The Bull Rider Wears Pink (14 page)

“I don't want to go to the
emergency room,” Kevin replied lifting one of the ear pieces and sinking deeper
into the pillows. “I'm not sick it's only a headache and a few pimples.” He
returned his attention to his computer. “I'm sure it will be gone by the
morning,” he said loudly.

“But you have to go,” Cassidy
replied, not that he could hear her. Yes, she was whining. Not a very effective
parenting method but she was officially overwhelmed. She really didn't want to
but she looked to John for help.

She was completely surprised that
he didn't shrug his shoulders, mutter sorry and back out the door. “They're
still
barrel
racing over at the arena.” John read the
time on his cell phone. “I bet the clinic is open and there's a nurse on staff.
Maybe she can figure out what's wrong with the kid.”

Chapter Nine

Kevin had the chicken pox and
Cassidy woke up wondering about how a kid could get them twice? Kevin had them
when he was two and Cassidy eighteen. He cried and scratched for three days straight.
At the end of it Cassidy wanted out. That was the first time she left her baby
with her mother and brothers and
hightailed
it to L.A.
Soon after that Naomi
hightailed
it to Costa Rica.
Yes, the Cooper women had a history of abandonment.

But this time Cassidy was going to
do the chicken pox right. She bought aspirin, Benadryl, and calamine lotion.
After the nurse diagnosed him last night, Kevin had a hot oatmeal bath in their
motel room. It didn't make him very happy but after much prodding he did admit
he felt less itchy.

“You have too many brothers,” John remarked
a little too loudly for her small car. But Cassidy didn't mind, he was keeping
Kevin occupied with a conversation about Cooper family lineage and the boy
wasn't itching. “I can't keep them all straight,” he cried. Honestly, when John
Risk got a little whiny like Pastor John, Cassidy liked it. Showed her the man
was human.

Kevin stuck his nose, with one
bright pox on it, between their seats. Yes, he should have had his seat belt on
and Cassidy asked earlier but the pressure from the harness hurt the marks on
his chest. Anyway, the road was straight for the next fifty miles. And, at
least nobody was drinking and driving in her car. Her damn brothers did that
all the time. She had no idea why Rachel and Carrie didn't put a stop to it.

She glanced over at John taking a
sip of his coffee while keeping his other hand firmly on the steering wheel.
She hadn't intended to bring him along. Actually she probably should have taken
a break from the man and his never ending proclamations of love but she
couldn't help it. He'd been so supportive last night when Kevin got sick and
this morning when he offered to drive them home, she practically jumped at the
chance to take a nap in the car.

“
There's
Logan, Caleb, and Shane,” Kevin explained holding his fingers up. Cassidy
checked to make sure his nails weren't bloody or pussy, all looked fine. “Not
that many names to remember,” Kevin continued and even though he was sick he
sounded like he thought John was the biggest loser in the world.

Poor John, in his role as Pastor
John he never got a break.

“You already know Logan and Caleb,”
Kevin continued. “The only name you need to remember is Shane. He's in rehab so
you probably won't meet him.”

John turned to Cassidy with his
eyebrows raised.

“Not drug rehab. He was hurt in Iraq
a few years back,” she explained.
“Took a bullet to his hip.
Shattered the entire thing.
We weren't sure if he
would ever walk again.” She sighed. “So a cane is better than a wheelchair but
he's always in pain.”

“Was he hurt while you were working
in L.A.?”
John asked calmly. Even though he'd been awake for the last twenty-four hours
the man missed nothing.

“Yes,” she replied on another sigh.
Why oh why did John want to know about every difficult moment in her life while
she was in L.A.?
At the time he never took an interest in her family. Then again, she didn't
talk about her family. “I kept in touch with them,” she added wearily.

“Jesus, Cassidy,” he scolded, his
fingers gripping the steering wheel tighter. The veins popping out of his
knuckles while his tanned forearms flexed.

John’s strong reaction was hard to understand.
John was never about work-family balance when he was strapping a tape recorder
under her breasts and asking her to have drinks with Lewis Trigger. At the time
he needed information from the man and felt Cassidy's short leather skirt would
get the guy talking. And…it did.

“I did what I had to do,” she told
him hoping he would stop pressing the issue. Even though they were talking in
code, they shouldn't have been talking in front of Kevin.

But John wasn't ready to drop it.
Again, Cassidy wasn't sure how to manage this compassionate, caring and
interested John. “Was Kevin living at the ranch too?” he asked.

“Yes,” Cassidy replied. She shook
her head. Couldn't the man understand she made choices? Not always the best
ones but it was done. Now she was making amends.

“This was at your family ranch?” he
clarified, “the one we are going to.” He glanced at her, blue eyes intent.

She had no idea what that was
about. “I couldn't leave L.A. and Montana
was safer for Kevin,” she told John. He should have already realized that the
work and being with him was more important to her at the time. Cassidy had lost
perspective. Then, all that changed when John made a very bad decision. But he
already knew that, he had watched her walk away from his hospital bed.

Cassidy pressed her knees to the
dashboard and slouched down a bit. If she was wearing a hat she would have
pulled it over her eyes. She didn't want to talk anymore and she knew she'd be
able to handle this line of questioning much better once she had another nap.

“But why?”
John pressed. “Couldn't there have been another way.” John Risk never second
guessed himself, never looked for a plan B. Then again, it was Pastor John
questioning her.

Kevin stuck his head between their
seats again. “There was no other way because she was making porn movies and
recovering from drug addiction,” he announced bluntly. The pink calamine lotion
on his face cracked as he spoke. “But maybe you know something about that?” The
boy asked John his voice rising with each insightful word spoken.

“
Ohhh
,
nooo
,” Cassidy moaned.

With his finger tapping on the
steering wheel John looked in the rear view mirror. “Kid,” he said in a low
voice, “please sit back and put your seat belt on.” He returned his attention
to the road. It seemed the strategy was to ignore that elephant-in-the-car
comment of Kevin's.

“The belt hurts the pox marks on my
stomach,” Kevin moaned. Thankfully his fever had broken during the night but he
was still infectious. Once the marks turned to scabs, which took four to six
days, then the disease wouldn't be transmittable.

“Well,” John said. “It's going to
hurt a hell of a lot more if we get in an accident and your damn pink head goes
through that windshield.” He jabbed his finger toward the windshield.

“That's not going to happen,” Kevin
replied confidently, “there isn't a curve in the road. And my head is not
pink,
it’s medication for the spots.”

“I hope you're not itching any of
those spots,” Cassidy remarked, so glad they weren't talking about her alleged
drug addiction and nonexistence porn work. “Remember, you'll get a scar if you
do.” She was told by the nurse, the older the patient the deeper the scar.

“I'm not two years old, I can do
what I want with my spots,” Kevin protested.

Good God, the kid was in a mood.
This sickness was not fun. “Please Kevin,” Cassidy begged. But just as the
words came out of her mouth Kevin's head
thunked
against the head rest.
John braked. It seemed John had a point to make and he wasn't going to make it
by pleading.

“John,” Cassidy yelled gripping the
door handle. She pulled her knees down, sat up and twisted around to look at
Kevin. Other than the
pissy
expression on his face,
he was fine.

“I'll be damned if we have an
accident and you're paralyzed for life,” John told Kevin, while looking in the
rear view mirror. His face getting red with each word he spoke. “Put your seat
belt on and show some respect to your mother. You don't know what the hell she
did in L.A.
and you have no right calling her a drug addict or a porn star.”

“You're a bully and a—” Kevin
started as he pulled the belt across his chest.

“Stop,” Cassidy yelled. She looked
at both of them. “I have no idea where this just went.” She put her hands up in
the air. “But I think we should all stop talking.” She turned on the radio. “How
about a little music?” she asked. Nobody replied so she turned it to a country
station.

After an eighteen wheeler passed
them on the left, John glanced in the rear view mirror. “Thank you,” he told
Kevin in a low, hard, menacing voice while driving at the speed limit. “But,
next time, can you do
me
a
favor
and listen to your mother the first time she asks?”

For half of a Kenny Chesney song
all was quiet. Then Kevin spoke up. “I thought you were a whiny, nervous kind
of guy,” he theorized. “Sort of like Dr. Simon Tam.” He tapped John's head rest
with his index finger. “Not some dare devil, risk taker, bad ass like Jayne.”

John looked to Cassidy for an
explanation. “The nerdy doctor on Firefly,” she supplied dryly.
“And mercenary gunfighter.”
She was a little worried about
where Kevin was going with this.

“When you're criticizing me can you
use
Battlestar
references?” John asked sharply. He
glanced in the rear view mirror again.

But Kevin wasn't going to comply. “On
second thought,” Kevin continued, “it's probably Shepherd Book you remind me
of.” While an Eric Church song started on the radio Kevin studied the back of
John's head. “That man knew how to read the scripture and handle a gun.” Kevin
leaned forward but John put on the brakes again and the shoulder strap snapped
Cassidy's son back into his seat.

“Why the hell did you do that?”
Kevin cried. He pulled on the seat belt. “If these pox marks pop I'll have
scars.” He glanced at Cassidy. “My mother doesn't want me to have scars.”

“You won't have scars and I needed
to get your attention,” John replied evenly. He wouldn't look at Cassidy. He
knew she wasn't happy with his
behavior
.

“Well, you already have my
attention,” Kevin countered. “I was in the middle of talking to you, telling
you about the Shepherd.” He shook his head and muttered something about John
being too stupid to breathe.

“John—” Cassidy started. She was
worried he'd crash the car. Then again, he probably had been trained in
advanced precision driving plus pursuit driving and maybe even spin-out
maneuvering
. Even so, he shouldn't be treating Kevin like
this.

“You're right,” John cut her off.
He waved a hand toward the backseat. “Go on,” he told Kevin politely with a nod
into the rear view mirror. “I shouldn't have interrupted you.” He even turned
off the radio.

“Well,” Kevin continued looking
smug. “The Shepherd was a—”

“I just want to say
Battlestar
is a much better television show and it lasted
for six seasons,” John cut Kevin off again. “Not a crappy one season,” he
added.

Did the man even realize what he
was doing? It must have been lack of sleep or having to walk away from the Mike
Shannon case that was causing him to behave like this. Or maybe he was worried
about Cassidy being pregnant. She was certainly worried about that. Then again,
whatever it was, no matter how big the concern, John had to stop bullying
Kevin.

“The Shepherd had a dark past,”
Kevin continued, taking on the part of the mature one and ignoring John's
comments about
Battlestar
. “Even though he was a man
of the cloth, he was hiding something on Serenity.”

John looked to Cassidy for
clarification.

“The space ship they live on,”
Cassidy explained. Then she turned her head and looked out the window. John was
probably being made at that moment by a thirteen year old and to add insult to
injury, he had no idea. Embarrassing was one way to describe the situation.
Careless another.
It was good they were all disappearing
from the rodeo for a few days. John needed to
reestablish
his cover.

“Sort of like you,” Kevin suggested.
“You seem to me—”

“I'm a preacher plain and simple,”
John interrupted again but that time it was okay because finally he understood where
Kevin was going with this story. “I came to the rodeo to give the bull riders
spiritual comfort and guidance.” He glanced at Cassidy.

She nodded as firmly as she
possibly could. He didn't look reassured. He was probably right to feel that
way. Even sick Kevin wasn't stupid and she was proud he had inherited her
Spidey
sense.

“Okay,” Kevin replied.

“It's true,” John pressed. “You
don't have to be that way,” he scolded.

“Whatever you say,” Kevin
commented. Then he pulled his computer and headphones out of his backpack. With
his knees on Cassidy’s headrest he slid down in the seat.

“Please don't kick my seat,”
Cassidy told her son. But he couldn't hear
her,
he was
already absorbed in the show he was watching. Most likely it was the Firefly
episode when the crew starts to figure out Shepherd isn't the mild minister he
portrays himself to be because he knows how to load a gun. Cassidy glanced at
John. She wondered where he was hiding his guns.