Chapter 1

Delon Sanchez woke up pissed off at the world. No different from every other morning in the past four months. But for Delon—proud owner of the fan-voted Best Smile in Pro Rodeo—it was like being trapped inside someone else’s skin. And that guy was turning out to be an asshole.

He made a fist and beat on his pillow, as if he could pound the dreams out of it. Those stupid, pointless dreams where he hadn’t been hurt right at the end of the best rodeo season of his life, and didn’t feel his shot at a world title disintegrate along with the ligaments in his knee. The dreams where he went on to the National Finals Rodeo and walked away with the gold buckle, heavy and warm and so damn real he could still feel the shape of it when he woke up.

Empty-handed.

He jammed his fist into the pillow again. His subconscious was a cruel bastard, and a whiner on top of it. An injury yanked the trapdoor out from under some cowboy’s gold buckle dream every year. That was rodeo. Hell, that was life. Delon was no special flower that fate had singled out to trample.

He flopped onto his back. A spider sneered at him from the corner of the ceiling, lounging on its web. He was tempted to reach down, grab a boot, and fling it. The way his luck was running he’d just miss, and it’d bounce off and black his eye. He stuffed his hands behind his head with a gloomy sigh. They should have drawn a chalk outline in the arena where he’d fallen, because the man who’d climbed down into the bucking chute that night was nowhere to be found.

He’d disappeared in the thirty-two seconds from the nod of his head to the moment of impact.

Thirty-two seconds.

He’d timed it on the video out of morbid curiosity. Less than a minute before the paramedics jammed a tube down his throat and reinflated the lung that’d been punctured when the horse trampled him, wiping out his knee and busting two ribs.

In that short time, his entire world had disintegrated.

Either that or it had been an illusion all along. But that was his fault. He’d let himself want too much, dream too big. Other people could reach up, grab the world by the throat, and make demands. Every time Delon tried, he got kicked in the teeth.

Whiner.

He flipped the spider the bird, kicked off the blankets, and got up. Time to dress for another of the increasingly frustrating therapy sessions that only emphasized his lack of progress. He had plateaued, his therapist kept saying, trying to make it sound like a temporary setback. And now she’d gotten married and run off—to Missouri, of all the damn places, as if there were no good men left in Texas—forcing him to absorb yet another in a barrage of unwelcome changes.

But hey, maybe this new therapist had the magic touch that would give him back his life. Or at least his career.

He slipped down the back stairs, escaping his apartment above the shop at Sanchez Trucking without seeing a soul, but had to stop at the Kwicky Mart for gas. With only two thousand people in Earnest, Texas, the face at the next pump was bound to be familiar.

And it would have to be Hank. At nineteen, the kid was a worse gossip than the old men down at the Corral Café. He hopped out of the family ranch pickup, so nimble Delon wanted to kick him. “Hey, Delon. How’s the knee feelin’?”

“Fine.” Delon turned his back, hunching his shoulders against the bitter January breeze as he jammed the gas nozzle into the tank of what his big brother jeeringly called his mom car. Well, screw Gil. If the elder Sanchez had paid more attention to safety ratings, he wouldn’t have thrown away the brilliant, God-given talent most cowboys—including Delon—could only dream of.

Hank lounged against the side of his dad’s one-ton dually while it guzzled four-dollar diesel like sweet tea. “Looks like it’s gettin’ pretty serious between Violet and Joe. Think they’ll get married?”

Delon made a noncommittal noise and mashed harder on the gas nozzle. Short answer? Nope. Joe Cassidy would be gone when the shine wore off, back to Oregon. Bad enough he’d leave Violet in pieces, but there’d be one brokenhearted little boy, too. Delon’s boy. Until now, Delon had just shrugged and laughed at Violet’s dating disasters. She couldn’t seem to help herself, so he might as well just let her get it out of her system—but she’d never brought her disasters home to their son before.

Beni worshiped Joe. So did every bull rider in the pro ranks—for good reason. As a bullfighter, Joe’s job was to save them from getting stomped, and he was damn good at it. Playing the hero made him hugely popular with the buckle bunnies, and it was no secret that Joe had accepted plenty of what the rodeo groupies offered. So, no. Delon didn’t think Joe was the marrying kind.

A red Grand Am whipped around the corner and the little blonde Didsworth girl—Mary Kate?—distracted Hank with a smile and a finger wave. He returned it with a cocky grin. “I hear she’s got a thing for bullfighters.”

“Don’t they all?” Delon muttered.

Even Violet. And she should know better, being a stock contractor’s daughter. What was it with women, lusting after men dumb enough to throw their bodies in front of large, pissed-off farm animals? Sure, it was exciting, but the long-term career prospects were not great. Said the guy who got a knee reconstruction for his twenty-ninth birthday.

The girl parked down the block, climbed out of her car, and made sure Hank and Delon were watching as she sashayed into the drug store.

Hank gave a low whistle. “I gotta get me a piece of that.”

“She’s a human being, not an apple pie,” Delon snapped. “And she’s still in high school.”

“Old enough to know what she wants.” Hank turned his smirk on Delon. “And you should talk. Like you’ve never gone stupid for a hot blonde.”

Tori. The memory slammed into Delon. Another of those times he’d made a grab for something way out of his reach. And fallen hard. “That was a long time ago,” he said stiffly.

“But you were seein’ her for, what—five, six months?” Because of course there were no secrets in Earnest, and on the rare occasions that the past died, it was buried in a very shallow grave. Hank shot him a sly grin. “You never brought her around, not even to meet Miz Iris. Sounds like a booty call to me.”

Delon had to choke down his fury for fear of sparking the gasoline fumes. Besides—damn it to hell—he couldn’t argue.

“Can’t blame you. I seen pictures.” Hank made a show of wiping his brow with his sleeve. “She was smokin’. Melanie and Violet and Shawnee called her Cowgirl Barbie.”

Tori might’ve looked perfect, but she was definitely not made of plastic. Delon would know. He’d examined every inch of her on multiple occasions. Had planned on doing it a whole lot more, until he’d called her that one last time.

We’re sorry, the number you have reached is no longer in service…

“Too bad she wasn’t the one you knocked up. Senator Patterson’s daughter? Beni would be like royalty around here.”

Delon slammed the nozzle back onto the pump and wheeled around, biting off a curse when pain stabbed through his busted knee. “Honest to shit, Hank, why someone hasn’t strangled you yet is beyond me.”

Hank gazed back in wide-eyed bafflement. “Why? What did I say?”

Only the gas pump between them stopped Delon from running the little bastard down as he drove away. He reached over to the passenger’s seat, grabbed a Snickers bar, and ripped it open with his teeth, but even the blast of sugar and chocolate couldn’t ward off the memories. Tori, with her long blonde hair sliding like expensive satin between his grease-stained fingers, and eyes as blue as her blood. Whose family spread was a Texas legend, the owners reigning as kings and queens of the Panhandle for well over a century.

Tori, who’d disappeared without so much as a Kiss my ass, cowboy, we’re through. And stayed gone.

He’d been stupid enough to be surprised, even after seeing how being a rich girl’s whim had worked out for his brother. Tori and Krista were stamped from the same cookie cutter, sugar-frosted temptation with glittery sprinkles on top. How could a man stop at one bite? Especially Delon, with his sweet tooth. But all he and Tori had in common was mutual lust and the fact that his father trucked loads of cattle, while Richard Patterson served on the United States Senate subcommittee with oversight of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The Sanchezes’ idea of a big night out was prime rib with all the fixin’s at the Lone Steer Saloon. The Pattersons had dined at the White House on multiple occasions during the last Republican presidency.

Yeah, Delon had had a real chance there.

Sometimes he wondered if he’d been following in his brother’s footsteps for so long that he couldn’t help himself. Little League shortstop—check. Defensive back and punt returner on the Earnest High School football team—check. Bareback rider—check. High class, heart-breaking blonde—check.

Illegitimate son—yep, check that one too.

Except Delon had done his brother one better for a change. The mother of his son was—or had been, pre-Joe—one of his best friends. Having a baby with Violet had made Delon a permanent part of the Jacobs clan, who had folded him in like he was blood-born. But Gil had knocked up the rich blonde, and now he waged an endless war against her powerful family to be a significant part of his son’s life. At least Delon didn’t have to drive clear to Oklahoma to see Beni. He just had to share him with goddamn Joe Cassidy.

Delon crammed the rest of the Snickers into his mouth and punched up the playlist he’d labeled The Hard Stuff. The bass notes vibrated clear down into his gonads and he thumped his fist against the steering wheel in time to the beat. He might drive a mom car, but he’d match the custom stereo system against any teenager cruising Forty-Fifth in Amarillo.

When he pulled into the parking lot at the clinic, Delon sat for a moment to delay the upcoming appointment. His new physical therapist was probably competent as hell. Panhandle Orthopedics & Rehabilitation was the best in the region—they wouldn’t hire anything less. But he was so damn tired of rolling with the punches—of taking the crumbs he was given and pretending he was satisfied.

Don’t kick up a fuss now, Delon. Your mother can’t come visit if you’re gonna throw such a fit when she leaves.

He scowled, drop-kicking that memory into the distant past as he climbed out of the car. On the worst days along the rodeo trail—beat-up, exhausted, and homesick—he’d always been able to paste on a happy face. He was the guy who could work the crowd, the sponsors, the rodeo committees, trading on the face God had given him to the tune of as much sponsorship money as some of the world champions. Now he could barely manage a smile for the receptionist.

Beth, a faded redhead with tired eyes who didn’t have much luck hiding her prematurely gray roots or the hard miles that had put them there, smiled back. She clicked a few times with her computer mouse. “Got you checked in, Delon.”

“Thanks. Can I go ahead and warm up?”

She shook her head. “Tori said she wanted to do a full evaluation first thing. She’ll be right out.”

His heart smacked into his ribs at the name. Then he blew out a dry laugh. Geezus. He’d really let Hank get into his head. Yeah, his—no, scratch that—the Tori he’d known had been studying physical therapy. But a Patterson wouldn’t work at a general orthopedic clinic. She’d be at a highfalutin research hospital, developing new techniques for treating Parkinson’s disease, or at one of those exclusive joints in Houston or Dallas that treated pro football and basketball players.

Besides, even his luck wasn’t that bad.

Then the waiting room door opened. A woman stood there—tallish, slender, and almost plain, wearing khakis and a white Panhandle Sports Medicine polo shirt. Her shoulder-length hair was the color of caramel. She was probably wearing makeup, but it was the kind a man never noticed. No jewelry. No glitter. No frosting of any kind on this Tori.

Then the voice that had whispered through his memories for almost seven years said, “Hello, Delon.”

The floor tilted under his feet. He knew he was gawking, but he couldn’t stop himself. She didn’t smile. Didn’t…anything. Her face was as blank as if they’d never shared more than a cup of coffee. She gestured toward the open door, cool as spring water. “Come on in.”

She turned to lead the way without checking to see if he followed. Delon squeezed his eyes shut, taking a moment to steady himself. Here he’d been thinking his life couldn’t get much more screwed up than it already was.

That’d teach him.