Cowboy with a Cause by Carla Cassidy Page A

nights before.
    She instantly dismissed the unkind thought. She knew instinctively that Adam wasn’t the kind of man to play wicked games. Still, when she finally balanced carefully on her good foot and rose up enough to check the upper cabinet, she found the teakettle there. She told herself that she needed to remind him that if he used something from the lower cabinets, he better put it back where it belonged.
    The tea didn’t help. It didn’t warm her nor did it take away any of the edgy tension that had been her constant companion for the last couple of days.
    She nearly jumped out of her chair at the unusual sound of the phone ringing. She quickly wheeled over to the phone on the counter and checked the caller ID. She didn’t recognize the number but answered, anyway. “Hello?”
    She waited for a response but none was forthcoming. “Hello?” she said again. She knew somebody was on the line. She could hear the sound of deep, uneven breathing.
    “Who is this? Craig, is this you?” A wave of anger swept over her as she thought of the real estate man. But as the sound of breathing continued and no words were spoken, an inexplicable fear raced through her and she slammed down the receiver.
    She nibbled on her bottom lip, staring at the phone. Surely if it had been Craig, he would have said something. So who had been on the phone?
    Maybe it had been some weird cell phone disconnect or a telemarketer who had gotten interrupted. Still, it bothered her enough that she grabbed a pen and paper and punched the caller ID button to display the number the call had originated from. She scribbled it down and then tried to call it back, unsurprised when she got an automated response that the cell phone caller was unavailable at the moment and to try again later.
    The whole incident simply fed the edginess that had been with her for the past couple of days. She suddenly found the silence around her oppressive.
    She had apparently gotten too used to having Adam around and was feeling the isolation of the last three days of him being gone most of the time.
    It was the first time since she’d gone into the wheelchair that she wanted out of the house, to be among other people. But she moved back to the kitchen table and stared into the backyard, remembering the night that she and Adam had gone to the café and she’d thought she’d seen somebody hiding behind the tree in her front yard.
    She leaned back in her chair and rubbed a hand across her forehead. She’d slept unusually hard the night before, after taking one of her pain pills.
    When she’d awakened, she’d been groggy, and only after a shower and dressing had she felt more like herself. She hadn’t left the kitchen all day, but now, staring out the back window, she realized the view was starting to bore her.
    Could she wheel herself to the café for dinner? Leave the house under her own steam and eat dinner among other people? A week ago she never would have considered it. Adam had opened up a little piece of the world for her in the week he’d been living here. She just wasn’t sure she was in a place to explore it all alone.
    Instead of leaving the house, she went into her bedroom and grabbed the sketch pad that had traveled with her for the past ten years. Inside were sketches of dance costumes, along with written choreography of the dances she’d seen in her mind as she’d drawn the costumes.
    This was the one hobby she’d had aside from the actual dancing. She’d always known in the back of her mind that a day would come when she’d no longer be fresh and exciting, when she’d be deemed too old for the stage. She’d just assumed when that time came, she’d come back home and open a dance studio of her own, a place to feed the dreams of little girls.
    Of course, she’d always assumed when that time came, she’d be in her thirties, still young enough to open a dance studio, maybe find love and build a family. She hadn’t expected an injury in the best