Free Wrangled by Natasha Stories

open up the house again. With all
the girls there, and now me, there was just one guest bedroom left in the house
for the therapist. If Russ had any notion of guests comin’, there wouldn’t be no
place to put ‘em. He said the only one that would be comin’ after this would be
Miss Charity’s mother, but that was a while off, so it would be okay. Nobody
ever had a better boss than Russ, and I’d fight anyone said anything different.
    That night when Annalee come in with my
dinner, I asked her could she stay a bit. She was so happy to see that I didn’t
have that brace on, and I guess she knowed what I wanted. After dinner she
hopped up on the bed with me and we kissed for quite a while, until she pulled
away outta my arms and said she had to check on the kids. I told her that the
boss had figured a way for a physical therapist to come and help me get my leg
back workin’ good again.
    “Oh, good. Maybe Celeste will like him and
stop going from one hand to another trying to find the right man.”
    I’d been hearin’ about that. She’d broke up
with the first hand she was steppin’ out with, and now everyone was fightin’ to
be the next. “Yeah, that’d be good, Annalee. It’s causin’ hard feelin’s in the
bunkhouse.”
    “I know. Well, good night, Cody.” With one
more kiss, she was gone, and I was layin’ there thinkin’ about the shovin’ and
hard looks I’d heard tell of, between Celeste’s beaus. That wasn’t a good
situation no way you looked at it. At least she’d be turnin’ eighteen before
too long. I wondered if she’d leave the ranch then, or stay on for awhile like
Annalee.
    You coulda knocked me over with a chicken
feather the next day when the boss brought the physical therapist in to meet
me. I expected a big dude that could help me stand up and take my weight while
I put only a little on the leg and started walkin’ on it. Instead, there stood
a little bit of a thing, no bigger than a minute, and it was a she! She was
pretty, too, with red hair like Miss Charity’s and blue eyes, and cute freckles
all across her nose and cheeks. My jaw dropped all the way to my chest when
Russ told me she was my therapist. I could see he was wonderin’ how it was all
gonna go down, too. His eyes were dark, and had this kinda glint in ‘em, that
meant he was havin’ a hard time not sayin’ nothin’. All I could think of was,
how was Annalee gonna take this?
    Turned out I was right to worry about it,
too. Annalee took one look at Miss Jenny, the therapist, and turned white. She
was real polite when the boss introduced them, but sparks was flyin’, at least
from Annalee’s eyes to Miss Jenny. Her head was turned away from me though, so
I couldn’t see if she was sendin’ ‘em back at Annalee or not, though there
wasn’t any reason she should; we’d just met. This was gonna get interestin’ and
not in a good way.
    ~~~
    Right from the first, that there Jenny was
flirty. She told me not to say Miss Jenny, but just call her Jenny. When she
pulled me up offa the bed to stand and kept her arms around my waist for stability,
it got mighty embarrassin’ sometimes. I had to admire her strength, though. It
isn’t every hundred-pound girl that can hold up a man my size, six-foot three
and pushin’ two hundred pounds. She’d walk backwards, holdin’ me up, until we
got to the rail that Russ had Bill install on the same wall as the door, and
then I’d hold myself up while she pulled my leg out straight and then flexed it
back to get my range of motion back, Jenny said. Other times, she’d have me
just set on the bed, hold out my leg with my foot pointed down and rotate it in
circles or up and down.
    Every day, she was there right after
breakfast and for an hour in the afternoon after lunch, to put me through my
trainin’, just like I used to do with Abo. Jenny had somethin’ she called a
resistance band that I had to wrap around my foot and then try to pull my leg
from one side to the other,