Chapter 4

Tori walked into the reception area and caught Beth with her chin in her hand, mooning out the window as Delon walked by. She angled a curious look at Tori.

“You know him?”

“Used to.” Tori jotted a reminder on a home exercise sheet for the patient she’d seen after turning Delon over to a PT aide to run through his exercises in the gym, then finish off with his knee packed in ice for twenty minutes. “We had sex for a few months, when he had time between rodeos.”

Beth’s jaw dropped a notch. “So y’all, um, dated.”

“No. Just sex.” Tori held out the sheet. “Could you make two copies of this?”

“Sure.” Beth took the paper but didn’t move, paralyzed by an acute case of excess information.

Tori grimaced apologetically. “Sorry. Lately, anything that pops into my head seems to fall right out of my mouth.”

Or, more likely, after months of knowing every one of her words, every smile, and every tear would be weighed, measured, and judged against an impossible standard, her filters had burned out.

Beth laughed, then tilted her head toward where Delon was climbing into his car. “So…”

“Everything you could imagine.”

Beth fluttered a hand over her heart. “Well, that’ll improve my fantasy life.”

“Glad I could help,” Tori said, and went to take a shot at persuading Mrs. Swisher to pack away her precious hand-tied rag rugs before she tripped and broke her other hip.

At five o’clock, she let out the breath she’d been holding for eight hours and climbed in her car for the forty-five-minute drive to Dumas. A whole day down and no one had jumped up, pointed, and shouted, “I know you!”

The fact that her new place was only ten miles from Delon’s hometown of Earnest had given her some pause. First she showed up as his therapist, then in his neighborhood. He might think she was stalking him. He could think again. She had been wooed and won by twenty acres fully fenced, with an indoor arena and without the ridiculous price tag attached to anything closer to Amarillo.

Her mouth twisted as she glanced ahead and behind, at the stream of evening commuters trickling north out of Amarillo. Bored. Distracted. Tired. Impatient. Only she was thrilled by the sheer mundanity of being just one more working stiff. For now, anyway. She wasn’t naive or optimistic enough to believe her paper-thin cover would hold forever, but she would count every dull, anonymous day as a blessing.

She’d learned to take the lack of attention for granted in Wyoming. She had never been a celebrity on par with the Bush twins or Chelsea Clinton, who would be stalked by the media even if they moved to the cloud forest of Ecuador. Though her father’s name and face were familiar to anyone who ladled up political news with every meal, he hadn’t reached the level of national fame that brought his family under constant scrutiny—unless they did something to attract it.

Except in the Panhandle. Here, just being a Patterson was enough. Or in Tori’s case, too much.

The road dipped to cross the Canadian River bridge, then continued up the other side and on toward Dumas. As Tori’s gaze wandered over the winter brown prairie rippling beyond the carved bluffs of the breaks, she felt the familiar tug deep in her gut. Home, the land whispered. All she wanted was a piece of it where she could exist like any normal human being.

In other words, the impossible.

Her last attempt at being a regular Panhandle gal had been a complete failure. She’d been so proud of herself, defying her mother, dropping out of medical school and coming home to pursue a degree in physical therapy at the college in Canyon. While she was at it, why not go whole hog and become a cowgirl? Unlike the horse shows—where she’d dominated in the junior ranks—no one could claim her success as a roper was due entirely to her name and the impeccably trained and bred Patterson horses.

Of course, that had been assuming she’d have some success.

She’d been a terrible roper. Everything about it was contrary to the style of riding her previous trainers had ingrained into her mind and her muscles. The girls on the rodeo team pitied, resented—and in a few notable cases—openly mocked her. In the face of their contempt, she became intensely self-conscious, which made her roping even worse.

Tori wasn’t good at failure. She was even worse at admitting defeat. So she’d clung stubbornly to the fringes of the rodeo crowd, sitting at a table near their default territory in the student union, trying to insinuate herself into the group. A few welcomed her with the bright, fawning smiles a Patterson learned to recognize in the cradle. Others were unbearably polite. She almost preferred the outright hostility. If nothing else, it had prepared her—as much as anything could—for the aftermath of Willy’s death.

And now here she was, back at the beginning. Or some version of it. She let her thoughts unspool like the ribbon of asphalt that took her north. Naturally, her mind headed straight for Delon and another January, seven years earlier.

She shouldn’t have gone to the party. She’d dithered until almost eleven o’clock that New Year’s Eve. Stupid, to go by herself. She’d never even been a party person, for the same reason that she didn’t date much. She’d watched too many of her prep-school classmates be victimized by an asshole looking for his fifteen minutes of Internet fame. Only on rare occasions, with boys who were equally protective of their privacy for similar reasons, had she allowed herself to cut loose a little, or let one of those dates extend past her front door.

But this party was right there in her apartment complex. She could hear the music and the shouts, see cowboys and girls wandering in and out. Maybe tonight, when they were laughing, relaxed, a little drunk, they’d give her a chance.

Of course she did it all wrong. Or right, to those who expected her to show up looking like a spoiled, clueless princess. Thousand-dollar hand-stitched boots. Chunky turquoise jewelry. A floaty little silk dress with a top that tied at the neck and middle, but left her back naked down to her sterling silver concho belt.

She’d realized her mistake as soon as she saw the other ropers lounging against a wall. Naturally it would be Shawnee, Violet, and Melanie—the rock solid core of the rodeo team. Violet was the daughter of Jacobs Livestock, even worked the arena as a pickup rider. Melanie was sixth-generation Panhandle ranch stock, and Shawnee’s dad had been a world champion team roper. They wore fancier versions of their usual jeans with colorful blouses. Their jewelry and makeup were as party perfect as Tori’s, though probably not as expensive, and Shawnee had used some kind of product to transform her wild mop of brown hair into less unruly curls. But unlike Tori, they were still Amazons of the arena, still looked like they could kick ass.

And they despised her.

Tori had hesitated, looked around for anyone else to talk to, but these were mostly pro circuit cowboys. Older. Harder. A little scary when they were at this advanced stage of inebriation. She worked her way, keeping her exposed back to the wall, to the corner where the three amigos stood sipping beer.

“Uh, hi.” Tori tried a smile. “Crowded in here.”

Shawnee looked her up and down, then smirked. “Hot damn, if it ain’t Cowgirl Barbie. You got Cowboy Ken waitin’ outside in the pink convertible, or are you lookin’ to git yerself a man who’s actually got something in his shorts?”

Everyone in the immediate area burst out laughing. Tori’s face went beet-red. She stammered something about finding a beer and dove into the crowd to escape. Bad move. The apartment was so packed she could barely squeeze between bodies. More than one hand strayed across private parts of her anatomy. A sob of panic bubbled in her throat as the mass of human flesh pinned her in place. She squirmed, trying in vain to make forward progress.

A beefy arm snaked around her hips and a pelvis ground against her butt. The man’s breath was hot against her bare shoulder. “You keep rubbing that fine ass of yours up against me, darlin’, I’ll scratch that itch between your legs.”

She drove her elbow into his gut, exactly as her father’s bodyguard had taught her. He grunted and fell backward, setting off a domino effect. Tori dove through the space he’d vacated, tripped over a tangle of feet, and tumbled face-first onto the love seat. The cowboy sitting there threw up his hands to catch her around the rib cage. She grabbed his shoulders and found herself nose to nose with rodeo’s answer to Zorro, minus the mask. Black shirt. Black hat. Black hair. Chiseled jaw and cheekbones. And those eyes. Were they truly black, too, or was that just the shadow from his hat brim?

He grinned and her heart actually skipped a beat. “Just droppin’ in, or were you plannin’ to stay awhile?”

“Sorry. I’ll just…” She tried to push herself upright, but the wave of stumbling bodies had bounced off the opposite wall and sloshed back their direction.

“Hold on.” The man in black lifted her off her feet, turned her sideways, and plopped her down on one of his muscular thighs, leaving his hands on her waist. “Your knee was fixin’ to do permanent damage.”

Her face went a few degrees hotter as she realized her skirt had flared out to drape over his leg, leaving her bare butt in direct contact with the starched denim of his jeans. Teach her to wear a thong. “I, uh…sorry. Again.”

“No harm, no foul.” He craned his neck to examine her back. “You’re coming undone.”

Sure enough, she was on the verge of flashing the entire room. She reached up and behind, shoving her boobs under his nose, but her fingers fumbled the satin strings tangled in her waist-length hair.

“Here. Let me.” He scooped her hair aside and reached around her, his shirt pulling snug across the powerful bulge of muscle in his shoulders and arms. His fingers brushed her bare spine as he moved to the lower tie, and sensation exploded at every point of contact, a thousand individual fires flaring to life.

“There.” He gave the strings a firm tug. “I double-tied the bows, just to be safe.”

“Thanks, um…”

“Delon.” One arm tightened around her as he stuck the other out to fend off a drunk who toppled their direction. “And you are?”

“Tori.” She hesitated, then added, “Patterson.”

“Nice to meet you,” Delon said, without a blink.

Hallelujah. One person in the room who didn’t give a damn about her family. He certainly didn’t have to tell her his last name. In early December, Delon Sanchez had competed at his first National Finals Rodeo, leaving with a pocketful of cash and predictions that he’d be the next Panhandle boy to bring home a world championship. As an alumni of the rodeo team—he’d graduated with a two-year associate degree in business the spring before Tori arrived—he had been the hottest topic of conversation at school for weeks.

Especially amongst the rodeo groupies who lingered, like Tori, around the edges of the real cowboy crowd. These girls hunted cowboys the way earlier generations of Patterson men had once stalked lions and water buffalo on the African plains, before it became a hot-button issue. A world champion was the ultimate prize, but nabbing a top fifteen contender earned serious points. A man who looked like Delon must’ve always been a target, but now, as a local boy done good, he’d become the equivalent of bagging a snow leopard.

And, from what Tori had overheard, almost as elusive.

But he didn’t look skittish as he cocked his head, studying her. “We definitely haven’t met.”

“Um, no. And I should get off,” she said, then blushed harder. “Of you, I mean. I was just, um, leaving.”

“Don’t go on my account.” Delon blessed her with another of those heart-tripping smiles, then shifted his gaze to the impenetrable wall of humanity between them and the door. “You’re not getting outta here right now, anyway.”

Not with her clothes and her dignity intact. As if to prove the point, a whoop went up and a shirt came flying out of the middle of the throng, followed by a bra, then a woman was hoisted above the crowd, her boobs bouncing as she pumped her arms to the music. The walls of the room vibrated with cheers of approval. Tori dropped her gaze, unaccountably embarrassed. God, she was such a sheltered twit.

“The boys are getting out of hand.” Delon squeezed her waist, his hand warm through the thin silk of her dress, and gave her a look that set off another explosion, deeper, more centrally located. “You’d better stick with me.”

Another drunk swayed dangerously close, nearly clocking Tori in the ear with his elbow. Delon shoved him away and pulled her deeper into the couch, until her hip was snug against his. She had to drape her arm across the back of the cushions, her fingers grazing his shoulder. Close up, he smelled like distilled manhood. Clean sweat, some woodsy kind of soap, and—she inhaled deeply and frowned—a hint of diesel exhaust and grease? Of course. Sanchez Trucking. She’d seen their sponsor signs at the college rodeos.

Dear Lord. What was she doing, snuggled up close enough to sniff a complete stranger? But she felt infinitely safer with him than pitting herself against the crowd. And somehow, despite the fact that his arm was now wrapped around her waist, his touch felt respectful. His body, like hers, held a certain kind of tension, as if unaccustomed to casual intimacy.

And he was trying very hard—if not entirely successfully—not to look down her dress.

“Hey, Delon! Happy birthday, dude!” a big, burly guy yelled, sticking out a hand.

As Delon leaned forward to shake it, his chest rubbed up against Tori’s nipple, hard, hot muscle sliding across thin silk in a caress so intimate she flushed from head to toe. Note to self: next time, wear some damn underwear.

“It’s your birthday?” she asked.

“Yep.” He gave her a pulse-thumping grin. “Looks like I got the best present ever.”

She smiled back, letting her body melt against him as she sank into a haze of arousal, the conversation flowing past in a blur as one person after another stopped to chat or shake Delon’s hand. Their curious glances couldn’t penetrate her bubble, and their names evaporated in the heat waves rising off her skin as every move generated more friction between their bodies.

The moves were becoming more intentional, on both their parts. His palm caressed her back and molded her against him, hip to shoulder. She let her hand fall onto his shoulder to feel the flex of his deltoid each time he reached up to shake a hand. Incredible that she had enough brain function to remember the names of the muscles. Flexor carpi radialus, brachioradialus, extensor carpi radialus longus…all clearly defined in forearms exposed by the sleeves he’d rolled up to his elbows.

Imagine what the rest of him would look like naked.

When she shuddered, Delon tilted his head to look into her eyes. “You okay?”

“Yes. Fine.” Assuming she didn’t spontaneously combust right there on his lap.

Then someone yelled, “Hey, assholes, it’s almost midnight. Grab a girl and get ready to plant a big sloppy one on her.”

Delon’s hand skimmed up to the nape of her neck as the crowd chanted, “…five, four, three, two…”

At one, his mouth touched hers. There was an instant of hesitation, then the kiss went hot, deep, no time wasted on polite preliminaries. She dove into the heat and he took her even deeper, into a dark swirl of lust that obliterated everything else in the room.

Delon pulled away, looking equally dazed. He blinked his gaze back into focus. “You ready to get out of here?”

She gulped, then nodded. He lifted her to her feet and stood with ease. He snugged his arm around her hips. “Stay close.”

He plowed through the crowd, clapping shoulders and shaking hands as they went, leaving a trail of smiles in his wake. Interesting. Delon had forcibly relocated at least a dozen people and made them like it. Not one saw the dogged intent under that smile.

Her father would have been impressed.

Tori tensed at the sight of Violet Jacobs leaning in the entryway, the arm of a wide-bodied steer wrestler curled around her shoulders. Her eyebrows rose when she saw Delon.

“You’re still here?” Then her gaze landed on Tori. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth went tight. “Got a new friend, I see.”

Delon pulled her forward a step. “This is Tori.”

Tori and Violet stared at each other for a long beat, then Violet shifted her attention back to Delon. “Y’all still comin’ to dinner tomorrow?”

“Like we’d skip Miz Iris’s cookin’,” Delon said. “Who all’s gonna be there?”

“Just family.”

“See you then,” he said.

Outside, the cold night air hit Tori’s bare skin like ice water and she shivered. Delon wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into the heat of his body.

“You and Violet are related?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Same as. Early on, my dad hauled stock for Jacobs Livestock. My brother and I were underfoot at their rodeos from the time we could walk, and later Miz Iris watched us when Dad had long hauls.”

“What about your mother?”

“She’s gone,” he said tersely, his cheerful mask slipping for an instant. He paused, frowned, and slapped his pockets. “Crap. I forgot. I don’t have the keys. Did you drive?”

“No.” She hesitated, heart pounding. How could she even consider trusting this man? But she did. She couldn’t even say why, beyond what she knew of his reputation. There was just something…

Before she could talk herself out of it, she pointed across the parking lot. “I live over there.”

He took a moment to decide. A moment just long enough to convince her she’d made the right decision. Then he smiled, slow and sweet, and drawled, “Well, all right, then. Lead the way.”

All these years later, she still hadn’t decided whether it had been a stupid decision…or a very, very good one.

* * *

Tori swore and slammed on the brakes, nearly missing her turn. Thank God there’d been no one behind her. She hadn’t lived at this place long enough to operate on autopilot while her mind was off on a stroll. A quarter mile down the dirt road, as she turned into her driveway, her phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, she cursed.

Then she parked the car, took a deep, bracing breath, and said, “Hello, Mother.”