Strummin' Up Love

by Erin Wright

  “I don’t have an old woman to complain about my socks,” Zane said dryly, “but if you wanted me to send the housekeeper over to hang out with the women, she could probably provide a whole list of things I don’t do right.”

  Declan threw his head back and laughed. “You can skip the old woman part of the equation. And your kid – is he old enough to be on his own, or should he be watched by a babysitter?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s good. He’ll just spend the whole night blowing shit up on the Xbox One if I leave him to his own devices. But, I’d love to get out and do something, especially something that doesn’t have anything to do with horses or chickens.” Truthfully, he’d love to spend time around other people who weren’t either his child or in his employ. He’d been cut off from the world for far too long.

  Declan chuckled. “I promise you, O’Malley’s doesn’t have a single chicken or horse in it, although I think there’s some decorations using saddles and horseshoes.”

  “I’ll probably survive that. Friday night, you say?” At Declan’s nod, he asked, “What time?”

  “Usually on around 7:30 or so. Late enough that we can eat with our families before going, but not so late that we end up staying all night. We’re a bunch of old, married men. We don’t party hard.”

  “Sounds good,” Zane said with a smile.

  The silence fell between them and they went back to watching the chickens scratch in the dirt, industriously finding every bit of interesting morsels available. Zane was surprised that he was comfortable around a guy he hardly knew, the silence not strained at all. What did Kylie call Carmelita a while back? Good people? That seemed to fit Declan, too.

  “Well,” Declan said after a while, “I better get a move-on. Lots of piglets just showed up and I best be checking in on them; make sure the moms are feeding well. Pigs are smarter than humans, I’d swear it, but they still need a little help along the way. See you Friday,” and with a tug on the brim of his cowboy hat, Declan turned on his heel and headed toward the row of trucks parked alongside the barn. He hopped into an oversized diesel truck, backed out, and headed back to town.

  He doesn’t have a kid in the program, or at least he didn’t go look in on the kid while he was here. He came all the way down here just to invite me over to the bar.

  If everyone else in his group is as laid-back as Declan, I just might grow to love this town after all.

  Chapter 7

  Louisa

  Louisa absentmindedly began tugging a brush through her hair, trying to decide what to do that day. It was Saturday, which meant no therapy camp, which meant it was just her and Skyler at the house all day, with Zane around…well, somewhere. After he’d driven her and Skyler to camp on Monday, he’d pretty much disappeared, leaving Skyler completely up to her. But with a whole empty day ahead—

  Something was wrong, though. Her brush wasn’t easily moving through her hair like it normally did. She tugged harder on it and felt a dull pain shoot through her head.

  Ouch! What the hell?

  Sleepily, she pulled the brush away from her scalp and watched in the mirror as her hair rose up in the air too, stuck like glue to the brush.

  Stuck like glue—

  She leaned in close to the mirror and squinted. There was…was that liquid stuff in her hair? She squinted harder. Sure enough, she could see the glint of golden liquid in her dark, straight hair.

  Honey. Holy shit, that little terror put honey on my brush!

  Carefully, she pulled the brush away, trying to keep as much of her hair intact as possible, wavering between laughing at Skyler’s impressive leap forward in practical “jokes,” and letting loose a string of swear words.

  This morning, he’d played it straight, not sitting outside of her bathroom door and telling her that she really needed to brush her hair while holding the brush out to her. No, he’d poured a little string of honey on the brush, put it back, and walked away.

  Well, wheeled away.

  It would’ve been a lot funnier if it’d happened to someone else. As it was, Louisa was the one with a head full of honey, which did tend to severely limit the hilarity factor for her.

  With a regretful sigh, she stripped off her bathrobe and stepped into the shower, setting the temperature as high as she could stand it. Her best bet would be to soften the honey and run it down the drain. At least, she hoped that’d work. It wasn’t like she had previous experience with this.

  She had long hair, almost down to her waist, and it’d been her one point of pride all her life. If she had to chop it all off to get the honey out…

  Death and destruction would ensue.

  As she carefully tried to pull the gooey honey out without taking chunks of hair out too, she managed to push past her shock and started to focus on revenge. Of course, the most obvious revenge of all was not to respond. Just like with the coffee – which it’d taken Skyler two days to finally finish but finish it he did – no reaction at all would put a pin in Skyler’s balloon. What was the fun of putting honey on someone’s hairbrush if they weren’t even going to squeal and yell and run around like a crazy person afterward?

  Almost no fun at all.

  In fact, he’d probably be tempted to come into her bathroom to check on the hairbrush as soon as he thought he could get away with it, because if she was blasé about the whole thing, that’d make him think she just hadn’t brushed her hair that morning, and thus hadn’t run into the booby-trapped hairbrush. The curiosity, though, meant he’d have to double check…

  The older sister in Louisa instantly kicked into action and she began daydreaming about rigging the door with a bucket of ice cold water to pour down on his head the moment he pushed the door open, but then she caught herself. She was an adult and this was her patient, not her younger brother. She couldn’t actually make him regret the day he was born, like any decent older sister would.

  As she continued to gently tug on her hair – the heat of the water softening the honey but still, she had so much damn hair, she was afraid this was going to take all day – she realized she could hurt him where he’d hate it the most, and do it under the guise of helping him.

  Well, no, it actually would be helping him. She’d just be gaining revenge at the same time.

  Two-fers. They were a brilliant thing.

  After getting out what she hoped was all of the honey and carefully combing her hair into a long braid down her back, she hurried down to the walk-out basement, where she’d found that Skyler spent nearly every waking moment when he wasn’t being forced to go elsewhere. As far as she could tell, Skyler lived and breathed solely for video games.

  Well, that was all about to change.

  Sure enough, she found him lounging on the couch in front of the large-screen TV, blasting away and killing something, his pencil-thin legs draped sideways across the leather. He didn’t even bother saying hello; he just kept his eyes glued to the TV as blood splattered across the screen, turning it a brilliant red. She shuddered. As a nurse, seeing needless gore and violence like this was hardly a treat, but then again, she didn’t figure she was the target demographic for Call of Duty.

  Without a word of warning, Louisa walked up to Skyler and snatched the wireless controller out of his hands before he could realize what she was doing. They convulsed reflexively in the air, grabbing at the controller, but Louisa was already holding it above her head.

  “What was that for?!” Skyler howled, his face turning red with anger. “Give that back to me – I’m going to—” Just then, the video beeped and then sounds of doom ensued, finishing with a pathetic-sounding beep.

  His character was dead.

  “You killed me!” Skyler hollered. “Give! That! Back!” He was swiping in the air, trying to reach it, but of course, Louisa had the height advantage on him even if he hadn’t been sitting on a couch.

  She just stood there, keeping a look of serenity pinned to her face, holding the controller above her head as she waited for the wailing and yelling t
o calm down. Once she could speak without having to shout to be heard, she said in a pleasant, even tone, “Before you start in on your day of vegging in front of the TV, slowly destroying your brain cells, we need to get your exercises done. Then you can kill off all of the brain cells your heart desires.”

  “What do you mean, kill off my brain cells?!” he demanded, his face a brilliant red. His arms were crossed across his chest as he stared up at her defiantly, ready to snatch at the controller as soon as she brought it even vaguely within reach.

  “Countless – and I do mean countless, as in too many to be able to count – studies have shown that too much video game time is bad for your mental capacity, especially as a child. Your brain is developing, and you should be doing more than just jamming your thumbs down on a controller. However,” she held up a hand to stop his cascade of protests, “considering that it’s summertime, I’ll let you destroy your brain all you want, but! You have to do your exercises first.”

  “What exercises?” He had his lower lip stuck so far out, she was surprised he could still talk around it. He had pouting down to a science.

  “Physical therapy exercises. I’m not a physical therapist – I went to school to be a nurse, which means I’m rather good at giving you shots and helping you manage your pain, not rehab exercises – but I know enough to get by. Some of the PTs on the floor would get bored and liked to practice on us nurses when we had a slow afternoon, so I know a few things. We’re going to start working on getting your legs back into shape, and how best to use your arms to help compensate for your loss of muscle control in your legs. Once you’ve done your PT for the day, you can kill as many imaginary beings on the Xbox as you want.”

  He glared at her, practically shaking with anger. “Why’d you have to kill me?” he demanded. “I could’ve just finished the level I was playing and then done the exercises. You didn’t need to grab the controller like that.”

  “And you didn’t need to put honey on my hairbrush,” she said mildly.

  Bam.

  The guilt washed over his face and she knew in that moment that he’d completely forgotten about his little prank on her. She guessed he’d probably put the honey on last night, and in kid time, that was years ago. “So, I think we’re even,” she continued. “For now. But if the practical jokes continue, I’m going to be forced to do something a lot worse than kill off your character in a video game. You’ve been warned.”

  He gulped, his face draining of all color. She kept hers impassive. She’d been told by her younger siblings that she was terrifying when she wanted to be, and in that moment, she really, really wanted to be.

  “Now, are you ready to do some exercises?” she asked, no hint of anger in her voice. It was like they’d just been discussing the weather, which was exactly how she wanted to play this. The guilt of what he did was enough – she didn’t need to yell at him. She could see that plastered all over his face.

  “I don’t know why I need to,” he muttered, looking away and staring at the floor. “It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna be a cripple for the rest of my life. Why do a bunch of work just to stay stuck in this stupid chair?”

  He wasn’t meeting her eyes, and she knew in that moment that they’d finally hit on at least part of Skyler’s problem. She was pretty sure his father’s distant manner and losing his mother didn’t help, of course. But that aside, he’d given up on the hope of ever getting better.

  And without hope…

  “I’ve read your file,” she said softly, turning and putting the controller down on the top shelf of a built-in bookcase, next to some serious-looking tomes that she was quite sure no one had actually ever read. These were the kinds of books bought by an interior designer to impress, not to read. “I asked your dad for it before I even agreed to this job.” She turned back to him and leaned casually against the bookcase, crossing her feet at the ankles, trying to convey a sense of calm and surety. “You can walk again. Based on the muscular responses after the accident, and where the damage was done, you could walk again just as easily as any other kid does. It’s nothing but your choices that have kept you trapped in this chair.”

  But his face had gone blank and his eyes were glued to the floor as if he’d found the most interesting of sights down there. He didn’t believe her.

  No, he couldn’t believe her. What if he tried, and he failed? Wouldn’t it be better if he just didn’t try at all?

  At least, that’s what he’d convinced himself was true.

  Now, it was up to her to break through his defenses.

  She was being stupid. She knew she was. The number one rule in dealing with patients in rehab was you could never want it more than the patient did. Well, you could, of course, but it wouldn’t do you any good. You could want something more than you wanted to breathe, but if the patient didn’t give a damn, all of your desires amounted to a hill of beans. How hard the patient was willing to work was what mattered. She’d seen patients overcome impossible odds through sheer dint of will.

  Skyler didn’t want it, or rather, he was too scared to want it. She’d read his file. He’d been sent home early from rehab because he’d stopped making any progress. He’d been trying in the beginning, but something had happened, and he’d quit. After that, the physical therapists had had to cajole him just to get out of bed. Progress had become a thing of the past, and eventually, they’d just sent him home, ready to move on to a patient who actually wanted to get better.

  But Louisa was good at cajoling and prodding and pushing and refusing to take “no” for an answer. She also didn’t have to justify her choice to continue to work with Skyler to the insurance company footing the bill. So yeah, she had a few tricks up her sleeve.

  Now it was time to see if she could outsmart a 12-year-old boy.

  Chapter 8

  Zane

  “This is Levi,” Declan said, introducing Zane to a tall, dark-haired man who put out his hand to shake, “and his half-brother, Moose.”

  Zane was already turning to shake hands with the half-brother when Declan’s words registered. “Come again?” he said blankly. He would’ve sworn he heard the name Moose, but that couldn’t possibly be right.

  “My birth certificate says Dear, but only my mother calls me that, and only when I’m in trouble,” Moose said smoothly, shaking Zane’s hand.

  That didn’t clear up a damn thing.

  “Your mother named you ‘Dear’?” Zane said slowly. “As in, ‘Oh dear, I forgot to put the roast in the oven’?”

  Small towns are officially strange-ass places.

  “No, no,” Moose said, laughing. “My father owns a John Deere dealership. I was named Deere after the tractor.” He was smiling but there was something dark in his eyes, a shadow that Zane wondered about. No matter how much Moose was laughing about this story, there was something not-so-funny going on there. “But then all of my friends started calling me Moose instead, and the nickname stuck. Get it? Deere? Moose? I guess I should just be grateful they didn’t stick on Elk.”

  Zane let out a half-snort of laughter at that one.

  “Levi and Moose are on the local volunteer fire department,” Declan said with a proud smile, slapping Levi good-naturedly on the shoulder. “Last spring, the Muffin Man bakery caught fire, and these guys were the heroes, pulling people out. Compared to them, I live a damn boring life.”

  “Well hell,” Stetson put in, Declan’s younger brother, “that’s ‘cause you are boring. You think chattin’ about pigs is a grand idea. It’s a real good thing you talked Iris into falling in love with you back in high school, before she realized how damn boring you are. Now it’s too late for her to back out of it!” Everyone bust up laughing as Declan shot his younger brother a disgusted look.

  Rolling his eyes, Declan turned back towards Zane and began talking as if his younger brother hadn’t said a word. “So, you’re here so your son can attend Adam’s therapy camp. Are you doing some riding yourself while you’re here?”

 
; Stetson, Declan, their older brother Wyatt, and the two firefighters all turned expectantly towards Zane, waiting for his answer. He shot them a pained smile.

  “Honestly? Uhhhh…I’ve never been on a horse.”

  My publicist would kill me if she heard me admit that in public.

  After all, a “real” country music star was supposed to pack concert halls on the weekends and brand cows during the week. Hiding his complete lack of any so-called “country” skills – virtually anything to do with farm animals, hunting, fishing, or ranching – had been a big part of his publicist’s job.

  Not surprisingly, this group reacted exactly how Zane had expected them to. There was dead silence in their little group for the space of several heartbeats. The thump of the music continued on, as did the drunken hollers of the other guys in the bar and the clink of glasses on tabletops, but amongst the six of them, there was dead silence.

  And then like someone had hit play, they all burst out talking at the same time.

  “But you’re a country music star!”

  “But you grew up in Tennessee!”

  “How have you never ridden a horse?!”

  If he’d just announced that he’d actually been born with two heads and the doctors had had to cut one off at birth, he didn’t think they could’ve been more surprised.

  He took a small sip of his beer, giving himself time to come up with a decent explanation. “I was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. As in, in the city of Nashville itself. Concrete, skyscrapers…I’m what you might call a rhinestone cowboy.” He shrugged, trying to downplay it. This was exactly why his publicist had worked so damn hard to hide this information from the public all these years. She’d once said dryly that fans would be more forgiving of him robbing someone on the street than not knowing how to castrate a calf.