Relentless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

“In what universe?”

  He smiled, pleased. “We’ll see you tonight.”

  Quint disappeared back into the house, and Carma hummed all the rest of the way to the office.

  Chapter 34

  Three weeks after his first practice session, Gil stood on the back of those same chutes, contemplating the spot where he and Carma had used his chaps as a cushion against the prickly grass. They hadn’t fooled anyone—including Beni and Quint—but even Hank’s smirk couldn’t stand up to Carma’s total lack of embarrassment.

  What? her dancing eyes asked. You’ve never gotten jumped behind the bucking chutes?

  Gil had caught Miz Iris eyeing them, then shooting a grin at Steve that made his ears turn red, which made Gil have to wonder…

  His mind shied away from the details, but those two had seen a lot of arenas and a lot of bucking chutes in almost forty years on the rodeo trail together.

  Tonight, though, the air was charged with a different sort of energy. They’d been following the damn plan to the letter, which meant he’d been on more than twenty horses, handpicked by Steve and Delon to give him a little more of a challenge each time he nodded his head. Faster, more elevation, more drop of their head and shoulders as they came down, increasing the yank on his arm. Gil had matched them jump for jump, his confidence growing with each ride.

  Now they were cranking up the power. There would be no margin for error tonight. These five-year-olds were the rising stars of Jacobs Livestock, brought home for some R&R after the winter rodeos so they’d be fresh and strong for the big summer run. They could carry a cowboy to the pay window if he made a good ride. But one mistake, one twist of the shoulders or slip of a spur, and they would hammer you.

  The one he straddled now was Blue Anchor, a roan mare whose front end was as heavy as her namesake, each jump threatening to jack your shoulders forward and slam your face into her neck. And if you made it past those first two or three seconds…

  Delon slapped Gil on the back. “Remember, she’s gonna want to throw some swoops at you.”

  “I’ll be ready.” He gritted his teeth and said, “Let ’er out.”

  Every tendon and ligament in his arm sang when she ejected from the chute, but he got his heels in her neck and was braced for the impact when her front feet drove into the ground. His gut clenched, fighting to hold his upper body tight as she launched again. He dragged his spurs up to the rigging, and barely snapped them back down to her shoulders before the next sledgehammer blow of hooves on dirt. Reach, drag, reach, drag…

  And then her head disappeared.

  He reached for her neck and found nothing but air, his foot swinging over her neck as she dropped her nose, ducked back to the left, and launched him ass over heels. Before he had time to react, his shoulder and the side of his head plowed into the dirt, rattling every bone and tooth. He’d forgotten the blunt trauma of slamming into the ground.

  And the total fucking insult of getting bucked off.

  Fury exploded in his chest, chasing the aftershocks from his body, but the stars were still dancing in front of his eyes as he lunged to his feet. He stomped toward the bucking chutes where the others stood, eyeing him with varying levels of concern.

  “I thought you said you were ready for the swoop,” Delon said, smirking.

  Gil bent, grabbed a dirt clod, and flung it at his brother’s fat head.

  * * *

  There was no wild sex that night. Or the night after. Or the next Thursday, when Gil staggered into his room shortly after five—which Quint suggested might be a record—and sprawled facedown on his bed. “Geezus. I forgot I could hurt in this many places.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Carma predicted, settling an ice pack onto his right shoulder.

  She didn’t say over it. Bareback riders were like running backs in football. They took a pounding even on the good days. But once he worked through the worst of the initial soreness, it would settle back to a weird sort of normal, like Carma’s aches and pains back in her trick riding days. Quint walked in and handed Carma another ice pack for Gil’s elbow.

  “Are you gonna be able to help out at the meet next week, or should I tell Coach you’re too busy?” He sounded vaguely hopeful.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I can help, too,” Carma offered. “We’re all coming to watch you anyway.”

  “Cool. Maybe you can keep Dad from starting another riot.” Quint’s departure was followed shortly by the sound of rummaging in the refrigerator and a muffled “We’re out of milk again.”

  This was what their lives had become. Gil spent his days at the office, brainstorming—and bickering—with Delon and their mother. His evenings at the arena or in the gym, all the Sanchez men together—sweating, scheming, giving each other a raft of shit. Wednesdays Carma got up at five to get to the Patterson ranch in time for the first patients, spending the night to be sure she didn’t doze off on the road after the long day—in her van, not one of the cabins—and driving home early on Thursday.

  And occasionally Gil found time to wander over to Carma’s van, after they got home from Quint’s track meet, or after Gil got back from his Tuesday night coffee date with Tamela, or after he and Delon finished another rodeo video marathon.

  After. After. After.

  It had become Carma’s mantra. After the Diamond Cowboy is over…

  And when Gil did show up, he was still only half there, his mind occupied with thoughts he rarely shared. There were nights he was so wired he could light up a Times Square billboard, but when she asked if he wanted a massage for the headache she saw throbbing behind his eyes, or offered to share one of the Native star legends from the book she’d bought after he’d asked her, or to sing him a sunset song while he just lay back and relaxed, he nearly always said he was fine.

  Nearly. But the exceptions were enough to keep her believing.

  The rest of the time…he deflected by making love to her. And it was wonderful—sweet and slow, explosively fast, anywhere in between—he gave her the kind of pleasure a woman dreamed of. But he never gave her any of the thousand pieces he doled out to others.

  Tamela got the lion’s share of Gil’s confessions including—Carma assumed—how he felt about her. She was way beyond the point where she could trust her own readings where their relationship was concerned. As for the rest…

  Delon got all the planning and analyzing and wondering whether Gil would be ready in time for the Diamond Cowboy, or if he was delusional for even trying at this late stage. Rochelle got most of his concerns related to the business. Quint got to be in the thick of things with his dad and Beni and Delon every minute that he wasn’t at school or track. And now the college term had ended, Jeremiah got most of Gil’s attention at work as he tried to put into words and notes all the hundred and one things he did at Sanchez Trucking.

  And Carma? She got great sex…and funny GIFs that doubled as their only real communication more days than not.

  Three more weeks…

  She sat beside him on the bed, and he mumbled his gratitude into the bedspread as she stroked the stiff muscles of his neck, a simple massage. The other kind of touch, where she felt as if she could reach inside and connect with him, required a combined focus and pooling of energy, and he seemed determined not to ask that of her. She supposed he considered this pain a rite of passage, his price of admittance back into the club. Carma understood.

  Carma always understood, even when she didn’t want to.

  He hummed his appreciation as she kneaded the wire-tight muscles of his back. “If you want a piece of me tonight, you’re gonna have to roll me over and take it yourself.”

  She laughed, making a concerted effort to stop brooding. He’d warned her it wasn’t going to be a joyride, and she’d jumped on this runaway train anyway. She could hardly complain now.

  She adjusted one of the ic
e packs. “You’ve got almost two hours to chill before we meet everyone at the Lone Steer.”

  For what would be their first actual date. And a slab of the prime rib everyone bragged about, promising Carma it was the best she’d ever eat. As if she wasn’t from Montana, for crying out loud.

  What was that saying? You can always tell a Texan…

  Gil groaned. “Is that tonight?”

  Carma stiffened, already knowing what he was going to say. “You can’t make it,” she said.

  “I screwed up.” He rolled over, wincing when he tilted his head to meet her gaze. “I told Jeremiah he could have the night off, so he went to Canyon to see his girlfriend.”

  “But Analise has to leave at six to pick Cruz up at the airport.” A twenty-four-hour layover between his last rodeo in Florida and the next one in Oregon.

  “I know. I completely forgot about Bing’s birthday dinner, and I just…” Gil squeezed his head between his hands. “I couldn’t take any more questions. Jeremiah is gonna be great, but right now, he’s wearing me out.”

  Carma got it. She did. Gil’s attention was being pulled in so many different directions, it was amazing that he didn’t lose track more often.

  “It’s okay,” she said stiffly. “I understand.”

  “Carma…”

  “No, really.” She squared her shoulders and sucked in the bottom lip that wanted to pout. “I’ll have plenty of company, and you can have a little alone time. Just you and a couple dozen drivers.”

  “I am really sorry.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I promise, I’ll make it up to you…”

  Yeah. Sure. When the Diamond Cowboy was over.

  But that evening as she pasted on a smile and explained to yet another person why Gil couldn’t make it to dinner, Carma couldn’t help feeling a powerful sense of déjà vu. How many times had she sat beside an empty chair and told friends or family or nosy strangers how Jayden’s practice session had run late, or he’d stayed in Billings a couple extra days to try out a new horse, or he was too tired from driving through the night after a rodeo north of Edmonton.

  All valid excuses. All priorities that had meant more to him than Carma.

  Now here she was again. And how would she know if she crossed the line from being patient and understanding to a starry-eyed fool who believed that all would magically become right at the stroke of midnight on the last Saturday in May?

  Gil sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her—unless there was a GIF for that. Right on cue, her phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was not a GIF.

  Slow night. Waiting for a call, then locking up. See you in forty-five, max.

  He was coming. For her. Carma hugged the phone and mentally took back every doubt she’d had.

  Chapter 35

  It was the first time in years—since they’d hired their twentieth driver, to be exact—that Gil had even considered leaving the dispatch office untended on a weeknight. Their fleet was rolling like greased steel, though, and the customers were silent as happy little clams. When he’d arrived, Analise was painting her toenails something called Suck Me Scarlet.

  “That’s all there is,” she said, tossing him a note.

  D-H Ted called. Has a deal in the works to expand Express Auto Rental into Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Wants to talk numbers with THE MAN.

  When Gil reached for his phone, Analise shook a finger at him. “He’s on a Very Important Conference Call until seven. He’ll call you when he’s done.”

  Gil hadn’t heard a peep from anyone else since. He should just go—deal with Ted in the morning—but in addition to being a classic dickhead, Ted was a fickle bastard. If Gil didn’t stroke his ego sufficiently, he might take his new business elsewhere, and there were paychecks to consider, especially now that they’d hired Jeremiah and another mechanic, not to mention the king’s ransom he would be paying Beth when she took over as receptionist.

  Thank you, Analise, for making sure the woman didn’t underestimate her worth. This was the trouble with hiring known entities. Sometimes they knew too damn much about how bad Gil needed them.

  He stretched, groaning as several vertebrae and both elbows cracked, and checked the time again. Seven fourteen, a.k.a. three minutes after the last time he’d looked.

  Call, dammit. If Gil got out of the office by seven thirty, he would be at the Lone Steer before everyone finished their salads.

  He drummed his fingers on the desk, wishing he’d remembered his guitar. There was that new meditation program Bing had given him. It would be good practice for competition, forcing himself to relax and focus when he felt more like decapitating Ted dolls.

  He also had a knot behind his left shoulder blade that would feel a lot better if he wasn’t slouched in a chair. Maybe later he could ask Carma to work her magic on it.

  Thank God for Carma. He wasn’t half the wreck he would’ve been without her. Carma’s van had become his oasis, the one place he could go where no one was asking him anything.

  With Carma he could shut his brain down and just exist.

  And do his damnedest not to fry her circuits when he was on overload. He’d been trying hard to decompress before he showed up at her campsite: workouts, progressive relaxation, picking a few songs on his guitar, and his latest hobby, packing various parts of his body in ice. Either this shit had hurt a lot less when he was twenty, or he’d been half-buzzed a lot more than he remembered.

  It was also a lot more exhausting, but he hadn’t been trying to run a trucking company and raise a kid back then. There weren’t so many people asking him questions that he felt like his brain was being turned inside out and pecked by crows on a daily basis—so that he forgot something like Bing’s birthday. He never forgot that kind of thing, and doing it now did not bode well. If he wore himself too thin, his willpower might be the first thing to give.

  All the better reason to close up shop and go have a meal that didn’t come in a takeout bag.

  He went out and got the sweater Carma left hanging on her chair for the days when she wore sleeveless sundresses and his mother was having hot flashes. Gil loved sundress days.

  Hell, he loved any time he stepped out of his office and saw Carma. He’d caught himself finding excuses to leave his desk just for the sheer pleasure of watching her glance up and smile as if he was the best thing she’d seen all day. He’d even started playing the old game he used to with the pills. How long can I stand to wait until the next one?

  So far this week his best had been an hour and half. How the hell would he manage when she went to work at the Patterson ranch full time, and he had to go cold turkey?

  Maybe he could talk her into texting him selfies every hour on the hour.

  He shoved the CD into the disk tray on his computer, turned up the volume, lowered his aching bones onto the floor and stretched out on his back. When he rolled up the sweater to use as a pillow, Carma’s scent surrounded him.

  Three more weeks. Then he’d have to learn how to share. Her time. Her energy. Even her smiles. And selfish bastard that he was, instead of solutions, all he could come up with were excuses to keep her right where he could see and smell and taste her whenever he wanted.

  But Carma shouldn’t be locked in a dingy little office. At the clinic she could put all her gifts to use, surrounded by horses and people who needed her particular brand of magic. Helping. Healing. Spreading her warmth.

  And ending her days on a horse, surrounded by miles of open prairie.

  She was a creature of the wind and sky, and only a complete jackass would try to ground her. He should be thankful she was only going a hundred miles and not clear back to Montana. Besides, if the clinic could capture her spirit and keep her in Texas, Gil would have more of a chance at holding onto her heart.

  He glared at the stubbornly silent phone he’d left lying on the desk. He could start by showing up
for dinner. Or dessert, at this rate. But at least she’d know he was trying.

  Over the high-end speakers, a soothing voice murmured instructions. Breathe in, the deepest breath you’ve taken all day. Breathe out, releasing your worries. Let go of the stress. Feel the tension leaving your shoulders, your neck, and your face.

  He closed his eyes and batted away his persistent, whirring thoughts like moths under a porch light, putting all his focus into relaxing, muscle by muscle. Just a few minutes…

  “Dad?”

  Gil jolted awake, heart pounding, body cold and aching. What? Where…

  “Dad!” Quint stood in the door, his face pinched with worry. “Are you okay? Did you pass out?”

  Gil pushed up onto one elbow, groggily scrubbing at his eyes. “You’re supposed to be at the Lone Steer.”

  “Duh. We waited so long everyone else left. I even talked Carma into dancing with me once, but you still didn’t show up. I texted twice. Carma said you probably got hung up on your call.”

  Son of a bitch. Ted. Gil grabbed his phone. Nine twenty. No missed calls. The bastard had stood him up. And since the phone hadn’t woken him…

  He’d left Carma sitting alone. Embarrassed her. Made her feel stupid for trusting him. This was not the man he’d made of himself. He did not blow off any kind of a date for any reason. But tonight he’d let Carma down twice over.

  Gil hung his head and swore.

  Quint sighed. “You can say that again.”

  Gil did, as the guilt and the craving hit him like a one-two punch straight to the gut. He clenched his hands around his head, fingers digging into his skull as if he could strangle that damn whisper.

  You know what would really take the edge off…

  He punched up speed dial on his phone, intending to call Tamela. He could send Quint out to explain to Carma. But he didn’t want a voice over the phone. He wanted a warm touch, and he needed to apologize. Find some way to erase the hurt he’d inflicted. Let her curse him if that’s what it took.

  But first he had to get himself there, despite the nearly irresistible urge to go the opposite direction.