Chapter 34

Please, God, let there be coffee. Delon shuffled down the back stairs and toward the mechanics’ break room, mug in hand. His head pounded, as if every thought was a boulder slamming around inside his skull, and his body ached like he’d been run over by the Freightliner. He pushed open the back door and sent up a heartfelt hallelujah at the scent of fresh brew. He didn’t bother making his own, when there were drivers who swore they stayed at Sanchez Trucking solely for the premium, high-octane fuel Merle brewed in the battered, olive green, twenty-cup percolator.

He was lifting his mug for the first life-altering sip when Gil stuck his head in the door. “What was my new truck doing parked out at The Notch last night?”

Hell. The GPS. Delon was in no mood to explain himself, so he took his time getting a slug of coffee into his system before he answered. “Last time I checked the sign, there was no Gilbert in front of Sanchez Trucking.”

Instead of snapping back, Gil leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms with a faint smile. “Took you long enough to say so.”

Delon glared at him for a full count of five. He was so not up to this today. He dropped his chin to his chest, winced when it made the boulders rattle and smash inside his skull, and breathed out a heartfelt f-bomb.

“You aren’t even worth picking a fight with this morning.” Gil scuffed over to refill his half-gallon insulated coffee tanker. “Guess you heard about Violet.”

“Yeah.” Another boulder smashed into his cranium. Violet. Joe. Married. He and Tori…what? Even after all the hours he’d sat, swapping between watching Tori sleep and staring out the windshield, he couldn’t fathom how to make all of those pieces fit together. His head told him people did it all the time. His heart cracked at the realization that he would never again wake up in Violet’s spare room and roust Beni from bed to share a lazy Sunday breakfast, just the three of them, until Cole or Steve popped in for a cup of coffee, or Iris with fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. His imaginary family had evaporated, like the mirage it had always been. And just to drive the point clear through him, Joe had proposed at the Lone Steer, where it had all begun.

“You’ve been there,” he told Gil. “Got any advice?”

Gil watched the coffee trickle into his mug for a long moment. Then he turned bleak eyes toward Delon. “Don’t let yourself get fucked over.”

“How do you mean?”

“You and Violet don’t even have a formal visitation schedule. And Joe’s mother is married to some billionaire in Idaho. What happens when she insists they all spend Christmas break at her ski lodge in Sun Valley? Or Joe and Violet decide to surprise Beni with a birthday trip to Disneyland next year, without bothering to ask how you feel about it first?”

Delon’s skin went cold. “She wouldn’t…”

Gil raised skeptical eyebrows. “I’d like to say you’re right, but as much as I respect Violet, I wouldn’t bet my kid on it.”

In his head, Delon heard the echo of Iris’s words, as they watched Violet and Joe together. This is our family now…

“But I’m a cynic, for obvious reasons, so you might want to take my opinion with a grain of salt.” Gil snapped the top onto his cup. “Now, about my truck…”

Delon dragged his thoughts back from the edge of the cliff his brother had so kindly pointed out. “I think I’ve at least earned the right to go for a drive without your permission.”

“You think so?” Gil prodded the single stale donut from the box Merle had picked up the day before, testing its edibility. The unfrosted ones were always the last to go.

“Yeah.” The muscles in Delon’s shoulders drew up tight, braced for combat.

Gil broke the donut in half, grimaced, and tossed both pieces in the trash before giving a nonchalant shrug. “I suppose, since either directly or indirectly you account for about a third of our current business.”

Delon damn near dropped his coffee. “How the…I’ve barely been here.”

“Don’t need your body. Just that pretty face and spot in the top fifteen in the world standings.” Gil grinned at him, every angle of his face sharp as honed steel. “You think that load of asswipes is the first time I ever whored you out? Think about it, D. What’s the first load you always get when you’re home?”

Sagebrush Feeders. Every damn time. Not that Delon minded the haul from the feedlot to the processing plant, but he’d never once snuck a load out without the loud-mouthed owner, Jimmy Ray Towler, catching him and insisting they have breakfast or lunch or a cup of coffee to “catch up.” Delon could hardly refuse when the contract was every trucking company’s dream—a steady supply of short, local hauls.

“You asshole. You tell him when I’m coming.”

Gil laughed. “Hell, yeah. How do you think we got the contract in the first place?”

Delon felt his aching eyes bug out. “Just so Jimmy Ray can take me to lunch?”

“Your name got our foot in the door. I took care of the rest.” Gil’s mouth curved. “Promised him the best service he’d ever get, short of that whorehouse he pops by on the way home to the little wife.”

“Geezus shit. You actually said that to him?”

“Pretty much. Which is why I can’t be the one sucking up to guys like Jimmy Ray. And Dad ain’t got a bullshit bone in his body. But you—” Gil waved the coffee tanker in Delon’s direction. “You’ve got that crap down pat. Smile and nod, Jimmy Ray gets to brag how Delon Sanchez never makes a trip home without stopping in for a visit, and we get twenty loads a week out of Sagebrush, guaranteed money—which is how we paid for that new Freightliner.”

Whoa. Delon had to lean against the table to catch his balance.

“But you’re worth twice as much to us when you’re gone, so get your ass back out there and ride, Poster Boy. Speaking of which…” A gleam came into Gil’s eyes that made Delon distinctly nervous. “I called your therapist this morning.”

Delon snapped upright. “Tori? Why? What did you say to her?”

“Chill. I didn’t ask if she enjoyed gettin’ physical in the Freightliner. Although I gotta say, she sounded a hell of a lot more chipper than you look. Problem there, D?”

Delon gave his head a shake. He only succeeded in rearranging the boulders. “It was fine.”

Amazing. Unbelievable. And scary as hell, how much he wanted her again, knowing full well there had never been such a thing as enough when it came to Tori.

“Fine?” Gil snorted. “What happened to the blew my brain to Mars look you used to have when she got done with you?”

“We grew up!” he snapped.

Gil looked insulted. “Why the hell would you do that?”

Delon hissed out an aggravated breath. “Since you’ve gotta be a nosy prick, it was her first time since Willy died. She was…” He shrugged, unable to find words to describe the instant when that first tear dripped onto his shoulder.

Gil studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then he sighed. “You’re gonna screw this up again.”

“I’m not—”

“Bullshit. I bet you barely got your clothes on before you were dreaming up reasons it won’t work, starting with how she’s just using you to get over her dead husband.”

Delon managed not to flinch at the direct hit. Barely. He stared down into his cup. “It wasn’t supposed to…I didn’t plan it to happen this way.”

“And while you were busy planning, she decided to do. You. Again.” Gil made a show of scratching his head. “Call me stupid, but damned if that doesn’t make me think she might actually like you.”

Or figured he was a known quantity. What better place to start getting over Willy than where she left off when she put the Panhandle in her rearview mirror? He’d given her what she wanted. Heat, speed, oblivion. Get it over with. Now he’d give her space, time to shed whatever tears she had left. Time for him to patch up the hole those tears had drilled in his defenses. Tough, capable Tori might turn him on, but those silent teardrops had taken him out at the knees, and that was no position to be in when a man had to guard his heart.

“’Course, she could be thinking the same thing,” Gil said.

“What?”

Gil arched his brows. “Gotta make a girl wonder, you all of the sudden gettin’ romantic on the night Violet got engaged.”

“That had nothing to do with it!” He shook off the spurt of anger and rerouted the conversation. “Why did you call Tori?”

“To ask when you can ride some real horses.”

Bam! There went the air, right out of him. He had to drag it back in to make words. “What did she say?”

Gil scowled. “Bunch of bullshit about patient privacy. Said she’d text you the answer. Guess she hasn’t got around to it.”

Or Delon hadn’t got around to turning on the phone he’d shut down during his date with Tori. It started bleating text alerts as soon as he turned it on, one after another after another. Christ. How many people were convinced it was their God-given duty to tell him about Joe’s proposal? Some even attached pictures, for hell’s sake. He scrolled through until he saw Tori’s number. Two messages. The first only a few minutes after he’d left her house this morning.

He opened the message and bam! There went his air again. When am I going to see you again?

Just like that. No games. No second-guessing. He should be thrilled. He was thrilled, damn it, even if it did feel an awful lot like that moment at the top of the roller coaster when you wondered what you were thinking, strapping yourself onto this ride, and your good sense was hollering at you to bail out, but it was already too late. He gave his head an impatient jerk that slammed another boulder into his temple and scrolled down to her second message.

Pepper says three weeks. But you can start riding a live-action bucking machine now, if you have one.

Gil had angled closer to read over his shoulder. “We still got ol’ Tin Lizzy.”

Delon barely had time to consider what it might take to resurrect their homemade bucking horse when his phone went nuts again with texts beeping in. Honest to God. The people in this town seriously needed to get a life. Then he read the subject line on one of the texts and stopped cold. Heart pounding in rhythm with his head, he opened the Internet link that had been so helpfully included.

“Holy shit. Almost a thousand comments.” Gil slapped him on the back. “Congrats, D. You’re viral. And it ain’t even the kind that’ll make your dick fall off.”

Delon cursed, stringing together every foul word he knew in every possible combination, ending with, “I’m going to kill Hank.”

The front office door banged open, and long, swift footsteps came down the hall toward them. Gil and Delon barely had time to exchange a questioning glance when Violet appeared in the doorway. She jerked a nod at Gil, then narrowed her eyes at Delon. “We need to talk.”

Delon returned her gaze without flinching. “Yes we do.”

* * *

They stomped silently up the stairs to Delon’s apartment. Violet waited until the door closed behind them before turning on him.

“You’re out early,” he said, taking the preemptive strike. “I figured you’d be wallowing in prewedded bliss.”

Violet flushed, but didn’t back down. “Actually, I was, until my mother called, all in a tizzy. Seems she let Beni use her laptop to play Candy Crush on your Facebook account while she made breakfast, and he wanted to know why everybody was posting pictures of your new Freightliner at someplace called The Notch, and what do they mean, ‘When this truck is rockin’, don’t come knockin’?”

Fuck. Forget Hank. Tori was going to kill him. Just what she didn’t need, on top of all the other media and Internet attention. And her father…Delon shuddered, imagining the senator’s reaction when he saw those posts. Delon was gonna have some serious explaining to do. But first, he had to deal with the woman standing in front of him.

“Thank God you’ve never done anything to embarrass the family,” he drawled, heavy on the sarcasm. “Or are you pissed because you consider The Notch one of your and Joe’s special places, since it’s where you got caught naked together?”

Color blazed hotter in her cheeks. “I’m not saying I’ve never done anything stupid. It just seems pretty convenient that you pulled that stunt last night, of all nights.”

“You think I had sex with Tori and got Hank to plaster it all over the Internet just to steal your thunder?” He was so stunned, it took a few seconds for his anger to catch up. “Sort of like the way Joe made his big proposal at the Lone Steer, of all places?”

Her hands fisted, and her eyes sparked with fury. “News flash, Delon. Not everything is about you. Joe picked the Lone Steer because we have history of our own there.”

“And it obviously never occurred to him to discuss it with me first.”

“Discuss it—” She threw up her hands. “He doesn’t need to ask you for my hand in marriage.”

“And Beni’s.”

She gaped at him. “What?”

“He didn’t just propose to be your husband. He’s going to be the stepfather of my son. I think I deserved at least a heads-up.”

Her mouth snapped shut. The anger drained from her face by degrees, leaving it stiff and cold. “I’m sorry for that. Joe wanted to surprise me. He didn’t think…”

“Yeah. Joe does a lot of that—not thinking. Seems to me that’s how he ended up in Texas to begin with.”

She sucked in a breath that broke at the end. Delon folded his arms over a pang in his chest at the sight of the tears beginning to glisten in her eyes. How had they come to this? Since childhood he’d admired and cherished and, yes, even loved her in his own way. They had endured pregnancy and childbirth and six years of parenting together and he’d sworn to protect her and Beni with his life, if necessary.

This should have been one of the happiest days of her life, and he was ruining it. He kicked aside the guilt. She and Joe had ruined a whole lot of days for him, too. And could do worse if good ol’ Delon sat back and let them.

“What else is Joe gonna do without checking with me?” he asked. “Persuade Beni to go out for soccer next year instead of baseball, because that’s what Joe played? Convince him that being a bullfighter is way cooler than riding bucking horses like his old man? Buy him his first beer, or box of condoms?”

Violet’s mouth worked, as if the words were piling up so fast they were getting jammed in her throat. “Joe would never—”

“Right. Because he’s so responsible. He wouldn’t make a big spectacle instead of proposing to you in a nice, quiet place so we could all sit down and discuss the best way to break the news to my son.”

“Our son!” She jabbed a finger at him. “And in case you forgot, Joe did try to talk to you. And we all know how that turned out.”

“At least I didn’t get cuffed and hauled away by the cops,” he shot back, feeling sick and mean even as he said it.

She hissed at the reminder of the worst of her dating disasters, then drew a deep, deliberate breath in a visible attempt to calm herself. When she spoke, her voice had only a slight tremor. “I am gonna marry him. I love him, and I believe he’s good for Beni. I’m sorry you don’t feel the same way. I will talk to Joe and make sure we don’t spring any more surprises on you. What more do you want from me, Delon?”

“A formal custody agreement,” he blurted.

She jerked back as if he’d taken a swing at her. Her eyes were dark and hurt as she stared at him. “Okay,” she said finally. “If you want to hand over Beni’s college tuition to a pack of lawyers, just fucking dandy. Have yours give me a call. From what I hear on the news, your girlfriend should be able to recommend a great attorney—assuming she hasn’t cut and run before you see her again.”

“Don’t even start—”

“I didn’t,” she spat. “You picked this fight. But you can be damn sure I’ll finish it.”

She left Delon with the slam of the door ringing in his ears.