotten in concern for the only parent she’d ever known, Shannon rushed forward to wrap her arms around him. “Is it your heart? Are you in pain?”
“Need to sit,” he managed, short of breath to the point of gasping. “My pills.”
Shannon took his arm and, frightened by the cold and clammy skin beneath her fingers, eased him onto the chair. Then she searched frantically through the desk for his medication, discovering the bottle at last beneath a stack of papers.
She shook out a pill, placed the tiny white tablet under his tongue and waited. From the looks of the bottle, this wasn’t the first episode of pain, but it was the first she’d witnessed.
“Should I call an ambulance? Or take you to the hospital?”
Eyes closed, he shook his head. “Get Kane.”
Kane? The request startled her. Why would he ask for Jackson? A sudden jolt of understanding exploded adrenaline into her bloodstream. Granddad thought he might be dying and didn’t want her to be alone.
Terrified to leave him for even a moment, Shannon had no choice. She raced to the back door and screamed out. “Jackson. Hurry. Granddad is sick!”
Waiting only long enough to see the tall Cajun jerk away from the gate and start in a long lope for the house, Shannon rushed back into the office and to her grandfather.
She sank to the floor beside his chair and laid her head against his knee as she’d done a thousand times growing up. Then the action had been to seek comfort from an anchor of a man who had all the answers. Now she needed to be the comforter, the strong one.
Please, God, don’t let me lose him. I’ll never argue with him again. Ever. If hiring Jackson makes him happy, I won’t say another word against him.
The squeak of the storm door and pound of boot steps heralded Jackson’s entry. If she hadn’t been so frightened, she might have been amused. For a big guy, he moved pretty fast.
He stormed into the room, expression concerned but confident. Shannon breathed an undeniable sigh of relief. She didn’t want to face this alone and somehow Jackson’s quiet strength gave her courage.
“What happened?”
“His heart. He had a heart attack about six months ago. He’s been on medication ever since.”
“Hospital,” Granddad managed to say through pale lips, though his eyes remained closed.
Jackson never hesitated. “Get the SUV,” he said to Shannon. “I’ll meet you at the back door.”
Then he scooped her grandfather into his arms as if he were a small child instead of a hundred-and-sixty-pound adult.
Grabbing the keys from the hook on the wall, Shannon raced for the truck.
By the time she pulled around back, Jackson was waiting. She bolted out of the driver’s seat and opened the back door, helping Jackson ease Granddad onto the empty bench seat. She started to close the door, but Jackson stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“You ride back here with him. I’ll drive.”
Unused to taking orders from anyone, Shannon wanted to argue, but the situation was too serious, and he was right. She needed to be with her grandfather. Any fool could drive. Even Jackson Kane.
Chapter Two
Jackson stood in the waiting room sucking in the unmistakable odor of antiseptic and sick people as he listened to a white-coated lady doctor explaining Gus Wyoming’s heart condition to Shannon. He’d rather smell the back end of a horse any day than the inside of a hospital.
He shifted from one boot to the other and wished for a dip of snuff, though he’d broken that habit more than two years ago. He hated hospitals. Nearly everyone he ever knew who’d gone into one never came out alive—Jett Garret being the exception. And look what had happened to him. Jackson suppressed a shudder. His poor buddy had gone to the hospital and had ended up losing his dream. Never mind that he was deliriously happy with the cute little nurse he’d found there. Jackson couldn’t imagine anything worse than giving up the dream—especially for a creature as undependable as a woman.
“Your grandfather has some blockage in his carotid arteries,” he heard the doctor say and focused his full attention in that direction.
“Is that what causes his chest pain?”
“Yes. And the blockage also causes the shortness of breath when he overexerts himself.” The doctor removed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned them against her coat. “If Mr. Wyoming had seen a doctor when he first began experiencing symptoms…” She stopped and shook her head, apparently seeing the futility in what-might-have-beens. “He doesn’t follow doctor’s orders very well.”
Shannon smiled, though Jackson could see the worry hanging on her like a wet saddle blanket—heavy and miserable. She’d been unfaltering since the moment they tore away from the ranch, her strength and constant upbeat chatter in the back seat of the SUV making the trip into town much calmer for him as well as the old man. There would be no hysterics from this little cowgirl.
Regardless