“Touch me all you want, Sky,” he drawled, equally soft.
Unleash the butterflies. They zoomed through her belly as his chest rose slowly, depressed slowly, his eyes riveted to hers.
“Josh?” she addressed her med student, her eyes not leaving Travis’s. “You remember how to turn on the X-ray machine?”
“Yup, on it.”
Josh disappeared inside again.
She released the clamps on the dog stretcher, fingers trembling at the invitation Travis had just made, and folded open the wheels, locking them and putting the stretcher on the sidewalk leading to the door. Leaning over Red Lightning’s bed to look at the injured dog, her fingers curled around the sunbaked metal. Memories assailed her. Memories of late summer nights, early school days, joyriding over the Legacy’s dirt roads. Ultimate freedom when so much of her life with Rhett had felt like a trap. This man and this truck had once been her warrior, charging to her trailer and hauling her into the night. Just touching the truck in the presence of the man who’d tucked her against his lanky torso on that ’80s red vinyl seat, as her hand trailed up and down his stomach, feathering over his thigh, feeling his breath hitch, a potent experience—
The record scratched. Had Ashley gotten to sit next to Travis in the cab? Others before her? When Skylar had always thought of it as her place and hers alone? Unseemly jealousy curled through her. Bitterness she couldn’t shake. It was always supposed to be them. And it hadn’t been—for either of them. Her frowned intensified.
“You okay?” Travis asked.
She nodded. Swallowing. Do your job, Sky.
“What’s on your mind?” he prodded.
“You still drive this truck,” she said.
He nodded, his lips curving up into a wistful smile as his hand cupped hers, blanketing her fingers with his broad, warm palm.
“Kinda want to take you for a ride again.”
Heat sizzled at the point of contact. Sweet, desperate heat tingling with a splash of need and a chaser of desire—with a twist of confusion—warred through her in a strange cocktail. So suddenly, all she could feel was his electric skin zapping hers. She clenched his hand. His breath hitched. His fingers gripped hers in return. He could be holding her hand or feeling her up—it had never mattered which—his touch was electric and had always made her stupid. It was all so complicated: his presence, inducing millions of questions; his eyes, glittering with affection, confusing her with fresh stabs of sadness at the years they’d lost that could never be regained, as if all the love she’d poured into building this place had been for nothing—
She withdrew. What the hell? “Let’s lift the blanket onto the stretcher. On three.”
Travis nodded, and the two of them did so. Her student propped the door open as they rolled up the walk.
“Bring your dog in, Trav. He can sit in the waiting room.”
Travis whistled, and the beautiful shepherd mix she’d seen sprawled on the pavement at the café hobble-trotted alongside them, gauze snug around his hind paw, expertly bandaged by El Paso’s finest orthopedic surgeon.
“Dr. Rivers, you okay? You look a little pale,” Joshua noted as she and Travis passed through the doorway.
She didn’t answer. Yet premonition coursed through her, feeling Travis’s eyes flit over her as if getting a read on her vitals again at the mere mention of her looking pale as they moved around the spaced-out chairs.
“You need to sit down, bab—Sky?”
Had his pet names for her almost slipped again? It did nothing but stoke the cocktail, churning it into an eddy in her gut. He was distracting her. In spite of the emergent rush, every ounce of her primal being was honed in on his movements, the faint whiff of sandalwood—the likes of which she wanted to breathe deeply as she pressed her face into his skin—and the sound of his soft breath.
“I need a weight. We’ll roll her to the back,” she directed.
“You want me to take over?” Joshua asked.
She opened her mouth to answer.
“Naw, man. I got her,” Travis interjected, and though it was spoken kindly enough, there was authority in his voice, too. “I know this is your showdown, girl, but I want to be here.” He indicated the injured stray with the tilt of his head.
The words spun around her head. Did they have a chance? Had he taken one look at her yesterday and realized he’d made a mistake fourteen years ago? Could she ever forgive him if he had?
*
She flipped thatswitch into work mode, which gave her a compass, rolled the stray onto the scale, jotted the weight, returned down the corridor to the exam rooms, and turned into the second one as Travis helped her lift the dog. The two of them found a rhythm, which admittedly felt…nice, and she whipped her stethoscope out of her pocket, listening to the dog’s chest, then abdomen.
“Okay, mild sedation to hold her still and prep for a set of images. She could use a couple rounds of fluids, too.”