Relentless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  He held out a hand to Quint. “I need a little help here. I’m not sure I can get up by myself.”

  Let Quint assume he was just talking about his stiff muscles.

  They walked side by side to the house. In the driveway, Gil stopped, trying not to even look at the Charger, his potential chariot to hell. “I’m going to talk to Carma,” he told Quint. “Call your grandmother and have her come and stay with you.”

  “I’m fine…” Quint began, before something in Gil’s expression stopped him. A flicker of unease crossed Quint’s face. “Anything else?”

  Gil looked down at hands that were trembling with the effort to maintain control. “Tell her to keep an eye on the car keys.” He glanced around the lot—there was the tow truck, three semi tractors, plus the service pickups. “All the keys.”

  Then he forced his feet to take him away from all those wheels and toward Carma.

  * * *

  Carma didn’t bother getting undressed, just stretched out on the woven wool rug she’d spread on the ground beside the van and stared up into the trees while she waited for Gil to show up bearing an armload of apologies and excuses. She knew the drill. Some emergency had popped up with some driver, or he’d remembered he had some paperwork that had to be done by morning and he’d lost track of time, or the call he’d been waiting for had taken way longer than he’d expected.

  I’m sorry, but this is my job. If I want to win, I have to put in the time.

  Oh, wait, that was Jayden—but the basic idea was the same. And it would leave Carma feeling petty and unreasonable for expecting Gil to slack off on her account.

  Fitting, that lying on her temporary patio made her feel like a sacrifice in waiting—circled in citronella candles to ward off the mosquitoes, with the cushy pad from a lounger for comfort.

  Dramatic much? No one had forced her to come here. No one was forcing her to stay. And the gullible part of her was still hoping Gil would be different. That both his reasons and his apology would make it all right.

  She didn’t turn her head when she heard the soft pad of footsteps coming up the trail they’d beaten from his door to hers, just watched in her peripheral vision as he lowered himself stiffly onto the rug. He didn’t say anything for five of her deliberately calm breaths. Then he huffed a sigh. “I should’ve just come to the party and let Ted talk to the answering machine like everybody else.”

  “Dickhead Ted?” Carma guessed.

  “Yeah. He’s dangling a bunch of new business and seeing how high he can make me jump.”

  Of course it would be someone important, the better to make Carma feel guilty for not getting over herself.

  Gil hunched his shoulders, gaze fixed on the fingers that worried a snag in the carpet. “And then he didn’t call, so I didn’t wake up—”

  Carma swiveled her head to stare at him. “You fell asleep?”

  Gil? Who could barely manage two consecutive hours of shut-eye in his pricey adjustable bed with his white-noise machine playing? But he did have that not-quite-there look, as if he’d been woken in the middle of the night.

  He found a new spot on the rug to torture, still not making eye contact. “I’m sorry. It was stupid. I should’ve set an alarm or something.”

  “You didn’t even hear Quint’s texts.”

  “I know. I can’t believe it either.” How exhausted did he have to be to doze off in his office, and not hear the phone that Analise swore was wired directly into his brain? He spread his arms with a derisive smile. “Behold, my natural gift for taking any mistake and fucking it up beyond repair.”

  No excuses. No explanations. Just pure self-flagellation. With his defenses leveled by fatigue, she could all but taste the wretched burn in the back of his throat. Gil didn’t make empty promises. And the failure to keep the ones he’d made was eating him up.

  He was already beating the ever-lovin’ crap out of himself. He didn’t need her piling on.

  She rolled onto her side to face him, pillowing her head on one bent arm. “Why didn’t you tell me you were so tired? I would’ve sent you home to get some rest last night.”

  “I think you just answered your own question,” he said, with a pale imitation of his usual smirk.

  She rolled her eyes. God forbid he admit that he wasn’t superhuman, capable of conquering the world on coffee and sheer determination. “Not that I haven’t appreciated the, um, services rendered, but to be totally honest, I’m wearing a little thin myself. I wouldn’t mind less Olympic-level sex and more just lying here vegetating together.”

  “I’m sorry.” His expression went a shade darker. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Gil. Relax.” She laid a hand on his arm, imagining a beam of sunlight passing between them. The calm of a mountain lake mirroring the sky. The muscles under her fingers slackened, then tensed again as he pulled away.

  “You shouldn’t waste that on me.”

  Excuse me? Carma had been upset and hurt earlier in the evening. Now she was downright pissed. She jabbed her finger into his biceps. “First off, Gil Sanchez, don’t you dare call yourself a waste of energy. And secondly, I am a renewable resource.”

  His jaw worked. “But you can be drained.”

  “In extreme situations. Or if I don’t give myself time and space to recharge.” She angled her head, but he was still avoiding her gaze. “You are not sucking the life out of me. And as someone recently told me, you don’t get to decide what I need without asking first.”

  “Great. On top of everything else, I’m making up my own double standards as we go.” He raked a hand through his hair. “But you were wiped out after that first visit to the Patterson clinic.”

  Was that why he’d been keeping her at a distance? “Again, extreme circumstance. Which you would know, if you’d asked.”

  “If I hadn’t been too wrapped up in myself, you mean.” He breathed out a weary curse. “Anything else I need to apologize for, while I’m at it?”

  Carma thought of the list of gripes she’d compiled at the Lone Steer. Then she looked at the slump of his shoulders, and felt the sheer physical and mental exhaustion smothering him like a dense black cloud.

  She squeezed his arm gently. “At the rate you’ve been pushing yourself, you were bound to crash. And yes, I was unhappy with you, but I’ll get over it if you tell me what I can do to help.”

  Anyone but Carma might’ve missed the hesitation before he said, “That’s plenty.”

  “Bullshit. Tell me what you really need.”

  He shook his head. “You’re already doing enough.”

  “Gil.” She put an edge in her voice. “Do you really want me to tell Analise that you call her new look Marilyn Monroe meets Marilyn Manson?”

  “God no. She’ll come in dripping fake blood just to show me how much worse it could be.”

  “Then tell me what you need.”

  “I can’t ask…” He raised a hand to ward off her hiss of frustration. “Fine. When you’re gone, it’s a dog pound in there—everybody yapping and whining and growling at each other.”

  She scrunched her face. “Worse than when I am there?”

  “Last week Mom and Delon and I got so loud during one of our discussions that Max threatened to turn the hose on us.”

  Carma blinked. “Max is scared to death of your mother.”

  “You see what I mean.”

  She nodded, her stomach settling to somewhere in the vicinity of her belly button. Her entire week revolved around Wednesdays. Whenever the chaos in the Sanchez office got overwhelming, she put on her headphones, closed her eyes, and imagined herself at the Patterson ranch, helping one of the amputees rig up a system for saddling a horse one-handed. Or loping across the prairie without another human in sight—or sound.

  “Forget it,” Gil said abruptly. “The clinic is the whole reason you came down here.”


  Not the whole reason. Carma suspected that even if her grandmother hadn’t given her a shove, she’d have manufactured a reason to come visit Bing—and Gil. No matter which direction she’d wandered since that night, her internal compass had been pointed toward Earnest, Texas.

  And she’d known from the moment she laid eyes on him that Gil wasn’t an easy man. That he’d only get more volatile and less accessible in these weeks leading up to the Diamond Cowboy. How much pressure he would put on himself. Just showing up wasn’t enough for Gil. He was in it to win it, one big chance to leave his mark.

  Three more weeks. Then the Diamond Cowboy would be over and Gil’s dream along with it, one way or another.

  “Okay,” she said. “You’ve got me five days a week, until Beth takes over.”

  The wave of relief that washed through him and on to her was worth the balled-up disappointment in her gut. “One more thing,” he said.

  She braced herself. What more could he want?

  “Can I stay for a while?” He finally lifted his gaze, and she nearly jerked her hand away from what she saw there. A bottomless, hopeless void—one he’d managed to hide from her and most everyone else. “If I leave here now, I’m not sure I won’t keep going until I get to the bar and tell them to give me a double of whatever will kick me the hardest.”

  Her heart knocked unsteadily as the demon that lived inside of him sneered at her. Did you really think it would be that easy to take him away from me?

  Yes, she had, she realized with a sick jolt. Despite all she knew and all his warnings, deep down she had let herself believe that Gil had conquered his addiction, unable to imagine anything holding up against his raw determination.

  This was what he’d tried to tell her. What he shared with Tamela that no one but another addict could ever truly understand. But tonight he had come to Carma instead, and the significance of that choice stole her breath.

  “I’m right here, as long as you need me,” she said, barely managing a whisper.

  He melted into her with a profound sigh, wrapping an arm around her waist and burrowing his cheek against her chest, a position so unlike his natural state of dominance that it took her a moment to react. Her hand hovered, uncertain, like he was one of her mom’s barn cats who’d sidle close, then bolt if she reached for them. But Gil sighed again as her fingers settled on his back and began to move, slow and reassuring. His breath played warm across the inner curve of her breast, and Carma was suddenly, intensely aware of the beat of her own heart, the air moving in and out of her lungs.

  He was still for so long she thought he might have fallen asleep again. Then he asked, “Did Quint really make you dance with him?”

  “Yes. Beni too.” She ran her fingers through his hair, smoothing where he’d raked it into spikes. “Great pair of wingmen you’ve got there.”

  She felt him smile through the thin cotton of her sundress. “True Sanchez boys.”

  They drifted into silence, the night filled with chirrups, hoots, and off in the distance, the eerie wail of coyotes.

  Softly, she began to hum along.

  Chapter 36

  Earnest, Texas—two weeks before the Diamond Cowboy Classic

  The day after Bing’s birthday party, Carma left Gil once again holed up with his mother and Delon, debating how they could absorb the increased business from Express Auto while still in the process of expanding to accommodate the Heartland Foods loads.

  Debate being a polite way of putting it. There was intense disagreement over what other clients might have to be weeded out, and which drivers had the skill and attention to detail required for hauling cars, apparently one of the trickier types of loads.

  Carma had made her escape at five o’clock on the dot.

  The temperature had climbed into the mideighties, too hot to go for a walk for another couple of hours, but she was too restless to sit. She cranked up some Linkin Park on the van’s stereo and dug one of her ropes, idly twirling it in the shade of the huge trees around the van.

  “Would you teach me?”

  She spun around to find Quint watching her, hands in pockets. Other than the night of the weenie and marshmallow roast, he hadn’t come near her campsite. Whatever he wanted now, it wasn’t just roping lessons. “Sure. There’s another rope right there next to the van.”

  He picked it up and, to her surprise, deftly built a loop. When he saw Carma watching, he said, “Tori taught me how to rope the dummy. And Shawnee showed me a couple of things.”

  “Did she now?” Carma propped her hands on her hips. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  He demonstrated a basic twirl and a wobbly ocean wave, with the rope wrapping around his arm halfway through the second circle. “I haven’t practiced much,” he muttered as he untangled it.

  “Have you ever tried roping cattle?” she asked, remembering his interest in Tori’s team-roping video.

  “Not real steers.” He made a new loop and gave the ocean wave another try. “A couple of times at Tori’s place they pulled the practice dummy around while I roped it off her horse, but we were barely even trotting.”

  Carma paused in the middle of adjusting her own loop. “I got the impression you weren’t crazy about horses.”

  “They’re fine, if they’re super calm and I know I can trust them. I like Cadillac and Fudge. And Shawnee’s got a cool horse named Roy.”

  And what did they all have in common, other than being extremely well broke? Duh. Carma couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to get a clue. “You want to be a roper.”

  Quint’s rope tangled around his arm again. “Someday.”

  “Why not now?”

  He took great pains to straighten out the rope. Carma waited while he adjusted the loop to some precise, predetermined size. Then he let his hands fall to his sides without taking a swing. “How was Dad when you saw him last night?”

  Frightening. She didn’t have say it. She saw it in Quint’s eyes. “What happened before he came over here?” she countered.

  “Nothing. Not really. I mean, he was really upset about falling asleep and all, and he told me to call Grandma and have her come stay with me.” This was the point when Quint usually would have rolled his eyes or made a face to let her know that he knew why his dad might not be sure when he’d get home. Quint didn’t do either of those things. “He said to tell her to guard all the keys.”

  “Um…keys?” Like, lock him out of the house?

  “To the car and the trucks and everything. So he couldn’t go to the bar.”

  Carma did a double take. “He told you that?”

  “Not the part about the bar, but why else?” Quint fiddled with the hondo on the rope. “Grandma and I kept watch to be sure he didn’t try walking instead.”

  It was only a quarter of a mile, max. Carma sometimes walked down to the Kwicky Mart or the Smoke Shack just to get out of the office at lunch, and the Corral Bar was just across the street. “He stayed here,” she said.

  In the van, eventually, but they’d slept in their clothes, on top of the blankets. She hadn’t suggested otherwise, getting the distinct sense that Gil felt naked enough just coming to her in that state. He’d left her at dawn with a kiss on the forehead and a whispered “Thank you.”

  And today in the office, he’d seemed like his normal self, which said volumes about how good he was at hiding his struggles. So good that he’d fooled Carma into thinking his addiction was just the reason he didn’t drink, the butt of his caustic jokes.

  She suspected it was the same for Quint, and he must be even more shaken than she was. This was his father.

  “Anyway,” Quint said, “Grandma and I talked about how everything is changing in the office and everybody’s stressed, but it’s the worst for Dad because he’s the one they all go to when they have a question. So we talked to Uncle Delon, and he was gon
na talk to Max and Analise and Jeremiah, and everybody’s gonna try real hard to take some of the load off of him so he doesn’t get so…”

  “Tired,” Carma supplied.

  Quint smiled faintly. “Yeah. And we figured you should know what’s going on, too.”

  “Good call.” Her own smile wobbled. She’d spent the whole day scheming how to make Gil’s life easier, and they already had it covered. She didn’t even have to worry about butting in. “We’ll take care of him.”

  “Thanks. Just don’t tell him, okay?”

  She was feeling way too close to tears, and that was someplace neither she nor Quint wanted to go, so she deliberately went off on a tangent. “About the team roping, you mean? ’Cuz I could swear I saw you working out on the spur board with them the other day.”

  Quint was suddenly fascinated by the hondo on his rope. “Uncle Delon insisted. He thinks I might want to be a bareback rider.”

  “Where did he get that idea?”

  He sighed. “I sorta accidentally gave my dad the wrong idea.”

  “I see.” Carma folded her arms and leaned back against the side of the van. “How does a person sorta accidentally do that?”

  Quint huffed impatiently. “We were looking at his old pictures and stuff, and his chaps were there, and they’re just really cool, you know? He wore them at the National Finals. The biggest rodeo in the world. And I don’t have anything else of his, the way Beni has his dad’s old Finals jackets and stuff. I was checking them out, and Dad asked if I wanted them.”

  Ah. Now it made sense. “And he assumed you were fascinated because you wanted to follow in his spur tracks.”

  “Yeah.”

  Carma took the time to really look at him. See what she could feel. “Are you scared to ride bucking horses?”

  “What sane person wouldn’t be?” he shot back. “I’ve seen how sore Dad is, and he’s only been bucked off that one time. They joke about how bareback riding hurts even when you make a great ride. What’s supposed to be fun about that?” Quint eyed her suspiciously. “You aren’t gonna tell him, are you?”