Chapter 10

Tori’s phone rang as she settled at her desk after ushering out her last patient of the morning. She looked at the number, her eyebrows climbing. Twice in a week?

“Hey, Daddy. I hope you’re not calling to say you found a stray wolf for me to adopt.”

“Why would I…oh! The cat.” He sounded vaguely nervous, which made all of her defensive antennae snap to attention. “No more pets. I, um, wondered if you were busy next Friday night.”

Oh, hell. Whatever he wanted, it couldn’t be good if he sounded that uncertain. “Depends. What am I going to get roped into?”

“The Buckaroo Ball. I agreed to be one of the hosts, but I need a date.”

Tori squelched a groan. The Buckaroo Ball was one of the biggest fundraisers of the year, an excuse for the Panhandle’s most well-to-do to dress up, pay exorbitant prices for mediocre prime rib, and bid obscene amounts of money in the charity auction.

And gawk at what the local gossip columns had called “the mysterious Miss—or should that be missing—Patterson.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy, but I’d rather stay out of the public eye.”

“I know, sugar, but I have a plan. We won’t mention your married name, and I’ll tell everyone you’re visting from out of town. Which is true, since you live in Dumas. If you go all out with the hair and makeup and glitter, no one from work will even recognize a picture in the paper.” He paused a beat, then added, “I’d love to spend an evening with you. And it does benefit the Cowboy Crisis Fund.”

Damn him for being almost as ruthless as her mother at exploiting her weaknesses. The crisis fund helped cowboys with medical expenses when their insurance fell short, or was nonexistent. A number of her patients in Wyoming had been beneficiaries, which was the only way they could afford therapy. It was one cause she was honor-bound to support.

She blew out a silent, resigned sigh. “What time?”

“I’ll pick you up at seven at the town house.”

“Have the housekeeper ship up all the formal dresses I left in the closet at the ranch and it’s a date.” He might guilt her into attending the ball. He could not force her to go shopping.

“Thanks, sugar. Love you.”

“Love you too, Daddy.”

Tori scowled at her phone for a moment, then pushed it aside, tapping a finger on Delon’s file, open on her tablet. According to the clinic’s records, Delon still lived above the shop at Sanchez Trucking. More telling, instead of a wife or significant other, he’d listed his dad as his emergency contact. But Tori knew for a fact that Delon also had a son. She’d seen the kid propped on his daddy’s hip during a televised interview at the National Finals a couple of years ago. But who was the mother? Better question, where was the mother? Not in Delon’s medical file, that much she knew.

Which was none of her business. Unless Delon broached the subject, she had no excuse to go poking around in his private affairs, but his professional life was out there for the world to see, and it was time she took a closer look.

She unwrapped the deli sandwich she’d brought for lunch and popped the top on a Dr. Pepper before pulling up an Internet browser and typing in Delon Sanchez and bareback riding. She would start by studying his normal riding style, then move on to other successful bareback riders, looking for ways to adjust Delon’s mechanics to compensate for the limited motion in his knee. The search results scrolled onto her screen, and she jacked forward in her chair. At the top of the list, with over twenty thousand hits, was a video titled Delon Sanchez bad wreck.

She hadn’t thought to look for footage of his injury. Tori’s lungs tightened as she clicked the Play button. The image was grainy, filmed at night on a cell phone camera with limited zoom capabilities, but she could see that the arena glistened under the lights, a lake of standing water pocked with mud.

A gate swung open and the horse vaulted out, bucking high and hard, straight across the arena, water spraying from under his platter feet. Delon matched him jump for jump, spurs rolling clear up to the rigging, then snapping back to the horse’s neck before its front feet hit the ground. His upper body was tight, no wild flopping, no head bouncing off the horse’s rump. Precision. Control. Delon’s trademark. Until it all came undone.

The bronc threw on the brakes at the fence and its hind legs skidded, then splayed, the momentum carrying its hindquarters up under its body. For an instant the horse hung there, nearly vertical. Tori sucked in a breath, sure it would flip onto its back and crush Delon. Then it toppled onto its side, splashing down like a breaching whale. When it scrambled up, Delon was still aboard, both hands clamped on the stiff handhold, but the rigging had slipped sideways.

The horse bolted around the end of the arena with the pickup riders in hot pursuit. The rigging kept slipping, dropping Delon’s body closer to the pounding hooves with each stride. Tori’s hand curled, her fingers digging into the plastic armrest of her chair as the bucking horse thundered toward the fence with Delon hanging out on the side, his head dangerously exposed to the steel posts. The pickup man kicked hard, his horse straining to squeeze into the gap and push the bronc away from the fence. When Delon’s hand came loose from the rigging, he fell directly in the oncoming horse’s path.

Tori flinched as the big brown gelding slammed into and over Delon. The pickup horse stumbled and went to its knees, sending the rider hurtling over its head. God only knew how the horse avoided crashing down on top of him. For an instant, there was utter silence. Then chaos, as cowboys and medics came running from every direction. Even though she knew the outcome, Tori held her breath as they clustered around Delon, easing him upright with no weight on his left leg.

She gasped when she saw him crumple, and the medics sprang into frantic motion. Delon had stopped breathing. Only for a few moments, until the EMTs intubated him and inflated his punctured lung, but still. Even though Pepper had told her, she hadn’t truly comprehended…he’d stopped breathing. She was suddenly intensely aware of how that must feel. The panic. The helpless terror.

She took a deep breath, appreciating how the oxygen flowed into her lungs on command. Then she frowned and tapped Pause. Wait just a damn minute. While she’d been focused on Delon, one of the bullfighters had sprinted to the aid of the fallen pickup man. That bullfighter was Joe Cassidy; everybody in rodeo knew him. And the pickup man who’d run Delon down—

The pickup man wasn’t a man at all. It was Violet Jacobs.