spreading a red-checkered tablecloth on this very rock, he’d set out the food and utensils, then pulled her onto his lap. “There’s something in my shirt pocket for you,” he’d told her, brown eyes twinkling with mischief.
It turned out “something” was a half-carat solitaire set in a plain gold band. She’d always been mesmerized by his deep, grating baritone, but never more than on that afternoon, when he cradled her chin in a work-calloused hand and said, “Will you marry me, Gabby, and change your last name from Lafayette to Cunningham?”
Had it been the love blazing in his dark eyes, or the whispery growl in his voice that prevented her from telling him how much she’d always hated that nickname? “Yes,” she’d said instead, kissing him so soundly that she knocked the Stetson from his head. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
The sweet memory induced a deep sigh and a fond smile, and gave her the final resolve to get to her feet and head home.
Home, where her husband waited.
There wasn’t a minute to waste when she fell, she’d broken her wristwatch. Behind the cracked crystal, the unmoving hands said 11:35. She’d been a rancher’s wife long enough to know a thing or two about life on the range; the position of the sun, high in the sky, told her it was past noon. She tried not to think about the fact that she’d been unconscious for nearly thirty minutes, or the fact that she wasn’t exactly sure how far Triumph had carried her from the highway.
Better get a move-on, girl, ’cause you have a lot of ground to cover before sundown, and you promised to make Drew lasagna, to celebrate your two-month anniversary.
As she headed toward the highway, Gabrielle recited her favorite Robert Frost poems, memorized as an English assignment in junior high. She sang “The Star Spangled Banner” and hummed a few bars of “Swanee.” She picked a handful of the wildflowers growing along the trail, made a lei of them by linking stems. But nothing, not even recounting those wonderful moments at the altar when she’d become Mrs. Drew Cunningham, could distract her from the throbbing in her head.
A battered blue pickup truck rolled to a stop beside her, tires crunching on the gravel, brakes squealing in protest.
“Hey, Troy,” she said, sending him a halfhearted grin.
“What you doin’ all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?”
She opened her mouth to respond, then snapped it shut. Strange, she thought, heart pounding as she struggled to remember, but she didn’t know what she was doing out here.
“You okay, Gabby?” Troy pressed. “You’re lookin’ a mite peaked.”
Shaking her head, Gabrielle frowned. “Pee-kid?”
He got out of the truck and walked around to her side. “Lemme have a look at you, girl.” Hands on her shoulders, he tilted his head up and peered down his long narrow nose to study her face. Bushy gray brows drew together in the center of his tanned forehead. “Got yourself a nice li’l goose egg there on your temple,” he observed. His blue-eyed gaze took in her attire, focused for a moment on the rip in the knee of her jeans. “How’d that happen?” he asked.
Blinking and frowning, Gabrielle could only muster the energy to shake her head.
Troy grabbed her elbow, steered her toward his pickup. “Nice boots,” he said.
She looked at her feet. Funny, she didn’t remember having purchased new riding boots. Wrinkling her nose in puzzlement, she removed her hat and ran a hand through her hair. “Um, thanks.”
“Been ridin’ that ornery beast of Drew’s again, ain’t ya?”
“Triumph?” She smiled. “Why, he isn’t the least bit—”
“Don’t give me that,” he interrupted. “Been ’round horses long enough to know a mean’un when I see it. And that’s a mean’un. Belongs in a rodeo, not on a ranch, if you ask me.”
Gabrielle nodded and took a deep breath, hoping the extra oxygen would nudge her memory.
“Looks to me like that critter threw you, li’l lady.” The passenger door groaned when he jerked it open. “Get on in there, missy. Drew would have my hide if I was to leave you out here all by your lonesome. Besides, the buzzards are likely to mistake you for a—”
Gabrielle stumbled. Had it not been for the grizzled cowboy’s quick response, she would have ended up a puddle of denim and leather, right there on the highway.
“Good grief, Gabby,” he sputtered, steadying her, “you’re white as a bedsheet.”
Troy helped her into the truck, stuffing her hat in after her. Peering down his long nose again, he gently tucked her hair behind her ear and inspected the bump on her head. “That bag o’ bones really did throw you a good one, didn’t he?”
Grimacing, Gabrielle swallowed. “Troy,” she whimpered, holding her stomach, “I think I’m going to be—”
In an instant, he helped her to the roadside, then held her steady until the spasms subsided. When the gut-wrenching spell ended, he casually blotted the corners of her mouth with a faded blue bandanna.
“Happens sometimes when you crack your crown,” Troy said matter-of-factly. “Why I remember once when…”
She couldn’t hear him above the ringing in her ears, couldn’t see much past the white fog that dimmed her vision. But somehow, thankfully, Troy managed to get her into the truck. Gabrielle sat stock-still, nodding and smiling politely, pretending to take in his every word as the beat-up old truck rattled down the road.
Leaning limply against the headrest, she took a peek at her wristwatch and groaned in frustration. Still 11:35…exactly what it had said the last hundred times she’d checked the time. The broken crystal could probably be repaired, but she wasn’t so sure about the buttery leather band.
Her mother had given this watch to her father. Aside from her own wedding band, it was Gabrielle’s single most treasured possession.
Closing her eyes, Gabrielle sighed, conjuring the image of the photograph of her mother, Leah. No matter where they’d lived, it had been on Gabrielle’s bedside table—full color, eight inches by ten.
When she was a little girl, Gabrielle had often made her father tell the story of the day he’d taken that picture. Her parents had been on their honeymoon, traveling the west coast highways, when Leah spotted a rainbow.
“She nearly gave me a black eye, pointing at the thing,” Jared had said, laughing softly at the memory. “So I parked our car there on that country road, and stood her beside the fence.”
It was waist high and made of gray rocks and stones. Jared told his daughter how he’d picked Leah up and perched her on that wall and said, “Smile pretty for me now….”
Gabrielle could almost touch the photo, the memory was so clear: her mother, knees bent and legs hugged to her chest, head tilted ever so slightly, love for her new husband radiating from her smile, from her pale gray eyes, her image haloed by a wide-arched, six-color rainbow that touched the ground at both ends.
The pounding in Gabrielle’s head made her forget the picture and the watch. She’d fallen before, but she’d never experienced pain like this, and it was beginning to frighten her.
“…and that’s how I got this scar alongside my jaw,” Troy was saying. “Horse with a temperament just like that Triumph’s. Belongs in a rodeo, not on a ranch,” he said again.
Gabrielle smiled weakly, grateful that Troy had happened along. She’d never minded being alone in the wilderness during the daytime, because Drew had drummed into her head how to survive, should she ever be stranded out here. She’d been a good student and had learned how to build a roaring fire even from damp wood, how to tell edible berries from the poisonous kind, how to construct a lean-to of sorts from the branches of blue spruce as protection from the elements. In the bright light of day,