Relentless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  “We’ll text you if we learn anything sooner,” Carma said.

  Quint considered, then nodded. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  But only if it was good news. Gil did not intend to share anything else via a damn message.

  He held out his hands to the boys. “Help me up.”

  * * *

  As Gil had predicted, it was over an hour before he was checked in, another thirty minutes for the X-rays to be taken, and then he was parked in a curtained cubicle to rot. He refused to sit around in a hospital gown, so he changed back into his dusty jeans and shirt before stretching out on the bed. He’d been instructed not to eat or drink until the radiologist reviewed the films, but Tori brought him a Coke anyway.

  “I would’ve noticed anything that might require emergency surgery,” she declared, handing over the blessedly cold can and another for Carma before settling into a chair with her Dr Pepper. “And nothing against Huntsville, but if it does need fixing, we can have you back in Boston in a few hours on Daddy’s jet.”

  The mention of surgery made his gut twist. Starting over with all the rehab, hobbling around for who knew how long. The potential that it might not ever be back to his current version of normal.

  Carma scooted her chair closer and laid her hand over the fist he’d unconsciously made. His fingers relaxed, as if his body remembered whatever it was she’d done to him earlier.

  “What is that?” Tori asked, her sharp eyes catching his reaction. “And why does it work on him, unlike everything else I’ve tried?”

  Carma started to pull away, but Gil caught her fingers. “I’d like to know, too.”

  She shrugged, her gaze tracking to some random point in the corner. “You would probably call it chi, or prana if you’re into yoga. It’s about channeling energy by applying pressure over specific points or along certain lines.”

  “And the humming or singing or whatever?” Tori asked. “What was that?”

  Carma looked even more uncomfortable. “It just gives the mind something to focus on, like the music in those meditation apps.”

  She was lying. Or not telling the whole truth. Gil could see from the way Tori’s eyes narrowed that she knew it, too. Why? Was it some kind of tribal ritual? Gil considered what little he knew about Navajo healers and their complicated ceremonies. Weren’t there taboos against discussing certain details with outsiders?

  He slid a meaningful glance at Tori. “I don’t need to know the specifics. It worked.”

  “Amazingly well.” She smiled, and a fool might think she was letting it go. Then she said, “You’re only working four days a week, right?”

  Carma tensed, looking equal parts alarmed and hopeful. “I have Tuesdays off.”

  “Hmm.” Tori pulled out her phone, thumbed quickly through a few screens, and frowned. “That doesn’t work for me. What about Wednesday after next?”

  Alarm won out. Carma looked hunted when she asked, “For what?”

  “You wanted to come to the ranch clinic. I’d like to go with you the first time.”

  “I…um, maybe?” Carma cast a Help me! glance at Gil.

  “That’ll be great.” He gave her back a This is what you wanted look. “Right?”

  “Um…right.” She gathered herself and nodded. “Thank you. I can’t wait to see it.”

  The orthopedic surgeon pushed through the curtain, and the conversation was forgotten in the sudden swell of apprehension.

  “Everything looks great,” he said, and the tension whooshed out of the room in one collective exhale, leaving Gil as limp as a spent balloon.

  The doctor flipped on the wall-mounted flat screen and pulled up a series of X-rays. The ceramic and titanium parts of Gil’s hip glowed brilliant, opaque white, with the bones in varying shades of translucence. The doctor used a pen as a pointer. “It’s incredible, actually. The prosthesis doesn’t show any signs of damage or displacement. The pelvis looks remarkably normal other than some thickening of the ischium and pubis around here, where they buttressed it with bone grafts. Our radiologist doesn’t see any microfracturing around the shaft of the prosthesis, but I recommend an MRI to be sure.”

  There was more, but Gil’s ears were filled with the rush of relief. It was okay. He was okay. And geezus. He was shaking. He tightened his grip on Carma’s hand, and she squeezed back.

  A white slip of paper appeared in front of him. “This will make you more comfortable for the next day or so,” the doctor said.

  Hydrocodone. Gil’s addict brain deciphered it instantly, upside down and in a physician’s scrawl, and his heart gave a single joyous thump before he forced a shake of his head. “No narcotics. I’ll be fine with ibuprofen and ice.”

  The doctor hesitated, then nodded. “If you say so.”

  Gil’s traitorous eyes tracked the paper all the way into the pocket of the man’s scrubs.

  “If you can take a fall like this and walk away, you’re tougher than most—and so is your hip.” The doctor gave him a broad wink. “Maybe you should be riding those bucking horses instead of working the chutes.”

  The jolt was instant and electric, a current that jerked Gil, Tori, and Carma all to attention. Was he suggesting…

  Holy shit. Gil fists clenched, trying to maintain his grip in the tsunami of excitement.

  Did the man just say he could ride again?

  Chapter 19

  By the time they finished dinner that night, Carma was desperate for space. Quiet. Solitude. The day had sucked her dry.

  She had removed herself as far as she could from the center of attention—a.k.a. Gil. He was kicked back in one of the loungers with his right butt cheek packed in ice, rolling his eyes at the volley of sore-ass jokes. On the other side of the fairgrounds, the midway and the beer garden were going strong in the rapidly lengthening shadows, but with the rodeo wrapped up the Jacobs rigs were the only ones left in the contestant parking area.

  Through all the questions and ribbing, Gil hadn’t mentioned the doctor’s last offhand comment, but Carma felt the knowledge simmering inside him. The tangle of shimmering possibilities and cold realities. Too much to share while he was still trying to sort it out.

  Beni dumped his empty plate and silverware in a tub, then snagged a couple of cookies before offering the tin to Gil. “I guess I don’t have to be so careful about throwing body blocks when we’re playing basketball.”

  “Neither do I,” Gil shot back. “The two of you better prepare to be schooled.”

  “In your dreams,” Quint scoffed, back to his normal zen self.

  Beni handed off the cookie tin and flopped into a chair. “You might be sound, but you’re still old.”

  “Hey, Peyton Manning had a couple of years on me when he won his last championship ring,” Gil retorted, but it was clear behind the jokes he was considering his new limits. How much could his body take? How well could it perform?

  What if the MRI and his Boston doctors confirmed that he could ride again?

  Tori’s phone chimed and she checked the message. “It’s Delon. I assume WTF? means he heard about Gil’s wreck.”

  She was dialing as she let herself into Shawnee’s trailer. Would she tell him what the doctor had said? Gil was her patient, but technically she hadn’t been on duty today, so she wasn’t bound by confidentiality.

  Carma guessed that Tori wouldn’t hide behind a technicality. If Gil wanted Delon to know, it would be up to him to break the news.

  As if on signal, the men rose and began gathering the remains of supper and dishes, hauling them into the crew trailer in what appeared to be a routine division of labor.

  Beni and Quint moved to help, but Shawnee shooed them away. “Go out on the midway and waste all your money winning cheesy stuffed toys. You know how that impresses the girls.”

  The boys exchanged an eye roll, then looked to Gil for a n
od of approval before sauntering off toward the twirling lights.

  “I’ll tell Tori you’ll be back by ten to head to the motel,” Gil called after them. Then he levered his chair into an upright position and tossed the half-melted ice packs toward a nearby cooler. “I’m going for a walk to loosen up.”

  His steps were slow, his body held in careful alignment as he moved off down the road that circled the rear of the arena. No doubt his back, neck, and shoulder were also feeling the effects of the fall. Carma started to say she’d go with him, then realized he had very specifically not invited her. Heat stung her face as she wondered if anyone else had taken note. Maybe they would chalk it up to Gil being Gil. Maybe he just wanted to be alone with his thoughts and was all too aware that Carma couldn’t help intruding.

  Or, like Carma, he was a little freaked out by how easily she could tap into his energy and direct it where she wanted. When it worked—and it often didn’t—the sensation was always unnerving, like sticking her fingers into a human light socket. Or in Gil’s case, a nuclear reactor. But she’d expected him to make her fight through layers of resistance, not meet her more than halfway.

  And this energy had nothing to do with the sexual arousal on constant simmer between them. It ran far deeper, at a level that required implicit, almost unconscious trust from an extremely guarded man.

  What did that say about him? And them? Her head reeled with the implications.

  She massaged her aching temples. God, it had been a day. Days, actually. From the moment her purse had disappeared, she’d been on a nonstop roller coaster of drama and emotion. She could feel it all roiling inside her, pushing her system toward overload. She had to get away from these perfectly lovely people.

  She excused herself on the pretense of heading over to the exhibitor showers in the livestock pavilion, which wasn’t a complete lie. She’d end up there eventually. Grabbing her bag and a towel from the black Freightliner—her assigned quarters for the night—she set out in the opposite direction from Gil.

  Given her druthers, Carma would’ve escaped to a patch of grass out on the edge of the rodeo grounds, far from the noise and lights. Unfortunately, the memory of that snake was all too fresh. When she was out of sight of the others, she cut through the bleachers, climbed the fence, and made her way to the darkest, quietest corner of the empty arena, where she changed into her already grubby tank top, kicked off her sandals, and stretched out on her back with her bag for a pillow.

  Ah. That was better. The sandy dirt was cool against her bare legs and arms, in contrast to the still-sultry air. She dug her fingers into the earth and tipped her head back to gaze up at what stars shone bright enough to penetrate the haze of light from the midway.

  Breathe in, the scent of earth and rodeo stock and the nearby trees. Breathe out, tension floating into the endless void above.

  Slowly her system leveled, her mind cleared, and the man-made noises faded to the background in favor of the whirring cicadas. There were dozens of nuances, from chirrups to something like the sound of a squealing fan belt. She began to hum along, the rising, falling, repetitive notes flowing through and out of her, along with the day’s accumulated stress.

  Ten, twenty, maybe thirty minutes—she couldn’t have guessed how long she’d been there when she became aware of someone watching her. She lifted her head and blinked her focus to the near distance, where Cole Jacobs leaned on the arena gate.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, voice almost reverent. “When I saw you lyin’ there, I figured someone had had too much beer. Then I heard…” He shook his head, as if he had no words. “I shouldn’t have eavesdropped, but it made me feel good.”

  “Me too.”

  His curiosity was palpable, so she lifted a hand to beckon him inside. He hesitated. “I don’t want to interrupt your private time. We consider that precious around here.”

  “I’ll bet.” Bing had told her Cole was autistic, and no doubt he’d heard about her unique mental capacity. She sat up. “If I stay much longer I will pass out.”

  He pushed through the gate and joined her, lowering himself to sit with hands on bent knees, not beside her, but not facing her directly, so eye contact wasn’t necessary. “I use music to control my anxiety,” he said, “but I’ve never heard anything quite like that. As if you were singing along with the cicadas.”

  “Pretty much.” Now that her concentration had widened, she could hear a whole chorus of night insects and birds. “For me it works better when the sounds come from nature.”

  “I thought it might be a prayer. Something, um, Native.”

  “No.” At least not in the usual way. Uncle Tony said it was a connection she’d made before anyone had told her it wasn’t that simple to talk to the spirits—if that’s what she was doing. “It’s just a thing I’ve done for as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, I’d go lie out in the tall grass and sing along with the sounds it made in the breeze. Or sit in the door of the barn during thunderstorms and make up rain songs. If you know how to listen, everything has a rhythm.”

  She didn’t add that on very special nights, she also heard music in the stars.

  Cole went silent. After a few minutes he nodded. “I can hear it, but don’t expect me to sing it.”

  “Hearing is enough. Touching.” She scooped up a handful of dirt and let it trickle through her fingers. “It’s easy to lose contact with nature when you’re surrounded by concrete and metal.”

  “And humans.” He heaved a powerful sigh. “Funny. I have to work at reading people and you’re the exact opposite, but we both ended up out here tonight.”

  Alone. But Cole had Shawnee. “How do you do it? You and Shawnee, I mean. The two of you are so different.”

  “Only on the surface. And we fill each other’s gaps. Shawnee runs interference so I don’t get overwhelmed by the people stuff, and I… Well, she’d been on her own for a long time and she needed someone solid.”

  He was definitely that. Carma wondered, with more than a touch of envy, what it would be like to be the one who flew free, instead of always being the anchor.

  She considered her next words carefully. “Was your brother Gil’s rock?”

  Cole ducked his head, but couldn’t hide a low pulse of grief.

  “Gil mentioned him on the drive down,” she added. “I got the sense that losing Xander was a big turning point in his life.”

  Cole thought for a moment, then nodded. “Gil was closer to him than he was to anyone, even Delon. Or maybe just in a different way. Gil didn’t have to be the big brother with Xander.”

  And with Delon he’d had to act as both parent and brother, which would’ve also affected their relationship.

  “He listened to Xander.” Cole scuffed a divot into the dirt with his heel. “If Delon or Violet or anyone else tried to tell him to ease off, he’d get pissed. But Xander had a way of talking him down. Joking. Teasing. He was good at that. When he was gone…”

  Cole left her to imagine the hole he’d left behind, in so many lives. And Gil had fallen into the abyss. They sat for a few more minutes, then Cole angled a bashful smile at her.

  “I see what Analise meant. For whatever reason, a person wants to tell you things.” He pushed to his feet, graceful for such a big man, and offered her a hand. When she was standing, he said, “Gil’s more shook up than he’s letting on. You can always tell when he goes off by himself.”

  “Maybe he needs private time, too.”

  Cole shook his head. “He’s not like us. Leave him alone, and he’ll just wind himself tighter and tighter.”

  The part of her that lived to be needed strained at the leash. You could save him. Soothe him. Fix him.

  Send him running in the opposite direction, bruised ass and all.

  Carma lifted her brows. “Are you suggesting I should loosen him up?”

  “Ah…
that wasn’t exactly what I meant.” Cole’s wince was nearly audible.

  She laughed. “I’m messing with you. He’s not in any shape for extracurricular activities tonight.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” Cole’s grin flashed in the darkness. “If he has the will, he’ll find a way.”

  So she’d seen, but Cole didn’t realize it wasn’t today’s fall that had knocked Gil sideways. It was the possibility of how far he could rise.

  Carma knew, though, and after his response this afternoon, she was sure she could offer him relief, both mentally and physically. But it would require a demonstration of more of her special skill set, and she wasn’t ready to have that also become general knowledge.

  Gil had cut Tori off when she’d started pushing for explanations, though. And he had trusted Carma with his inner self.

  The least she could do was return the favor, right?

  Chapter 20

  Gil was flat on his back in the tow-truck sleeper with the lights out, strumming his guitar and trying to slow his wildly spinning brain, when the soft knock came.

  “Yeah?” he called.

  The door opened a cautious crack. “I heard the music.”

  “Carma?” He squinted against the sudden brightness of the dome light.

  Her mouth tilted into an uncertain smile. “Do you need anything before I go to bed?”

  A handful of Xanax. A few beers. You. “I wouldn’t mind some company.”

  Something to focus on besides his own thoughts. With a few offhand words, that doctor had turned all the old wild urges loose, thundering through Gil’s veins. He wanted to run with them. To throw his head back and spur a bronc so high and wild that he saw stars.

  As distractions went, Carma was as good as it got.

  She climbed up to sit sideways in the seat, facing him, the scent of freshly showered woman wafting in with her. When she shut the door, the light went out and he could only make out her silhouette as she fiddled with the strap on her bag. “I brought something that might help with the sore muscles.”