Empty-handed.
He jammed his fist into the pillow again. His subconscious was a cruel bastard, and a whiner on top of it. Every year an injury yanked the trap door out from under some cowboy’s gold buckle dream. That was rodeo. Hell, that was life. Delon was no special flower fate had singled out to trample.
He flopped onto his back. A spider sneered at him from the corner of the ceiling, lounging on a web Delon had just knocked down the day before. He was tempted to reach down, grab a boot and fling it, but the way his luck was running, he’d just miss and it’d bounce off and black his eye. He stuffed his hands behind his head with a gloomy sigh. They should have drawn a chalk outline in the arena where he’d fallen, because the man who’d climbed down into the bucking chute that night was nowhere to be found.
Gone, in the twenty-two seconds from the nod of his head to the moment of impact. He’d timed it on the video out of morbid curiosity. Less than a minute before the paramedics jammed a tube down his throat and re-inflated the lung that’d been punctured when the horse trampled him, wiping out his knee and busting two ribs. Three days before he’d checked out of the hospital. In that short time, his entire life had disintegrated.
Or had been an illusion all along. But that was his fault. He’d let himself want too much, dream too big. Other people could reach up, grab the world by the throat, and make demands. Every time Delon tried, he got kicked in the teeth.
Whiner.
He flipped the spider the bird, kicked off the blankets, and got up to dress for another therapy session that would accomplish nothing except forcing him to absorb one more unwelcome change. He doubted this new therapist could fix him either, but maybe she wouldn’t be afraid to tell him the truth.
He slipped down the back stairs, escaping his apartment above the shop at Sanchez Trucking without seeing a soul, but was forced to stop at the Kwicky Mart for gas. With only two thousand people in Earnest, Texas, the face at the next pump was bound to be familiar.
And it would have to be Hank. The kid hopped out of his pickup, so nimble Delon wanted to kick him. “Hey, Delon. How’s the knee feelin’?”
Like he’d torn it up so bad even Pepper Burke, surgeon to the stars of professional rodeo, couldn’t make it good as new.
“Fine.” Delon turned his back, hunching his shoulders against the bitter January breeze as he jammed the gas nozzle into the tank of what his brother jeeringly called his mom car. Well, screw Gil. If he’d paid more attention to safety ratings, he’d be flaunting a gold buckle by now.
Hank lounged against the side of his dad’s one-ton dually while it guzzled four-dollar diesel like sweet tea. “Looks like it’s getting’ pretty serious between Violet and Joe. Think they’ll get married?”
Delon made a noncommittal noise and mashed harder on the gas nozzle. Short answer? Nope. When the shine wore off, Joe Cassidy would be gone, back to Oregon. Bad enough he’d leave Violet in pieces, but there’d be one brokenhearted little boy, too. Delon’s boy. Until now, Delon had just shrugged and laughed at Violet’s dating disasters. She couldn’t seem to help herself, so he might as well just let her get it out of her system—but she’d never brought her disasters home before.
Beni worshipped Joe, along with every bull rider in the pro ranks and most of the buckle bunnies. The bull riders had good reason. Joe’s job was to save them from getting stomped, and he was damn good at it. And a whole lot of those women had admired him from real close up, too. So no. Delon didn’t think Joe was the marrying kind.
A red Grand Am whipped around the corner and the little blonde Didsworth girl—Mary Beth?—distracted Hank with a smile and a finger wave. He returned it with a cocky grin. “I hear she’s got a thing for bullfighters.”
“Don’t they all?” Delon muttered.
Even Violet, who should know better, being a stock contractor’s daughter. What was it with women, lusting after men dumb enough to throw their bodies in front of large, pissed off farm animals? Sure, it was exciting, but the long term career prospects were not great. Said the guy who got a knee reconstruction for his twenty-ninth birthday.
Mary Beth parked down the block, climbed out of her car, and made sure Hank and Delon were watching as she sashayed into the drug store.
Hank gave a low whistle. “I gotta get me a piece of that.”
“She’s a human being, not an apple pie,” Delon snapped. “And she’s still in high school.”
“Old enough to know what she wants.” Hank turned his smirk on Delon. “Like you’ve got any room to talk. Everybody knows about your hot blonde.”
Tori. The memory slammed into Delon. Another of those times he’d made a grab for something way out of his reach. And fallen hard.
Hank shot him a sly grin. “You were seein’ her for what—five, six months? And you never brought her around, not even to meet Miz Iris. Sounds like a booty call to me.”
Delon had to choke down his fury for fear of sparking the gasoline fumes. Besides—damn it to hell—he couldn’t argue.
“Can’t blame you. I seen pictures.” Hank made a show of wiping his brow with his sleeve. “She was smokin’. Melanie and Violet and Shawnee called her Cowgirl Barbie—said she had the perfect outfit for every occasion and roped like she was afraid she’d break a nail.”
Tori was definitely not made of plastic. Delon would know. He’d examined every inch of her on multiple occasions. Had planned on doing it a whole lot more, until he’d called her one last time.
I’m sorry, the number you have reached is no longer in service...
“Too bad she wasn’t the one you knocked up. Senator Patterson’s daughter? That’s some serious cash.”
Delon slammed the nozzle back onto the pump and wheeled around, biting off a curse when pain stabbed through his knee. “Honest to shit, Hank, why someone hasn’t strangled you yet is beyond me.”
Hank gazed back in wide-eyed bafflement. “Why? What did I say?”
Only the gas pump between them stopped Delon from running the little bastard down as he drove away. He reached over to the passenger’s seat, grabbed a Snickers bar and ripped it open with his teeth, but even the blast of sugar and chocolate couldn’t ward off the memories. Tori, with her silky blonde hair, endless legs and eyes as blue as her blood. Who’d left without so much as a Kiss my ass, cowboy, we’re through, never to be heard from again.
And he’d been stupid enough to be surprised, even after seeing how it’d ended for his brother. Except it never ended for Gil because he had knocked up the rich blonde, and he had to fight tooth and nail to be a part of his son’s life. At least Delon didn’t have to drive clear to Oklahoma to see Beni. He just had to share him with goddamn Joe Cassidy.
Delon crammed the rest of the Snickers into his mouth and punched up the playlist he’d labeled The Hard Stuff. The bass notes vibrated clear down into his gonads as he thumped his fist against the steering wheel in time to the beat. He might drive a mom car, but he’d match the custom stereo system against any gang banger in Amarillo.
He pulled into the parking lot at the clinic and sat for a moment, dreading the upcoming appointment. Victoria Hancock was probably better than average or Panhandle Sports Medicine wouldn’t have hired her, but he was so damn tired of rolling with the punches. Taking the crumbs he was given and pretending he was satisfied.
Don’t kick up a fuss now, Delon. Your mother can’t come visit if you’re gonna throw such a fit when she leaves.
He scowled, drop-kicking that memory into the distant past as he climbed out of the car. On the worst days along the rodeo trail—beat-up, exhausted and homesick—he’d always been able to paste on a happy face. He was the guy who could work the crowd, the sponsors, the rodeo committees, trading on the face God had given him to the tune of as much sponsorship money as some of the world champions. Now he could barely manage a smile for the receptionist.
Beth—a fade
d redhead with tired eyes who didn’t have much luck hiding her prematurely gray roots or the hard miles that had put them there—smiled back. She clicked a few times with her computer mouse. “Got you checked in, Delon.”
“Thanks. Can I go ahead and warm up?”
She shook her head. “Tori said she wanted to do a full evaluation first thing. She’ll be right out.”
His heart smacked into his ribs. Tori? Couldn’t be. Lots of women named Victoria shortened it to Tori. He was just jumpy because Hank had mentioned her. She had been studying physical therapy, but what were the odds…
The waiting room door opened and a woman stood there—tallish, slender and almost plain, wearing khakis and a white Panhandle Sports Medicine polo shirt. The floor tilted under his feet.
“Hello, Delon.” Tori didn’t smile. Didn’t…anything. Her face was as blank as if they’d never shared more than a cup of coffee. “Come on in.”
She turned to lead the way without checking to see if he followed. Delon squeezed his eyes shut, taking a moment to steady himself. Here he’d been thinking his life couldn’t get much more screwed up.
That’d teach him.
Chapter 2
Delon was still gorgeous. Which, of course, Tori had known. He’d been one of the top bareback riders in the country for years, and fans and sponsors alike swooned over that face, that body, and that way he had of making every person feel like he’d been waiting all day just to smile at them.
He wasn’t smiling now. Tori pointed him down the hall toward one of the four private treatment rooms and followed behind. He walked with the distinctive, slightly duck-footed gait of a bareback rider who’d spent a lifetime turning his toes out to spur bucking horses. The view was spectacular, despite loose-fitting nylon warm up pants and a plain navy blue T-shirt. His body was denser, the way men got as they matured. The changes only made him more attractive. More…there.
She’d never seen him in workout clothes. Hell, she’d barely seen him in clothes at all, back in the day. Most of the time they’d spent together had involved the opposite of dressing for the occasion. She poked at the memory, the way her dentist poked her cheek to see if she was numb enough for him to start drilling. Can you feel that? No? Great. We can go ahead then.
Ah, the blessed numbness. It had settled around her like thick cotton batting, layer after layer, down the long highway between here and the Wyoming border. By the time she crossed into the Panhandle, she couldn’t feel anything but the most basic biological urges. Eat. Drink. Pee. Sleep…well, she was working on that one.
Everything else was muted to near silence. Grief. Guilt. The gossamer thread of anger that wound through it all. She was vaguely aware of their presence, but from a safe distance. For now, survival was enough. An induced coma of the heart, so it could finally rest and heal.
If anyone could penetrate her cocoon, it should have been Delon, but she had looked him straight in the eye and there was…not exactly nothing. But what she felt now was an echo, the ping of a sonar scanner detecting the shape of something too far in the murky past to be more than a blur on her emotional screen. Which meant her concerns about whether she could effectively function as his therapist were ungrounded, at least from her perspective. From Delon’s…hard to tell, since he had yet to say a word. He hesitated at the door to the treatment room, as if unsure about being trapped in the confined space with her.
“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 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 to Panhandle Sports Medicine, but she’d rather hang herself with a cheap rope than explain to her mentor why she shouldn’t.
Delon finally moved over to the table, but rather than sitting on it he braced his butt against the edge and faced her, arms and ankles crossed, a posture that 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.” 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.
“Lay 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, but 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 rodeo 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 felt, she doubted that was the case.
“What about the joint 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 fold
s. There are ways to address the adhesions.”
“But not the other kind.”
She saw the answer in his eyes before she spoke. “No. And there are limits to how much we can improve it with therapy. You’ll have to learn to live with a deficit.”
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 from 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 found 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. 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.”
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