Chapter Three
Troy shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”
She visibly sagged before his eyes, shooting him a grateful smile. “How much did he take? I’ll repay you.”
“I caught him before he took anything.”
“I…don’t know what to do with him.” Her voice was wobbly, her eyes glassy. “I’m at my wits’ end.”
She cocked her hip, leaning against the doorframe, crossing one bare ankle over the other. She was in loose shorts that fell to mid thigh showing off solidly muscled legs.
Strong legs.
The kind of legs that could squeeze a horse or a bull or hell, a man for that matter, taking him in whatever direction she wanted. He’d always been a girls-in-skinny-jeans kinda guy but those legs were causing him to rethink long-held beliefs.
They conjured up images of her riding him. All. Night. Long. Which was hardly appropriate to be thinking about right now.
“His father?”
She shook her head. “Died five years ago.”
Troy’s gut tightened. He barely knew Joss or her son but he knew enough about crap fathers to understand the importance of good ones. He only had to look at how Joss had been able to bring Damien to tears just mentioning his father to know her dead husband had been one of the good ones.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. It seems like a whole other lifetime ago sometimes.”
Maybe. But her voice had softened and Troy didn’t need to be a psychologist to catch the wistfulness in her tone. He wondered if her husband’s death had anything to do with their move from Chicago.
“I just wish I knew what he was thinking, you know?” Her eyebrows knotted as she searched his face for who knew what.
“You’re a guy. Can you shed any light on what the hell goes through a teenage boy’s head?”
Troy was pretty sure she did not want to know the kind of things that occupied the brain of a fifteen-year-old male. There was some stuff mothers just shouldn’t know. “Well that would be breaking the guy code,” he teased. “Suffice to say that most of it involves chicks and heavy levels of nudity.”
“Oh God…” She groaned. “Don’t. I’m not ready for that. I don’t even want to think about it.”
He laughed. “Stealing doesn’t look so bad now, does it?”
She groaned again. “They both suck.”
“Well if it’s any consolation, I don’t think he’s going to be stealing again anytime soon.”
“Yeah, but how often has he been doing it?”
She chewed on her bottom lip and Troy lost his place in the conversation. He wanted to step right up into her space, slide his hand onto her waist and soothe that bottom lip with his tongue.
His dick got hard at the thought but he was pretty sure she’d knee him in the balls if he even attempted such a move.
Unfortunately, not even the prospect of that killed his erection.
“I mean how often has he already been out wandering the streets at night when I thought he was in bed?”
Troy shrugged, grateful for the rhetorical question as he dragged his thoughts off her mouth.
“Where did it happen?” she asked. “At the arena?”
“No.” He shook his head. “At the Motel 6 where I’m staying.”
“What?” She straightened. Troy did his best not to ogle the corresponding jiggle of her breasts. “That’s on the outskirts of town! How on earth did he get out there?”
He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Bike.”
She stared at the bicycle Troy had stowed in the back of his truck. “What the—”
She stopped abruptly and Troy got the distinct impression she’d been about to say fuck. What the fuck. The thought of such a dirty word coming out of that pretty mouth didn’t really help the situation in his pants.
“Right.” She narrowed her eyes at the bicycle. “I know exactly how that kid is getting punished. No bike for the entire summer. He wants to run around Plainview like some kind of gangster then he can do it on his feet.”
Troy chuckled. He probably shouldn’t have but she was pretty magnificent vibrating with annoyance and vengeance, her ponytail swishing with each angry word. “I’m sorry.” He held up his hands in surrender as she glared at him. “It’s not funny.”
She glared some more before a slow, grudging smile puffed up her chipmunk cheeks. “Sorry.” She dropped her head against the doorframe. “But that kid…” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Don’t ever have kids, Troy—they become teenagers whose sole purpose in life is to piss you off.”
More dirty words. Heaven help him. “Bulls aren’t much better.”
She snorted. “I think I’d rather face down a raging bull than Damien at the moment.”
Troy laughed. “I’d pay good money to see that.”
Her breath hitched as their gazes met and held. Her eyes widened slightly and damn if her cheeks didn’t warm up right before his eyes. Her hand crept up to her chest, her fingers coming to rest lightly around the base of her throat.
She was the one to break the growing silence. “God…I’m sorry.” Her hand slid from her throat to absently pat her chest just above her cleavage. It drew his gaze to the two hard points of her nipples, tenting the fabric of her top.
His erection went from hard to granite.
“Would you like to come in for a coffee? Or a drink?” she added hastily. “It’s the least I can offer you after what Damien did. I’m sure I have some hard liquor around here somewhere. Gus likes a slug every now and then.”
Troy tensed. “Gus?” There was another guy?
“Damien’s grandfather. My father-in-law. We live with him.”
Ah. Troy relaxed.
“Did you want to come in?”
The only hard liquor Troy was interested in right now had nothing to do with booze and everything to do with burying his head between those strong thighs of hers. And even he wasn’t crass enough to press his luck with a woman who was worried her son was turning into a gangster.
While said son was in the house.
Not to mention her dead husband’s father.
Joss was complicated. And Troy didn’t do complicated. He sure as hell didn’t play with single mothers. He may have been a total horn dog but even he knew a guy didn’t mess with that dynamic.
No matter how well Joss hit a lug nut. Or how strong her thighs. Or how hard his dick.
“No, it’s okay. But thank you.” He smiled. “I probably should be hitting the sack. Big night tomorrow night.”
“Okay…sure.” Was that disappointment in her voice? She pushed off the doorframe. “Thank you. Again.” She shook her head. “I seem to be always thanking you.”
He shrugged. “As I said last night, my pleasure.” Her teeth dug into her bottom lip again and Troy shoved his hands into his back pockets. Just in case. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“As long as it’s not in my ER.”
“Amen to that.”
Troy laughed and she joined him, her breasts bouncing enticingly. Hell if he didn’t want to tug up the hem of her shirt and put his mouth to them. Right here on her doorstep with the porch light spotlighting them for the whole neighborhood to see.
“Well…good night then.” If he didn’t leave now he might just follow through on that impulse and he had no desire to feel that strong thigh smashing into his testicles. “You want me to keep the bike for a few days? Let your son think you got rid of it?”
She smiled and it drew his gaze to her mouth. Like he didn’t want to kiss her badly enough already. “Devious,” she murmured. “I like the way you think.”
“It’s not even my best quality.”
“Oh yeah? What is your best quality?”
Troy’s breath heated in his lungs at the tease in her voice. “Come watch me on the weekend.”
“Your best quality is how you ride a bull?”
“Nope.” Troy shook his head slow and deliberate. “It’s what I do with all that adrenaline afterward.”
It was satisfying to see the cool, clear gray of her eyes shimmer and liquefy and to hear her long husky exhalation. He figured a doctor would know all the ways to deal with an adrenaline high.
“Night, Joss.”
He smiled as he turned away and headed for his truck, his heart pounding, his erection raging.
*
Troy zoned out the buzz of the crowd in the packed arena as he centered himself, focusing on the thick thud of his pulse bounding through his chest, his abdomen, his groin. Everything melted away—the boom of the announcer over the speakers, the guys around him in the chute and the powerful shift of an angry bull between his legs.
It was just him and his heartbeat.
The pound of blood, the rush of oxygen, the wash of adrenaline.
“You ready?”
Troy tightened his grip on his rope and raised his left hand in the air. He nodded. “Go.”
With a clatter and a roar from the crowd, the chute flew open and Troy was pitched forward as his mean-ass bull—Gandalf—bucked right out of the gate.
Yes, you sonofabitch, that’s right. Buck me off. I dare you.
The announcer whipped the crowd up as the bull kicked and spun, twisting its massive sixteen hundred pound weight in the air, doing its level best to throw its unwanted burden into the dirt.
Troy was tall for a bull rider. And lanky. Mostly they were shorter, stockier guys with a lower center of gravity. But he’d learned to compensate early with extraordinary upper body flexibility and almost innate instincts for which way a bull was going to turn. He was also better than just about anyone in the business in using his raised hand for counterbalance.
“You’re mine, Gandalf,” he taunted, enjoying the thrill as his body jerked back and forth.
Troy squeezed his thighs tight against the dun-colored hide as the bull threatened to pull his roped arm out of its socket with every jarring drop. All he had to do tonight to take out the comp and earn precious points was to stay for eight lousy seconds.
Eight seconds that felt like eight hundred as Gandalf kicked and bucked and dropped. Troy’s pulse washed like Niagara Falls through his ears as he counted off the seconds in his head, waiting for the buzzer.
One. Two. Three. Gandalf twisted violently to the right. Troy sensed it coming but still his pulse spiked as he slewed sideways. He lost his hat before righting himself.
Four. Five. Six. The bull kicked out his back legs and dropped with bone-jarring suddenness onto his front.
Seven…Eight!
The buzzer blared; the crowd went wild. He threw back his head and hollered at the top of his lungs. A rush of invincibility flooded his system. He was bulletproof. He was fucking indestructible.
He was king of the world.
Gandalf did not agree, the bull bucking him off before he had a chance to dismount. Troy sailed through the air, hitting the ground hard, his bent left arm taking the full impact.
His vision grayed as white-hot pain sliced up and down his arm, movement impossible. He lay facedown inhaling dirt through clenched teeth, waiting for the crunch of his skull under the hard smack of Gandalf’s hooves.
But the clowns rushed the bull, distracting him from venting his fury on the rider who dared defy him. The Wonder from Down Under had taken out the top prize.
But his elbow paid the price.
*
Troy didn’t remember a whole lot after that. A haze of pain disconnected his brain and then a wonderful hit of who-the-hell-cared-what plunged him into a rainbow and out the other side.
Troy had suffered many an injury. Shoulders, knees, ankles. Bruises, lacerations, broken bones. Tendons, ligaments, organs. So it wasn’t his first brush with narcotics. But it was the best.
Thousands of tiny fingers stroked every millimeter of his skin.
Every millimeter.
There was pleasure and swirling lights. Everything was pretty and glowing. The whole first sixteen years of his life were erased and the memory of every orgasm he’d ever been the grateful recipient of whispered sweet nothings against his sensitized skin.
He floated in a warm pool of bliss while the pain in his arm was a vague dull ache somewhere out of reach.
No wonder his parents had been hooked on drugs. Why spend time in their shitty dysfunctional lives taking care of him when they could feel this damn good?
“Troy.”
Joss. He smiled as her voice took the place of the fingers, making delicious promises as it massaged his body.
“Troy!” She gave his uninjured arm a hard shake. “It’s Joss Garrity. Wake up.”
He smiled again, forcing open eyes that felt super-glued together. “You again,” he said dreamily as she came into soft focus, all big gray eyes and chipmunk cheeks. A ponytail long enough to wrap around his hand several times.
She was in a navy scrub top with some white blurry stitching on the pocket, a stethoscope slung around her neck.
“You’re glowing, like an angel. With a ponytail.”
He laughed at his own humor. An angel with a ponytail seemed hysterically funny.
“Oookay. No more morphine for you.”
“Whatever you say, doc.” Troy didn’t mind. His eyes drifted shut. Absolutely nothing bothered him at the moment.
“Troy!” A harder shake this time.
“Hmm, bossy,” he murmured, coordinating his eyelids better this time. They opened faster if not all the way. “I like that.”
“You’ve dislocated your elbow.”
“Not me.” He shook his head. “Gandalf did it.”
“Okay.” She nodded and her ponytail bounced. “Definitely no more morphine for you.”
“Oh no, ma’am…that was the name of the bull.”
Troy rolled his head to the side to locate who’d spoken. “Hey, Diego! Dude.” The rookie grasped Troy’s good arm. One of the medical team from the rodeo was also in the cubicle.
“You won, man.”
Troy laughed. It floated somewhere above his head. “Course I did. I’m the Wonder from Down Under.”
A light, tinkly laugh carried from somewhere down near his feet, penetrating his bubble. He shifted his focus with difficulty. A pretty, skinny blonde smiled at him. He smiled back out of politeness and habit. But she didn’t hold a candle to Joss.
Joss. God. Even her name turned him on.
He dragged his gaze away, trying to locate her with eyes that didn’t want to focus. “You’re beautiful, you know that?” He reached for her ponytail but his arm weighed a ton and it fell uselessly to the trolley.
He thought he heard a snigger coming from Diego’s direction but Joss didn’t pass any comment—she just plowed on. “We need to get an X-ray to be certain but I’m pretty sure it’ll confirm my suspicions. As soon as they are, we’ll need to pop the joint back into place.”
“Pop!” He shoved his index finger into the side of his cheek and it made a loud popping sound as he forced it out. He laughed. “Simple as that.”
“Well…it’s probably going to hurt a bit.”
Troy smiled at her with all the joy and pleasure that was floating round inside him. “Honey, I’m not feeling any pain at the moment.”
Her hand fell to his shoulder and she patted him. “Trust me. You will.”
*
Half an hour later, Troy was still drifting along in a lovely drug haze, still feeling no pain, when Joss grasped his forearm and told him to take some deep breaths. The nurse with the laugh held his upper arm firmly with both of her hands.
“It’ll be quick, but it’ll hurt like the blazes as it slips back in. Are you ready?”
Troy waved his good hand airily in a dismissive gesture. “I get bucked off bulls for a living. I can handle a few seconds of pain.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Here goes.”
The procedure took about twenty seconds and Troy felt only a vague kind of pressure until the last two seconds when it felt like she was amputating his arm through the elbow joint with a blunt, rusty knife.
“Fuuuck!” he swore loud enough for everyone in the emergency department to hear him as he jackknifed into a sitting position, his heart rate and blood pressure spiking into the stroke zone.
Had he been in his right mind he’d have apologized for his language. But he was in a world of agony.
It hurt far worse than the actual dislocation had. But as quickly as the pain erupted, it dissipated, evaporating in the same blinding flash it had arrived, and he collapsed back against the thin mattress, with a grunt.
“There.” She nodded and patted his chest again. “Good as new.”
“Christ.” Troy took a deep, shuddery breath. “Remind me not to get into an arm wrestle with you.”
Then he closed his eyes and headed back into the rainbow.