Tangled in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  “Climb up on the table,” she said. “I want to take some measurements.”

  He didn’t budge. “It’s all in my chart.”

  “I reviewed Margo’s notes, but I prefer to form my own opinions.” When he still didn’t move, she added, “You won’t be charged for the evaluation, since it’s solely for my benefit.”

  She held her breath as he stood for a few beats, possibly debating whether or not to turn around, stomp back to reception, and demand to be assigned a different therapist. Being fired by a star patient wasn’t quite the impression she wanted to make on her first day. Damn Pepper for insisting that she take over Delon’s rehab when she transferred here, but she’d rather hang herself with a cheap rope than explain to her mentor why she shouldn’t take the case.

  Delon finally moved over to the table. But rather than sit on it, he braced his butt against the edge and faced her, arms and ankles crossed. The pose made all kinds of muscles jump up and beg for attention. A woman would have to be a whole lot more than numb not to notice.

  “So, you’re back from…”

  “Cheyenne,” she said, filling in the blank.

  He blinked. “Wyoming?”

  Was there any other? Probably, but only one that mattered. “Yes. I did my outpatient clinical rotation at Pepper’s place and he hired me when I graduated.”

  “Pepper Burke?”

  “Yes.” Surgeon to the stars of rodeo. The man who’d performed Delon’s surgery, also in Cheyenne, where Tori had made damn sure their paths hadn’t crossed. “I’ve worked for him since I graduated.”

  She watched the wheels turn behind Delon’s dark eyes, connections snapping into place. Cowboys traveled from all over the United States and Canada to be treated by Pepper and his staff. “Tough place to get hired on.”

  “Yes.” She gestured toward the table. “If you’re satisfied with my credentials…”

  He blinked again, then squinted as if he was seeing double, trying to line up his memory of college Tori with the woman who stood in front of him. She could have told him not to bother. She’d shed that girl, layer by superficial layer, until there was barely enough left to recognize in the mirror.

  Whatever Delon saw, it convinced him to slide onto the treatment table. She started with girth measurements—calf, knee, thigh—to compare the muscle mass of his injured leg to the uninjured side. As she slid the tape around his thigh, she felt him tense. Glancing up, her gaze caught his and for an instant she saw it all in his eyes. The memories. The heat.

  Her pulse skipped ever so slightly, echoing the hitch in his breath. Her emotions might be too anesthetized to react to his proximity, but her body remembered, and with great fondness. A trained response. No more significant than Pavlov’s drooling dogs.

  “Lie flat,” she ordered, and picked up his leg.

  Halfway through the series of tests, she knew Pepper’s concern was justified. If anything, Delon’s injured leg was slightly stronger than the other, testament to how hard he’d worked at his rehab. Four months post surgery, though, he should have had full range of motion. Instead, when she bent the knee, she felt as if she hit a brick wall a few degrees past ninety. She increased the pressure to see how he’d react.

  “That’s it,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Well, crap. “How does it feel when I push on it?”

  “Like my kneecap is going to explode.”

  Double crap. She sucked in one corner of her bottom lip and chewed on it as she considered their options.

  “Is there any chance it’s going to get better?” His voice was quiet, but tension vibrated from every muscle in his body—for good reason. He was asking if his career might be over. It wasn’t a question she could, or should, answer.

  She stepped back and folded her arms. “I’ll give Pepper a call. He’ll want new X-rays, possibly an MRI—”

  “What will an MRI tell him?” His gaze came up to meet hers, flat, black, daring her to be anything less than honest.

  “Whether you’ve developed an abnormal amount of scar tissue, either inside the joint or in the capsule.”

  “And if I have?”

  “He can go in arthroscopically and clean up inside the joint.” But from what she’d felt, she doubted that was the case.

  “What about the capsule?”

  She kept her eyes on him, steady, unflinching. “You had a contact injury with a lot of trauma. The capsule may have thickened and scarred in response, or adhesions may have formed between folds. There are ways to address the adhesions.”

  “But not the other kind.”

  “No. And there are limits to how much we can improve it with therapy. You’ll have to learn to live with a deficit.”

  That would mean a shorter spur stroke with his left compared to his right leg, in an event where symmetry was a huge part of the score. How many points would the lag cost him per ride? Five? Ten? Enough to end his career as he knew it.

  “Worst case scenario, we can get you to at least eighty percent of normal. Then we can look at your biomechanics, make adjustments—”

  He gave a sharp, impatient shake of his head. “The judges aren’t stupid. They’ll notice if I try to fake it.”

  She didn’t argue. After the thousands of hours he’d spent training his body to work in a very precise groove, telling Delon he had to change his riding style was no different than informing a pitcher they couldn’t stay in the major leagues unless they changed their arm angle, or a golfer that they had to retool their swing.

  The tight, angry set to Delon’s shoulders suggested it might be a while before he would consider trying. Well, he was in luck. He’d landed a physical therapist who knew all about adapting to loss. One of these days she might even get around to finding her new style.

  Delon sat up abruptly and swung his legs off the table, forcing her to step aside. She pulled out a business card and scribbled a number on the back.

  “For today, stick with your regular exercise program. Between now and your next appointment, I’ll decide what changes we need to make. If you want to go ahead with the X-rays and MRI, let Beth know on your way out and she’ll make the arrangements.” She handed him the card. “That’s my direct line if you have any other questions.”

  He turned the card over and studied the front for a long moment. Then he looked at her, his face a wooden mask. “What does your husband think of living in Texas?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  His fist curled around the card. “Sorry. Divorced?”

  “Dead,” she said, and walked out the door before he could join the legions who’d expressed their heartfelt sympathy when they didn’t know fuck all about Willy except what they’d heard on the evening news.

  Chapter 3

  Dead.

  There were less brutal ways to say it. Widowed. Passed away. I lost my husband last…year, summer, whatever. But Tori had deliberately picked that flat, ugly word, and said it with her eyes empty. Abandoned. Set in a face Delon barely recognized. Leaner, harder, her cheeks hollowed out like a person who’d been ill. Or heartsick.

  She was Tori, but not Tori. He realized now how much of her former beauty had been manufactured. Hair bleach, push-up bras—even the intense sky blue of her eyes must’ve been colored contact lenses. Now her eyes were more gray than blue. The color of mist. Or ghosts.

  He slammed the heel of his hand on his car’s center console. He wanted to rage. He deserved it, goddammit. His fury had built, coal by glowing coal, the entire time she’d examined him like nothing more than a specimen under a microscope. No explanation for her disappearance. No apology. Then she’d looked at him with that cool, blank expression and said yeah, his knee was probably fucked. He wanted to curse her for confirming his worst fears.

  For waltzing off to Wyoming and getting married and never looking back. Cheyenne, for hell’s sake. Al
l the times he’d competed there in the past six years…

  You might have to learn to live with a deficit.

  Live? Sure. He could live just fine with a bad knee. But ride? When she’d said those words, a fresh wash of panic had spilled into the vat of old hurt and humiliation, and he’d been two seconds away from exploding. And then she’d stolen his thunder.

  Dead. Dead, dead, dead.

  As he pulled through the gates of Sanchez Trucking, the wind kicked up dust from beneath his tires and sent it whirling across the gravel lot, spinning and skittering like his thoughts. He parked, turned off the car, and just sat there, trying to breathe. The yellow steel shop was two stories tall at the peak to accommodate semis, trailers, and the chain hoists that dangled from steel beams above, and wide enough for three pull-through repair bays. The far right side housed office space at the front and a one bedroom apartment upstairs. Home sweet home.

  People asked why he didn’t get a house, more space, but they had an entire shop for Beni to run tame under the watchful eyes of the mechanics. Beni loved the trucks, and hanging around with the drivers. Besides, Delon was gone—used to be gone, he corrected himself bitterly—more often than he was home. And now…until he figured out what was next, he might as well save some cash and stay where he could still pretend to be a real part of Sanchez Trucking.

  The front door banged open and one of the drivers stomped out, strode over to an idling pickup, slammed into the cab, and roared away, spewing an angry rooster tail of gravel and dust. That couldn’t be good. And if there was smoke at Sanchez Trucking, ten to one Delon knew who’d started the fire.

  He slung his gym bag over his shoulder and walked through an open bay door, past an engine they’d pulled the day before for a total overhaul, and into a dusty, wood-paneled hallway, the concrete floor tracked with grime.

  Their secretary barely spared him a glance as she bustled around the beat-up reception desk, collecting stacks of trip sheets, delivery receipts, bills of lading, and invoices. Scanning and cloud backup be damned, Merle Sanchez insisted they keep paper copies of everything. The computer system did allow Miz Nordquist to run their office from home, though, rather than “that stinking shop.” Given that she had the face and disposition of a thundercloud, no one objected.

  “What’s wrong with Jerry?” Delon asked.

  She jerked her head toward his dad’s office, at the front of the building. “Your brother.”

  Bingo. Delon found his dad slouched behind the desk, elbow on the armrest of the big leather chair and chin in hand, expression grim. Gil stood at the window, a narrow slice of darkness through the square of sunlight.

  “What’s up?” Delon asked.

  His dad blew out a weary sigh. “Jerry got an offer from an oil company up in the Bakken.”

  “North Dakota?” Delon shivered. Closest he’d ever come to freezing his ass off was in Valley City in March. “Must’ve been one hell of an offer. When’s he done?”

  “Now,” Gil snapped.

  Delon jerked around in surprise. “He’s due to load out for Duluth tomorrow night.”

  Silence. Delon looked from his dad to Gil, and cursed. “You cut him loose and left us hanging?”

  Gil slapped his hand against the window hard enough to make the pane vibrate. “I’ve been bustin’ my ass, working the loads so he could get home more since that new kid was born, and this is how he repays us.”

  “So you booted him out the door?” Delon let out a growl of impatience. “For Christ’s sake, Gil. He’s a good operator and he’s HAZMAT certified.”

  Gil wheeled around to glare at Delon. “He quit. I just accelerated the process.”

  “He won’t stick in the oil patch,” Delon argued. “Just long enough to get a jump on paying for that new truck, then he’ll be out of that frozen hellhole, headed south.”

  “And I’m supposed to welcome him with open arms?”

  “Guys like him are hard to find—”

  “The kind who takes advantage of you then spits in your face?”

  Their dad straightened, cutting his hand through the air to signal Enough! Lord knew, he’d had plenty of opportunities to use it over the years. “We need to figure out who’s gonna take his load. What do we have for a truck?”

  Delon stared at his dad in disbelief. He wasn’t even going to try to salvage the situation? “The white Peterbilt is ready to go.”

  “Then we just need a driver. I’m hauling hay to Quanah ’til the end of the week.”

  “I can get Miz Nordquist to cover dispatch and take it myself.” Gil scowled. “It’ll cost me.”

  Mostly in beer for all the drivers and mechanics who had to deal with the woman in person. Delon let it hang for a minute, debating whether to let Gil off the hook he’d buried in his own ass, but it came down to doing what was best for the business. And a chance to get out of town, even if it was to Duluth. After ten years of crisscrossing the country on the rodeo trail, he was going stir-crazy in Earnest.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “What about Beni?” his dad asked.

  “Violet asked to keep him a couple of extra days. Joe’s gonna be here.”

  Another silence. Someone else’s family might ask how he felt about that, but the Sanchez men didn’t discuss feelings unless they involved the latest idiotic mandate from the Department of Transportation. Building up this business from a single worn-out cattle hauler hadn’t left Merle Sanchez much time for the touchy-feely crap. He’d kept his boys fed, clothed, and mostly out of trouble. The rest they’d had to figure out on their own.

  What did Merle think when he looked at the sons who wore the Sanchez name so much more easily than he did, with his ginger hair and freckled skin? Did he search for some piece of himself in them, or curse the dark skin and hair of the woman who’d deserted him? Lord knew, he would never say.

  “You sure your knee is up to it?” he asked Delon.

  “I’ll stop and walk out the kinks when I need to.”

  “Works for me.” But Merle looked to Gil for confirmation, as if he had the final say.

  “The paperwork’s at the front desk,” Gil said, starting for the door. “I’ve gotta go make some calls, find someone to take Jerry’s HAZMAT loads until I can get a permanent replacement.”

  The hitch in his gait was more pronounced than usual as he walked out, pausing at the front desk to grab a folder before he disappeared into his lair. On the door that slapped shut behind him an engraved plate said The Dispatcher. Below it, one of the drivers had taped up a handwritten paper sign that declared Enter at your own risk.

  “You’re welcome,” Delon muttered.

  His dad gave him a wry smile. “We do appreciate the help.”

  We. As if there was a “them,” separate from him. And he’d let it happen. As he’d built a name and a fanbase, the demands for autograph sessions and sponsor appearances had increased, eating into the time between rodeos. At home, he’d spent every available moment with Beni, as often as not at the Jacobs ranch with Violet and her family. Meanwhile, his brother had slithered into the position at Sanchez Trucking that Delon had always assumed would be waiting for him. Gil, who’d once said he’d rather have his balls cut off than be chained to a desk. Which left Delon…what?

  “I can talk to Jerry,” he offered. “Smooth things over before he leaves.”

  Merle shook his head. “Your brother is right. We did everything we could to keep him. When—or if—he comes back, we can’t make it easy for him. Otherwise, he’ll just use us again and take off soon as he gets a better offer.”

  Hell. Delon couldn’t argue with that logic.

  Merle shifted in his chair, visibly switching gears. “What did you think of the new therapist?”

  “She’s…different.” Which was the truth. Tori was nowhere near the same girl he used to know.

  �
��Is that good or bad?”

  Odds were it didn’t matter. Delon fought to keep the cold punch of misery from showing on his face. If the joint capsule was scarred beyond repair, the best therapist in the universe wouldn’t be able to fix what ailed his knee. Whether he could stand to see Tori twice a week until they admitted defeat…

  “I haven’t decided yet,” he said. And that was the honest truth, too.

  Chapter 4

  Tori walked into the reception area and caught Beth with her chin in her hand, mooning out the window as Delon walked by. She angled a curious look at Tori.

  “You know him?”

  “Used to.” Tori jotted a reminder on a home exercise sheet for the patient she’d seen after turning Delon over to a PT aide to run through his exercises in the gym, then finish off with his knee packed in ice for twenty minutes. “We had sex for a few months, when he had time between rodeos.”

  Beth’s jaw dropped a notch. “So y’all, um, dated.”

  “No. Just sex.” Tori held out the sheet. “Could you make two copies of this?”

  “Sure.” Beth took the paper but didn’t move, paralyzed by an acute case of excess information.

  Tori grimaced apologetically. “Sorry. Lately, anything that pops into my head seems to fall right out of my mouth.”

  Or, more likely, after months of knowing every one of her words, every smile, and every tear would be weighed, measured, and judged against an impossible standard, her filters had burned out.

  Beth laughed, then tilted her head toward where Delon was climbing into his car. “So…”

  “Everything you could imagine.”

  Beth fluttered a hand over her heart. “Well, that’ll improve my fantasy life.”