Chapter 29

Monday morning, Delon sat on a treatment table while Beni spun in circles on a stool, waiting for Tori. She walked in carrying a sheaf of papers and what looked like a wrist brace. Their eyes caught, and for a moment that kiss at the shop shimmered in the air between them. Then she glanced away.

“How was your weekend?” she asked.

“Uncle Gil said he’s gonna have to beat the dispatch stuff into Daddy’s head with a keyboard,” Beni chirped. “Then Daddy said—”

“You weren’t supposed to be listening,” Delon cut in, before Beni could repeat his response word for word. Note to self—noise-canceling headphones are not foolproof. Delon gave Tori a wry smile. “My brother is not the soul of patience.”

“Consider me shocked,” she drawled.

Delon laughed. “How about you? Good weekend?”

“Had a visit with my mother. Won third at a roping in Lubbock with Shawnee. And there’s now a Facebook page called Keeping Up with the Pattersons, in case you’d like to know what brand of tampons I prefer.”

His face went hot. “I…uh…”

“What are tampons?” Beni asked.

“Girl stuff.” The corner of Tori’s mouth curled, sharp as a fish hook. “Ask your mother. In the meantime…ready to get started?”

“Yes!” Beni bumped a grubby fist against the one she held out.

Honestly. It was like dirt jumped up and followed the kid. Delon could’ve sworn he’d been clean when they left the house. And he was still flummoxed at how effortlessly Tori managed his child. More than just being comfortable with kids, the two of them seemed to be on the same wavelength, the way she anticipated every duck and dodge of that cunning little mind.

“The first thing you need is this, Coach.” The devil danced in Tori’s eyes as she pulled out a whistle and slipped the lanyard over Beni’s head. It was heavy duty, real metal, the official kind used by referees and lifeguards.

Delon’s ears wept at the sight of it. “You are a cruel woman.”

“Who? Me?” She pressed a hand to her chest with a smile that sparkled with mischief. He blinked. The light was back, and he couldn’t say whether it had flipped on all at once or slowly brightened like the sky before sunrise. Not her old, superficial gloss—this glow seemed to emanate from her soul. God, what he’d give to warm up next to that fire. Or jump right in.

She handed him the top two sheets of paper. “Look at these.”

He did. One was a photocopy of the first page of an article from something called the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The title was an indecipherable string of words like immunostimulatory and allogeneic, dry enough to make his fingertips crack where they touched the paper. He switched to the second sheet. The words were hand-written in purple calligraphy on cream-colored parchment. The title was “Lost,” and the language was so flowery and convoluted he had no more idea what it meant than the journal article.

A headache began to brew behind his eyes. Was this another test? If so, he was going to fail miserably. Again. He let a small, defeated sigh slip.

“Yeah,” Tori said. “I don’t have a clue what they mean, either.”

He lowered the papers. “So your point is?”

“My sister wrote both of them. The first is one of her research papers. The second is a poem she sent me after Willy died.”

Delon looked from one page to the other again, then back at Tori. “Really?”

“Yes. And this is the good part.” Tori took the papers and held them side-by-side for comparison. “She can’t write poetry on a computer. She uses them constantly at work, and she says the minute her fingers touch the keyboard those are the only kinds of words she has. But if she picks up a pen and writes in calligraphy, her mind automatically switches gears and she gets poetry.”

Interesting. Sort of. But he still didn’t understand…

“Think about it. She makes a physical change, and it causes a mental shift.” Tori waved the papers in front of him. “This is what we’re going to do with you. By forcing you to use your left hand for all of your daily activities, I’m hoping to flip that switch in your brain. Turn off your old mechanics and turn on the new.”

“Cool,” Beni said. And damned if he didn’t look like he knew exactly what she meant.

Delon gave her a dubious look. “You honestly think this will work?”

She folded her arms, so determined it was a tiny bit scary, like his knee had become one of those hurdles in her path and she was gonna get over it come hell or high water…and drag him along by the collar if necessary. “We proved you’re physically capable. We just have to teach you to do it consistently—on a real live bucking horse.”

* * *

“What the hell is that?” Gil demanded when Delon walked into the dispatcher’s office.

He resisted the urge to hide his right arm behind his back. “Part of Tori’s new plan.”

“She’s gonna fix your knee by making it so you can’t wipe your ass?”

“Something like that.” He joined Gil in frowning at the brace that curved all the way up the palm and fingers of his hand, leaving only his thumb free. “She’s got this theory about how if we rewire my brain by forcing me to do everything left-handed, I’ll ride better with my right. She says it’ll change my center of balance.”

Gil went still for a beat, then slouched back in his chair. “You’re gonna try switching hands.”

“Yeah.” Delon made sure his voice was equally nonchalant. “I could use some help, if you’re interested.” If you don’t still hate that I can do this and you can’t.

Gil took a long, deep breath and let it stream out slowly. “Look, D, it was never about you specifically. For a couple of years I hated anyone who could walk without a limp. But what I’ve really hated is watching you treat this thing like a nine-to-five job. Show up, put in your time, settle for whatever they decide to pay you.”

“But I did get paid,” Delon flashed back. “More often than any other bareback rider over the past five years, even if it wasn’t the big check. I can live with that. I’m not like you.”

“You’re better.” Gil jacked forward in his chair, his expression fierce. “That’s what really pisses me off. You’re so goddamn talented and you don’t have a clue.”

Delon gaped at him, stunned. “You’re the one who racked up the arena records.”

“Or got thrown on my head.” Gil flicked a dismissive hand. “You’re stronger. Faster. And so fucking controlled. If we could morph the two of us together, we’d have Kaycee Feild’s bastard brother.”

Kaycee, who had dominated bareback riding for years. And the best of Delon and Gil, mashed together, equaled the new style Tori had created.

Gil’s expression didn’t change as he leafed through the pages of exercises Tori had printed out, but Delon could feel the energy beginning to build around him. “This could be brilliant.”

“Or a total waste of time.”

“So what if it is? You got something better to do?” Gil gave him a heavy-lidded stare. “Rodeo is a fickle, jealous bitch. If you want a gold buckle, you gotta give her your whole heart, even though you know she’ll stomp on it more days than not.”

And Delon was asking to be destroyed twice over, putting his personal and professional future in the hands of a woman who had said outright she didn’t want to be here, and hadn’t so much as knocked down the weeds around that crappy little house of hers. What was to stop her from disappearing again, especially now that the press was gnawing over every detail of her life like a pack of starving coyotes?

“Well?” Gil asked. “You up for it, or not?”

Delon shook his head slowly. “I’ll give it a shot, but realistically—”

“Fuck reality,” Gil snarled. “That’s what’s left when you’ve used up all your dreams.”

Or chased them so hard you crashed and burned. Delon couldn’t take that risk. He’d do everything exactly as Tori instructed. He’d even follow Gil’s lead—up to a point. But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—throw all caution to the wind.

Screw that little voice saying he couldn’t ride a bucking horse with one foot on the ground.

The computer monitor behind Gil lit up with three consecutive messages from drivers. One was stuck in LaGrande, Oregon, because Deadman Pass had just been closed due to a winter storm. Another was nine hours late getting loaded out of Tulsa. The third was hunkered in a motel in El Paso, sure he’d contracted food poisoning from the shithole cafe where he’d had dinner the night before.

Gil gave Delon’s wrist brace the stink eye. “Can you type while you’re wearing that thing?”

“I can’t type when I’m not.”

“Good point. I’ll put out the fires.” Gil shoved the second keyboard toward him. “Check the status on the rest of the loads we’ve got moving. Use your dick if you have to. It’s probably faster than those other ten peckers of yours.”

The main office door banged open, followed by the long, air-shredding blast of a whistle.

“What the hell?” Gil demanded, whirling around.

Beni bounded through the door, grinning. “I’m Daddy’s coach. Tori said I gotta have a real coach’s whistle.”

Gil turned his glare on Delon, who shrugged.

“Figures,” Gil said sourly, spinning to face his keyboard. “Just when you start to trust a woman.”