by Leslie North
But the things she should do weren't coming as easily to her anymore.
She dressed herself quickly as Charlie gathered up her papers and straightened them out of order on her desk. Then he took her by the hand, and Dylan let him spirit her down the hallway and out the back door to his pickup.
8
Charlie
"You ever been up close and personal with one of these before?"
He thought himself a gentleman for asking, but when Dylan raised her head from behind the bowed back of the mare she was brushing, he could see that he was mistaken. Her eyebrow arched like it was spring-loaded, and she asked him with her eyes if he seriously required a response.
"Yes, Charlie, I have seen a horse before. Up close, even," she answered finally. "I've even ridden one. Back when I was a kid."
"The plastic horse outside the Galleria doesn't count." It had been his idea to invite Dylan out to Wildhorse Ranch on her next day off.
Now, he secured the saddle for her and watched as Dylan hauled herself up onto the red roan Trevor had suggested for her. Charlie patted Copper’s neck and followed suit. Copper was old and reliable, and while Charlie might have preferred to try out one of the newer, faster horses just to see if he still had it in him to ride one after all these years, maybe it was a better idea to start slow. Dylan's caution was rubbing off on him. He didn't hate it as much as he had thought he would.
Charlie settled himself into the saddle, and steered Copper with a casually lifted wrist and a click of his tongue. The horse started obediently forward, and Dylan, after a moment spent observing, followed suit. She hadn't been lying: Charlie could tell by the erect way she carried herself that she had sat astride a horse before. English-style lessons, maybe, although that was something for Trevor to divine later during a more official lesson.
"Smitty said something funny to me," Dylan mentioned as she trotted up beside him.
"Really? Like genuinely funny?" Charlie feigned his surprise, and Dylan laughed.
"No…I mean, he doesn't seem like a guy given to a lot of joking. He takes his job almost more seriously than I do." She shook her head. "He said you didn't just come home to Lockhart to rehab your knee. He said you're here to rehab your image. I wonder what image that could be?"
Charlie grunted. "Well, don't wonder too hard. At the very least, don't strain yourself pretending like you don't know exactly what he was talking about."
Dylan laughed again, bright and confident. Not a lot of women laughed like that, Charlie reflected as he cast his eyes toward her. It came out of nowhere sometimes like a shot. Even better when he was the one responsible for it.
"I thought it was interesting, that's all. Lockhart Bend seems to hold this mysterious, magic property for some people—myself included. People really do come here to heal in a lot of different ways. To better themselves."
"That why you came here?" Charlie asked her. He turned his horse into hers slightly until the animals strolled side by side, and his knee bumped up against hers.
"I came here to get away from the city," Dylan admitted. "I fell in love with Lockhart Bend the first time I drove through here, late at night. It's so…quieting. I really feel like I can get so much more done here, without all the bullshit.”
"I feel the same." Charlie wasn't embarrassed to say it. Not with Dylan.
She chuckled. "You're not going to believe it, but once I wanted to be a cheerleader."
"That why you were staring at all the ladies in the skybox that first night we met?"
Dylan leaned over her saddle to punch him in the shoulder. "You know why I was watching them so intently. Thanks a lot for inviting me along and then forgetting all about me, by the way. I don't think I ever made you feel sorry for that."
"You made me sorry every hour of every therapy session after," he reminded her. "I couldn't figure out what the hell you had against me. Now I know you were just jealous."
Dylan made a noise in her throat, half-enraged and half-dismissive. He saw the fire enter her eyes before it ignited her to action; all at once, she flicked her reins and pressed forward in her saddle. The red roan mare took off, leaving Charlie and Copper to choke on their dust.
"Dylan!" he called after her. "You really sure you want to do that?"
"No!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Holy shit, Charlie! How do you stop this thing?"
"Told you. Plastic horse outside the Galleria," Charlie muttered to Copper as he urged his own horse on after her. Thankfully, the mare Dylan had sped away on knew an amateur rider when she felt one. The moment Dylan gave up the reins to hang off the saddle horn, the roan slowed to a trot and bounced back around to the driveway, where she stopped to crop the green grassy patch by Dylan's car. Charlie swung down easily out of his own saddle before Copper had fully halted; a slight twinge in his knee told him the old, familiar maneuver was a mistake, but that didn't stop him from going directly to Dylan and pulling her down out of the saddle.
"Whoa!" She stumbled into him, laughing and raising a hand to her wind-tousled hair.
"Little late for that," Charlie mused as he helped plant her upright after her wild ride. "But next time, try saying that when you're astride the horse."
"I'll keep that in mind." She flattened her raven hair as best she could. She looked up at him, eyes shining. Her cheeks were tinged rosy-pink from her brief time in the sun, and there were small freckles scattered around her nose that he had never noticed before. "Hey." She touched a hand to his arm and ran it up his arm. God, she could make him purr if she wanted to. "Can I choose the location of our next session?" she asked him.
"This wasn't a session, Doc," he told her. "This was supposed to be a date."
"I know." Dylan huffed in mild exasperation. "When I say session, I really do mean therapy session. I'd like to mix it up a bit. I promise what I have in mind will easily fit into your schedule with the Teamsters, now that you’re working out with the team again."
He found himself disliking this sudden turn back to work in their conversation. He knew his knee occupied the forefront of Dylan's brain most days—hell, it occupied the forefront of his brain, considering it was his career on the line—but something about the shift back to basics between them didn't feel right.
Dylan was more to him than just a hookup or a means to a Super Bowl ring. He thought he had made that abundantly clear on their outing today, but maybe she required a firmer signal.
He roped her around the waist and pulled her in against him. Dylan came unresisting, a warmer look of affection threatening to overtake her more clinical expression. Overtake away, Charlie thought, as he caught her chin and lowered himself to her for a kiss.
The touch of those slick, full lips should have been familiar to him by now. After all they had been through together, even a kiss from his beautiful doctor could still take his breath away like it was the first time. Dylan pressed her hands into his chest, but it wasn't to ward him off; it was a signal of surrender, even encouragement. When his tongue threaded along the seam of her lips, she opened to him with a sigh, and her arms slid up around his neck.
"Why do you think I wanted to plan something different for us?" she asked him when he could finally bring himself to pull away. "Just trust me, will you? What I have in mind won't just improve our working relationship." She trailed a finger down his chest, and he tensed his muscles out of habit. A beautiful woman's touch always brought out the instinct to flex in him
"If you say so," Charlie rumbled. He couldn't imagine how multiple sets of leg lifts and squats might come together to form a romantic interlude, but if anyone could find a way, it was Dylan.
"I do." She raised herself up on her toes to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. "You're going to like it, I promise."
Charlie groaned. He could think of a million and one things to do with her that he would also like, but Dylan chose that exact moment to shake out her shirtsleeve and check her watch.
"Oh, crap. I told accounting I would e-mail them about how to sp
lit the money from the fundraiser. We made more than enough to cover your splurge. I've got to head out." She slipped out from beneath him before he could wrap his arms around her and throw her over his shoulder, Neanderthal-style, and carry her into the farmhouse. If there was one thing Charlie regretted about their first evening—their first kiss—together, it was letting it all unfold on the couch, when Trevor had a perfectly good guest bed that could do with a bit of breaking in…
"Aren't you supposed to be having a day off?" Charlie called after her, but he couldn't suppress his smile at watching her go. Whatever she had in store for him later this week, he had his own ideas about how to spice things up to his liking—to both their likings.
He just hoped Dylan was ready for the workout he had in store for her.
9
Dylan
"When you said you had something new in mind for our session today, I had no idea this was what you meant," Charlie admitted as he closed the stadium gate behind them. "Field straight ahead. It's the big green thing. You can't miss it."
Dylan snorted as she strode for the football field. No one with two pairs of working eyes would ever miss that much green: the grass field stretched before her like a great carpet, over a hundred yards long and as natural and verdant as a golf course. The Teamsters spared no expense, preferring the terrain afforded by real grass rather than Astroturf.
Dylan dropped her duffel bag and wandered out to the middle of the field. She stared up at the open dome ceiling and the brilliant blue patch of Austin sky. The power, the sheer enormity of the cathedral-like structure overwhelmed her. She managed to keep her mouth from falling open as Charlie joined her with a knowing look. This place was sacred to him, and now she could see why. She gave herself a moment to revel in it all, though she was a bit more suspicious of the empty bleachers; the sight of so many vacant seats was unnatural.
"Have you ever been here when the stadium’s been empty like this?" she asked. "I imagine you always have coaches and press and hangers-on around you."
"Oh, yeah." Charlie spun a lanyard of keys on his finger.
"'Oh yeah,' you’ve done this before, or 'oh yeah,' there’s always a crowd?"
“The crowd. Teamster players can gain access to the field pretty much whenever we want, but yeah—there’s always at least a security guard or groundskeeper around. How’d you pull this off?”
"I arranged it with the team beforehand." Dylan explained. Smitty was all too happy to help—he was in favor of anything that got his biggest client back on the field ASAP. "We're completely alone for the next few hours."
“I never thought I’d like being here without an audience, but this is weirder than I expected.” Charlie turned in place, scanning the empty seats.
Dylan took another minute to soak in the feel of this temple to sport, then shook her head to clear it. She pointed back toward her duffel bag. "I brought a ball with me, if you want to grab it. I figured we'd start with an easy warm-up, and then you can show me some of the exercises the Teamster trainers put you through. "
“I only do hard,” Charlie teased as he piled his blond locks up into an expert man-bun and approached her bag. He palmed the football and raised it over his head. "Go long," he instructed.
Dylan turned so he wouldn't see her smile and sauntered down the field. "I'll go long so long as you promise to be careful even when I'm not around to police you." She didn't mention that today's session would prove to her once and for all that Charlie wasn't ready to return to the team. Maybe she was just prolonging the inevitable moment when she would have to tell him, but she wanted to be sure. Who knew—maybe the invincible Charlie Wild would manage to pull a rabbit out of that duffel and surprise her.
"Even after all we've been through, you still don't trust me," Charlie said in wonder. He flexed and threw the ball; Dylan lunged and caught it, then shook her head. Some of her curls had come loose from her messy ponytail, and they swished around her face to emphasize her denial. "I do trust you, Charlie. I know there's more to you than all this show and machismo." She hauled back and threw a perfect spiral. "It's just that every time I think I have you figured out, you throw me for a loop."
"You know plenty about me already." Charlie caught the ball and lobbed it underhand back to her. Dylan scoffed at his lack of technique and threw an even tighter spiral in response. "You know more about me than most. Except for my brothers."
"Aren't you leaving the entire world out of the equation?" Dylan caught another easy throw and took a personal timeout. She fisted a hand on her cocked hip and planted the football against the other. "Everyone knows everything about Charlie Wild, star quarterback. I was under the impression you didn't have a lot of privacy, and you preferred it that way."
"There are certain things I like to keep private," Charlie responded with a grin. Dylan tried not to roll her eyes too hard as she dropped back and pitched him the ball once more. "And I mean it, Doc. What you see is what you get, and you've seen all of me, the good and the bad. That includes my MRI scans."
"That reminds me—I wonder if I could get a few copies of those scans autographed to sell at the next hospital benefit," Dylan pretended to wonder as Charlie tossed the ball back to her.
"There's another secret you didn't think you knew about me. You know I don't like hospitals."
"You’re right. I did notice that, didn't I?" Dylan tried to contain her grin. "Obviously, your dislike doesn't extend to the doctors charged with your care."
"Not the hot ones," Charlie conceded. "Even if they do chap my ass every chance they get."
"The chances come so readily. May I ask again, then, why you hate hospitals?"
Charlie paused mid-throw. Dylan watched his fingers slide meditatively back and forth through the football's stitches. They must be so familiar to him. Would there ever come a day where his touch, gliding along her dips and swells, would be just as memorized and natural? The ache hit her with the force of a Teamster linebacker. Whatever Charlie would divulge, she wanted to know it. She wanted to know everything about him and reciprocate when asked.
"My brother. Andrew."
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. Of all the revelations he could have dropped on her, this one was the most unexpected. "I didn't know you had any brothers other than the twins."
"Yeah. Not a lot of people know about Andrew," Charlie conceded, so quiet that she barely heard him from where she stood. Their game of catch appeared forgotten, so Dylan approached him. She didn't know what instinct inspired her to do it, but she reached between them and took Charlie's hand before he spoke his next words.
"A few more years, and he would have looked exactly like Nicholas," he said. "Little scamp reminds me of him more than I can describe."
"Andrew…he died young at the hospital. At Lockhart General?"
Charlie nodded slowly. "When he was four. Complications due to undiagnosed food allergies. By the time help arrived at the ranch and they loaded him up into the back of the ambulance, it was a foregone conclusion. Mom was never the same."
"God, Charlie, I'm so sorry." Dylan squeezed his hand. She was used to giving and receiving bad news in her chosen profession, but this was something without any sort of preapproved communication structure. "I'm glad your mother had someone like you. And Trevor and Trent. She did a hell of a job raising the sons she was lucky enough to see grow old."
"You calling me old, Doc?" Charlie flexed a smile and returned her squeeze with one of his own. "It was a long time ago, and we've all had the time to move past the worst of our grief. Still, never told anyone that little bit of trivia before. Care to share a secret with the class?"
He started to reel her in, and Dylan had a feeling she knew exactly where this line of questioning was headed. She twisted out of his hold, yanked the ball from his unsuspecting hand, and sprinted for the end of the field with a laugh of exertion. She knew he would catch her; she just wanted to see how far she'd make it beforehand. She heard Charlie's curse, but couldn't risk turning arou
nd to take in what was sure to be a priceless look on his face.
She knew there was no way she would make it to the end zone; even so, she wasn't expecting the tackle. Charlie came at her faster and with more strength than she could have possibly anticipated. In a real display of grace and athleticism, he caught her around the waist and took them both to the ground. Dylan landed on top of him, and he knocked the ball out of her hand. Just when she thought her capture complete, he rolled himself over on top of her.
"Charlie, get off me," Dylan grumbled from beneath him. Despite her protests, her heart was thudding fast.
"I can't," he lamented, "my knee."
"Oh, fuck off!" she exclaimed with an incredulous laugh. "That's the last thing you would say if it was true!"
"If you insist, Dr. Rose." Charlie's hand slipped beneath her shirt and ascended, skimming her skin and tracing the cup of her bra.
"If I insist on…what exactly?" Why was her breath coming so short? Maybe it was all that running and exercising she had been doing. Then again, if that was the case, Dylan was inexcusably out of shape.
Better to accept the real reason and figure a way out of this.
"I think you know what," Charlie replied. His finger slipped beneath the fabric of her bra to find her nipple already taut and waiting. He pinched it, massaging it between his fingers. Dylan squirmed.
"This—we're on the fifty-yard line!" she exclaimed.
"So? I had sex with you at your place of work." Charlie lowered his mouth to savor the sweet spot between her neck and shoulders. Dylan clamped her lips closed over a moan; the world spun behind her tightly shut eyes. "It's only fair I give you the same opportunity."