by Vicki Tharp
“Maybe.” She pointed to the extra water bottle in the crook of his arm. “Please say that’s for me.”
He looked around like he didn’t want anyone to overhear. “It’s vodka.”
“V-vodka? It’s the middle of the freaking day? What if Mac catches you? Or Dale or Lottie? Or you fall off the ladder and break your neck or you get someone else hurt or—”
“Take a breath, Irish.”
She swallowed her tirade and glanced around them, hoping no one had seen, no one had heard. Her breath came in short, rapid inhalations. Her heart raced and blood swirled in her ears, making sounds dull and far away, and she wasn’t even the one drinking on the job. She bent over, her hands on her knees, her head lowered to keep her from passing out.
Too late. Stars shot across her vision, bright volleys and strobe flashes. She barely felt it when she plowed head first into the sand.
When she came to, Bryan was kneeling beside her, wiping the sand off her face and shading her with his hat.
“What the hell?” he asked.
She blinked him into focus.
“You keep sleeping on the job and I’m gonna have to report it to Mac.”
“You’re an ass,” she said, but it made him smile.
She tried to sit up, but her hand slid out from beneath her in the deep sand. He grabbed her beneath her arms and sat her up, leaning her against one of the rails.
“Here, drink this.” He handed her the bottle.
She eyed him.
“It’s water. Promise.”
She’d panicked. Over a bottle of water. A joke. Idiot.
He unscrewed the lid and held the bottle to her lips, tilting it up for her to drink. She guzzled half the bottle. Feeling her strength return, she took the bottle from him and scooted herself up higher.
“Sorry,” she said. “I must have gotten a little dehydrated. Dry mountain air and all.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit what?”
“You didn’t pass out because you were dehydrated,” he said.
“You suddenly an expert on my body?”
He waited a beat before answering. She expected some kind of smart-ass remark, but his eyes never left hers. Then his expression shifted, softened. “No. But I’m an expert on panic attacks, on PTSD, on things that go bump in the night.” His voice was quiet, sincere, unexpected.
“I don’t have PTSD.”
“Or dehydration.” He settled against the rails beside her. “But that was one fucker of a panic attack.”
She pulled another long, defiant swallow from the bottle.
“What gives?” he asked.
Laughter escaped her, incredulous and full of derision. “Seriously? Mister goes silent and deep like a nuclear sub when asked about his leg, his service, then expects me to take my own knife and gut myself? Fat freaking chance.”
He nodded once at that, leaned back, rested his head on the rail, and settled his hat low on his head, like he was shading his eyes from the sun and was about to take a nap, though his body vibrated with tension like a support wire on a suspension bridge. At the base of his neck, his pulse thrummed.
“I was stationed in Fallujah, Iraq. Camp Baharia.”
She leaned nearer to hear him better.
“A big, fat, fucker of a boil on the hairy ass of the world. It was a day like every other day, hot enough to fry your brain in your head, sand whipping and grinding into sweaty cracks and crevices you didn’t even know you had.”
She edged closer still, afraid if she moved too fast, he’d realize what he was revealing and stop talking.
“Went to a briefing that morning with my commander, my CO, two other enlisted, and a trusted Iraqi informant the US had been working with for over a year. We were gathering intel on a safe house where the insurgents had some of their high-level leaders stashed. Mac was running late and my CO was about to lose his shit.”
He let out a short, strangled laugh and tilted his head to look at her. “My CO was always losing his shit.
“And then…” Bryan’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and his jaw muscles contracted as he struggled to maintain his composure. “And then…nothing.”
Bryan gripped his knee above the prosthetic. Sidney reached over, lacing their fingers together. His hand curved and held her fingers tight. He felt so strong, so alive.
She knew how the story ended, knew he’d survived, knew he’d lost his leg. Still, her chest tightened and her gut knotted. She didn’t know if she really wanted to hear this, the reality of it, the pain of it, but she wouldn’t stop him.
“Rahim stripped my CO’s weapon from his holster and blew his brains out.” He scrubbed at his face with his free hand. “Brains, blood, bone splattered my clothes, my face, in my mouth. I raised my weapon, but he was already firing on me, on the others in the tent. I took one in the leg, one through the armhole of my body armor.
“I was still moving so he aimed the gun at my head. Mac came in.” Bryan leveled his hat, his sight landing thousands of miles away in the desert of a hostile country. “She was shot, but still managed to take him out. I owe her my life.”
Sidney didn’t know what to say. She barely knew him, yet he’d trusted her with his story, with the worst moment of his life. It humbled her. In comparison, her troubles with her parents seemed so insignificant.
At the thought of telling him about her panic attacks, about something so personal, her pulse pounded. She took a shallow breath. “My dad—”
“Shhh.” His grip on her hand had eased, but he didn’t let go.
“You don’t want to hear—”
“Yeah, but not like this,” he said. “This isn’t some kind of I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours.”
Because the lump of relief in her throat was too huge to talk around, Sidney managed a half smile in thanks. The lasso constricting her chest eased and her blood pressure dipped out of the yellow zone. She swallowed the last of the water then crushed the bottle in her hand.
A truck pulled up near the big house, the two front doors opening and thunking closed. Bryan stood, pulled her up, finally releasing her hand.
She wanted his hand back. Crazy. She didn’t even know him, but even while her head warned her about his drinking, her heart stuffed cotton in its ears and refused to listen.
“That’s Hank with Mac,” he said as a man and Mac walked their way.
“Was Mac upset about the burro?”
“I haven’t told her yet.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Boomer stood shoulder to shoulder with Sidney by the round pen, in quiet solidarity as Hank and Mac approached. He shifted from foot to artificial foot and rubbed the muscles at the base of his neck. If Mac or Hank didn’t want the burro, he’d find a home that could take it and the buckskin, because he wasn’t about to let them be split up.
Boomer wasn’t sure he liked what that said about him. Next thing you knew he’d be eating berries and nuts and swearing off steak. He straightened, not giving a flying fuck what anyone else thought. This decision he would own and defend.
Bryan shook Hank’s outstretched hand.
Hank turned his attention to Sidney. “You must be—”
“Holy cowboy! You’re Hank Nash!” She shook his hand as if she’d met Bon Jovi and Captain America all rolled into one, as if she wanted to ask him for a selfie and to sign her breasts with a Sharpie. For hell’s sake.
“In the flesh,” Hank said.
“I saw you win the finals in Vegas, that bull was brutal, I—”
“What happened to your head?” Mac pointed at Sidney’s right temple, drawing the attention away from her husband.
Maybe Boomer needed a silver belt buckle too. They seemed to be some kind of metallic aphrodisiac.
Sidney raised a hand and came away with a smattering of sand and b
lood. “I…uh…” She glanced back at the round pen, then her shoulders sagged, and Boomer knew she’d decided not to lie. To tell her new bosses that she’d lost her shit.
“My fault,” Boomer said. “I tripped her up while she was working the horses.” The truth, essentially. More of a mental trip, but he claimed fault.
“It’s a scrape.” She sneaked a thank-you glance at him then turned her attention back to Mac and Hank. “Come on, I’ll show you the horses.”
As they walked toward the mustangs, Boomer fell in behind them. Sidney carried the conversation. The horses were her deal. Phantom pains shot up his leg—hot and scorching and excruciating, as if a razor-toothed demon were using his leg as a chew stick. He froze mid-step. Sweat slicked his scalp and sluiced down his spine as goose bumps erupted on his skin. His heart rate spiked, his stomach roiled, and he swallowed a bubble of bile.
“Hey, Bryan, you coming?” Sidney asked.
He tugged his hat down low before looking up, trying to hide the pain. Sidney hung from the corral, two rungs up so she could see over the top.
“Be right there.” His words came out low and harsh, as if the demon had taken hold of his soul and growled them out.
Sidney turned back to the horses.
Mac stepped over to him. “You okay?” she said under her breath.
“Yeah, sure.” He tried to smile, but the demon chomped down again and stole it away.
“Bullshit. Sit down and take a load off.”
The beast answered. “You know what I need? I need you to leave me the fuck alone.”
Mac cracked her knuckles, prepping for a fight, and smiled—slow, salient, dangerous. “Sit your ass down, or I’ll take you down. Your choice.”
Fat chance. “I’m not gonna sit in the dirt and cry over my boo-boo. I’m not a kid with a skinned knee.” Then another scorching wave of pain hit, sucking the oxygen from his lungs. He heaved in warm, dry air. “Corral,” he managed. “I’ll lean on it.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pain pill mixed in among the lint and horse treats and galvanized screws and popped the pill into his mouth, crunching it between his molars like a Tic Tac.
Mac wrapped her arm around his waist and bore his weight as they trudged to the fence.
At the rail, a few yards from where Hank and Sidney compared the horses’ conformation, the demon unhinged his jaws and released his leg. Boomer removed his hat and swiped the sweat from him brow. Sometimes he didn’t know what he’d do without Mac. When he spoke, he pushed the words past the emotion in his throat. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”
She gave his waist a squeeze before letting go. “Am I the pot, or the kettle?”
He latched onto the top rail, transferring his weight from Mac to his good leg. The burro spotted him, pushed through the herd, and trotted halfway over, his long, fuzzy ears quivering as he brayed.
“A donkey?” Hank’s voice jumped from bass to soprano.
“I—”
“He’s bonded to the buckskin.” Sidney cut Boomer a look that screamed shut the hell up. He did, though the burro was his deal. Why was she protecting him?
Sidney continued, “I couldn’t pass up the buckskin, and I figured that if your plan was to train and sell horses to the dude ranches, then a string that comes with a pack animal could add a lot of value.”
Boomer tuned out as Hank asked her another question. Mac nudged his shoulder in a spill-the-beans kind of gesture. He leaned in and whispered, “No matter what she says,” he tilted his head toward Sidney, “the donkey’s on me. I couldn’t leave him behind.”
Mac met his gaze. He didn’t find pity or concern there, just utter and complete understanding. “Of course not.”
“See those two horses over there?” Hank said to Sidney. “That’s the mare and the colt the horse was pregnant with when Mac saved them from the kill buyer at auction a couple years ago. I’d sent her there to buy some saddle horses.”
Hank had raised his voice to be heard by his wife and Boomer. After he was finished talking, Hank said to Mac, “If I hadn’t seen you two in action, I would think y’all were a couple a pushovers.”
“Come closer and say that to my face, cowboy.” Mac’s eyes went dark, mischievous.
Hank backed off, with a smile on his face. “Not in front of the children, dear.”
Mac rolled her eyes. Sidney laughed. It was low and throaty, completely at odds from how Boomer had expected her laugh to sound. He shouldn’t have been surprised. In the two days he’d known her, she hadn’t once been what he’d expected.
He looked at her then, really looked at her. He looked past the short red hair she’d moussed up from her scalp like tiny flames, past the flush on her cheeks from a day in the sun, past the sandy raspberry on her temple, past her firm breasts and exquisite ass. Past all that, he saw the woman beneath: tough, strong, intelligent, with a depth he suspected he could mine for an eon and still not hit bottom.
“Burro or no burro, you picked a solid string, Sidney. Good job,” Hank said.
It might have been Boomer’s imagination, but Sidney seemed to grow two inches right in front of his face.
Hank didn’t give Sidney a chance to respond before adding, “I got a call today, from a potential buyer,” he said. “Coming up in a couple weeks to check out what we have. He’s a big fish. People see he’s buying stock from us, others will want to as well. A good impression is vital.”
“Sure.” A smile. Tight. Forced. Sidney raised her chin. “I won’t let you down.”
Hank looked Sidney in the eye.
Did Hank see what Boomer saw? A woman determined to prove her abilities worthy and her detractors wrong?
“No, I don’t believe you will,” Hank said.
Hank and Mac turned toward the big house when Mac called over her shoulder. “Take care of that wound for her, Boomer.”
* * * *
At the barn, Bryan stopped Sidney with a hand to her arm and drew her around to face him. He lifted her chin and angled her wound toward the sun. With a light touch, he plucked a caked-on piece of hay from her forehead.
Sand rained down from her hair. Sidney reached up. The abrasion was superficial, the sand ground in, stuck on with dried sweat and blood. The wound stung every time the wind blew.
“Come on,” Bryan said. “I have a first aid kit at my cabin.”
“It’s fine. I’ll clean it when I take a shower tonight.”
“You know there’s manure in with all that sand.”
“It’s a scratch. I was raised in a barn. I probably nibbled on a ball of manure by the time I’d learned to crawl. If nothing else, I have one freaking fantastic immune system.”
“Humor me.” His blue eyes narrowed. He wasn’t taking no for an answer.
She sighed for dramatic effect. “Okay, fine. But I need to get Eli settled first.”
Bryan glanced over to where Eli was still saddled in the shade, his hay bag still partially full. “He can wait.”
“Eli, then me.”
He looked her up and down, measuring her resolve. He must have figured it was greater than his because he nodded and followed her over to Eli, his limp more profound.
“I’ve got this, if you want to sit and wait for me.”
“I can help.”
She stepped in front of him. “Your stride is short. The lines around your eyes are long, and if you clench your jaws any tighter, you’ll shatter a molar. Jesus, Bryan, if you’re in pain, stop.”
Then his face softened, a few of the stress lines on his forehead relaxed. “Only my mother calls me Bryan.”
She wrinkled her nose and suppressed a shiver. His mother? Bryan’s mother was probably a perfectly wonderful person, but having a hot guy tell you that you remind them of their mother, that was sixty-one kinds of wrong. “I remind you of your mother?�
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He laughed. The rumble warm and smooth, like chocolate melting in the sun. He looked her up and down. Long and slow, as if he were mentally comparing every inch of her to his mother. Every. Single. Solitary. Inch. She flushed.
“Hardly,” he said.
Her stomach did a weird flippy thing and the synapses in her brain misfired, so she didn’t know what to think about her reaction. She led Eli to the barn. Bryan cranked on the water and handed her the hose.
Since changing the subject when things got awkward seemed to be working for them, she went with it. “So, you’ve liked to blow shit up—”
“For a very long time.” Bryan made the mental shift without slipping the clutch or grinding any gears.
“Legally?”
His slow smile transformed his face. “Mostly.” When she raised her brows at him he added, “Two or three or four fence posts may not have survived my elementary school days, and there was an old outhouse that fell victim. But that stinky old toilet taught me the need to learn how to shape my charges so the explosion goes in the right direction. I’d call it a win.”
She squeegeed the water off Eli then turned her horse out with Mac’s mare and colt. “Your mother must have been a saint.”
“See,” he grinned. “Nothing at all like you.”
She tried to sock him in the gut, but he moved faster than she’d expected considering his leg was bothering him.
As they walked down to Bryan’s cabin, Sidney’s mind whirred and shifted into hyperdrive. Two weeks. Two weeks to get four wild horses far enough in their training to impress the buyer. To impress Hank and Mac. To make or break her employment.
Her heart thumped in her chest, her breath quickened, and her stride lengthened. This wasn’t the start of another panic attack. The panic attacks were all about flight. This? This was all about the fight.
* * * *
Boomer held his cabin door open and ushered Sidney inside. She stopped in the center and did a slow 360, taking in the two sets of bunk beds on either side wall, the mini-kitchen with a refrigerator, sink, and microwave that shared a wall with the bathroom tucked behind it.