Cowboys 03 - My Cowboy Homecoming (10 page)

“See that you do.” I picked up Fausto’s backpack before heading outside.

Threep bounded up the porch stairs.

“Hey, look who’s here.” I gave her scratches behind her ear before opening the screen door. “You feel up to some company Lucho? Threep’s here for a visit.”

“Sweet.” He held his hand out and she went to him. “Always happy to have a furry friend around.”

“All right then.” I stepped back as Fausto darted out the door past me. His feet thundered down the wooden stairs. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Thanks for giving him a ride.”

“Anytime. You got a phone?”

He frowned. “Yeah. Why?”

“What’s the number?” I got out my phone to add him to my contact list. He rattled off the numbers and I saved him as a contact. I wrote hello in the message box and hit send so he’d have mine. “If you think of anything you need while I’m out—anything at all—you can text me.”

He ducked his head. “There you go being all nice again.”

“It’s a gift. And a curse. It’s a gift curse.” I stepped out and closed the door between us.

“You coming or what?” Fausto shouted impatiently from my truck.

Soon.

And yes. I would be going straight to hell for thinking about fresh-faced Fausto’s adored big brother in a sexual way, I just knew it.

Was Lucho even out to his family?

I climbed into the truck and keyed the ignition, determined to corral my thoughts.

“How long do you think it will be before Lucho can ride again?” Fausto asked.

“I don’t know.”
Christ.
That didn’t help. The image I got in my head of Lucho riding my cock—of Lucho’s muscles bunching while he took all of me inside him, his skin sticky with sweat and jizz—had me twitching in my jeans.

“I can’t wait.”

Neither can I.

Fausto smiled in innocent anticipation, which shamed me.

Goddamn. I really am going straight to hell.

Lucho was waiting for me on the porch when I got back. He sat in his wheelchair—a tan, solid buck-eighty of bored-as-hell, work-hardened muscle—holding a bag of apples in his lap.

“What are you up to?” I dropped the breakfast I’d purchased for him onto his knees.

“You bought me donuts?” He glanced up warily. “I look like Homer Simpson to you?”

“D’oh,” I teased. “I thought you might like a breakfast bagel. Did you eat this morning?”

“Not really.” He opened the bag, took out one of the sandwiches, and gave it a sniff. “This looks good.”

“So let me get you some coffee and then you can tell me what I ought to be doing while everyone else is bringing in the fat cows.”

“Heavies.” He snorted a laugh as he unearthed an edge of bagel and bit right in. “Mmfph oo.”

“You’re welcome.” I went inside. The coffee looked like it had seen better days, but hell, I’d had much worse. I’d chewed coffee beans—and grounds and instant coffee—to stay awake. Cowboys probably weren’t that picky either, so I poured it and took it back to him.

He’d inhaled that first sandwich, and was starting on his second. Good thing I’d eaten mine in the truck. “Coffee.”

He stared at it. “You didn’t put nothing in it, did you?”

“Like what?” I asked, wholly offended.
Did he think I’d poison him?

“Like cream or sugar. I take it black.”

“Oh.” I handed it over. “It’s black.”

“Touchy much?” he asked.

“I can’t think why I would be.”

He put the coffee on the porch railing and finished his second sandwich in three bites. “I guess I was hungry after all.”

“I guess.” I watched him put the sandwich papers back into the bag and squeeze the whole deal into a golf-ball-sized roll, which he tossed to me.

“Thank you.” He sipped his coffee without wincing. “I appreciate you bringing me breakfast.”

“People are nicer when they’re fed.”

“That your theory?”

“Seems to be.” I shrugged. “So. What’s on the agenda for this morning?”

“I want to see the rescues. You getting anywhere with them?”

“Fausto’s been taking care of the mare in the barn since yesterday.”

“That’s good. How’s Pio doing?”

“He is not a happy camper. He nearly took my head off when I led Kiki away.”

“Hope the boss didn’t see that. He’s got his doubts about Pio as it is.”

“Malloy was there.” I said grimly. “He’s looking for progress and Pio didn’t exactly meet expectations.”

“Shit.”

“It’s fine. He’s giving you time to win Pio over.”

“Us.”

“What?”

“He’s giving
us
time. I can’t do nothing right now. You’ve gotta do it for me, and don’t think I’m not climbing the walls cause I’ve gotta send a tenderfoot in to do a cowboy’s job.”

“What about the other guys? There must be someone better qualified than me around here. Even Fausto.”

“Nope. My
mami
would kill me if he got hurt.”

“So I’m what?” I crossed my arms. “I’m
expendable
?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“So—”

“So drive me over there. I want to see the bastard.”

I took a look at the path. “You’ll get your wheels bogged down in mud and horseshit.”

“I’ll wash them.”

“Excuse me? You’re not fit to do anything.”

“Okay, then you’ll wash them.” He gave me a hopeful side-eye glance. “Okay?”

“And why would I do that?” I tried out a stern stance. A no-nonsense attitude. He laughed at that too.

“You said it yourself. You’re cursed with the nice.” He smirked at me. “You’ll clean up my wheels so I won’t track anything into the bunkhouse, won’t you? Pretty please?”

Shit, yeah, I was.
I would.

It took all my strength to—carefully and without jarring Lucho too much—back his chair down the porch stairs. After that, I pushed him as best I could, cursing when the wheels dug into ruts because I didn’t want to jostle his foot—even a little. Pretty soon, we reached the enclosure where Pio was staying.

Our presence agitated Pio. He postured for a while, but he wasn’t getting anywhere with it. Lucho watched, assessing Pio’s attitude with a gentle sort of smile on his face.

Pio came within ten feet of us and lifted his head to give it an angry shake. He pawed the ground.

“He’s a pest,” I said.

“I like him.” Lucho bit into an apple. “I like a challenge.”

“Me too.” To be honest, I wasn’t looking at the horse when I said that.

Pio eyed us warily.

“I think you should go in there.” Lucho didn’t take his eyes off the horse.

“You would.” I gave his shoulder a nudge with my hip.

“C’mon, you’ve faced down worse.”

“I have.” I admitted. “But that wasn’t exactly my choice.”

“You joined up, didn’t you?”

“Sure. To get away from my dad. When you think about it like that, the Taliban was just—” I searched for a way to explain “—the price of doing business.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. You know why?”

“Why?”

“I watched that documentary they made about Afghanistan.”

“
Restrepo
?” I asked, and he nodded. “I wasn’t there when that shit was going down.”

“But those guys were combat soldiers, right?”

“Right.”

“And not everyone who joins up goes into combat. You could have asked to be a mechanic or an electrician.”

“It doesn’t really work that way.”

“Well. You could have joined the navy, right? Spent your time in a submarine and never seen a minute of action.”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

“So. You joined the army. Were you there? Where those guys were?”

I looked up at the sky. It was blue and infinite and streaked with translucent clouds. It was the same sky as the one we’d had in Afghanistan, but it didn’t feel the same. “I was. I served with the 173rd, so yes, I was in the Korengal Valley. But I didn’t serve until later. Plus it wasn’t—” I hesitated. “The guys who made that film were embedded for a year and they had to boil everything they went through down to ninety minutes.”

“But you were in Afghanistan.”

“I joined because I was an idiot kid, trying to prove something.” I pulled my hat off to fan away a particularly irritating fly. “I guess I did that. Now I’m back. I don’t like to think about it anymore.”

“Are you seeing someone?”

“Are we talking about my service or my sex life? Why the twenty questions game?”

“I meant,” Lucho said patiently, “did you see a counselor when you came back? Someone who will help you get back into civilian life?”

“Look. It’s not like they show on the news, all right? Not everyone gets PTSD the way they say.” I tightened my fingers on the fence. “I saw the shrinks, and I’ve got a plan. It’s all good.”

“You’ve got a plan?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

My plan?
I watched Pio lope from one side of the enclosure to the other. My plan was to work hard and take care of my mother. To get a dog of my own and to stay as far away from humanity as possible. To live quiet and die old.

What I
hadn’t
planned was for one particular human to get under my skin like a fucking tick first thing.

Lucho tilted his head, still waiting for me to answer. “Look. I’ve got it covered, okay? What do you want me to do once I’m in there with your horse?”

“That’s going to be your horse, army.” He laughed at my expression. “I’ve got a horse.”

“No way that horse is ever going to warm up to me. The best I can hope for is he doesn’t try to kill me if I get in there with him.”

“But you like him, don’t you? I can tell you like him by how you look at him. Like deep inside, you hope like hell Pio will be okay. You don’t know what to do, but you want to make things right for him. You want to make him feel safe. And that’s what I’m counting on.”

“Yeah.” Strangely enough, that was exactly how I felt. “That’s what I want.”

“Okay then. That makes you his only hope. You have to get him to trust you.” He took another bite of his apple. “Lose your fear and go in with your heart. Go make a friend.”

“All right.” Pio and I made uneasy eye contact, which was all wrong because he probably saw that as a challenge. Sorry, dude.
Just following orders
. I squared my shoulders, opened the gate, and then walked slowly inside, holding my hand out for him to sniff. Hey, dogs do that. Why not horses? “If he bites my hand off, I’m totally holding you responsible.”

“No, don’t try to get—” Pio’s ears flattened a second before he charged me.

“Shit.”
I got the hell out of Dodge and slammed the gate shut behind me.

Lucho had covered his eyes with his hands. “
Chingame
, army. I didn’t mean you should attack. I meant for you to close in, little by little. Invade his environment, but don’t walk right up to him. What the hell? He’s not a dog.”

“Now you say.”

He sighed. “I didn’t expect you to be an idiot.”

“You should have. I’m clueless here. Plus you’ve called me an idiot since we met.”

At that, his brows lifted. “When did I ever?”

“All right. Maybe you just implied it. I am an idiot,” I said softly. Looking at him, I sure as hell
felt
like an idiot. “I pretty much just did what you told me without question because I figured you knew what you were talking about in this situation.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s a lot of responsibility to put on me.”

“I don’t really have my footing here, Lucho.” Were we still talking about horses? “I’m looking to you for some kind of . . . guidance, I guess. I’m more like that horse than any trainer in this situation. Don’t leave me hanging.”

Lucho’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, which made my dick twitch and my pulse pound in my ears. He gave me a slow, serious nod. “Okay. I’ve got this. I’ll take care of you.”

“Yeah?” I asked, heart pounding harder.

“Yeah.” Those brown eyes sparkled. “I won’t let the big, bad horsey hurt you.”

Shit. “You’re only teasing because you’re laid up right now. If you think I’ll forget any of this when you’re on your feet? Think again.”

As he threw all his power behind that fierce, feral smile of his, the wind ruffled his hair.

Goddamn. Here was something fine and I wanted it
.

Wanted him.

I smiled back.

He jerked his chin. “Now get in there, and ignore him for a bit. Then when he’s not anxious anymore, we’ll get him moving. Win him over. You can do it.”

“All right. I get it.” I muttered. “Hearts and minds.”

The words were an echo that made me shiver a little, despite the heat.
Hearts and minds.

’Cause that shit never went badly.

I opened the gate again and went inside. “You’re the boss, Lucho.
For now
.”

While I ignored Pio, Lucho started teaching me to watch his body language. The battle plan, as Lucho laid it out for me, was to get Pio moving.

That was it.

I chk’d at him, and he ran away from me. Round and round the enclosure we went, over and over. If he tried to stop or go back, I was supposed to get him moving again. I was to keep him from turning around and running away.

And that was it.

Lucho had me move Pio in the direction he told me he wanted Pio to move, for the better part of a long,
hot
hour, until the animal was winded and more than a little unhappy with both of us. At that point, the feeling was mutual.

I wondered whether Lucho was training me or Pio or both of us and if he’d ever stop barking out orders:
go, go, stop him, get him, that’s right, go, go. Watch him. Turn him. Make up his mind for him. Don’t give him a choice there, stand up to him, use your head. He’s a kid. Think with your heart.

At last, Pio seemed so tired that even if I crowded him he didn’t erupt or charge in anger. He pretty much just kept moving.

Lucho told me that was right where we wanted him.

“That’s probably enough for today. Here.” Lucho tossed me an apple. “Now see if he’ll take the apple from you. Get a little closer. Hold it out in the flat of your hands. That’s right.”

I did what Lucho told me to do because he’d trained me right along with Pio. I suppose if I really thought about things just then, I’d have balked a lot like Pio was balking.

Pio jerked his head up when I approached, eyeing me warily. His ears laid back.

“Bite a piece off the apple and offer it again. If he won’t take it, drop it at his feet.”

We were both tired, Pio and me. I figured I had about a fifty-fifty chance of walking away with all my fingers, but that was better than some chances I’d taken.

I bit the apple and crunched on it. It was tart and sweet. Juicy. I held the rest out and whispered, “C’mon. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Lucho stayed silent while Pio debated the wisdom of approaching me.

After a bit, he took a couple of steps forward, then turned and bolted the way he came. I wasn’t prepared for his sudden burst of speed, so I flinched.

I wasn’t real proud of that, especially when Lucho laughed. To be ornery, I leaned up against the rails and took another bite of the apple for my trouble.

I stayed where I was, offered the apple again, and eventually curiosity got the better of Pio. He stepped close again. I stayed absolutely still, holding the apple out, hands flat, palms up. Pio came toward me two steps. Two more. Another. Finally, he stretched his neck and took the apple from me, and I don’t know . . .

I felt some kind of rush all through my gut, like I’d done something amazing or won some big prize. Like after the rotten day I’d had the day before—when nothing went right—I was due for some good luck and
there it was
.

Goddamn, it felt good. I was giddy with happiness.

Pio trotted away with his prize, and I pushed off the fence and let myself out of the enclosure.

Lucho stood, gripping the fence, grinning at me with such pleasure and surprise and even pride, maybe, that I stopped a foot away. “What?”

He leaned his hip against the rail and kept his weight off his foot. “Why the fuck d’you have to be Calvin Tripplehorn’s kid?”