Chapter 3

Dead.

There were less brutal ways to say it. Widowed. Passed away. I lost my husband last…year, summer, whatever. But Tori had deliberately picked that flat, ugly word, and said it with her eyes empty. Abandoned. Set in a face Delon barely recognized. Leaner, harder, her cheeks hollowed out like a person who’d been ill. Or heartsick.

She was Tori, but not Tori. He realized now how much of her former beauty had been manufactured. Hair bleach, push-up bras—even the intense sky blue of her eyes must’ve been colored contact lenses. Now her eyes were more gray than blue. The color of mist. Or ghosts.

He slammed the heel of his hand on his car’s center console. He wanted to rage. He deserved it, goddammit. His fury had built, coal by glowing coal, the entire time she’d examined him like nothing more than a specimen under a microscope. No explanation for her disappearance. No apology. Then she’d looked at him with that cool, blank expression and said yeah, his knee was probably fucked. He wanted to curse her for confirming his worst fears.

For waltzing off to Wyoming and getting married and never looking back. Cheyenne, for hell’s sake. All the times he’d competed there in the past six years…

You might have to learn to live with a deficit.

Live? Sure. He could live just fine with a bad knee. But ride? When she’d said those words, a fresh wash of panic had spilled into the vat of old hurt and humiliation, and he’d been two seconds away from exploding. And then she’d stolen his thunder.

Dead. Dead, dead, dead.

As he pulled through the gates of Sanchez Trucking, the wind kicked up dust from beneath his tires and sent it whirling across the gravel lot, spinning and skittering like his thoughts. He parked, turned off the car, and just sat there, trying to breathe. The yellow steel shop was two stories tall at the peak to accommodate semis, trailers, and the chain hoists that dangled from steel beams above, and wide enough for three pull-through repair bays. The far right side housed office space at the front and a one bedroom apartment upstairs. Home sweet home.

People asked why he didn’t get a house, more space, but they had an entire shop for Beni to run tame under the watchful eyes of the mechanics. Beni loved the trucks, and hanging around with the drivers. Besides, Delon was gone—used to be gone, he corrected himself bitterly—more often than he was home. And now…until he figured out what was next, he might as well save some cash and stay where he could still pretend to be a real part of Sanchez Trucking.

The front door banged open and one of the drivers stomped out, strode over to an idling pickup, slammed into the cab, and roared away, spewing an angry rooster tail of gravel and dust. That couldn’t be good. And if there was smoke at Sanchez Trucking, ten to one Delon knew who’d started the fire.

He slung his gym bag over his shoulder and walked through an open bay door, past an engine they’d pulled the day before for a total overhaul, and into a dusty, wood-paneled hallway, the concrete floor tracked with grime.

Their secretary barely spared him a glance as she bustled around the beat-up reception desk, collecting stacks of trip sheets, delivery receipts, bills of lading, and invoices. Scanning and cloud backup be damned, Merle Sanchez insisted they keep paper copies of everything. The computer system did allow Miz Nordquist to run their office from home, though, rather than “that stinking shop.” Given that she had the face and disposition of a thundercloud, no one objected.

“What’s wrong with Jerry?” Delon asked.

She jerked her head toward his dad’s office, at the front of the building. “Your brother.”

Bingo. Delon found his dad slouched behind the desk, elbow on the armrest of the big leather chair and chin in hand, expression grim. Gil stood at the window, a narrow slice of darkness through the square of sunlight.

“What’s up?” Delon asked.

His dad blew out a weary sigh. “Jerry got an offer from an oil company up in the Bakken.”

“North Dakota?” Delon shivered. Closest he’d ever come to freezing his ass off was in Valley City in March. “Must’ve been one hell of an offer. When’s he done?”

“Now,” Gil snapped.

Delon jerked around in surprise. “He’s due to load out for Duluth tomorrow night.”

Silence. Delon looked from his dad to Gil, and cursed. “You cut him loose and left us hanging?”

Gil slapped his hand against the window hard enough to make the pane vibrate. “I’ve been bustin’ my ass, working the loads so he could get home more since that new kid was born, and this is how he repays us.”

“So you booted him out the door?” Delon let out a growl of impatience. “For Christ’s sake, Gil. He’s a good operator and he’s HAZMAT certified.”

Gil wheeled around to glare at Delon. “He quit. I just accelerated the process.”

“He won’t stick in the oil patch,” Delon argued. “Just long enough to get a jump on paying for that new truck, then he’ll be out of that frozen hellhole, headed south.”

“And I’m supposed to welcome him with open arms?”

“Guys like him are hard to find—”

“The kind who takes advantage of you then spits in your face?”

Their dad straightened, cutting his hand through the air to signal Enough! Lord knew, he’d had plenty of opportunities to use it over the years. “We need to figure out who’s gonna take his load. What do we have for a truck?”

Delon stared at his dad in disbelief. He wasn’t even going to try to salvage the situation? “The white Peterbilt is ready to go.”

“Then we just need a driver. I’m hauling hay to Quanah ’til the end of the week.”

“I can get Miz Nordquist to cover dispatch and take it myself.” Gil scowled. “It’ll cost me.”

Mostly in beer for all the drivers and mechanics who had to deal with the woman in person. Delon let it hang for a minute, debating whether to let Gil off the hook he’d buried in his own ass, but it came down to doing what was best for the business. And a chance to get out of town, even if it was to Duluth. After ten years of crisscrossing the country on the rodeo trail, he was going stir-crazy in Earnest.

“I’ll take it.”

“What about Beni?” his dad asked.

“Violet asked to keep him a couple of extra days. Joe’s gonna be here.”

Another silence. Someone else’s family might ask how he felt about that, but the Sanchez men didn’t discuss feelings unless they involved the latest idiotic mandate from the Department of Transportation. Building up this business from a single worn-out cattle hauler hadn’t left Merle Sanchez much time for the touchy-feely crap. He’d kept his boys fed, clothed, and mostly out of trouble. The rest they’d had to figure out on their own.

What did Merle think when he looked at the sons who wore the Sanchez name so much more easily than he did, with his ginger hair and freckled skin? Did he search for some piece of himself in them, or curse the dark skin and hair of the woman who’d deserted him? Lord knew, he would never say.

“You sure your knee is up to it?” he asked Delon.

“I’ll stop and walk out the kinks when I need to.”

“Works for me.” But Merle looked to Gil for confirmation, as if he had the final say.

“The paperwork’s at the front desk,” Gil said, starting for the door. “I’ve gotta go make some calls, find someone to take Jerry’s HAZMAT loads until I can get a permanent replacement.”

The hitch in his gait was more pronounced than usual as he walked out, pausing at the front desk to grab a folder before he disappeared into his lair. On the door that slapped shut behind him an engraved plate said The Dispatcher. Below it, one of the drivers had taped up a handwritten paper sign that declared Enter at your own risk.

“You’re welcome,” Delon muttered.

His dad gave him a wry smile. “We do appreciate the help.”

We. As if there was a “them,” separate from him. And he’d let it happen. As he’d built a name and a fanbase, the demands for autograph sessions and sponsor appearances had increased, eating into the time between rodeos. At home, he’d spent every available moment with Beni, as often as not at the Jacobs ranch with Violet and her family. Meanwhile, his brother had slithered into the position at Sanchez Trucking that Delon had always assumed would be waiting for him. Gil, who’d once said he’d rather have his balls cut off than be chained to a desk. Which left Delon…what?

“I can talk to Jerry,” he offered. “Smooth things over before he leaves.”

Merle shook his head. “Your brother is right. We did everything we could to keep him. When—or if—he comes back, we can’t make it easy for him. Otherwise, he’ll just use us again and take off soon as he gets a better offer.”

Hell. Delon couldn’t argue with that logic.

Merle shifted in his chair, visibly switching gears. “What did you think of the new therapist?”

“She’s…different.” Which was the truth. Tori was nowhere near the same girl he used to know.

“Is that good or bad?”

Odds were it didn’t matter. Delon fought to keep the cold punch of misery from showing on his face. If the joint capsule was scarred beyond repair, the best therapist in the universe wouldn’t be able to fix what ailed his knee. Whether he could stand to see Tori twice a week until they admitted defeat…

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. And that was the honest truth, too.