The Cowboy's Texas Sky (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 2)

Chapter Seven

“Don’t for one minute think I didn’t want you. I…” Travis rumbled, turning away and shaking his head, and that tense posture broke, relaxing his corded shoulders. “I didn’t want you to see me like this,” he finally muttered.

See him like what? With healed scars on his arms and on the crest of his cheek? Did he believe she’d think less of him?

“What kind of superficial girl did you take me for?” Skylar gasped. “Like I’d care that you had some scars?”

More words formed on his lips but fell away unspoken. Travis’s profile was so hardened it may as well have been steel, as if etched with blades. She swallowed. Exhaled. He was holding something back. Yet she’d seen that spark of heat in him, seen him gazing over every inch of her body like she was a buffet and he was starving.

“All these years, I mourned your loss, and you just went about your life. And now you’re here saying you want to see me. Don’t you think you at least owe me an explanation?” There was no masking the hurt in her voice.

“The army, Afghanistan…” He was shaking his head. “The uh, scars—Shit, I made a lot of mistakes. Mistakes you—and my family—all tried to convince me to avoid, but I was so damn stubborn…” He turned back around now, held her with his hard, pointed stare that made those obsidian depths blaze with flecks of gold as if they could bore right into her soul. “You wouldn’t have wanted the guy who came home from overseas,” he said coldly.

“I didn’t know the guy came home from overseas,” she snapped, feeling her teeth clench. “And who the hell do you think you are to tell me what I’d want or not want? Why can’t you just say it? That you wanted to dump me but didn’t want to have to get your hands dirty doing it?”

His brow drew together in question.

“What do you mean ‘didn’t know’?” he croaked, a sheen of white blanching his face uncharacteristically for the guy who shed pheromones just flashing a smile. “Everybody knew. It was in the paper. Miracle Survival and all that bullshit. Cameras in my face.”

That hollow cheeked photo she couldn’t shake from the back of her mind.

She wanted so suddenly to defend herself. To rail against him. And yet, right now, she didn’t dare touch him for fear her dregs of resolve would snap and she’d grip him tightly and beg him to hold her again like he had during that hazy moment at the hospital. Lie to her for a minute and let her feel wanted.

“Your momma told me you’d been killed.” Tears wobbled in her vision. But just verbalizing that phrase brought back all the shock in a wave that nearly knocked her on her ass. “The newspapers, your family, your daddy. Everyone.” She couldn’t dam the waterfalls. A cascade trickled down her cheek, and stubbornly, she shoved it away with the backs of her fingers. “So if you want to know how I’ve been, why don’t I tell you about the time I got that dreaded phone call and flunked out of A&M and—”

Tires squealed. A horn blasted.

“Look out!” shrieked someone on the other side of the street coming out of the drugstore. She and Travis whirled toward the road.

A yelp, a thump as something was struck by a truck. And the damned truck that had just hit it didn’t even stop! Just gunned the accelerator and roared off.

“Oh my god,” Skylar breathed, dropping her backpack, loose dollars fluttering down.

*

Skylar bolted offthe curb toward the road.

Was it a person who’d just been hit? Boss. Landmines. Shooting, searing, blinding pain that to this day Travis couldn’t tell if had been the explosion or his optic nerves failing him. His heart froze. Thumped like a bass drum. The images flashed, cutting their crippling path through his mind. Boss’s lifeless face, the blood and dirt crusted over his mangled body.

His muscles ached suddenly, his stump below his knee throbbed so badly he braced it—

Yoda’s wet nose nudged his hand, and he flinched at the meaning of it.

“I’m all right, Yodabear,” he breathed.

Skylar was running into the road despite another vehicle coming, shaking a fist. “What is wrong with you! You horrible piece of—”

Shit, she was gonna get herself killed! Travis tore off after her, running unevenly on his prosthetic toward the crumpled lump on the asphalt.

Yoda sprang beside him.

“Stay!” Travis barked, and Yoda dutifully turned and hobbled back onto the curb to sit.

A few patrons and a couple employees from the drugstore filtered out toward the road, muttering passing between them. Skylar dropped to her knees on the asphalt. He joined her, slipping through the small gathering.

He dropped down beside her. She roved her hands over a dog, calming it, and those blue eyes that had held him with steely calculation moments ago shimmered, her brows drawn together in a look of distress he remembered all too well from when her pops had been hard on her or she’d helped a particularly tragic case at the animal shelter.

“Poor, sweet girl,” she whispered gently.