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

“Oh man,” she said ominously.

“Everything okay?” he asked, wishing her hair was still down so he could strum his fingers through it.

“No… I have to get home,” she said, haste in her voice. “Brandon’s on his way back. I must not have heard the text when it first came through. The music was loud and… Crap! He’ll be home in, like, a half hour.”

Travis exhaled, then tried to vanquish his disappointment with a smile to put her at ease. “No worries, let’s pack up and get you home.”

“No, not no worries. I have to be there when he gets back. If he gets home before me, Anita will find out, and since the accident, it’s like she’s been trying to rack up strikes against me. I’ll look ‘irresponsible’ if I’m out joyriding with a guy when Brandon gets home instead of being there.”

“Brandon’s fourteen. He can’t handle being by himself for a few minutes until you get back?”

She smiled resignedly. “Of course he can, and he’d probably be thrilled by the independence. He’s constantly complaining that I ‘babysit’ him. But Anita doesn’t think I’m perfect, and this will only give her a bit more fuel against me.”

“Is she afraid he’ll eat after midnight and turn into a gremlin?” He scooted toward the tailgate now, dragging his blanket with him, wadding it up like the ball of disappointment that it was to cram behind the seat, sealing up the Grizzly and tucking it against the back.

Skylar snorted, zipping closed her backpack. “You know, her opinion of him isn’t always that high. I wouldn’t put a thought like that past her.”

That remark, delivered with dark sarcasm, sat in Travis’s mind as his pulse reluctantly slowed and his shaft petulantly gave needy pulses, demanding a do-over of their make-out session. Of all the things they’d talked about tonight, they hadn’t forayed into the foster kid topic.

“You’re not allowed to have a good time, too?” He brushed a hand down her arm thoughtfully. She squeezed his fingers as they feathered to her hand to hold it but pulled away as she hastened off the tailgate, her dress riding up her fine legs that—hell—he wasn’t going to be touching any further tonight. His cap had fallen off. He raked his hand through his hair with frustration and whisked it back up. “What, you’re out on hundreds of dates or something and it’s interfering with raising him?”

He’d meant it lightly, but a dark frown captured her face as she slung her backpack over her shoulder and straightened her skirt. She wouldn’t look at him. Shit. What did the look mean?

“Hey, I’m teasing, that’s all.” He caught her arm.

She glanced at him, but the worry on her face compelled him to grab up his phone playing softly and slam shut the tailgate. Had she not been on any dates…since him? Or worse, had she gone on dating sprees and he’d made her feel ashamed about it now? He didn’t want to know.

He walked her to her door, opening it, when she paused. She rested a careful hand upon his chest, her finger taking up that pensive tracing of imaginary spirals like she’d done at her clinic, sending shivers through him. She swallowed.

“Would it bother you if I said I had tried to date?”

What? The hedging way she’d just confessed that she’d seen other people without admitting it directly made his stomach drop. Yeah, it bothered him. And yet where did he have room to judge her? He’d tried to bang the heartache out of his system, all while knowing he’d never actually said the words to her that they were breaking up, just let the threads of their relationship disintegrate on the air. He’d given her no explanations, and she’d lived a life of a grieving widow because of it. He’d been a total asshole, now that he examined the past through the lens of experience he had now.

No. He shook his head. It only bothered him because he didn’t want to think of Skylar Rivers as anyone else’s girlfriend but his, but he hoped she’d liked the guys she’d dated. He hoped they’d made her happy, at least, for the time they’d dated. She’d deserved to be happy.

“Naw, Sky.” He shook his head and leaned down to place a kiss upon her lips, holding her chin on his finger tenderly. “Did they make you happy?” he whispered.

She swallowed, their lips still touching. “They weren’t you.”

She crawled in swiftly before their connection could regenerate, clearly anxious to race the clock, her knee banging against the dash—The glove box fell open. His stack of junk spilled out.

“Oh man, the latch is still broken?” she said with surprise, scrambling to pick up the spilled contents. “I’m so sorry.”

Shit.“I’ll get that, don’t worry about it,” he hastened, snatching the pile out of her hands.

But disorganized papers spilled unevenly onto her lap. His handicap mirror hanger that he never used and hadn’t renewed since 2004 when he’d finally gotten a new license and was competent on his prosthetic—he snatched it up, feeling his neck burning with embarrassment and thankful for the nighttime concealing the redness. The condoms. Ugh. The wadded-up sticky note with Ashley’s phone number and name—Skylar had already unfolded the wadded crease. Goddammit! She said nothing, even though she stiffened. A further reminder, like her admission about dating others, that there was baggage to unpack, there were reasons why they’d sought from others what they could no longer get from each other. There were reasons why she flinched back from him the moment intimacy took that turn toward lovemaking.

And a photograph. He tried to grab that, too, but she was holding it intently, focusing on it in the overhead cab light. She then took up his arm, rolling his tattoo into the light, and held the photo next to it.

“This is Boss?” she said.

He nodded, letting her hold it.

It was the photo he’d used for his tattoo, a photo he’d taken of his friend when they’d first landed overseas, on a camera that miraculously hadn’t been blown to shreds when the roadside bomb took his unit by surprise or when the landmine had exploded right under his foot. It was the photo he’d made a copy of and driven out to Boss’s wife in Las Cruces.

She flipped it over and read the back. “Brandon ‘Boss’ Fuentes… Huh… Brandon…”