Relentless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  “No, but they can hold you accountable, and I have never seen you go back on your word to either of them.” She smiled ruefully. “Besides, it’s a lot harder to make bad decisions when you’re listening to voices you can trust.”

  “Unlike my own?”

  “Hey, it happens to all of us. As long as we keep coming to a meeting and each other, we’re gonna be okay.”

  All things considered, he should be damned happy with okay. But for a few glorious hours he’d remembered what it was like to want more, and right now okay sounded about as appetizing as cold coffee.

  * * *

  Carma breathed a sigh of relief when Gil’s headlights flashed across the windows of the van. She watched the Charger glide across the lot and disappear behind the shop, then rolled away from the smoked-glass window and onto her back, wrapping her arms around her stomach. The ibuprofen she’d taken earlier hadn’t eased the dull headache that pulsed behind her eyes, fed by stress, fatigue, and a queasy mixture of anticipation and dread.

  She’d expected Hank to go straight to Sanchez Trucking and try to talk to Gil. Instead, he’d declared he had to get a second opinion. Assuming he meant Bing, she’d waited to hear from her cousin, but there’d been total silence from that quarter. Who had Hank talked to? Miz Iris, maybe. Or, God forbid, Delon. Carma already knew how Gil would feel about that.

  Her mouth twisted. At least she didn’t have to worry about being fired. No matter how furious, Gil would put the business ahead of his personal problems. He might even make a point of being polite.

  It would be awful.

  Almost as bad as lying here waiting for the ball to drop. She rolled onto her stomach, aware in every nerve ending that Gil was right over there. And he’d sent Quint to stay overnight with Beni. Carma ached with wanting the heat and the hard certainty of Gil’s body against her. Inside her. Taking them both to a place where thinking was impossible.

  Depending on what Hank did, tonight could be her last chance.

  Before she could change her mind, she sat up, shoved her feet into flip-flops, and grabbed the ugly purse. The curtains on the front windows of Gil’s house were open, and as she approached she could see him in the kitchen. She paused to watch, her heart thrumming at the way his dark-gray T-shirt clung to shoulders that slumped with exhaustion.

  God. He looked so alone.

  There was an endless, excruciating silence after her knock. Then the door swung open and he was there, dark and a little forbidding with the light at his back.

  “Carma.” It was a sigh of resignation. He raked a hand through hair that had already been roughed up. “I’m sorry. I just spent two hours pouring my guts out to my sponsor. I can’t talk any more tonight.”

  “Good.” She stepped inside, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

  After a moment’s surprise, his hands came to her waist, pushing up under the hoodie and T-shirt to find bare skin. She shivered at his touch, cool from the milk jug and glass. Without breaking contact, he pivoted them both, shut the door, and walked her down the hall.

  A swan-necked lamp threw a dense pool of light onto a small desk in the corner of his bedroom. He took the purse from her hand and tossed it onto the nightstand. His eyes glittered, black and intent, as he peeled off her hoodie, then her T-shirt, then his own, leaving them both naked from the waist up. His gaze followed his hands as they settled at her waist, thumbs tracing dual lines of fire up her stomach until he cupped her breasts. Her head fell back on a moan as he palmed their weight, his hair tickling along her throat as he bent to taste.

  They didn’t speak. Only sighs, moans, a catch of the breath or a purr of gratification. They fell into a slow, liquid rhythm, riding each wave of desire, in no rush to reach the crest. When they did tumble over, it was a long slide into a pool of molten pleasure.

  Carma mumbled in protest as he pulled away to dispose of the condom and turn out the light. Then he was back, tucking her into the hard curve of his body and tugging the comforter over them.

  And finally, they slept.

  * * *

  Gil could get used to waking up next to Carma. Not just in the morning, but at midnight, at 3:00 a.m., and again as the sky was turning silver-blue at dawn. Instead of kicking off the blankets and abandoning hope of sleep, he’d burrowed into her warmth and her sweet cherry-almond scent and let the soft rise and fall of her breath lull him back to slumberland.

  But now he did have to get up.

  As he eased up to sit on the edge of the mattress, she stirred, sighed, and blinked her eyes open. That irresistible mouth curved into a drowsy smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” He leaned over to kiss her forehead, trying to keep his morning breath to himself. “It’s still early.”

  “Mmm.” She sighed again as he stroked the hair away from her face. Then she pushed up onto one elbow. The comforter slid down, revealing a lot of satiny bronze skin, and it was all Gil could do not to say the hell with it and dive back in.

  “You are not making it easier for me to get to work,” he said.

  She laughed, low and raspy, but tucked the comforter around her chest as she sat up. “How ’bout if I kill the mood by saying we need to talk?”

  “That did the trick.” He reached for his gym shorts, literally girding his loins. “Should I be caffeinated for this?”

  “Not that big a deal. I just wanted to tell you… I’m moving out.”

  Gil’s heart crashed against his rib cage. Shit. She was leaving already. He’d been weaving pretty fantasies, and she’d only popped over for a good-bye fuck. “When?”

  “As soon as possible. I gotta be honest, I really hate that apartment.” She swung her legs over the other side of the bed, baring the length of her back and the lush curve of one hip. “Is there an RV park around here?”

  “An RV park,” Gil echoed, not comprehending. “In Earnest?”

  “I take that as a no. It’s not far to the campgrounds at Lake Meredith. I can only stay at each one for two weeks, but…” Her smile flickered uncertainly. “Well, we’ll have to see.”

  Gil kept staring at her with what he was sure was an idiotic expression while his internal organs settled back into their assigned places. She wasn’t leaving, only relocating.

  To some campground full of strangers. Nope. Not on his watch. “There might be something else. Let me think about it.”

  “Thanks.” Her smile gained strength. “And really, I didn’t mean to insult your apartment.”

  “No offense taken. You just caught me by surprise.” And so had the intensity of his reaction. Had he said he might be falling in love? Hah. That truck had definitely left the yard.

  Patience. He breathed himself down to something approximating calm. As long as she was staying, they had time, especially if he wasn’t wasting any trying to resuscitate old dreams. He could concentrate on Carma and Quint and ramping up for the Heartland Foods workload. By then some of the shine should have worn off his relationship with Carma. Without that glare in his eyes, he’d be able to see both more clearly.

  Then she stood up and dropped the comforter, and he went blind again.

  * * *

  By the time Analise reported for work at four, Gil had pretty much come to terms with his new plan, and the occasional torpedo blast of disappointment barely rocked his boat. Forget the Diamond Cowboy. The first week of June would be a great time to take a couple of days off, just him and Carma. Drive over to southern Colorado and New Mexico to explore the canyonlands. They could swing south to visit his mother, maybe head into the backcountry where most of her family lived. It would be so much easier with Carma along as a buffer.

  In the meantime, Gil had plenty of good stuff to focus on. Making breakfast with Carma as the sun came up, laughing when they bumped hips because he’d never had a woman in his kitchen, her disgust that he spent so much time in the
office that he didn’t have a coffeepot of his own.

  He would take care of that too.

  There was Quint’s track meet in Bluegrass on Thursday, where Hank would be hanging around because Grace was the athletic trainer there. He and Gil could debate how these kids compared to back when they were each in their glory days and be smug about how no one had come close to breaking Cole’s records in the shot put and discus.

  Hank would make puppy-dog eyes at Grace, and Gil would think twice about giving him grief about it now that there was a chance he was looking at Carma the same way.

  Afterward Gil would take Quint out for victory ice cream, and for an hour or so he might feel like he was getting this dad thing right. And then he’d come home and tell Carma all about it while they watched the sun set.

  Which reminded him—he still had to come up with a better place for her to park than some public campground half an hour away. All she needed was a level spot with grass, trees, a restroom and showers close by…

  Analise opened the door but didn’t step into the dispatch office to take over. “Your presence is requested, oh supreme ruler.”

  Hell. What now? If this was Max on a rampage about another truck cab that looked like a feral hog had been living in it, Gil was gonna make good on his threat to start deducting extra cleaning costs from the drivers’ pay. He tossed his Bluetooth earpiece onto the desk, stomped out into the reception area…and stopped dead.

  “Delon?” Gil blinked, but his brother was still standing there, arms folded, jaw tight. Alarm squeezed hot fingers around his lungs. It had to be horrible news if Delon felt the need to deliver it in person. “What’s wrong? Is somebody…”

  He flashed back to that devastating night, Steve Jacobs on their doorstep, his eyes dull with shock as he told them Xander and his parents were gone.

  “Nothing like that.” Gil turned toward the voice and found Hank, his eyes sharp and hard. And why would Grace be here with him, on a weekday?

  In the opposite corner, Carma sat stiffly in the chair she’d pushed as far from the center of the room as possible. Her gaze met Gil’s for an instant, then dropped to the hands clasped in her lap.

  Guilty. Fuck. What had she done?

  Gil mimicked Delon’s posture, lounging against the nearest filing cabinet to steady himself. “So what is this? An intervention? You’re about a dozen years too late.”

  “Not really. You’ve still got plenty of bad habits. Like thinking you get to make all the decisions without consulting anyone.” Delon’s words were strung dangerously tight. “And thanks for putting my wife in a position where she had to keep secrets from me. Really appreciate that, big bro.”

  Muscles bunched in Delon’s thick, powerful arms, and it occurred to Gil that the arena wasn’t the only place where he couldn’t take his little brother anymore. They had never been the kind of kids who pounded on each other, but there was always a first time.

  “I was planning to tell you after you got back from California,” he said. “Which—correct me if I’m wrong—is where you’re supposed to be.”

  Delon stabbed a finger at him. “This is my fucking company, too, and you don’t get to shove me out the door so you can keep playing the martyr.”

  Bam! Direct hit. Gil covered the sting with a careless shrug. “Fine. You can clean out Dad’s desk.”

  Delon swore, several of Gil’s favorite, most descriptive alternatives for the word jerk, not even caring that there were women in the room. Oh yeah. He was seriously pissed.

  “You could have told me.” Hank’s voice was raw steel. “All the time you spent dogging my ass, insisting I had to pull my head out and get on with my life, but when you need to talk about what it’s like to get a second chance and wonder if you deserve it, you don’t trust me enough to say a goddamn word.”

  Shit. He hadn’t even considered talking to Hank. Gil angled his chin, gave his best arrogant asshole smirk, and lied through his teeth. “I never questioned whether I deserve it. I just haven’t decided whether it’s worth the hassle.”

  “By which you mean letting anyone do anything around here without you looking over their shoulder.” Analise’s eye roll was truly impressive under inch-long fake lashes. “If it was possible, you’d have computer chips implanted in our brains so you could log in and check our status just like the drivers.”

  Gil flipped the attitude right back at her. “No one wants to see inside your head.”

  “Especially you,” she shot back with a barbed smile. “It’s a dangerous place for people who doubt my powers.”

  Gil ignored her to raise his eyebrows at Grace. “What’s your beef?”

  She gave him a stone-cold stare that reminded him this was a woman who, despite standing five foot nothing and looking barely older than the students, kept three hundred athletes and their coaches in line. “I did used to work here part time. I can pitch in with the basic stuff once school is out. And Hank can take some loads when you start moving drivers over to Heartland Foods.”

  Gil curled his mouth into a lethal weapon. “I appreciate the offer, but if I’m gonna go off rodeoing, what I really need is a weekend dispatcher. When do you want to start training?”

  “I…” Grace began, and Gil laughed. Yeah. That’s what he figured. Grace had her own rodeo schedule lined out, and she wasn’t about to give it up for his benefit. But to his surprise, she didn’t back down. “Obviously, I’m no help to you there, but I have this brother. You know, Jeremiah? The one who’s majoring in business and looking for a summer and weekend job for at least the next two years? He might even stick around after graduation if you were in the market for someone whose head could be even harder than yours.”

  The acid comeback fizzled on Gil’s tongue. He’d sat next to Jeremiah during New Year’s dinner at Miz Iris’s. The kid was smart, with Grace’s take-no-shit attitude and a lot of shrewd questions about the trucking business. Besides, they had to hire another dispatcher no matter what. Gil and Analise were already stretched too far.

  He nodded. “Have him call me.”

  Grace cocked her head as if she hadn’t heard him right. “Um, okay. I will.”

  “Great.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “If you’ve all had your say…”

  “Not even close.” Delon pushed open the door to the main office and stepped aside to usher a familiar figure through.

  Gil blinked. Then blinked again. “Mom?”

  Chapter 28

  If Carma sat very, very still, maybe Gil would forget she was there until she had a chance to slip out the back door.

  And run.

  Gil leaned an elbow on top of a filing cabinet and speared his fingers through his hair. “I have no clue what’s happening here.”

  “Thank Tori,” Delon said. “She pointed out that Dad was perfectly happy with his three original rigs until Mom came along. Next thing you know, they were running around fifteen trucks. Then she left and nothing changed until you decided you were gonna build a damn dynasty.”

  Gil stared at his mother. “You built it up?”

  Rochelle Yazzie stared straight back at him, an older, feminine version of Gil, right down to the just-try-to-fuck-with-me attitude.

  “You don’t think you got all that from your father?” She waved a hand that took him in from head to foot, and Carma almost smiled. Everything about both Gil and Delon that was missing from Merle was wrapped up in their mother, tight as braided rawhide. “When I had to leave, I hired Mrs. Nordquist to ride herd on him, and the bookkeepers downtown to keep track of the financials. I reviewed all the contracts clear up until you took over. And for a while after.”

  “Shit.” Hank bumped himself on the forehead. “That’s why you never divorced him.”

  “I worked my tail off to make this place a going concern. I wasn’t gonna sell it or let him fritter it away.” She made a fist and p
ressed it to her breastbone. “And we are divorced where it counts.”

  Meaning back home, among her people.

  “Why are you here?” Gil asked abruptly.

  She lifted her chin, defiant. “I have ten years’ experience with the road department, managing twice as much equipment and three times as many employees as you have here. Plus you need drivers and I have a list of prospects who’ve graduated from the CDL program at the college in Shiprock.”

  “How many of these people are related to you?” Delon asked.

  Her mouth quirked. “That depends on how you define ‘related.’ But I wouldn’t consider hiring them if they weren’t reliable.”

  “We only have three tractors that aren’t already running full time,” Gil argued, his edges sharpening with every word. “We need owner-operators.”

  Rochelle didn’t give an inch. “A few of my people would be interested in buying their own rigs if they had guaranteed work. I’ve already looked into financing with the Navajo Nation loan program and the VA, and Hank’s sister has some other good options for minorities through her small-business programs.”

  Wow. They had covered a lot of bases in the time since Carma had talked to Hank. Or, more likely, Rochelle had been planning this for a while, on the assumption that Merle would bow out sooner rather than later.

  “Dad and I have been looking at used tractors, in case we got the contract.” Unlike his brother, Delon was getting more enthusiastic. “We can afford three, maybe four, if we find older models that need some work and have Max and the crew whip them into shape.”

  Analise tossed in her two cents. “All the Heartland loads will be drop and hooks, so you’ll have extra trailers.”

  Drop and hook? Oh, right. When the client preloaded trailers and all the driver had to do was drop off their empty one and hook onto the next.

  None of which was making Gil any happier. Carma could practically see a red line creeping up from his chest, into the corded muscles of his neck, toward his eyebrows. She did not want to be in the vicinity when his pressure gauge topped out.