Reckless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

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 Texas?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

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

  “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 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 beauty had been manufactured. Platinum blonde hair, push-up bras, perfect makeup. Even the intense sky blue of her eyes must’ve been colored contact lens. Now she’d let her hair go a dark caramel color, and 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, goddamnit. 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. All 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. But ride? When she’d said those words, the fresh wash of panic had spilled into a 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. One grim syllable he couldn’t spit out. It left a taste like ashes in his mouth that he couldn’t smother with chocolate. His body felt as it was constructed of a thousand coiled springs. One wrong move and he would fly apart.

  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. Might as well save some cash and stay here…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. At the far left end were a break room and bathroom for the mechanics. Next to that was the dispatcher’s office. Directly in front of him was the beat up metal desk that served as their reception area.

  Their secretary barely spared him a glance as she bustled around, collecting stacks of trip sheets, delivery receipts, bills of lading and invoices, most already scanned. 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 spit 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. 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?

  Merle sighed. “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 till 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 criss-crossing 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.

  “You sure your knee is up to it?” his dad asked.

  “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 among rodeo fans, 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 wasn’t a lie. 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.

  Please enjoy this sneak peek at Nicole Helm’s

  available October 2016

  BIG SKY CHRISTMAS

  Thack Lane has his hands full. For the past seven years, he’s been struggling to move on from his wife’s tragic death and raise a daughter all by his lonesome. He doesn’t have time for himself, much less a cheerful new neighbor with a smile that can light up the ranch.

  Christmas spirit? Bah, humbug.

  With Christmas right around the corner, Summer Shaw is searching for somewhere to belong. When her neighbor’s young daughter takes a shine to her, she is thrilled. But Thack is something else altogether. He’s got walls around his heart that no amount of holiday wishes can scale…and yet as joy comes creeping back to the lonely homestead, Summer and Thack may just find their happily ever after before the last of Christmas miracles are through…

  Chapter 1

  For Summer Shaw, happiness was made of simple pleasures—a place to call your own, a little patch of land, the big open sky and food in your stomach. All that was why the Shaw Ranch wasn’t just happy, it was heaven. Here, she also had family—as evidenced by the tiny week-old niece she held in her arms.

  “She’s just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “So you’ve said, approximately three hundred times.” Mel sighed, closing her eyes and sinking into the living room couch. “Today alone.”

  “Why don’t you go take a nap? I can handle Lissa for an hour or so.”

  “No, I’m fine.” Mel yawned, curling her legs onto the couch. “I’ll just close my eyes for a few seconds.”

  “Of course you will,” Summer placated, cradling the baby in one arm while she draped an afghan across Mel with the other. “Your mama needs to learn that she can’t do everything,” Summer whispered to the bundle in her arms.

  “I heard that,” Mel mumbled without any heat.

  Summer tiptoed out of the room. With any luck, Mel really would relax and sleep—at least until Lissa needed to eat again. Mel and Summer’s tentative relationship still had its moments of awkwardness, and had since Summer had showed up on the doorstep of Shaw over a year ago. But the changes that came with Mel’s pregnancy and Lissa’s birth had smoothed over those last pockets of distance.

  They finally had something to bond them together, that could get them past being so wary of each other.

  Summer hummed to the beautiful baby girl, walking her to the den at the end of the house. It was a cluttered, messy room that smelled of old magazines and dirt. Summer liked how it held the distinctive signs of the most recently married Shaw couple: her brother Caleb’s ranch magazines and her new sister-in-law Delia’s gardening tools stored for the winter.

  This space had everything she wanted—the comfort, the evidence of family and the big window that looked out over mountains, barns and so much of Shaw.

  Winter held Montana in its grip, the mountains heavily snow-peaked, the world around her white and glittering. She missed the warmth of summer, but she couldn’t bring herself to miss California, even as she entered her second Montana winter.

  It was harsh and long, but the upcoming holidays would warm up this interminable season. Her family would gather, and they would celebrate.

  A family who treated her as though she were a person. Maybe a person they didn’t know what to do with, but it was hard to push. It was mainly just her father treating her with distance, at this point.

  He’d apologized, after all, for treating her with silence when she first showed up. For knowing that Summer’s mother had been pregnant with her when Mom had left him and Montana, and doing nothing to stop it.

  Even so, Summer wasn’t one hundred percent sure what to do with that apology, or with the dread that lived in her heart. Because who knew which of her mother’s stories were true? She might not belong here. Summer winced at the little prick of conscience. She had been at Shaw for almost a year and a half—she couldn’t let that possibility ever take this away.

  The Shaws were her family now. They never needed to know that there was doubt.

  Summer took a deep breath. She’d spent a lifetime—short though twenty-three years might be—learning to soak up life’s good moments. She’d learned every deep-breathing, positive-thinking, centered-life meditation, practiced them with every fiber of her being. She breathed, day and night, through thick and thin, happy and sad.

  That had kept her going, all through the unpredictable prison that had been her life with Mom, and the new freedom she’d found in Montana and Shaw.

  Still. Nothing was perfect. Even in moments like this one, holding this newborn—her niece—in front of the most beautiful landscape she’d ever seen, the joy could be jarred. A knot formed in the pit of her stomach. Tiny at first. A little pebble. But eventually it would grow until she had a boulder sitting on her chest.

  Because a life spent collecting these few-and-far-between perfect moments had taught her one thing. Just when she thought she was on the right track, happy, peaceful, home…

  Life would have other plans.

  She closed her eyes against the certainty. Please don’t take Shaw away from me. I can handle anything but that.

  Anything but that.

  A beat. A breath.

  Summer opened her eyes, and her gaze drifted toward the tree line around her caravan. Well, that was something no one could take away. Her little home. Her ability to survive. Those were all hers.

  Lissa fussed and Summer began to sing, one of the slow country love songs the regulars at Pioneer Spirit tended to drift
off to.

  At second glimpse of the caravan, way off in the trees, she didn’t pay much attention to the little dot of red. The vehicle was a colorful thing as it was. She’d repainted the outside this summer, a vibrant purple and blue to mimic the sky at dusk.

  But red was off. She squinted, noticing the dot of color was moving. It was too big to be a bird, too red to be…well, anything else, but so far away it was impossible to make out clearly.

  Her stomach dropped with the sour fear she thought she’d gotten over, except for in her dreams. Surely it wasn’t big enough to be her mother. Surely, surely Mom wouldn’t have followed her here. But that bright vibrant red had always been one of Mom’s favorites.

  Run.

  Panic bubbled up in Summer’s chest, and she backed away from the window. She couldn’t let Linda get up here, especially couldn’t let her talk to any Shaws. Linda would turn them against Summer, and ruin everything Summer’s life had become. Who knew what damage she could inflict on the Shaws, on this place Summer was finally beginning to think of as home.

  Summer turned on a heel. She wasn’t going to run. She’d promised herself she would never run away again. So, she’d fight.

  * * *

  It was not her mother.

  After settling Lissa back with Mel, failing to stay calm or nonchalant, Summer dashed across the snow-packed land that separated the Shaw house and her caravan. She arrived breathless and near tears, only to find a little girl. A little girl dressed in red. Red coat, red boots, even her pants were red. She had a shock of unruly curly blonde hair, and she stared at Summer with big blue eyes.

  Summer wasn’t great at guessing ages, but the girl had to be old enough for elementary school, though probably not much older than that.

  “Hello,” Summer offered once she could breathe almost normally. “Are you lost?”

  The girl continued her wide-eyed staring.

  “Are you okay?” Summer pressed, taking a few uncertain steps toward her. She didn’t know of any neighbor children; a few families around the ranch made sure not to associate with any of the Shaws. There was a lot of not-so-pleasant history there, mainly involving Caleb being a bit of a ne’er-do-well as an adolescent.