Read Online Long Road Home by Joann Ross - Free Book Online

been six weeks ago, when he’d stumbled over the curb outside Ryan Murphy’s office. He’d gone sprawling, ending up on the ground, splay-legged like a helpless newborn foal.
    “Going to the doctor doesn’t count,” she said when, instead of answering, he turned his attention to the TV, watching as Desperado sent Joaquin Sanchez—who’d been ranked second rider in the world on that day—flying off his back into the dirt.
    “And another one bites the dust,” he said with a spark of pride.
    The animal athlete he’d bred and raised from a calf was in the pantheon of rodeo bulls, right up there alongside Bushwacker, Asteroid, and Little Yellow Jacket. Go into any cowboy bar in the country, and before caps were popped off bottles of Bud Light, you could get an argument going about which of the four deserved the pinnacle. Not that Buck had any doubt. The others were good and had their special moves, but to his mind, Desperado was the best-all-around bull ever.
    Winema blew out a long, frustrated breath. “Speaking of bovine, you did know that Sawyer Murphy brought his stock over today?”
    “Yeah.” Buck still wasn’t sure how he felt about that development. Sure, they could use the money. If he’d been willing to sell Desperado back when offers rose as high as a cool million, they wouldn’t be in the straits they were. But though he didn’t want anyone to think him soft or sentimental, the bull was family. And you don’t sell off family.
    “Maybe you might want to go look at them.”
    “I can see the pasture from the window.” He couldn’t fault the Murphys for their stock. They’d always bred for ease of birthing and quality of beef, rather than falling prey to any popular beauty contest standards many other ranchers had gone for.
    “You could go welcome him home,” she pressed on. Stubborn. She just never let up once something got buzzing in her bonnet. “Given that the boy’s been fighting for his county and even the president called him a hero. You missed his party,” she reminded him.
    Since he and Dan Murphy had been best friends all their lives, Buck felt a bit guilty about that. “Couldn’t help it. In case you forgot, I tripped over that damn rug.”
    “I’ve watched you take a lot harder falls. Like back in high school when you were riding that bronc at the Basin Junior Rodeo and got throwed.”
    “You remember that?” It had been the summer after their junior year of high school.
    “Sure do. I was in the grandstands with my girlfriends. I remember thinkin’ that you might need some cheering up, and Anna, who’d been there to cheer on Dan in the bull riding, dared me to go talk to you. Of course the others took up the idea.”
    Her dark eyes took on a momentary mist of memory. “I’d just gotten up the nerve when you up and hightailed it out of there without looking back.” As that confession hit like a bullet to the brain, she shrugged. “Just as well. If you’d had an opportunity to fall for my considerable female charms, we might have ended up being the ones going steady, and Warren wouldn’t have asked me to the Fall Fantasy.”
    Buck remembered that day all too clearly. He’d landed on his back and had lain there, helpless as a pup, unable to move with the air knocked out of him. The rodeo clowns—bull fighters, they called them these days—had gotten the bucking horse out of the arena while he’d struggled to catch enough breath to stagger to his feet.
    Which was exactly how he felt right now. That revelation that might have changed both their lives had knocked the air right out of him.
    He was about to spiral into regrets when he looked out the window and saw Austin working with a yearling in the corral. He might not say it enough, but from the moment the girl had drawn breath, she’d been the sunshine of his life. And the one good thing to come out of a marriage to a woman who’d never fit into his life.
    When Britta had taken him to Sweden to meet her wealthy,