A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances)

by Quint, Suzie

  Eden gave her mama a tight-lipped smile.

  “Is there something else worrying you?”

  Eden looked down, watching her feet intently as she jiggled the top foot back and forth. “Deanne and me, we were kinda hoping, well, that you and Mr. Thomas liked each other.”

  “Oh.” Great. This had to come up now? Two months ago, Georgia would have known what to say. Had, in fact, thought it through and practiced the sentences in her head until she had them down cold because with all the time they spent together and as close as the two girls were, she’d expected this to come up sooner or later. But that was before she and Daniel had kissed. And groped. Don’t forget the groping. And before she’d rethought the life example she wanted to set for her daughter.

  “Well, sugar . . . I do like Mr. Thomas.” That was from her script. Could she use more? “We’re friends.”

  Eden raised her eyes and Georgia rushed to say more. “But you’re talking about a special kind of liking and I . . .” What should she say? She wasn’t sure enough of her position to get Eden’s hopes up. Too flustered to think of something appropriately vague, Georgia fell back on her rehearsed speech. “You shouldn’t count on it.”

  Eden sighed and Georgia hoped the conversation was over.

  “Couldn’t you maybe try?”

  Oh hell. Now what was she supposed to say? “We’ll see.” Another tried and true cliché.

  Eden’s mouth stretched as if she were trying to keep the corners from turning down. “Yeah, I know what that means.”

  No, she didn’t, Georgia thought. Though Eden would normally have been right thinking it meant no, this time it meant . . . we’ll see.

  “Brush your teeth, sugar lips, and go to bed,” Georgia turned off the TV and dropped her collection of Doritos crumbs in the wastebasket. In the kitchen, she busied herself cleaning the counters until she heard the bedroom door close behind Eden; then she swiped one of her daddy’s beers from the refrigerator. Leaning back against the counter, she opened it, took a long draw, and checked the messages on her cell to discover Eden wasn’t the only one who’d gotten a call from Dallas. Judging from the time, Daniel had called while she was in the bar, looking for Sol. As noisy as it had been, she’d missed hearing it ring.

  His voice sounded like sanity, she thought as she listened to his message.

  “Was hoping to catch you when Deanne called, but I guess we missed you this time. I hope things are going well with your parents and that your ex isn’t giving you too hard a time.”

  Georgia had told him early in their friendship about Sol’s antics. She regretted that now because any sane man would think twice about getting involved with a woman whose ex-husband acted as crazy as Sol did when he scented another man around her.

  “Give me a call sometime and let me know how it’s going. Oh, and your cat’s doing fine, but she may be declawed by the time you get her back.”

  Georgia giggled. She wished it wasn’t too late to call him. He was the one person who would understand how much she’d miss her daughter when Eden went out to the ranch.

  She didn’t want to think about that, so instead she contemplated making her own family with him. It was so perfect. Their girls would be delighted to officially be sisters.

  And being married to Daniel would be so different from being married to Sol.

  Daniel was devoted to his daughter. Sol was . . . Okay, Sol was devoted to Eden, too. A point for each.

  Daniel was a practiced parent. He’d had sole responsibility for Deanne for almost four years. Sol was a part-time father. Okay, so that wasn’t his fault. She’d made that choice for him. No points for either of them.

  But parenting skills weren’t what was lacking in Eden’s life. What Georgia wanted for her daughter was the example of a functional marriage where two people were kind and considerate of each other and disagreements were solved with compromise and logic.

  Daniel was a good fit for that role. They already had a supportive friendship that would translate to a solid partnership, and their night of kissing and groping convinced her Daniel would be a thoughtful and satisfying lover who wouldn’t be irrationally jealous.

  It would be nothing like it had been with Sol.

  She and Sol had been . . . combustible. They’d burned hot for the short time they’d been married. It had been fun and exciting while it lasted, but it had also been terrifying. Sol was a risk taker and a control freak. Georgia had spent most of her time either worried sick about him killing himself on those damned bulls or fighting to keep from being smothered. In between, there’d been moments of utter bliss. Okay, there’d been a lot of those moments.

  He’d made her feel as though she was as vital to him as the air he breathed. His kisses had been heady stuff, and their sex life . . . well, satisfying seemed too mild a word to describe it. It had been wild and passionate and intense. No. It had been more than that. It had been toe-curling, mark-him-with-her-nails, forget-her-own-name crazy-good. And loud. Heaven help her, it had been loud. He’d gotten very, very good at making her scream his name.

  Not really the kind of sex you wanted to have with your child in the bedroom down the hall.

  She was older now. Old enough to know other things were more important than the physical chemistry that still sometimes made her hormones run wild around her ex.

  So what if Daniel as potential husband material wouldn’t have occurred to her if it hadn’t been for the night of the kiss-and-grope? Sex alone never held a marriage together. She and Sol were living proof of that. Daniel was right. Sometimes the four of them felt like a family, and that was what she wanted for Eden.

  As she took another sip of her beer, a soft scuffing sound came from her right.

  “Grams?”

  Her grandmother shuffled into the kitchen.

  “It’s late. What are you doing up?”

  “Us old folk don’t sleep much. You’ll find that out when you get to be my age.”

  “I don’t think I want to live to be your age,” Georgia said. She’d hate having to rely on others to take care of her.

  “You’ll change your mind when you realize how fast it all goes by.” Grams lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table. “Seems like I was your age just day before yesterday. You gonna share a beer with your granny, or you gonna to bogart ‘em all?”

  Georgia smiled to herself as she opened the fridge for another beer. Grams’ hands were gnarled with arthritis, so Georgia opened it before setting it on the table. She took a chair as her grandmother took her first sip.

  “Ah,” Grams said with heartfelt satisfaction before she focused on Georgia. “So Eden’s going out to the McKnights?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s good. You got enough on your plate.”

  “No more than you did at my age.” Grams had been widowed young and raised three kids alone. Reminding herself of that kept Georgia from grumbling too much, but it also brought back the school nurse’s comments about repetition compulsion. Georgia’s own parents were together but that had been a near thing, and their marriage wasn’t exactly the model she wanted her daughter repeating.

  “Oh, it wasn’t easy,” Grams said, “especially with your uncle Ray. If I’d had someone like the McKnights to help out, you can bet I’d’ve been all over it like a duck on a June bug. The McKnights are good people. You won’t have to worry about Eden.”

  “I know.”

  Grams cocked her head. “But?”

  “But what?”

  “I thought I heard a but coming. What’s got you worried, girl child?”

  Georgia took another pull on her beer while she decided how much to unload. “It’s just . . . they’re so focused on rodeo. Every year, they put more resources into breeding bulls. I don’t want Eden sucked into that.”

  “Oh, honey.” Grams patted her hand. “Rodeo’s their business.”

  “It’s a business that kills people.” Georgia pressed her fingers to her mouth as if she could push the wo
rds back in. She’d been thinking about Sol and forgotten for a moment that Grams was the last one who needed reminding about the dangers of bull riding.

  Grams brushed her hand through the air as though it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t anymore. “Car accidents kill people, too, but does that mean we should stop riding in ‘em?”

  “No, of course not. But at least cars do something for you. They get you where you’re going. Rodeo’s just entertainment.”

  Grams smiled in that way she had when she was thinking she’d neglected to educate her children—or, in this case, grandchild—properly. Georgia jumped up to help when Grams pushed herself up from her chair. Beer bottle in one hand, she flapped the other, encouraging Georgia to follow her into her small bedroom.

  Grams stopped in front of the dresser and plucked a five-by-seven sterling silver frame from the mementos crowding the top. She gazed at the picture for a moment before she handed it to Georgia. “That’s your granddaddy in Oklahoma City,” she said as though Georgia didn’t already know. “He was twenty-six years old.”

  Georgia sat on the edge of the bed. Frozen in time, her grandfather, in full cowboy regalia, held up the gold buckle he’d won. He had smiling eyes and an infectious grin that had surely caught the attention of every buckle bunny west of the Mississippi. “He was a good-looking man, Grams.”

  “That he was.” Grams sat beside her and smiled at the picture fondly. “Good in bed, too.”

  Georgia tried to suppress her gasp and ended up choking instead. Grams patted her back. “There, there, child. Shocked you, did I? Well, your generation didn’t invent sex, you know.”

  “I know,” Georgia said in a thin voice. She held the picture between her hands as Grams reached over and lovingly drew her finger down the image of the man she’d married.

  “He was a good man, but he had a need to live his life at full speed. Sometimes I think he knew he wouldn’t make old bones, so he packed every moment as full as he could get it.” She sighed. “But that’s silliness. That’s me trying to be poetic about his life. He was who he was, and I loved him like the devil.”

  Georgia knew the pitfalls of romanticizing someone who wasn’t around. It seemed to be a weakness for the women in her family.

  “How come you never remarried, Grams?”

  “Oh, I thought about it.” She bumped shoulders with Georgia. “Don’t tell your mama, but I came real close to doing it once.”

  Georgia felt her eyebrows lift. Grams was a regular firecracker. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because he was a nice man. Nice and steady. He’d have taken good care of me, and I’d have been bored out of my skull married to him.”

  Georgia let the picture drop to her lap.

  “It never pays to settle, honey.” Grams took the picture from her and gazed at the love of her life. “Without passion, you’ll never get through life’s rough spots.”

  It was a nice sentiment, but Georgia wasn’t convinced. She and Sol had had passion, but it hadn’t saved their marriage. The easiness she felt when she and Daniel took the girls to the pool or skating was nicer. Passion was . . . messy. Intense. She didn’t have the energy for it.

  And she wanted her daughter to break the pattern. “Grams, what were your parents like?”

  “My mama was good people, but she died before she should have. I think you were three when a stroke took her. I don’t remember my daddy. He died young. A submariner in WW2. The Japs sank his boat in the Pacific.”

  So out of the past four generations, three women had raised their children by themselves. Repetition compulsion. The sins of the father. Or in this case, the sins of the mothers who’d chosen husbands who died too soon. If she didn’t want that for Eden, it was up to her to break the pattern. Georgia prayed it wasn’t too late. Even if was, she had to try.

  ###

  While her mother saw her physical therapist and then her speech therapist, Georgia met with her mother’s doctor.

  The discovery that her mother’s doctor had retired wasn’t that surprising. He’d been as old as the hills when Georgia was young. What shocked her was that her mama’s new doctor was not only a Yankee from one of the Great Lakes states but a woman as well.

  Dr. Ackerman was on the far side of forty. She wore glasses but looked over them more than through them and spoke in clipped phrases. The only reason Georgia could figure out that her mother hadn’t found another doctor was that having a Yankee woman for a doctor gave her two things to gripe about for the price of one. It probably killed her that the stroke kept her from complaining about it.

  “Has anyone spoken to you about your mother’s therapy?” Dr. Ackerman asked.

  Georgia shook her head.

  “Your mother. She’s a lucky woman. The stroke impaired her right side, but I’ve seen worse. She’s not that steady on her feet. That might be the result of the stroke. Or it might be preexisting. Family doesn’t always want to see physical deterioration. The therapy will help her get her sense of balance back. Her coordination, too. The biggest thing—I’m sure you’ve noticed—is her speech. She understands what you say, but she can’t find the words she wants.”

  Georgia had figured that out half an hour after she’d gotten home.

  “Your mother . . .” Dr. Ackerman tapped her pen against her bottom lip as though looking for an inoffensive way to phrase her thoughts. “Well, I’m going to be straight with you. She’s manipulative.”

  Now there was a news flash. Georgia barked a laugh then covered her mouth, embarrassed. Her mother could teach a master’s level course in guilt and manipulation.

  “You’ll need to be patient. She’s going to get discouraged. So will you. Don’t let the pity party get out of hand.”

  Dr. Ackerman consulted the medical file in front of her. “She’s scheduled for therapy three times a week,” Doctor Ackerman continued. “That’s three hours of physical therapy and three hours of speech therapy.”

  “That seems like a lot,” Georgia said.

  “It’s on the heavy side, but the sooner she sees results, the less discouraged she’ll get. We don’t want her giving up.” She lifted a sheet in the file and scanned the page below it. “We’d like to see her in group therapy. That will help her frame of mind. It gives the speech therapy a boost as well, but so far, your mother has refused.”

  Georgia wasn’t surprised. Her mama wouldn’t want strangers staring at her in the shape she was in. Georgia figured she’d have to insist. That wasn’t going to be pretty.

  They went on to talk about the challenges her mother faced with her daily self-care functions, such as dressing, bathing, feeding, and toileting.

  “She needs to do as much as she can for herself,” the doctor said. “If you do it for her, she’ll expect it. I’ve seen it before. Some people give up because it’s easier to let others do it for them.”

  Georgia suppressed a groan. This was going to be the summer from hell.

  ###

  Sol should have been out mending fences with his daddy. Zach had gone instead, leaving Sol to work in the barn, so he’d be there when Eden showed up.

  It was a valid excuse. After all, Eden was his kid, and he didn’t get to see her nearly as much as he wanted to. That was true, but it wasn’t the whole story.

  He dropped the small toolbox beside the mechanical bull set up in the back of the barn. Old Taurus had already been used hard when Sol finagled a deal for it back in high school, and it took regular maintenance to keep it going. He didn’t ride it himself anymore, but some of his younger brothers practiced their balance on it, and they occasionally rented it out to one of the local bars.

  He pulled off the work glove and tried to flex his hand inside the Ace bandage. The hand had been giving him fits for a couple of months, but he’d felt something pop at the last rodeo. It felt like the bones were scraping against each other, and he could practically hear the fingernails-on-the-blackboard squeal that should go with it.

  It wasn’t bad as bull-riding
injuries went. He probably wasn’t even going to feel the rain coming on in his hand as he got older the way he already did in his left knee, but he couldn’t grip hard with it, which meant no riding until it healed.

  He wasn’t a patient man, but he tried not to be stupid. It would really suck to get bucked off and hurt bad because he was too impatient to give his hand a couple of weeks to heal. Hell, it wasn’t like sitting on the sidelines for a few weeks was going to cost him his big break. That had come and gone two years ago. At least with Eden there, he wouldn’t mind being grounded so much.

  He’d finished checking all Taurus’ gears and hydraulics when he heard, “Is he workin’?”

  Sol glanced over his shoulder to find his youngest brothers, Aaron and Tobias, eyeing the bull. “You ready to ride?”

  At fourteen and thirteen, they should have been past the stage where they acted like puppies climbing over each other to be first, but Sol still saw it in them at times. They both had aspirations to make the Professional Bull Riders Tour as he had for that too-brief time. Sol hoped they lasted there longer than he had.

  He moved the thick mats back around the bull, so no one would get hurt if they fell off, then went to glance out the open barn door before he put the tools away. No sign of Georgia and Eden yet.

  He went back and watched his brothers. He could practically see the stars sparkling in their eyes as they pretended they were big shots like Ty Murray or Chris Shivers.

  That dream had been hard to give up. No high compared with getting on the back of a one-ton critter whose goal in life was to throw you off as fast as he could. And if the bulls at the nearby rodeos weren’t quite as challenging as those he’d ridden for the few weeks he’d made it in the PBR, well, they could still surprise him once in a while. When they did, his blood pumped faster, colors were brighter, and in those eight seconds, he was alive and that hollow corner in his heart melted away.

  And yet there were moments when, for two cents, he’d give it up altogether. In spite of the example set by three-time PBR Champion Adriano Moraes, who’d ridden until he was thirty-eight, thirty was old for bull rider. More often, though, Sol felt as though he was losing the heart for riding.