He smiled down at her, then shook his head. “It’s grown-up stuff and I’m going to be holed up in my office for a while. But since your mom seems to be feeling good right now, why don’t you take her to meet our new foal?”
He definitely had the magic touch with Katie, because her face lit up like Christmas.
Katie turned to her. “One of the horses just had a baby, and Ryan’s uncle Nando showed us a special spot where we can sit and watch it so we don’t spook its mother.”
One more thing Rachel had been missing out on. Fernando Montoya was the ranch’s horse trainer, and he was married to Nicole, one of Janie’s good friends. Rachel had heard a lot about the Montoyas and had chatted with them briefly at church, but she hadn’t had much of a chance to get to know them.
But as she watched Ty head toward the ranch house, the ache in her heart was more about the fear of not knowing how she was going to survive and Ty being completely in denial about it.
Ty couldn’t believe he’d missed the call from the kidney center. It was killing him not to say anything to her, but he didn’t want to get her hopes up. The doctors had warned him that because things could go wrong at any stage, it was best not to say anything to the recipient until go time.
But this—this could be it. Rachel’s chance at a new kidney, and an improved life.
As he raced to the main ranch house, where he could take the call in the privacy of his office and had all the paperwork at his desk, he couldn’t help thinking about Rachel’s disappointment at him not talking about her fears.
But he couldn’t. Not when he was working so hard to save her life. Not only did he not want to get her hopes up, but he also didn’t want her to feel obligated to be in a relationship with him because of what he was doing. He still didn’t know how he was going to maneuver that once the transplant was complete, or how he was going to explain everything that had gone into this process.
And then there was the call he’d been on last week. One more issue he was still trying to wrestle with. Putting Ricky’s information back on the DNA website had yielded more results. Twins. Also the product of an extramarital affair. This news, however, was not met with joy from the other parties. Apparently, they’d given the test to their parents as a gift to track their family heritage, not realizing that it provided proof of an affair their mother had with a married man.
Ty had reached out to the twins to see if they would be willing to donate a kidney to Rachel, as well as have a relationship with Ricky, which had resulted in a number of angry conversations, threats of lawsuits from the other parties and Ty’s throbbing head. He’d been choosing not to take any painkillers in case the need for his kidney became more dire and he had to be rushed to surgery, which meant he’d been spending more time away from everyone else dealing with his frustrations rather than taking it out on them.
While he knew he needed to tell Ricky and Rachel about the twins, he was still working on gathering all the information so that he could present an accurate picture. They deserved to know that the twins existed, even if both men were insistent that they never hear from anyone associated with the Double R again.
But that was a mess for another day.
When he got into his office, he closed the door behind him and returned the call. His last tests had come back clear, which brought them one step closer to his being able to donate a kidney. Now they just needed to schedule him for his final psychological evaluation to give the whole transplant process the green light.
As he pulled up his calendar to check his schedule, Katie came running into his office.
“Mom’s real sick,” she said. “She fell down and hurt herself in the barn. She says she’s going to be fine, but Mr. Nando wants her to go see a doctor to get checked out. You have to come and make sure she’s going to be okay. Everyone listens to you.”
Without looking at his calendar, Ty asked the woman on the phone, “When is your next available appointment?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” she said.
“I’ll take it.”
He quickly confirmed the details, then hung up the phone. Hopefully, he hadn’t wasted too much time on the call. By the time he got out the front door, Rachel was already walking to the porch, escorted by half a dozen of the cowboys who’d been gathered in the barn.
“Not you, too,” Rachel said. “I’m fine. I just got a little dizzy, that’s all. I went to sit down, and I misjudged where the chair was.”
Ricky must have heard the commotion, because he also stepped out of the ranch house.
“I’d feel a lot better if a doctor checked you out,” Ricky said.
Katie tugged at Ty’s hand. “Me, too. I came to get Ty to make Mom listen.”
He hated the defeated look on Rachel’s face. Her priority had always been about protecting Katie, and he’d done his best to help her with it.
Ty gave Katie a reassuring squeeze. “Your mom’s a big girl, and I trust her to make the right decision. She’ll see the doctor, if only to make the rest of us feel better.”
He looked at Rachel, who mostly seemed embarrassed about the whole incident. He knew her I’m-not-feeling-well expression, and she wasn’t wearing it. It seemed more that she disliked everyone making a big deal of the situation.
As Rachel approached, Katie let go of his hand and ran to her mom, wrapping her arms around her. “Please say you’re going to see the doctor.
