Relentless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  Damn this puny little office, and damn her curiosity for overriding her survival instincts. A good Blackfeet knew better than to let herself get cornered.

  Everyone jumped when Gil slammed the flat of his hand against the filing cabinet. “Fine! Y’all apparently have all the answers, so I’m gonna run over to Dumas and pick up those seals for the Jacobs truck. Tell Quint to order supper from the café. I might not be back right away.”

  Code for I have had more than I can take, and I’m going to a meeting. Or to talk to his sponsor. Anywhere but here.

  And anyone but Carma.

  He’d confided in her, and in return she’d brought all this down on his head—although Carma had predicted Delon’s reaction almost to the word.

  She doubted that was gonna get her off the hook.

  * * *

  When Gil walked into his house that night, Quint was holed up in his bedroom, the patio door was open, and his mother was sitting in one of the chairs, staring out at the prairie beyond the chain-link fence.

  Well, shit. Tamela had told him not to put off clearing the air. Oh yeah, and Be nice. Your mother is trying to help. She’d said pretty much the same thing about Carma, which was where Gil had planned to start. Typical of this damn day that he didn’t get to choose.

  He puffed out a sigh at the wary look in his mother’s dark eyes. “What, did you draw the short straw and get stuck being the one trying to make me see reason?”

  “I volunteered. It’s about time I showed up for the hard stuff.”

  No comment. “As sons go, I’ve kinda been an asshole.”

  “As mothers go, I haven’t been a real prize, either.” She closed her hands around the armrests, finger by finger. “I could tell you what a pitiful soul I was, so sure nobody understood how hard it was for me.”

  He slid into the chair set at an angle to hers. “And I could whine about having to be my brother’s keeper…but we all know how much I liked bossing him around.”

  “From the day he was born.” Her shoulders moved restlessly. “Merle wasn’t a terrible father.”

  “There are a lot worse. And Steve and Miz Iris were always there for us. We were lucky that way.”

  “That wasn’t just luck. When I had to leave, I asked them to look after the two of you until I came back.” She sighed heavily. “I didn’t think it would take me quite this long.”

  A smile tugged at his mouth. “Well, Miz Iris took you at your word. She’s still fussing over us.”

  “They are good people.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  They fell quiet, listening to the usual chorus of cicadas and various other night things. In the cluster of trees beyond the fence an owl hooted, and Gil saw his mother’s lips move in a silent prayer. What was it she’d told him about owls? He couldn’t remember if they were considered a curse or a blessing. There was so much he’d willfully refused to learn, as if that would teach her a lesson. What exactly, he didn’t know.

  “Why didn’t you come to see me when you were going through the program?” she asked.

  Hell. It had been so long, he’d thought he’d dodged this bullet. “The rules say to be willing to make amends…except when it might be hurtful to you or the other person. You think you’re to blame for my addiction, and I couldn’t say that you were completely wrong, so why put us both through all that? We’ll never know either way. Maybe it would have been different if you were here. Maybe I was just programmed that way.” He hitched a shoulder. “Look at Bing’s grandson. She’s an addiction counselor and he died of an overdose, even though she’d done everything she could to help him.”

  A thought that scared the living hell out of Gil. What if Quint was genetically doomed to repeat his father’s mistakes?

  “I should have done better,” she said.

  “You didn’t have a lot of choices.”

  “And I made the worst of them.” She shook her head. “You were barely more than babies, but I was so angry that you chose this place and these people instead of your own mother. As if you’d done it on purpose, to hurt me.”

  Guilt slid like a knife between Gil’s ribs. Another reason he’d avoided this conversation. The wounds went both ways.

  “I did, you know,” he admitted. “From as far back as I can remember, I knew that old man didn’t approve of me, so I was bound and determined to piss him off any way I could.” He smiled grimly. “From what I can remember, I’m a slightly paler version of him, so he only had himself to blame.”

  She laughed, then sighed. “But you and Delon blamed me.”

  “We were kids.” He took a breath, then said, “And it’s not easy to come back to a man who didn’t miss you.”

  Her shoulders snapped back. “You knew?”

  “I figured it out while I was talking to the counselor in rehab.” He fingered a frayed spot on the knee of his jeans, worrying it into a hole. “I was telling her about you and Dad, and it just hit me. I didn’t remember him ever being sad. Not the way you were. He was perfectly fine without you, except for the laundry. He hated doing laundry.”

  “And he was terrible at it.”

  “That’s why none of us wear anything white. Single dad hack.”

  “Smart.” She bowed her head. “It wasn’t only him. I fell pretty hard at the start. My first grown-up romance! But if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, I would’ve been gone in under six months. I was so homesick, I seriously considered going home and raising you by myself.”

  Gil tried to imagine the person he would be if she had. A life without Delon. Without rodeo and the friends it had brought him. Without Quint. His breath stuck in his chest, then wobbled out. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Me too.” She turned her head and the light from Quint’s window glistened in her damp eyes. “I am so grateful to Tori for insisting that Delon include me in their wedding, and invite me to visit whenever I wanted. And to you for following their lead. All my beautiful boys. I missed so much, but I wouldn’t fix a single mistake if it meant not having any one of you.”

  “Same here.” But they were being honest, so he had to ask. “How long are you staying?”

  “This time?” she asked, completing his thought. “As long as you need me. I can’t turn back time, but I would like to do whatever I can to help you from now on.”

  He cleared a rapidly swelling lump from his throat. “You know, I’d have to be a total hypocrite to keep holding a grudge now.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I get to have my son with me because his mother made pretty much the exact same choice you did—one part of her family for another. Krista can’t have both. Neither could you.”

  She nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “Well, there you go.” And they were both ready to dial back the intensity, so he said, “I guess we’d better figure out where you’re going to live.”

  She manufactured a frown. “Don’t even try to stick me in that dismal little apartment.”

  “What is so wrong with that place?” he demanded, baffled.

  “Only a man would have to ask.”

  He sighed mightily and reached out a hand. She tentatively laid hers in it.

  “You know, I worry about Krista being so far away,” he said, gazing up at the sky. “I think a boy always needs his mother…even when he tries his damnedest not to.”

  The tears that had been shimmering in her eyes spilled over. He squeezed her hand, and together they watched the narrow sliver of a new moon climb into the sky.

  Chapter 29

  Ten minutes after Rochelle’s car pulled out of the front gates and turned toward downtown and the lone five-room motel, a knock on the sliding door of the van sent Carma’s pulse into overdrive. She took a steadying breath and called out, “Entrez!”

  The door rolled back and Gil frowned at it, the
n her. “You should lock this.”

  “I do before I go to sleep.” She clutched the book she’d been trying to read against her palpitating heart. “Between the fence, the lights, and the security cameras, I figured there wouldn’t be anyone wandering around the yard.”

  He hooked a hand on the sill above the door, his face too shadowed to read. “I tried the apartment first, then saw a light on in here. Are you hiding?”

  “Should I be?” There was too much going on inside of him to sort out, but he wasn’t radiating fury, so that was better than she’d expected.

  “If you have to ask…” His gaze traveled around the interior. “This thing is like a time machine.”

  “It’s Uncle Tony’s baby.” She cocked her head. “You seem awfully calm.”

  “I’ve had time to cool down.” He rolled his shoulders, trying to shed the remaining tension.

  “There were a lot of people poking their fingers into your pie today. I don’t imagine that sat too well.”

  His mouth twisted. “That’s what Tamela said, too.”

  Jealousy flared, singeing a corner of her heart. Gil had spent the evening with another woman? “Tamela?”

  “My sponsor.”

  Oh. She’d assumed it was a man. Opposite-sex sponsorships weren’t against the rules, but they did have the potential for added complications. “Is that who you were with last night, too?”

  “Yes.” Reading the doubt in her voice, he gave a slight shake of his head. “There is not and has never been anything romantic between us. All else aside, that would be doubling up on a bad bet.”

  Carma frowned. “Is that how you think of yourself?”

  “It’s what I know. Any relationship I’m in is a threesome. You, me, and my addiction. Staying clean takes time and energy away from everyone else in my life. How’s that sound for a happily-ever-after?”

  “Like you’re trying to scare me off. Have you forgotten where I come from? I know about drunks and addicts.”

  His eyebrows spiked. “Do you? Is Jayden an alcoholic? Your brother? Anybody you’ve lived with, had to rely on, day in and day out?”

  “No. But…”

  “Then you don’t really know. And it shows.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Because I asked someone you helped to return the favor?”

  “Because you didn’t ask me if I needed help in the first place. You assumed you knew best and tried to push me in the direction you thought I should go.”

  “You told me you wanted to ride again.” She slapped her book down on the bed. “Then your dad comes up with some fishing trip and you just…quit.”

  He sat, using the doorframe as a backrest and tilting his face into the soft yellow light, which somehow made his angles sharper. “Do I seem like someone who lets people take advantage of him?”

  “I… It depends. In general, or in the office?”

  “Either. And the answer is no. It’s only taking advantage if I’m not willing. I let Delon dump his extra work on me because I want him out there kicking ass and drumming up more business. I’ve let my dad gradually dawdle off into the sunset because he didn’t move fast enough for me. There’s always something in it for me, and if I’d felt used, I would have stopped. Resentment and self-pity are poison. Believe me, they came close to killing me more than once.”

  “But you’ve earned some payback,” she insisted. “You could have at least asked your dad if he was willing to help.”

  “I intended to. I made all kinds of plans. Hell, I was running with it so hard I could barely breathe. You know. You felt it.”

  She nodded reluctantly. There had been something frantic about him that morning.

  He combed the shag carpet with his fingers, then studied the tracks they left. “You think falling off the wagon just means getting stoned or hitting the bottle, but addiction can come at me from any direction, and everything about the Diamond Cowboy makes it lick its chops.”

  “The what?” She gaped at him. “That was your comeback plan?”

  “Of course. Big money, major adrenaline, short prep time. The perfect excuse to drop everything else and throw myself into it, balls to the wall.” His laugh was like rock grinding glass. “The list of shit I could put off or not do at all was getting longer by the minute. If Dad hadn’t tripped me up, I would’ve run us right off the road. I even had a whole spiel worked out for the guy at Heartland Foods about how we’d analyzed our current resources and the availability of new drivers and concluded that we weren’t in a position to provide an acceptable level of service at this time.”

  Carma gulped. “You were gonna decline that contract. Without consulting anyone else?”

  Dear God. Delon would have dismembered him.

  “Yep. And it seemed totally logical. That’s how my particular brand of addiction works its evil magic. It takes a reasonable idea and pushes it farther and faster until it turns into a train wreck.”

  “But…” She shook her head, struggling to fit that image into what she’d witnessed. “You’re such a control freak.”

  “Sober Gil has no choice.” He gave her another of those bitter smiles. “Steve Jacobs had a horse like me once. As long as he kept it on a really tight rein, they were safe. But if he gave it a tiny bit of slack, it’d stampede through brush and fences and into washouts—just running blind.”

  Carma knew those horses. Her dad always said the most dangerous animal was one that didn’t care if it hurt itself. She never would have put Gil in that category, though.

  But she only knew sober Gil.

  “That’s the risk you’re taking,” he said. “I can’t promise I won’t lose my grip. And I can’t be with someone who tries to take the reins.”

  The declaration struck with the quiet thwppt! of an arrow to the heart. “So that counts me out.”

  “I can’t blame you for what I didn’t explain. Now that you know…”

  Her pride bristled at the implication. “What? I’m on probation? Meddle once more and we’re done? If that’s the case, I’m gonna need a better definition of what’s off-limits. Am I allowed to encourage you in any way, or is that too dangerous?”

  “That isn’t what I meant.” He ran a weary hand over his eyes, shadows settling in the hollows of his face. “But yes, we do need clear boundaries. I have a great support system with my sponsor and the group in Dumas, so I’ve never had to lean on the people close to me—and I don’t want to start. This works. I’m not gonna screw with it.”

  There was a finality in his voice that left no room for negotiation. But he had talked to her. Once. When Tamela wasn’t available. A weight settled behind her breastbone. “And you expect me to be content with whatever parts of yourself you choose to share, whenever it suits you.”

  “I don’t expect anyone to be satisfied with what I have to offer.” He dragged a thumbnail down the front of his jeans. “That’s why I’ve avoided this kind of relationship. But we’re past that point, so I have to hope this is better than nothing, because that’s what I am if I’m not sober.” He paused, then sighed. “I can’t even swear that what I feel for you is real, and not another sneak attack.”

  A second arrow skewered her gut. “You think this is a…crush?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. It happened so fast, and the more I have of you, the more I want.” He lifted his hand, then let it fall. “I can’t trust any kind of irresistible urge.”

  Her spine stiffened, one vertebra at a time. “You’re putting me in the same class as a bottle of rotgut whiskey.”

  “More like hundred-dollar tequila. I’m not sure if you’re more dangerous when you’re smoothing me out, or when you’re setting me on fire. But I won’t let myself make any promises until I’m sure. I owe that to both of us.”

  “And I’m supposed to hang around until you figure it out.”

  He picked a
t the carpet, eyes downcast. “If you think it’s worth the trouble.”

  If you think I’m worth it. That silent plea, etched into the stark lines of his face, was all that kept her from heaving the book at his head. All around him, hands were snatching at those reins he’d been gripping for so long. Meanwhile, Carma was in the process of rearranging her own boundaries, without a map. It was a lousy time for either of them to fall into a new relationship.

  But like he’d said, it was too late to turn back now.

  That didn’t mean she had to let him dictate all the rules, though, so she said, “I have to think about it.”

  “That’s fair.” He stood, surveyed the interior of the van, and took note of her pajamas. “You actually hate the apartment so much you’d rather sleep in the parking lot?”

  “I prefer my own bed. And since my new phone is finally ready and I got my new debit card in the mail today, I’m going out after work tomorrow to scout campgrounds.”

  His frown made an immediate return. “I don’t like the idea of you staying somewhere alone.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing ever since I left Montana?”

  He shook her off. “Give me a day or two. I’ll find something better.”

  A place he chose, that met his standards. She was on the verge of telling him what to do with his orders when she realized this wasn’t just Gil being arrogant. At a time when change was threatening every part of his life, he needed to maintain some control. Carma could give him at least that much, considering she had brought the clamoring horde to his door.

  “Fine. I’ll wait until the weekend.”

  “Thank you.” He stood for a moment, as if he couldn’t figure out how to leave—or didn’t want to. Then he gave the side of the van a gentle slap. “Sleep tight. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Before Carma could answer, he slid the door shut with a decisive thunk. A few seconds later he cupped his hands against the bubble window beside her head. “Lock the doors!”

  She doubted he could see her through the smoked plexiglass, but she waved a stiff middle finger at him anyway. Then she grabbed the cheap cell phone and called Bing. “I need to vent.”