****
Sheets tangled around his body as he slept. The air cranked out of the hotel air conditioner, cooling the room as Dylan slept, trapped in a dream that haunted him nearly every night.
He was back in that hut, staring at Max.
“You sonovabitch, it was you,” Dally whispered, shaking his head, his pale green eyes narrowed and angry. “It was you.”
“Yeah, that little voice of yours led ya astray this time, didn’t it?” Max smirked. “It had me a little worried for a while. You’ve had too many lucky hits there, but not this time. Your luck has run out, cowboy.”
And as Dylan laid there, trying to drag himself to Nick, Max had turned around and walked away from the gun in his face, not even turning when somebody had shot Dally in the back.
Those laughing brilliant green eyes went forever dull and a scream started to build in Dylan’s throat.
Only this time, it was worse…because Max suddenly had Kris. And as the bullet exploded through Dylan’s body, Max was jerking her around, reaching for the back of her dress with one hand, his other hand holding the gun he had at her neck, not just pointing, but shoved against it, the metal biting into the soft, pale flesh.
Her soft sobs tore at his heart, but he couldn’t get out of the wheelchair to do a damned thing…wheelchair…I’m not in a wheelchair here.
Dylan came to full wakefulness in the blink of an eye, jerking himself out of the dream, away from the rage, the misery such a betrayal had caused.
Slowly, Dylan Kline sat in bed, and swung his legs over the side, planting his large naked feet on the cool tile floor. He could feel that cool, hard tile, just as he could feel the fullness in his bladder, the stiffness of his joints. He wasn’t paralyzed.
Flexing his feet, he lifted his eyes skyward and whispered, “Thank You, God.”
In the past five months since retiring from the Army, those had been the first words out of his mouth, each and every day. Even though some days he questioned whether or not he believed in an Almighty Power. It had started when he had left the base and gone out to Arlington, to see Nick’s grave.
Dallas Conroy, the son of a Texas millionaire, had been buried on a family plot just outside of Mesquite. Only fitting for a Texan to rest eternally in Texas, Dylan remembered thinking. Dally, with his odd feelings and even odder dreams had saved their tails so many times—if they had only listened this last time. Maybe…just maybe.
Dylan had sat in his wheel chair, staring down at the green grass, remembering Nick and his sheer love of life. You gotta be thankful everyday, man. For whatever you have, be thankful.
Some of us don’t have so much to be thankful for, Dylan had said once.
Hell, you better not be talking about yourself, slick. You got brains, you got guts. You’re an American, able to think and do and say what you please. That’s more than some sorry bastards have.
At the time of that conversation, Dylan had also had the ability to stand and walk away. On that cold winter morning, he told himself he still had all that. And someday, he’d be able to walk again.
That wasn’t the case for Dom Salvatore. Poor bastard was paralyzed, for sure and certain, from the waist down.
Yeah, Dylan had a little more to be thankful for than some.
So, every day, he said thanks. Since Nick wasn’t here to do it.
Slowly, he stood up. Without looking at the clock, he knew what time it was. The impersonal feel of the hotel room made him even more anxious to get home. It was time to leave. Time to get on the road.
And in a handful of hours, he’d back in Monticello.
What he was going to do with his life, he still didn’t know.
Well, that wasn’t completely true. The first thing he was going to have to do was figure out how to deal with Nik. Out of everything he had done in the past few years, all the lines he had crossed when he was a teen, all the battles he had fought, Nicole Kline Lightfoot was one of the few things on God’s green earth that could still strike fear into his heart.
Not that he’d ever let her know that.
And she was going to be royally pissed once she found out just why he had been in a hospital, why he was accepting an early retirement. And she’d be royally pissed at him, for not bothering to let her know before now.
“Like she doesn’t have enough on her hands,” he mumbled to himself as he walked over to the tiny little coffee pot and set about fixing a cup before he got dressed.
Between the kids and her writing, not to mention the college courses she had decided to take, the last thing she needed to deal with was a damn handicapped bastard who sat around for hours at a time, feeling sorry for himself.
Now, he just had to find a way to make Nikki understand his side of things.
Like the fact that seeing her upset and in tears while he was flat on his back was just a little more than he could have handled. Taking a cup of black coffee, he headed for the shower.
He’d figured out how to handle Nikki in a couple of hours.
Hell, he’d disarmed live bombs.
Surely he could handle one short redhead with a big mouth and a bad attitude.
****
Then again, maybe not, Dylan thought warily as he waited for Nikki to react. His stomach started to rumble. He’d bypassed the meal on the flight, figuring they could stop and get some food on the way back to Monticello, but Nikki had mentioned pot roast. No way was he going to choose the golden arches over a pot roast.
But sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by three pairs of censuring eyes, Dylan realized there was a distinct possibility he’d be wearing the pot roast, not eating it.
Jack Kline wanted a beer, Dylan could tell simply by the look on his face. It had been easily a decade since he had taken a drink, but the craving, the need for it would never completely fade. That was what being an alcoholic did to you.
He was getting old, Dylan realized with a start, and it was starting to show. The lines of his face had never seemed so heavy and his eyes looked unbelievably weary. “You okay now, boy?” Jack asked, pushing back from the table. There was so much more Jack wanted to say, but he sometimes wondered if he had the right. Nikki had done more to raise these boys than he had.
“I’m fine, sir. No longer fit for active duty, but everything is in working order. I’m walking fine, and starting to run. I’ll be able to do more as time goes by. How much more, I don’t know.”
Jack’s eyebrows quirked at the ‘sir,’ but he made no comment. “I reckon you had your reasons for keeping yourself away from those who care about you while you were hurting. So I won’t be asking why you did it, but I do think it was the wrong choice,” he said as he rose from the table. His large, rawboned hands clenched briefly around the chair as he pushed it back in place. “Nik, I think I’ll go have that cigarette now.”
Shawn’s eyes were turbulent, flashing sparks of green fire as he waited with a clenched jaw for the door to shut. “Always have to handle things on your lonesome, don’t you, man?” he said, fighting to keep his voice low. “You stupid bastard, if you’d been paralyzed, would you have bothered to call and let us know?”
“Shawn-”
But the younger man had already stormed out of the kitchen, the glass in the door pane rattling behind him as he slammed it shut.
Well, he’d totally managed to alienate two of them. And they weren’t even the worst, he thought, turning to meet Nikki’s hazel eyes. His fingers had started to beat a tattoo on his thigh and he closed his fist, clenched it, relaxed as he waited.
“Why?” Nikki asked simply.
Her voice was thick with tears and her eyes gleamed with them.
“I had to,” he said gruffly. “I had to. I’m sorry. Seeing you standing over me, while I was doing my damnedest to get back on my feet—” he broke off and blew out a breath. “You’ve always been there, always. And I knew you’d be there. But I had to know what I was going to be able to do. I had to.”
“We would have helped,”
she said flatly, rising from the table and slamming her glass down, stalking away from him.
He caught up with her, catching her arm. “You would have tried. I know that. But…you know how you wake up at night after a bad dream, and any time you go to talk about it, it just sticks in your throat, and you can’t say anything? Talking about it always seems to make it more real. I had to deal with this on my own, in my own way,” he whispered, staring into her eyes.
Her lashes lowered and she nodded, slowly. “That may well be,” his sister said quietly. “And now I need to deal with this, in my own way.”
Dylan felt his heart die a little at the look in his sister’s eyes.
Fuck.
****
“He was paralyzed, Wade,” Nikki hissed, slamming down a plate. “And he didn’t even bother to pick up the phone to say, ‘Hey, I’m in the hospital.’ The bastard.”
“Nik, you know how Dylan is,” Wade said, making sure he had the table between the two of them, and that the plates were all out of her hands. “You’ve got better luck getting news from a door knob than him.”
As if she hadn’t even heard him, she muttered, “A hospital. Took a damn bullet in his back, and does he call? Did he even list a next of kin in case he took a bullet in the head?”
Wade laughed. “Nik, as hard as his head is, it would damage the bullet more than him,” he said, walking around the table and wrapping his arms around her from behind.
Her mouth quirked up in a smile. “Well, there is that,” she agreed, covering his hands with hers and squeezing.
The door opened and closed quietly as Nikki tipped her head back to study her husband. “I love you,” she whispered.
She turned her head to see her father standing there and Nikki sighed. The grim look in Jack’s eyes probably didn’t mean anything good. “Shawn’s looking to rumble. I think I need to head on home for the night. Want me to take him with me?”
She sighed and rested her brow for a minute against Wade’s chest. “No. Nobody needs to go anywhere. I’m going to go talk to Dylan,” she muttered, shaking her head.
“You really are a jerk, Dylan. You know that?”
“Look, I need to get a room for the night,” Dylan said without turning around. Staring into the coming twilight, he kept his hands tucked in his back pockets and his eyes away from Nikki. “I ought to be heading back into town, okay?”
“Oh, shove it, Sergeant,” Nikki muttered, moving onto the porch and leaning against the rail. “I don’t agree with what you did. Or any reasons you may have for doing it. But...it was your call.”
“I was having a hard enough time handling it myself, Nik,” Dylan said gruffly. “How could I keep focused on what I had to do with you folks around?”
“You were scared,” Nikki said, her voice husky with surprise.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you’d ever admit to something like that,” Nikki said quietly. “You’ve never admitted to any other human reaction.”
“I’m just as human as you are,” Dylan muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. Had he ever felt this tired? Maybe during training, when he had gone without food and sleep. And when he had woken in hospital the day after they told him he would never walk again.
“Oh, I know that,” Nikki said with a laugh. “I remember when Mom was trying to get you potty trained, for crying out loud. I remember when you were trying to learn to ride a bike; you kept falling off, busting your knees up and skinning your elbows. But you didn’t cry. When we found Mom that day, you didn’t cry. I know you’re human, Dylan. But sometimes I think you’ve forgotten that.”
“Nik, the last thing I need right now is an evaluation from an armchair shrink,” he said, finally turning around to face her in the fading daylight.
“What do you need, Dylan? You’ve never told anybody what you need. Hell, I practically raised you and Shawn, and I don’t think you ever told me that you needed anything. Or any one.”
“I needed to walk,” he told her, folding his arms across his chest, the material spreading taut across his shoulders. “I needed to be able to stand up while I take shower. And I needed to come back home and see you. See everybody.”
“But only in your time,” Nikki added as his voice fell silent. “You needed us, but only according to your time frame. Have you ever let go of that pride of yours long enough to really need somebody, Dylan? You don’t need any of us, not really. Not because you don’t love us. But because you don’t let yourself.”
His dark gold hair fell over his flat eyes and he tossed it back irritably. “I need you,” he said, turning back around, bracing his hands against the smooth wood of the railing. A soft summer breeze drifted by, bringing the scent of grass, flowers, and the pond. Dragging it into his lungs, he remembered how many times he wondered if he would ever be able to come back here, how many times he wondered if he’d ever see his nieces and nephew grow up.
“No. Dylan, you don’t know what it’s like to really need a person, so badly that that person is all you can think about, all you can see, all you can feel. You’ve never needed any of us so badly that the sole thought in your mind was getting back home to us alive,” Nikki said, her voice barely loud enough to hear. “If you had, maybe you could understand why it bothers me so much that you never bothered to call, never bothered to let us know how badly you’d been hurt. Why you never understood how much we worried about you.
“I’m so proud of you, of what you’ve made of yourself,” she continued. “So damn proud. But not a night goes by that I didn’t think of you, hope you were safe, in one piece. If a late night phone call came, I would panic, almost too scared to answer it for fear of hearing something had happened to you.
“But I always did answer, because I thought if something had happened, you’d need us with you,” she finished, shoving her hair back, holding it in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck. “But when something did happen, you never even bothered to call. That hurts, Dylan. It hurt all three of us.”
“I’m sorry,” was all he could say. Rubbing the heel of his hand against his chest, he pondered how easily she could make him feel the fool.
“Maybe next time something happens to you, you’ll let us know. Even if you don’t need us there, maybe we need to be there,” she told him, moving close enough to lean up against his arm.
“I guess I should have done that to begin with,” he said wearily, wrapping his arm around her. She felt tiny against him, something that never failed to surprise him. God knows he’d never admit to her, but she scared the hell out of him, always had. The way she loved so passionately, with everything inside her, the way she fought her way out of the slums they’d grown up in. “I just…I had this crazy feeling that talking about it would make it more real.”
She smiled. “Just like if you looked for the monsters in your closet they would be there, but if you kept your head under the covers, you were safe,” she said.
Dylan knew, without a doubt in his mind, if she’d hadn’t succeeded and taken them away from Portland, he’d still be there. If she hadn’t fought as hard as she had, proven that something good could come from them, he never would have tried.
So fierce, so loving, and so damn gentle. Sometimes he wondered how in the hell she had come from their parents. He could see some of his father in both himself and in Shawn, but he could never see anything of Mom or Dad in his sister.
A gentle throat clearing had him looking down. The sly smile in her wide soft hazel eyes had him shoring up his defenses. And she was so damn devious.
“I talked to Kirsten earlier. She said she ran into you at the airport…did you know she’s moved to Louisville? Y’all are going to be practically neighbors,” Nikki said, her voice, her face incredibly innocent.
“Kris has moved to Louisville,” Dylan repeated, his voice incredulous. Funny…Jerry hadn’t given him that piece of information.
“Hmmm. Starting up some new business. She’s going to tell me about it—we’
re getting together for lunch in a day or two, and she’ll be coming down here for a few days in a couple of weeks. She looking good?” Nikki asked, batting her eyes.
“Like she always does,” Dylan replied, irritably. Elegant, beautiful, and totally beyond his reach.
She smiled sunnily at him as though she could read his every though. And then she said, “You’re not going into town, Dylan. You’ll stay here.”
If she had told him that a year ago, he would have smirked at her and leaped over the fence, walked the thirty something miles just to prove her wrong. Even if it took half the night. But there was no way his back would let him walk that kind of distance. He was hard pressed to walk a damn mile now.
As if she could read his mind, Nikki moved back to stand beside him. “You walk, Dylan. Maybe not as far as you like. And maybe you can’t run. But some of the guys you were with will never walk anywhere again. One is stuck in a wheelchair forever and he will never do so many of things you said you needed. And two of them will never see a sunset, or look at a pretty woman. Never see their families.”
With that, she reached up, brushed his hair back before laying one hand against his cheek. After studying his face for a long moment, she smiled at him, then turned around and went back inside.
He blew out a breath and studied the sky overhead for a long time. She was too damn young to act like his mom.
Not that her age had ever stopped her before.
****
It took a week of running around like a mad woman, and a lot of begging and pleading, but she got the long Memorial Day weekend she had been hoping for off. Actually, she got a bonus.
The owner of the little romance publishing company let her leave Thursday, though what it had taken to get out of there didn’t set very well in Kris’ belly.
Nikki was so not going to go for it.
But as Kacie had put it, It can’t hurt to ask, now can it?
No. It wouldn’t hurt Kacie for Kris to ask Nikki.
ALWAYS YOURS Page 5