Healing the Quarterback (Wildhorse Ranch Brothers Book 2)

by Leslie North

  When she looked for Charlie again less than a minute later, he was gone.

  Better this way, Dylan tried to convince herself as she dropped into a seat offered her near the railing. Charlie Wild was a flirt, as unserious about her as he was about the rules. He shirked all responsibility and those who would impose it on him—and that was okay. The worlds they inhabited may have shared the same orbit, but they were still light years away from having anything in common. In fact, she wanted nothing to do with him. She was a helpful professional, a woman with a career that would last her all her life; he was a party boy most concerned with where his balls were at any moment, double entendre intended. He had maybe a few more years before a major injury took him out or until the media grew bored with him and decided to assist in his downfall. Dylan had seen this story play out a million times before.

  Still, that didn't stop her from finding number twenty-seven down on the playing field once the game started. He wasn’t the biggest guy out there—the linebackers got that honor—but Charlie Wild was the indisputable center of gravity. Of course he would be surrounded by cameras and reporters, giving his pre-game interview. Dylan leaned forward, folding her arms beneath her on the railing as she watched. Maybe it was all right to admire him from a distance—the way his mile-wide shoulders filled out his pads; the way he leaned all his weight to one side, with his helmet nestled in the crook of his hip; the way the tight little knot of hair piled atop his head gave his chiseled features a strength and severity she hadn't fully appreciated before.

  Okay, fine. She would admire him with all the rest. But like all the rest, she would only allow herself to admire from a distance.

  The first quarter started. Dylan sipped on her second vodka-cranberry, relishing the tart taste that kept her company as she observed the action below. Occasional comments from her seatmates drew her attention away from the field, but her eyes always returned to the Teamsters' star quarterback. Someone wise had once said to never meet your heroes. Not that Charlie was her hero, but she couldn't help feeling…disappointed somehow. And not because she had built up some false, worshipful image of who he was in her head. He had a whole team of people behind him off the field whose sole job was to market him as the playboy of football, a potent man's man who conquered women as easily as he conquered his opponents.

  But that wasn't the man Dylan thought she had met an hour ago. He had been cocky, sure, but…surprising. Chivalrous was the word she wanted to use, but she kept it to herself. Dylan sucked her drink down until the ice cubes rattled; she rose to go get herself a third.

  "WILD IS DOWN! WILD IS DOWN!" the radio announcer in the skybox suddenly shouted.

  All around her, the box's occupants stood with a cry. The crowd below them roared like an ocean in upheaval. Dylan whirled and rushed back to the railing. Her drink slipped from between her fingers and crashed to the balcony floor.

  Maybe a few more years before an injury takes him out. Her own earlier thought bounced around in the back of her skull. There was number twenty-seven, sprawled on the field, surrounded by his teammates—with a stretcher on the way.

  2

  Charlie

  Lockhart Bend was pretty much exactly as Charlie remembered it: a dusty town with a third lane for tumbleweeds, as preserved and unchanging as the locals, and that's exactly the way the locals liked it.

  Lockhart Bend was too small for Charlie, and Lockhart General Hospital was even smaller. As Charlie stared up at its plain brick face, he felt the first faint stirrings of anxiety in his stomach.

  "Been a long-ass time since I've been back here," he said to his half-brother Trevor. He shifted on his crutches, wincing more at the fact that they cramped his style than from any actual pain. It had been over a month since the accident, and he wouldn't be walking with them now if his brother hadn't insisted.

  Trevor looked equally uncomfortable with their surroundings. Then again, the stern-faced cowboy almost always looked uncomfortable when confronted with someone or something that wasn't a horse, but this went beyond even his usual restlessness. Charlie decided to take pity on him.

  "Look, I know we both hate this place. Why don't you wait out here?" Charlie suggested. "Once the meeting's over, I'll come and get you. You can look at all my fucked-up MRI scans. Get to know the most intimate parts of me."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure." Charlie clapped a hand on his brother's shoulder, then his gaze zeroed in on a figure coming toward them on the sidewalk. "No shit," he muttered under his breath. Trevor turned to see what the matter was and went so far as to push the brim of his Stetson up to get a better look.

  She might have been a mirage shimmering out of the Texas heat to torment him. Today she had shed the baggy clothes, but he still would have recognized her anywhere: she was all legs in those jeans, all easy confidence, as if the skin she wore was enough for her and anything else could be easily discarded as excess. The baseball cap was gone, and her dark hair flowed around her elegantly erect neck in soft waves. She was even more striking than he had remembered; those hallmark green eyes of hers were evident even from this distance, reflecting the light of the midday sun until they practically glowed amid the exquisite contours of her face.

  "You know her?" Trevor sounded doubtful.

  "That's the chick I was telling you about. The mystery brunette from the stadium." Charlie slapped Trevor's shoulder again. "Stand back. Watch and learn," he murmured as he turned to greet the mystery head-on.

  "Uh-huh." Again, Trevor sounded doubtful.

  The woman's eyes locked with Charlie’s as she mounted the front steps to the entrance. Recognition flickered in their green depths, but she kept walking as if she hadn't quite remembered who he was. That was the only explanation that made sense, anyway. What woman would have any reason to willfully ignore him?

  "Well, hey there again, beautiful! Didn't expect to be reunited with you this soon!" Charlie said. He was all too happy to break the ice. "What did you say your name was again?"

  "I didn't," she replied. His overfamiliar greeting didn't so much as cause a hitch in her stride. This new part of the equation he found puzzling, but it only made him more intrigued.

  "You stalking me?" he asked as he jogged after her. Maybe jogged was a mistake. He shuffled as best he could on the crutches that had been custom-made to support a man of his size. Wounded warrior, he told himself. Don't worry so much about the crutches. Chicks love it.

  "While it may come as a surprise to you to hear it, I actually live here in Lockhart Bend," the woman informed him curtly. "So, you're the one who is technically in my area code."

  "Great. Maybe you can help me, then. I'm looking for my doctor—Dr. Dylan Rose." Charlie reached out to hold the door open for her, and she breezed right past him as if doors had never been an obstacle. "You don't happen to know where I can find him, do you?"

  The woman finally turned around, but it was only to stare at him blankly. Before she could muster a response—or before Charlie could inform her getting her number would be his consolation prize for missing his doctor—a staff member quickly intercepted and ushered them both down a side hallway.

  "Huh. So, since we're both going into the same meeting, I assume you work here." He intentionally allowed his eyes to linger on her as he asked. He wanted her to see his appreciation and guess the nature of his thoughts. The disgusted look she gave him in response wasn't as repellent as she probably wanted it to be.

  They entered the conference room together, but before he could drop down into the chair beside her and dig a bit deeper, Smitty motioned for him to join his management team at the other end of the table. Charlie saluted her—earning himself a scoff, which was marginally better than the lip curl—as he joined his people. The meeting about his treatment plan and how the hospital would handle a patient of his notoreity commenced around him, but there wasn't a lot he was interested in focusing on. The mystery surrounding the woman at the end of the table was too intriguing to pull his at
tention away from it for long.

  "So, we'd like to make a generous donation to the hospital," one of the nameless suits who represented him and the Teamsters head office said about ten minutes in. "A fifty thousand-dollar donation to Sports Med from the Teamsters will go over well, we think. Not only will it improve the charitable profile of our client, but it will also raise the profile of the hospital and likely bring you more business. We look forward to collaborating with Lockhart General to see this arrangement pushed forward."

  "Pardon me, but wouldn't those funds be better allocated to the Critical Care wing?" His favorite dark-haired beauty cut in as she stood. "Sports Medicine is already generously endowed, and the patients in Critical Care are in desperate need of…"

  "Out of the question," Smitty broke in. "The only way you're getting this donation is if it raises the profile of my client and the profile of his team."

  "Are you seriously trying to tell me that a donation to Critical Care wouldn't—"

  "Nobody is trying to tell any one individual in this room anything," the hospital head interrupted quickly, with a significant look toward Charlie's mystery woman. The brunette tossed her head in annoyance as she sat back down. Charlie shot Smitty a look—could we? being his unvoiced question—but Smitty just shook his head in exasperation. He probably sensed the inspiration for Charlie's telepathic question and wanted to nip it in the bud now.

  Fat chance of that. As the meeting droned on, Charlie took turns watching the clock and watching the beautiful storm cloud brewing at the other end of the table. Finally, the hospital head dismissed them all. Charlie rose as quickly as he could on crutches and lumbered after the woman. If she thought she was going to escape from him a third time, she had a lot to learn.

  "Hey. You." Not his best attempt at an overture, but in his defense, he had tried pretty much everything else. The woman paused, perhaps taking enough pity on him to allow him to catch up.

  "Need help finding radiology, Mr. Wild? I'm sure one of the nurses will be happy to escort you."

  “I was hoping for some more personal attention, actually. Your name would be a good start.”

  The mystery woman stared at him for a long, weary moment. Then she inclined her head toward the front entrance of the hospital. "Who's the cowboy? He with you?"

  "Yeah, he's with me. He's my half-brother, Trevor. He's the owner down at Wildhorse Ranch. I'm going to be staying with him for a bit." Whoever this woman was, it was likely she had at least driven by Wildhorse on her way in and out of town.

  "Your half-brother? I thought you were from Austin," the woman muttered to herself. "That's what it says on all your stats."

  "I am. And I'm flattered you were looking at my stats." Charlie leaned forward as casually as he could manage on his crutches. He was trying, with varying degrees of success, to crowd the approaching Smitty out of their conversation. "But I'm from here originally. Charlie Wild, of Lockhart Bend. Pleasure to keep making your acquaintance, Miss…?"

  "Dr. Rose. Dr. Dylan Rose."

  Smitty arrived just in time to hear. His eyebrows rose so dramatically his sunglasses nearly fell off his head.

  "Shit," Charlie uttered.

  "I guess my only question, Mr. Wild, is what the hell did you do to yourself in private after your more publicly broadcast injury?"

  A pair of green eyes that had fast become familiar flashed at him like fire. Charlie winced. "That's some bedside manner you've got there, Doc. What makes you think I did anything to aggravate it?"

  Female sports doctor Dylan Rose—his doctor, and the mystery woman who had haunted his thoughts since he first knocked a bucket of popcorn out of her hands—angrily indicated the wall where she had posted his MRI scans. "Because we're currently standing in radiology, Mr. Wild, in one of the best sports clinics in the country, and fortunately they taught me how to read these things when I was in school."

  "It was my fault, ma'am." Trevor stood with his arms crossed beside Charlie. Charlie shot him a silencing look, but it had never been as effective on family as it was on his management team. "Charlie offered to help me move some equipment out of one of the barns. He told me he'd cleared it with you first."

  "Really." Now Dylan was giving Charlie a look that would have melted his MRI results like cigarette burns on old film. "That's funny, considering he didn't know who I was until today."

  "Look, Doc, I didn't think it was a big deal." Could this enraged woman be any hotter? Could her eyes be any greener? They reminded Charlie of the freshwater swimming holes he and his brothers used to leap into as kids…only these waters were slightly less welcoming at the moment. "I admit that I fucked up, okay? I'm not above doing that."

  "Wow." Trevor whistled, and Charlie was seriously starting to regret inviting him to this appointment. Who knew how much more successful he would be in getting Dylan on his side—and maybe even into his bed—without his half-brother cock-blocking and providing her with more ammunition to use against him at every turn.

  "Your ego aside, Mr. Wild—Charlie." Dylan corrected herself when she appeared to remember there were currently two Mr. Wilds in the room. "There won't be any more 'fucking up' now that I've been assigned to you. Your injury has now been aggravated to the point that a literal misstep could end your career. My expertise can only carry us so far—what I need you to do is start following my rules, whether I'm around to enforce them or not. An ACL injury of this magnitude isn't going to care whether or not my eyes are on you."

  No, Charlie thought wickedly, but I might. I might want those eyes of yours on every inch of me, Doc.

  Trevor elbowed him, and for a moment Charlie almost worried that he had said the words out loud. Then he remembered that he was Charlie Wild, the Teamsters' favorite say-anything, do-anything playboy, and he relaxed a little. If outside observers didn't automatically assume his thoughts were perverted, then he wasn't projecting himself right. Though he had some vague memory of Smitty suggesting he tone it down a bit.

  For her part, Dylan didn't appear to notice the way his eyes climbed every inch of her appreciatively. The white coat and the sensible clothes she wore beneath it were only marginally better than the getup she’d had on at the stadium, but Charlie surprisingly found he approved of her modesty. It left him more to discover for himself—and damned if he wasn't prepared to explore.

  "Do you have any more questions for me at this time?" Dylan asked him curtly.

  "Yeah. Who the hell names their daughter 'Dylan?’"

  A pen sailed toward him like a javelin. Charlie snatched it out of the air on instinct; the implement was capped, thank goodness, or he might have lost an eye if his reflexes hadn't been quick enough.

  Dylan smiled sweetly. "Good. Your hand-eye coordination is still intact, so that's one less test I have to run." She flipped her raven hair back over her shoulders and dismissed him by turning away. "Stick with me, and you'll be back at the top of your game in no time," she said over her shoulder as she jotted down more information on his chart.

  How many pens does one woman need? Charlie thought as he followed his brother out into the hallway. What he said out loud was, "Are all the beautiful ones crazy?"

  "Around here they are." Trevor's slow-and-easy stride was better suited to navigating Lockhart General than Charlie's swinging gait. He had to dodge out of the way of a nurse pushing a trolley full of supplies past him and nearly took Trevor out in the process with one of his crutches. “She must be the new doctor people have been talking about. Seems like she’ll fit right in.”

  "I hate these fucking things," Charlie hissed. "I swear she's doing this just to punish me."

  "Now why would she want to do that?" Trevor asked wryly. "Can't be because you thought she was a man, can it?"

  "We've met before," Charlie grumbled. "I…might not have made the best first impression. Actually, I have no idea how I did. Usually I can read a woman like an open book."

  "Maybe this one's above your reading level," Trevor volunteered. Charlie made a move
to swing at the backs of Trevor's legs with a crutch, but quickly aborted when he noticed a kid hovering in a doorway watching the brothers approach.

  Trevor paused first, but Charlie was the one who spoke: "Hey, bud. Know where I can find a vending machine around here? I'm starving."

  The boy shook his bald head. He was thin and ghostly-pale; the only thing that distinguished him from the hospital gown that swallowed him was the translucent quality of his skin.

  "There are no vending machines in Critical Care," he said. He spoke with the self-appointed authority of any kid, but his voice was a croaking whisper, like there weren't enough glasses of water in all of Lockhart General to quench his thirst.

  "What? No vending machines?" Charlie boomed incredulously. "I'm going to personally tackle whoever had that bright idea."

  A wisp of a smile tugged up one side of the boy's face. "Are you a football player or something?"

  Charlie exchanged a glance with a bemused Trevor. He wasn't used to not being recognized. "Yeah. Or something. You might have seen me on TV."

  "Critical Care doesn't have any TVs."

  "No TVs?" Charlie shouted, and the boy giggled. Other wasted figures were starting to turn up in the doorways down the hall; a few children even wheeled their friends out to see what the commotion was. The revelation of every new face was like a knife piercing Charlie's heart. Did you know Critical Care extended to kid patients? he wanted to ask Trevor. As if reading his thoughts, his half-brother gave a light shake of his head.

  "What's your name?" Charlie asked the boy.

  "Nicholas."