Texas on My Mind

by Delores Fossen

  Logan got to his feet. “I’ll drive you. Wouldn’t mind having a beer myself.”

  Now Riley was the one who stared. “I don’t need a babysitter, Logan.”

  “Good. Because I wasn’t offering. You can buy. I’ll have one beer—then I’ll go to the office and clear out some of this paperwork. When you’re done at Calhoun’s, you can walk over or give me a call, and I’ll drive you home. Consider me your designated driver.”

  Logan apparently assumed that offer was a done deal because he gathered up his papers and headed to the side door, which led to where he’d parked. Riley considered arguing but realized he’d be doing it just for argument’s sake—a constant problem for him when dealing with Logan—but he really did want to just get out and maybe clear his head.

  Of Ethan.

  Of Claire.

  Especially Claire.

  “Dinner’s ready, but if you’re in a hurry to take off, I’ll hold some for both of you in the microwave,” Della called out to them.

  “No need,” Logan answered at the same time Riley said, “Thanks. I appreciate it.” Maybe she’d leave him some more of those cookies, too.

  Riley followed Logan outside to a big silver truck with the McCord Cattle Brokers copper logo painted on the door. On both doors, Riley realized when he went to get in.

  “Thanks for helping today,” Logan said.

  Riley didn’t wait for more praise because with Logan that was about as good as it would get. But Riley didn’t need his praise anyway. Hadn’t in a long time. He hadn’t done the work today for Logan but rather for the family. And for himself.

  “I called Lucky earlier,” Logan went on as he pulled out of the driveway. “I asked him to come home to help you with the cutting horses. The new trainer gets here tomorrow, and Lucky and you can get him settled. Plus, I need the two of you to go look at some other horses I’d like to add to the inventory.”

  There was so much wrong with that handful of sentences that Riley didn’t know where to start. “You really think Lucky will come home?”

  “He should. This is his business, too.”

  Which wasn’t an answer at all, but Riley knew how things would likely go. Or rather not go. Lucky wouldn’t be there because he was off doing some rodeo promotion. Riley didn’t know a lot of the details because Lucky didn’t make it home often enough to share what was going on in his life, but Lucky wouldn’t just drop everything—or anything for that matter—to attend to family business.

  Especially when his twin brother had ordered him home.

  But that wasn’t the only thing wrong with Logan’s decree. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to help, either,” Riley said. “The Air Force should be scheduling my physical soon, and once I’m cleared for duty, I’ll be leaving.”

  Now, normally that gave Riley a nice kick of adrenaline, but tonight it made his stomach feel a little acidy. He’d probably downed that cookie too fast.

  “You’re sure you’ll be cleared?” Logan asked.

  “Of course.” That was perhaps the biggest lie he’d ever told, but it was a lie that Riley had to hang on to. He couldn’t fail at this. He had to go back on active duty.

  “What about the flashbacks? Are you still having them?” Logan pressed.

  Thankfully Riley didn’t have to lie and say no because Logan’s phone beeped. A simple little sound to indicate he had a phone call. Judging by what Riley could hear of the conversation, it was about those horses Logan had just mentioned, and the deal apparently wasn’t going well, if Logan’s terse, one-and two-word replies were any indication.

  Too much. Renegotiate. Now.

  He said now a lot.

  Logan was still growling out those replies when he pulled into the parking lot of Calhoun’s Pub. He motioned for Riley to go ahead in, which suited him just fine. If he waited around with Logan much longer, his brother would try to rope him into doing something else that Riley was reasonably sure he wouldn’t want to do.

  It was only a short walk from the parking lot to the entrance, but by the time Riley made it, the sweat was already making his back and neck sticky. Inside wasn’t a whole lot better. The place was a converted nineteenth-century barn, and even though it had AC and dozens of ceiling fans, it wasn’t cooling off the place much.

  Riley figured that was the owner Donnie Calhoun’s way of getting people to buy more cold beers.

  Since it was a Saturday night, the pub was packed. He’d forgotten how it could be and that it was the only place where folks could unwind at the end of a workweek. Not exactly a quiet place to have a beer with the jukebox blaring, the customers trying to be heard over the music and even the crunch of the peanut shells beneath him. One step, and Riley felt his boots shift a little. Just enough.

  As they’d done that day in the sand.

  The fan blades whipped through the air above him, somehow cutting through the other sounds but not the heat, and they stirred up the dust. Smothering him. Someone, a man, shouted out something. Maybe his name. But it was just an echo in Riley’s head. A cry for help.

  Shit.

  The sensations all hit him at once, and Riley felt himself being yanked back into the middle of the flashback. No. This couldn’t happen. Not here in front of everybody.

  Jingle bells. Jingle bells.

  That didn’t work, so he pulled out his phone to look at Claire’s picture. Maybe it was the poor lighting or maybe he just hadn’t caught it in time, but the picture didn’t work. He was going down fast.

  Because he could hear the kid.

  He could feel the warm blood snaking down his body.

  Get the hell out now!

  But he couldn’t run. The sand was pulling him down, and the pain. Fuck, the pain. Too much. And the kid wasn’t moving.

  Sixty-forty chance if he got him moving, but Riley couldn’t lift his feet.

  It’d been a huge mistake coming here, and he turned to try to leave—fast—when he saw something. The woman pushing her way through the crowd. Or maybe she was a mirage.

  Because it was Claire.

  Not a picture on his phone, either. She was wearing jeans and a snug little red top and had a beer in her hand. She was making her way toward him.

  “Riley,” she said, obviously aware that all hell had broken loose inside his head. Probably because she’d seen him like this on the porch that day. But that was a picnic compared with the roar going on inside him right now.

  Livvy was with her, right by her side, but unlike Claire, she didn’t seem to notice what was going on because she was smiling in between swigs of a beer.

  “Now, there’s the hot cowboy Claire’s been looking for,” Livvy declared.

  And Livvy pushed Claire right into his arms.

  * * *

  OH, NO. This wasn’t good. Claire knew that look, knew that Riley was about to lose it.

  “Come on,” Claire said. She slipped her arm around Riley’s waist and got him moving toward the back exit. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  Livvy clapped her hands. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  She no doubt thought Claire was finally taking the initiative with Riley and was hauling him off for a good make-out session. But making out was the last thing on Claire’s mind as she worked to get Riley away from the crowd and thought of ways to help him fight these demons that were bearing down on him.

  If that was even possible.

  Claire had been doing some reading about PTSD and combat flashbacks, and while the websites had given her some useful information, all of that went out the window when it was happening right in front of her. Especially since it was happening to Riley.

  “Just put one foot ahead of the other,” she instructed, though she had to yell it to be heard over the music. She considered dropping her b
eer, but that would only cause unwanted attention.

  “The sand,” he said.

  “I’ll get you through it.” Both the sand in his head and the stuff just out the back door of the pub.

  Donnie Calhoun had added several inches of sand to the back so the smokers would have a place to squash out their cigarette butts, but that meant Riley and she were trudging through it while dodging any questions from the gaggle of smokers out there.

  Claire had a solution to avoid those questions. It wasn’t a good solution, but desperation took over. She knew above all else that Riley wouldn’t want anyone to know what he was going through. So she put her mouth on his neck and pulled down his head so that it looked as if they were kissing.

  It worked.

  They didn’t get a single flashback/PTSD/what’s-wrong-with-you? question from the dozen or so smokers. Though Riley did get some cheers and dirty suggestions.

  Maybe it was the neck nuzzling or those dirty suggestions, but it seemed to get Riley to pick up some speed.

  “Sixty-forty if I hurry,” he said.

  He was still in the nightmare, still clearly fighting it, judging from his steel-hard muscles and the sweat that had beaded on his face. Claire figured that ratio had something to do with his chance of succeeding on a mission. Not ideal odds considering he was probably talking about his life.

  “Gotta get the kid out,” he said. Each word seemed to be a battle in itself.

  One he was losing.

  Claire went with something drastic. She poured her beer over his head.

  Riley stopped in his tracks, gasping for breath. The kind of gasp someone might make if they’d been underwater too long. And he looked at her, the beer trickling from his hair and down his face.

  “You poured your beer on me.” His words weren’t so shaky now, but Riley did look at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  Since they were still in view of the smokers, the beer ploy had gotten their attention, too, and the questions came.

  Can’t handle her, Riley?

  Does the flyboy need some help locating his target?

  The questions were punctuated with laughter, some jeering, and Claire shot them nasty glares before she pulled Riley to the side of the old barn. Thankfully, there was no one else here, and there was still enough light coming from the front of the building so she could make sure she wasn’t maneuvering them into a fire-ant bed.

  “You poured your beer on me,” Riley repeated.

  She nodded. “All the websites I read said I shouldn’t tell you to snap out of it, offer advice or minimize what you’ve been through, but none of the sites said I couldn’t pour a beer on you.”

  He stared at her. Laughed. It wasn’t a 100 percent kind of a laugh. More like that sixty-forty ratio he’d mentioned earlier, and it was short, but at least she could see Riley coming back to her.

  “Logan,” Riley said, leaning the back of his head against the wall. “He’s in his truck in the parking lot.”

  “You want me to get him?”

  “Hell, no.”

  All right. “I can text him and tell him that I’ll make sure you get home.” Claire put the empty beer bottle on the ground and fired off a message to Logan. He answered right away, saying that he’d skipped Calhoun’s and was at his office.

  Good.

  Riley definitely wouldn’t have wanted to face Logan with his head smelling like beer and the semi-shell-shocked look still on his face. She showed Riley the text response, then put her phone back into her pocket and debated what to do next. Anything she did could cause Riley’s walls to go up again, but she wouldn’t be much of a friend if she blew this off.

  “Now, according to the websites, this is when I should ask you if you want to talk about it?” she tossed out there.

  He had his head tipped up to the sky as if seeking some kind of divine assistance. And maybe he was. The websites had suggested that as an option, too. Then, by degrees his chin came back down until they made eye contact.

  “I’m getting help,” he said. “At the base. I’ve only been to one session, but there are, well, exercises and stuff. Nothing about beer pouring though. Or neck kissing. But I have to say, that worked pretty well. The kissing, not the beer.” He licked some of it from the corner of his mouth.

  Now she laughed. “That was my attempt at a distraction. And I didn’t actually kiss you. I just wanted to avoid the jerks in that smoking crowd.”

  “Does the flyboy need some help locating his target?” Riley repeated. “And Jake Banchini offered to lend me a condom if he could join us.”

  Claire hadn’t heard that, but she’d deal with Jake the next time she saw him. Maybe she’d dump a beer on Jake’s head, too. For very different reasons.

  “You know the gossips will get wind of this,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah.” Definitely no trace of that laughter now, and she hated that she’d even brought it up. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Claire shrugged. “Either way, we would have given them gossip fodder, but the talk will die down when folks see you with Jodi.”

  It was such a stupid thing to say, and the trouble was, Claire didn’t want to take back the comment.

  “Jodi’s probably gone by now,” he said.

  “Oh. Well. How do you feel about that?”

  She got the look, the one to let her know that this subject was off-limits. The old, normal Riley was back, not a trace of the flashbacks anywhere on his face. “I don’t have my car, Livvy drove me, but I can walk you home if you like,” she suggested. It was more than a mile from this part of town, and it was a scorcher of a night, but she didn’t want to leave him alone just yet. “Or I can have Livvy take you.”

  A taxi wasn’t an option because the sole taxi driver in the town, Walter Meekins, was home with a gout flare-up. For once, the gossip mill had actually given her some relevant information so she wouldn’t bother wasting time calling him.

  Riley shook his head. “Let’s just stay here a little longer. Then I can walk home.”

  And she would follow him to make sure he didn’t have another episode on the way there.

  He wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. “I’m not sure how much of this is sweat and how much is beer. It’s hot enough to catch malaria out here.”

  It was, but he didn’t budge. Riley didn’t talk, either. He just stood there, looking up at the sky. Claire looked, too. Or rather she tried, but her attention just kept going back to him. Even with the beer-head and wet shirt, he still managed to look, well, mouthwatering.

  “This might be the malaria talking, but you’re hot.” Uh-oh. She hadn’t exactly intended to say that out loud, and it got Riley’s attention all right.

  Not 60 percent of it, either.

  All of it.

  “Want to do something we’ll probably regret?” he asked. But he didn’t give her a chance to answer.

  Riley slipped his hand around the back of her neck, lowered his head and kissed her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AS REGRETS WENT, it was a damn good one.

  Riley had always figured that Claire would taste like something sweet, but he hadn’t known just how sweet that sweet could be. Of course, her taste was mixed with some of the beer she’d had before rescuing him, some of the beer on his own mouth, too, but that only added another memory to the one he was making.

  It’d be a short memory, though.

  Or so he’d thought when he first touched his lips to hers.

  He’d thought she would immediately come to her senses and put a stop to this fire-playing game. But Claire upped the memory-making a thousandfold by making a little sound. Barely audible over Garth Brooks, who was now belting out “Friends in Low Places” on the jukebox. But it was audible enough for Riley’s ears to catch it.
<
br />   And have that sound slide right through his whole body.

  Not a purr, exactly. More like surprise mixed with a whole lot of heat. Yeah, maybe the malaria had kicked in after all. Or maybe he’d just lost what little of his mind he had left, but that didn’t get him to back away.

  Riley continued kissing her until lack of oxygen became a serious issue. They broke the mouth-to-mouth just seconds before they certainly would have passed out.

  “Oh,” she said, the single word muttered as she gulped in some air.

  That was it. Nothing else. And Riley was still trying to gather enough breath to say something even marginally PG-rated or relevant. “Me, man. You, woman” probably wouldn’t do it.

  She looked up at him as if waiting to see what he would do next. She was still breathing through her mouth, and her warm breath was hitting against his face. Her breath smelled good, too. Again, beer with a whole lot of heat that was zinging between them.

  Since Claire clearly wasn’t going to do any moving away, Riley figured he should be the one to do it. Really. As in right now. Before he crushed what was left of their friendship.

  But that didn’t happen.

  He was obviously weak and mindless when it came to Claire, and that really stupid part of him behind the zipper of his jeans was encouraging him to go in for another round.

  So, that’s what he did.

  “I didn’t regret that nearly enough,” he said, right before he kissed her again.

  Claire didn’t stay passive this time, either. Her hands went to his waist, and she leaned in, not exactly deepening the kiss, but rather deepening something even better.

  Her belly landed against the beginnings of his hard-on.

  Now, that was something she noticed, and she did pull back. She slid her tongue over her lips, dropped a glance at the front of his jeans, at the intruder that had just popped up between them.

  All right. So, that was the end of the kissing.

  Or so he thought.