Michelle and Tyler: Christian Romance (Cathedral Hills Book 2) Read online

  Michelle and Tyler

  (Cathedral Hills, Book 2)

  Morris Fenris

  Changing Culture Publications

  Michelle and Tyler

  (Cathedral Hills, Book 2)

  Copyright 2015 Morris Fenris, Changing Culture Publications

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Book List

  Prologue

  A year and a few months earlier…

  Michelle Cottrell watched Tyler as he climbed into the chute, trying not to focus on the sounds coming from the raging animal he was preparing to sit upon. He only needed to ride for eight seconds, but she knew without a doubt it would be the longest eight seconds of her life.

  She watched as the handlers tried to steady the animal, and when Tyler looked straight at her and tipped his hat to her, she couldn’t hold back the smile and the small wave she sent in his direction. She and Tyler had grown up together, he being two years ahead of her.

  She’d secretly held a girlish crush on him since her pre-teens, but nothing had even come of it until the spring of her senior year. Tyler had already graduated and was making a name for himself in the rodeo circuit for calf roping. He had come back to town for the holidays and then stuck around to help his folks out during the cold winter months.

  Because Michelle was friends with his sister, Brooke, they had seen each other quite often. There had been an attraction from the beginning, but Michelle had been realistic and kept things light and friendly, knowing that she was heading to Wyoming and college in the fall. Tyler had earned enough points to compete on the Professional Bull Rider’s circuit come spring, and would be traveling around the western United States. Neither of them was ready for a relationship.

  That didn’t mean she hadn’t often wondered what it might be like to be his girlfriend. Michelle had plenty of boys she called friends, but she had always kept things on the friendship level. Her parents were the pastors of the little church in Cathedral Hills, and had a wonderful marriage. She’d grown up knowing that she would only ever give her heart once, and she had protected it as best as she could.

  Almost a year ago, she had been at the Denver Coliseum looking for a runaway when she had run into Tyler. He had been there for the bull riding competition, and had invited her to dinner after his ride. Since she had been unsuccessful in locating the young girl her team was looking for, she had accepted.

  The two had become long distance friends, with Tyler coming to Denver at least once a month to see her. Over that time, they had sent emails and text messages back and forth, and talked with each other for countless hours on the phone.

  When the buzzer sounded and the chute was opened, Michelle watched as the animal named Torpedo lunged out of the gate. Twisting and turning to try and dislodge his rider, Tyler held on, keeping one arm in the air as the rules required and moving fluidly with the animal. When the eight second buzzer sounded, the crowd went crazy, but Michelle wasn’t ready to celebrate yet. Tyler was still on the animal’s back!

  The rodeo clowns came rushing forward to distract the bull, and she watched as Tyler attempted to throw himself clear, but he was too close to the boards of the arena. His body went flying through the air, smashing against the boards to crumple on the hard packed dirt below. Michelle surged to her feet and silently prayed for him to get up.

  The next five seconds seemed like eternity. Help was headed for his still body, when suddenly he lifted a hand and pushed himself up to his feet. He was cradling his arm against his side at an odd angle, but Michelle didn’t pay much attention to that. Tyler was alive!

  She kept her eyes on his body as he was helped out of the arena, sitting in the midst of his cheering fans, as a revelation stole her ability to think of anything else. She loved Tyler Jameson!

  Chapter 1

  Present Day…

  Michelle exited the small office she used when staying at Camp Red Bird, trying to keep her sense of disillusionment at bay. In her hands were letters from both the state and the county. Not only were the fees going up, but they were imposing more insurance restrictions on facilities like the camp, fees that would either mean upping the cost to the campers, or finding additional funding sources. The thought of shutting down the camp wasn’t even worth a consideration.

  Camp Red Bird had been in operation since the Cottrell’s had first come to Cathedral Hills. It was situated in the mountains above Cathedral Hills, at approximately eight thousand feet, and not only catered to children’s summer camps, but to various retreats throughout the year. As long as she had breath to fight, and a brain to seek out new funding sources, Camp Red Bird would remain operational!

  She had just spent the last two hours researching grants and other sources of income that might get the camp financially healthy once again, and the most plausible avenue seemed in the area of therapy and social reconditioning. The camp was uniquely situated to handle both, with just a few major changes to how things were done.

  Therapy could be offered in a variety of ways, some of them groundbreaking, and thus available for all sorts of new grant programs. The empathetic nature of horses made them the ideal species to teach independence and build trust and a sense of responsibility. Michelle had always dreamed of working with horses, the main reason she had gone to school in Wyoming. They had a training center where they were researching using horseback riding as a form of therapy for disabled kids. She’d had the privilege of working with those kids all four years while she’d been at college, with hopes of opening her own operation in Colorado, but student loans and the need for a stable income source had taken precedence. When she’d been offered a job working for the State of Colorado Social Services Division, she’d been in no position to turn it down.

  She’d never given up her dream though, and she’d continue to study up on new treatments for not only kids, but also teens and young adults. Social reconditioning for teens and young adults was a little more complex than dealing with younger children.

  After doing her research earlier in the day, she’d already decided they needed to focus on kids on the lower end of the age spectrum. There were security protocols to develop, education needs that would have to be addressed, and then there was the actual social work aspect – something she was qualified to do, but not all alone. She was going to need help!

  She stepped out of the office, pulling the door shut behind her and started across the clearing. The staff was busy stacking the logs for the end of the week bonfire the ki
ds always enjoyed, and she stopped to speak with the camp’s assistant director, Shannon Caldwell, for a minute. After being informed everything was still under control, she headed for her own private sleeping quarters. Her head hurt just from the amount of things that needed to be done before the first of the year if the camp was to survive.

  “Michelle?”

  Michelle heard someone call her name and whirled around, almost dropping the paperwork she held in her hands. She scanned the area around the fire ring until she placed the voice. When she saw him, she couldn’t stop her heart from racing, or the many thoughts that rushed through her brain. Tyler? Oh mercy, what is he doing here?!

  “Tyler.” Michelle was proud of herself for keeping her voice nice and calm. “What brings you to Camp Red Bird?” She tried not to let her eyes take in his person, but she couldn’t help it. His chosen career path put him in harm’s way each time he stepped inside a chute and even though she told herself she no longer cared, she couldn’t resist making sure he was alright.

  “I’m taking over the horseback riding program and thinking about retiring.” Tyler looked Michelle over, narrowing his eyes as he took in her too-slim figure and the dark circles beneath her eyes. “Have you been sick?”

  Heartbroken? Yes! Physically ill? No! “Not really, I just haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.” There is no way I’m going to admit how badly you hurt me. I’m made of stronger stuff than that! And my lack of sleep has nothing to do with you!

  “So,” Tyler looked around and then smiled, “the camp seems to be going well.”

  Michelle jumped at the change of conversation, not wanting to delve into the past with him. “It is.” An awkward silence ensued before she spoke again, “I thought you were still competing. I didn’t realize you had decided to retire.” You couldn’t even call and tell me that our last fight was pointless after all? Michelle swallowed back the tears that were threatening to fall. Snippets of their last conversation tried to push their way to the forefront, but she quickly slammed the door on those memories. There’s nothing to be gained from going there!

  She shuffled her feet, anxious to get away from him before she made a complete fool of herself. Keep it together for a few more minutes. Be polite, but distant. He left you, remember?

  Tyler and she had been dancing around their attraction to each other since they were seniors in high school. Neither one of them had been willing to jeopardize their friendship by crossing that invisible line. Then he had taken off on the rodeo circuit, and she had gone away to college in Wyoming.

  She’d run into him at a rodeo on the eastern slope of Colorado two years earlier, and the two had reconnected. He had still been traveling on the circuit, but had been based out of Colorado Springs that season; traveling between Denver and Colorado Springs had been an easy jaunt in-between competitions. He had come to Denver at least once a month and she had rearranged her schedule to spend as much time with him as possible.

  Over the course of a year, their friendship had developed and Michelle felt like Tyler had become one of her best friends. Her childhood crush on him was still there, but they had been careful to let their relationship grow without confusing things with too much physical interaction. They had exchanged a few kisses, and had even begun holding hands and cuddling while watching the television or some other mundane activity, but neither of them had been in a hurry to take things too fast.

  Their conversations had begun to follow the path of their futures, and several times they had traveled down the “what if” road, trying to figure out what a long-term relationship between them might look like. As they had begun to talk about the future together, Michelle had been praying for God’s direction and guidance. At the age of twenty-three, she wasn’t willing to compromise on either of their happiness and set them up for a lifetime of hurt.

  Michelle had taken a new position in northern Colorado, making their time together even harder to come by. When the State rodeo finals had been in Denver, she had driven down to watch and been horrified to see the top bull rider on the circuit have his neck broken when his glove had gotten caught up in the ropes.

  She recalled watching in horror as his limp body was tossed around the back of the beast, contorting in ways the human body wasn’t meant to move. Before they’d been able to free him, his neck had snapped and he’d stopped breathing. The medical team had worked on him for hours, but he had finally been declared dead the next day.

  Unbeknownst to Tyler, Michelle had been working with a young mother whose husband’s recklessness and need for the next adrenaline rush had taken not only his life, but that of their eight year old son. The mother was only twenty-five years old and had already attempted suicide once in the midst of her depression.

  Michelle had majored in social work, partly because of what had happened with her best friend Jenna while growing up, and she had been assigned this young woman’s case. It had been the hardest case of her life!

  The tragedy surrounding this young woman was further compounded when the young mother found out that her husband had died, not only with their son by his side, but with his current girlfriend along. He’d been cheating on her for several months and the girlfriend had been five months pregnant when she and her baby were killed.

  She had thought he was at the local amusement park with their son, enjoying some father-son bonding time while she helped care for her aging mother who was in the hospital recovering from hip replacement surgery. She’d had no idea that he was actually doing some amateur boat racing, illegally and without proper safety protection on their son or himself.

  The story about a tragic boat accident had hit the news stations before the police had come looking for the young woman, finding her at her mother’s bedside. She’d had no idea how drastically her life would change as she’d sat there watching the news report and feeling sorry for the family members of the deceased.

  The effect of dealing with the young woman’s situation had Michelle feeling very vulnerable and living beneath a shadow fear. Intellectually, she knew that the odds of Tyler becoming seriously injured were in his favor, but fear was a living, breathing entity that consumed her dreams and her thoughts. Each time she closed her eyes and thought of Tyler, she had visions of him lying in the dirt, bleeding and broken as a bull trampled his lifeless body!

  It was irrational, and not something she’d had the courage to mention to him yet. She didn’t want him to ever feel that she had forced him to give up his dream to make her happy, so she had made herself miserable. After watching another rider die, her fears only escalated and she became a person she didn’t even recognize anymore.

  She had pleaded with Tyler to stop and find something else to do. When he’d wanted to discuss her fears, she’d been unwilling to share everything that was going on in her head. That very same rodeo, only minutes earlier, he’d dislocated his shoulder. The end result had been a surgical fix, and three months of therapy before he was released to start riding again.

  When she’d watched the medical team escort him out of the ring, Michelle had made the startling revelation that not only was Tyler her best friend, he was her soul mate. She loved him! Not in a teenage crush sort of way either. She loved him with her entire being and the thought of him not being there left her shaken to the core. Michelle had been sure he felt for her the same way she felt for him. They had discussed coming back to Cathedral Hills and starting a rodeo training school and a therapeutic riding program for kids, but once he’d received his doctor’s release, he’d been off and running.

  The last time she’d seen him, they had argued fiercely over what she viewed as his defection and lack of feelings for her. He tried to explain to her he just needed one more successful season, but she hadn’t been willing to listen. Her fears came rushing back in, and her sense of well-being and happiness disappeared. When he drove away, she mourned his loss; sure she would be mourning him for real in the very near future.

  Chapter 2

  Tyler watched the
emotions on Michelle’s face, knowing she was remembering the way he’d left a year and some ago. He hadn’t handled her fears very well, and had accused her of wanting to control him and steal his dreams from him. He’d known that something was bothering her, but she’d declined to discuss it with him, even though he’d asked repeatedly. He knew it had something to do with a work case, and he’d finally stopped asking, honoring her desire to handle it on her own.

  When she’d become irrational about him riding again, he’d briefly tried to figure out what was motivating her to act out in such an uncharacteristic fashion, but she’d given him nothing. She’d accused him of being uncaring, and some of the things that had been said between them were very hurtful. He’d responded in kind, throwing his own accusations out that she cared more for her job and her clients, and that she was just trying to manipulate him into doing what she wanted. The accusations had been unfair, and he had acted out in a very juvenile fashion, driving away and nearly getting himself killed that weekend when he drew a bull he knew he couldn’t ride and not withdrawing.

  He’d known before stepping into the chute that things were going to end badly. But rather than listening to his gut, he’d climbed on board Widow Maker and then gave the signal for the gate to be opened. He’d not even managed a three-second ride, when the huge animal twisted around, dislodging him from his seat on its broad back. Luckily, the bull’s horns had missed him, but not his clothing. The animal had tossed him across the arena as if he was made of plastic, only being prevented from goring him when the rodeo clowns had intervened and physically diverted the animal from further attack.

  He’d spent five days in the hospital for broken ribs, and a broken collarbone, but still his pride had kept him going. The latest disaster to befall one of his own had finally woke him up and managed to help him realize what was truly important in life.