Chapter One
Fourteen years later, July 2016
“All done,” Travis Dixon said, clasping the patient’s shoulder gently to rouse him as the anesthesiologist fitted the heart monitor onto the bed rail and tethered the IV to the pole.
Command Sergeant Major Reyes’s head lolled, the anesthesia wearing off. This patient, his former army sergeant, injured in another tour after Travis’s stint had ended, was another person helped in Boss’s honor. People like him were the reason Travis had switched horses in midstream—pun intended—from horses to humans. Funny how he might be back to horses, now, too, if he bit the bullet and contacted his little bro, Toby, about the therapeutic stable and clinic he was codirecting with Dr. Lopez. Lopez was circling like a wolf stalking prey, nagging him, “Unless you can think of a closer location, we’re gonna have to go with that land in Dallas. The hospital needs to put in an offer soon, so we can break ground on schedule.” Yeah, he had land at his fingertips for the state-of-the-art physical therapy clinic and stable just a couple hours away in Alpine, much closer than Dallas, if he could only call Toby to ask. Funny how something so simple as a phone call seemed so hard.
“You did great, man. No beer kegs or partyin’ now,” he grinned, tapping him with the back of his fingers. “I don’t wanna hear from those nurses that you’re giving ’em a hard time, y’ hear?”
“You know me, Dixon,” Reyes said, attempting to smile, his throat sounding thick and sore from the trach tube that had just been extracted. “Already ordered that keg.”
“Yeah, I got your number. Party animal,” Travis teased, then clasped him. “Rest, and I’ll see you in recovery to talk about that meniscus. ’Kay?”
Reyes nodded, more alert, as his slurred joking ebbed away. “My wife? My daughters?”
“On my way to see them right now. They love you and they’re anxious for an update. Keep an eye on Dr. James, y’ hear?” He winked at the anesthesiologist and flashed a grin. “She’s a crazy bed driver.”
Dr. James was cute. And he had it on account she thought the same thing about him. Except she was married—Of course. The ones with brains and beauty always are.
“You let him get away with that?” Reyes said to Dr. James, a sense of humor in spite of his groggy state.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll pay him back,” Dr. James said on a grin, flashing Travis what he knew was a smile behind her mask that pulled up her pretty green eyes into half-moons.
“Yeah, she will.” Travis soaked up the twinkle in her eye.
James pushed the bed into the corridor as the heart monitor bleeped steadily, undercutting the noise the scrub tech was making by clinking bloodied tools into the bin for sterilizing. Travis dropped his face shield and moved to the counter under the observation window to collect his phone, plugged into the sound system softly playing his internet radio playlist to help him concentrate. Oasis’s “Wonderwall” had just tapered off. A new song was starting, a country one? What the heck? He thought he’d disliked everything his internet radio tried to shuffle around until he had a nice, late-nineties-to-early-two-thousands grunge and alternative rock playlist.
It was a familiar song, though… Shit, he’d recognize that twangy guitar lead-in anywhere. The unmistakable melody and lively rhythm cut through his thoughts. He’d heard his pops play this Randy Travis bit for his momma time and again. He’d at one time, so long ago, played it for a girl he’d once loved.
…I’m gonna love you, forever and ever, forever and ever, amen…
Unzipping zipper in his ears. Skylar’s powdery dress slackening. Her sweet breath hitching, their song filtering into the starlit, nighttime air from his portable CD player.So in love with her as pulses raced like wild horses set loose upon the range, as he became her first…
He gave the song a thumbs down. The radio cut to a more predictable Soundgarden song. He ought to delete the old country tears-in-your-beers playlist he never listened to anyway, and maybe the program would stop trying to shuffle the different genres.
He X’d out of the app and snapped the cord from the stereo. And yet it reverberated through his mind, like a distant memory shimmering across a void he’d crossed a long time ago and never looked back upon to see how far he’d come.
Skylar Rivers, the one he’d let get away. He’d never be that savior who hauled her out the window to spirit her off into the night anymore, joyriding in his truck, Red Lightning; dancing it up; making out like frenzied animals atop Cerro Casas Grandes, the beautiful plateaued mountain on his ranch—no, Toby’s ranch now—unable to get enough of each other as the wind blew them in any direction it chose. The world had been their own big oyster. He’d once believed they could do anything, overcome everything, if they just had each other. He couldn’t think about those high school days and not think about her: the sunshine yin to his talkative yang, the high school yearbook had said.
He smiled wistfully and pocketed his cell in the breast pocket of his blue surgical scrubs. Wonder what Skylar’s up to? He hoped she’d gotten that family and mess of animals she’d always wanted. Her life had been hard, and his, in hindsight, so breezy, growing up as part of the wealthy Dixon Cattle Co. family that had dominated the beef industry since before the turn of the twentieth century, owning one of the largest, most beautiful ranches in western Texas, the Legacy. Silver spoons and anything he’d truly wanted had been his—until he’d gone down to that army recruitment office, bent himself over the proverbial table, and let his future get fucked hard.
“G’night,” he said to the nurse who was shutting down equipment for the weekend.
“G’night, Dr. Dixon. What are you up to this weekend? I’ve got a date,” the nurse replied with swagger in her hips and excitement threading her words.
“Aw, you ain’t gonna ask me out?” He grinned, winking, jutting his chin.
She was at least twenty years too old for him and happily married, given the sugary way in which she chatted about her hubs, but he had no idea how to talk to a woman without flirting. And he knew for a fact from the gossip that he wasn’t hurting for admirers.
She smacked his arm. He feigned dodging it as a laugh worked its way out of their throats.
“Don’t you go on making my husband jealous, Dixon,” she said. He grinned. “Morgan’s taking me to dinner and a movie. What about you? You got a date, Mister Single Doctor?” she countered, clicking the mouse and checking off items.
His smile inched down a notch. Thank God for masks to hide behind.
“Yup.”
“Really?” She seemed intrigued. “Where are you taking the lucky lady?”