She nodded, grateful for Jasper’s wisdom. “I know. Thanks. Call me if you need me.”
“We got this covered. Stop frettin’—Oh. Almost forgot. Letter came for you up at the main house by mistake. Tyson asked me to drop it off.”
Jasper plucked a letter from his back pocket, handing the envelope to her. She took it, flipped it over, front and back. Fancy, old-fashioned script in the return address. An estate agent. From Alpine, Texas.
“Alpine? What in the world?” She’d run fast and hard away from Alpine so long ago, cut those home ties like box cutters on packing tape.
“You about to inherit some money, Doolittle?” Jasper teased.
She flipped the envelope over in her hand again. Just what she needed today, another weird curveball thrown her way, after her star high school pitcher boyfriend threw a doozy of one yesterday…
She snorted. “Yeah, hard negative. Sadly, mysterious rich relatives don’t run in my blood. I’m a self-made woman.”
Jasper harrumphed again. “Damn successful one. Seriously, how you’ve gone through life without another guy snatching up a pretty thing like you? I’d say it was your ex-boyfriend’s loss.”
She waved with her signature chipper smile, then climbed up the runner board into the cab, fired up the dually and blasted the AC, and tossed the letter onto the passenger seat unopened. Shuffled her charts on top of it. But as she approached the sole stoplight in Los Magueyes ten minutes later, passing between the two storefronts and a drugstore as the road stretched eastward toward Sierra Blanca, the searing morning sun washing out the traffic signal, making it difficult to see if it was red or green, a familiar truck caught her eye, parked in front of her friend Lydia’s café, the well-known Café Del Sol.
The sight of it stopped her heart. No. Her heart was galloping like Patches’s hooves. Her heart jumped back into her throat. What the hell was up with her heart, jumping and stopping and galloping?
She glanced at the time. Eight twenty-eight. “Keep driving.” Her stomach twisted. “Do not act desperate.” But she’d know that truck anywhere.
Jeez, Trav still drove that old beauty he’d fondly named Red Lightning when he’d beaten his brother in a drag race? Incredible.
And there he sat at an outdoor table like a cool drink of water in worn-out jeans that had seen younger years, boots that looked straight off the Legacy or from a barrel-racing arena, that seductively curved back as he pored over an iPad propped on the table with a binder of notes beside him, working. Mesh trucker hat on backward, he devoured bites off a plate of breakfast sandwiches with a teenage appetite, while her heart was so twisted in knots she’d skipped breakfast.
Knots? She’d gone from pitter-patters to knots. And that T-shirt… He may as well have been wearing stretched-on seal skin over his smooth, tanned muscles. His scrubs had only hinted at his physique, but his jeans and T damn well showcased the walking pheromone he’d become.
She snapped shut her jaw as her boot pressed the brake of its own volition, and her hands guided the wheel into a parallel spot, as if Travis had a gravitational pull. Yeah, her resolve was as hardened as a marshmallow—she raised her eyes heavenward. Had he woken up last night thinking about her, like she’d thought constantly about him? And that cap! OMG, she recognized it now. He still wore that old thing? He hadn’t changed a bit, even if he’d changed as drastically as the weather during tornado season. Her heart, doing these stupid jumps and stops and flips, pinched now. Pinched with wistful memories of that cap.
Whatever had happened with that nurse yesterday, he’d gone home and called her. It had to mean something.
Her traitorous fingers turned off the ignition before she could evaluate further what was wrong with her heart doing all these gymnastics. Butterflies swarmed her skin, her stomach, just knowing he was certifiably alive. She wanted to pass within his presence once more and feel that shimmer of awareness like a high she’d been denied but didn’t want to give him the pleasure of knowing his power over her.
She wanted to make him see what he’d given up by letting her go.