Grumpy Cowboy (Single Dad Collection)

For a man like me, that kind of inactivity just about made me lose my mind. My leg may not be any better than a two-by-four right now, but I’ll tote the fucker around painstakingly if it means I can start to find some goddamn normalcy again.

“Come here, darlin’,” I tell my daughter, shoving the stool closer to Huck with the edge of my huge leg brace. “You climb up, and I’ll hold his head.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Joey replies. Her blond pigtails bob from side to side as she flashes a grin my way and steps up onto the stool. She proceeds to give Huck a pat on the neck and grabs on to a piece of his mane like I taught her.

Joey has been riding since the time she could walk and, frankly, does it better than a whole host of the guests we see come through our ranch on a yearly basis, but she’s still my baby girl, regardless.

I don’t worry about myself—haven’t even considered a possibility other than making a full recovery from this shit—but riding in an ambulance in the middle of the night and going in and out of consciousness the whole time feels a lot different as a father than it did as a professional bronc rider.

Without Joey’s mama in the picture, it’s up to me to be everything she needs and then some, and knowing I let my ego lead me to decisions that make that harder to do is a difficult realization to come by.

Joey settles into the saddle and shoves her tiny boots through the stirrups, anchoring on the balls of her feet to give herself leverage. Huck is a big horse, nearly sixteen hands of brute muscle, but he’s smart too, and he knows to treat riders like my Joey with extra care.

“Okay, darlin’, go on and give him his head and get on out to the arena. Walk, trot, and canter—no runnin’, you hear me?”

Joey looks down at me with a toothy, mischievous smile, and I narrow my eyes.

“No runnin’, you hear me?”

She tilts her head to the side. “Like, no fast runnin’?”

“No runnin’ at all.”

“Not even a little runnin’? Like, just a little faster than a canter? You’d hardly even know the difference, really.”

“Joey, I said, no runnin’. Period. End of story.”

“This story is pretty boring,” she mutters, and it takes everything inside me to keep a straight face and not laugh.

I swear, some days, my daughter is five going on eighteen.

“Josephine Jameson, that’s enough sassin’.” I give her a stern stare, and finally, she rolls her eyes back at me and nods.

“Fine. No runnin’. Promise, Daddy.”

“Good. Now, Ms. Sassypants, I’ll be out there with ya in a couple minutes, and if you keep that promise, I’ll let ya go buck wild for a little bit,” I offer, making the apples of her cheeks lift to the corners of her eyes.

“Yippee!” she exclaims, and all I can do is grin.

There’s no denying that, when it comes to being adventurous, my little girl is a bit too much like me.

I slap Huck on the butt, and he walks off with Joe, out of the barn hallway and around the corner to head for the arena.

Alone in the alleyway, without a horse to lean on now, I struggle to make my way back to the stall walls and pull myself up to take some of the weight off my good leg.

My injured one is locked straight in a brace the size of this fucking ranch and aches like a son of a bitch. It’s sore all the time, and the pressure of the blood pooling in it feels like a thousand tiny needles, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to go lie back down in the house.

Or take any of that fucking pain medication Dr. Namath keeps pushing on me.

I open the stall door next to me with a hard shove and hobble inside with the help of my good leg and my crutch.

“Hey there, Sonny,” I say to my personal horse. He’s quick as lightning and about the best at herding cattle I’ve ever seen, but he also has a need for more exercise than the bombproof geldings we put our guests on.

As far as I know, Ronald and Tiny, two of our ranch hands, have ridden Sonny a few times since I got hurt, but for my painted boy, that’s not nearly enough.

“What do you think? You wanna go for a ride?” I ask him.

I’m not sure how, but there has to be a way to get myself up on his back if I try hard enough.

I grab his rope halter off the door and hobble back to slide it gently over his head. He gives me no trouble, clearly just as eager to be out and moving as I am.