Rescue My Heart (22 page)

Christ.

Completely over himself, he got up early the next morning to take out his horse. Reno was a four-year-old American quarter horse and the other love of Adam’s life besides his dog. Two years ago, Reno had been rescued from a traveling carnival looking like a bare sack of bones and skin, covered in sores from being beaten. With Dell’s help, Adam had nursed him back to life. These days Reno was fit and happy—and demanding.

When Adam got close enough, Reno nickered in greeting and butted him in the chest, snorting with eagerness to get out. While Adam saddled him up, Reno frisked him for apple slices—which he found in Adam’s jacket pocket. “You’re an attention ’ho, you know that. Like a woman,” Adam said, hearing the footsteps behind him. Knowing it was his brother, he didn’t turn.

“Don’t let
your
woman hear you say that,” Dell said, leaning against a post.

Adam imitated Reno and ignored this. He hopped into the saddle and took off, leaving Dell to eat their dust.

His woman
.

He didn’t have a damn woman and didn’t have room in his life for one, anyway. He didn’t have time or inclination or need. He didn’t have shit. He sure as hell didn’t have a single thing to offer a woman.

So why have you done nothing but think about
her?

He brushed that thought off the same way he’d brushed off his brother.

Or tried.

But it didn’t take Dell long to saddle his horse and urge Kiki to catch up to Reno. Kiki had a thing for Reno. A competition thing. The two horses nickered at each other while Dell tipped his hat back and flashed a triumphant smile at Adam.

The brothers were as competitive as their horses.

“In a hurry, then?” Dell asked.

“Needed a ride.”

“Thought maybe you’d already gotten one of those recently.”

Adam shot his brother a long look, which Dell met evenly. “You seemed…relaxed, is all,” Dell said.

Adam shook his head. “Is this why you’re up at the crack of dawn? To bug the shit out of me? Where’s Jade?”

“She’s pissed off at me right now.”

“Maybe you can pretend I’m pissed off at you, too.”

Dell sighed. “You’re no fun anymore.”

Adam didn’t respond to that, since it might very well be true. “Why’s Jade pissed?”

“Because I asked her how she felt about diamond rings.”

Adam stared at him. “You asked her to marry you?”

Dell shrugged. “Not yet.”

“So how does she feel about diamond rings?”

“She says she’s happy living in sin with me and doesn’t see the reason to complicate things.”

Adam looked at his brother, the guy who defined laid-back
and easygoing, the guy who’d never wanted a relationship, much less a wedding ring. “You really want to marry her.”

“More than anything.” Dell leaned forward and gently patted Kiki’s neck. “I’ll wear her down. Eventually.”

Adam smiled. “Going to be fun watching you try.”

They rode hard out to Crescent Canyon and stared down at the valley below.

Dell dismounted and, holding Kiki’s reins, walked to the edge. He looked down for a long moment, then tossed his head back and let out a yell. When he was done, he turned to Adam.

Adam dismounted Reno and joined his brother. Side by side, they stared down into the meadow, dotted with a mix of snow and mud. It was late enough in the year that everything was still brown from a late fall, and far too early for any hints of spring. And yet the meadow was quiet, serene. Beautiful.

“Do it,” Dell said.

“I’m good.”

“Do it or I’ll push you off.”

This wasn’t true. Dell wouldn’t push Adam off because then he’d have to run Belle Haven alone, and he was too lazy to handle it all by himself. Adam turned his gaze to the meadow. The deal was to think of the thing that you wanted to let go of. So he closed his eyes and knew exactly what he wanted to let go of—the memory of Holly having to get him out of the cave. Just thinking about it he felt himself start to sweat. He drew a deep breath and yelled at the top of his lungs until he had nothing left.

Still staring into the meadow, Dell reached out and clasped a hand on Adam’s shoulder. They stood like that until Reno nudged Adam, searching his pockets for more apple slices.

Dell laughed when the horse found them. “You are such a softie,” he said.

If Adam hadn’t just yelled himself hoarse, losing all the tension in his entire body, he might have shown Dell just how much he
wasn’t
a softie. But he was feeling much more relaxed now and not up to a tussle. They got back on their horses and rode to Belle Haven, arriving in plenty of time before Dell’s patients.

Dell was a damn good veterinarian and extremely popular. Usually he was busy from morning until night, seeing anything from the animal kingdom that needed him. In general, his appointments ran the gamut from a rabbit with an abscess to a goat who’d let her curiosity get the best of her and had ended up with her head stuck inside a mailbox.

Adam had a busy day. He worked an S&R for a hiker who’d turned out to not be lost at all but hiding out from his pissed-off wife after he’d blown their savings at an online gambling site.

It was much later that afternoon when Brady and Twinkles, his rescued mutt, cornered Adam in the staff room. Brady was tall, broad-shouldered, and built for a fight. They’d certainly had plenty when they’d been teenagers, but they’d both mellowed in their old age. “How you doing?” Brady asked.

Adam shrugged, bent to scratch Twinkles behind the ears, and then searched their refrigerator for something to eat. For several years now, he’d not felt much, including hunger. He’d eaten in order to fuel his body, nothing more. But lately he’d been hungry. Famished, even. He found a big, fat turkey club sandwich.
Score
.

“Shoulder okay?”

Adam nodded as he dug into the sandwich. When he looked up, Dell was there, too, exchanging a long look with Brady. “What?”

“You’re eating my sandwich,” Dell said.

“Yeah.” Adam took another huge bite. “It’s good, too.”

Normally Dell would call him an asshole, but he didn’t. This was because both Dell and Brady had been treating
him with kid gloves ever since he’d gotten back from Fallen Lakes—which, FYI, he hated.
Hated
.

“Poker night,” Dell said. “My place.”

They played bimonthly with Lilah and Cruz, her partner at the kennels. Poker night was taken very seriously. Adam had won big the past three times they’d all played, so he knew everyone would be out for his blood tonight. Normally this wasn’t a problem. He was good at being unreadable. Few could outbluff him. It was a talent that had served him well through his teenage crime spree, and then the military. And now at kicking some poker ass.

But he wasn’t in the mood to play. He shrugged, signaling maybe he’d be there, maybe not. And since Dell wasn’t going to stop him, he ate more of the sandwich.

Dell glanced at it longingly but didn’t say a word.

“What does that mean?” Brady asked Adam. “That shrug. You’re coming, right?”

“Maybe. I’m tired.”

Brady and Dell exchanged another look.

“What now?”

“You tell us what,” Dell said, eyeing the sandwich, and if Adam wasn’t mistaken, his brother’s mouth was watering.

Adam took another big bite and shook his head. “Not a clue.”

“Okay, can we stop with the bullshit?” Brady asked. “You went on a rescue.”

Ah, so the kid-glove treatment was from the rescue out at Bear Lake, not related to Holly at all. “Yeah,” he said. “I went on two rescues this week actually. So what? I do it
every
week.”

Of course it wasn’t every week that he also banged his co-rescuer on a mountaintop, but that was best kept to himself.

Twinkles eyed Adam’s food and whined. Brady scooped the little guy up and cuddled him. Brady, the big badass,
cuddling a damn dog. It’d be funny, if Adam could find the funny in anything right now.

“Here’s the thing,” Brady said. “You don’t go on rescues.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Except Adam knew
exactly
what he was talking about because it was true. Adam hadn’t been
on
a rescue, as in hands-on, since he’d gotten home from overseas, and they all knew it. How he’d actually thought this was some kind of secret, he had no clue. He ate some more of Dell’s sandwich, which helped ease his pain in a big way. “Jade makes excellent sandwiches.”

Dell sighed as Adam finished it. “How do you know that Jade made it?”

“Cuz you barely know where the kitchen is, much less how to use it.” Adam opened a bottle of water and drank deeply. When the last drop was gone, he swiped his mouth and studied his two brothers, who were in turn studying him like a bug on a slide. “Jesus. You two need a life.”

“Actually,” Dell said slowly, as if speaking to the village idiot, “we have lives. We’ve been thinking that
you
need a life, but you appear to be getting one. Want to talk about it?”

Still with the fucking kid gloves. Adam shook his head and slid him a look, because, really, since when did they talk about feelings? Without a word he turned back to the refrigerator and eyed a plate with three chocolate cupcakes on it. Nice. He pulled it out and went to work on the first cupcake.

“Those are mine, too,” Dell said.

Adam finished the first cupcake in two bites and when Dell didn’t stop him, he went for another one. “Wouldn’t want to upset the crazy person,” Adam said. “Best to let him have the cupcakes.”

Dell sighed again.

Adam licked the last of the chocolate off his fingers and handed over the empty plate before heading for the door.

“I think he’s fine,” Brady said to Dell.

“Could’ve told me that before I let him eat all my fucking food,” Dell muttered.

Adam didn’t go to poker.

Instead, he crawled into bed and slept like the living dead and woke sometime near dawn, just before whoever was coming up the loft steps got to his front door. The urge to reach for a weapon and point it at the intruder was still as strong as it had been two years ago but he no longer acted on it.

Brady let himself in and hit the light. “Don’t shoot.”

Adam shook his head and flopped back to the bed. “You’re supposed to say that before you come in.”

Brady laughed softly. “Trigger finger still twitchy, huh?”

Brady would know the feeling. He’d been army, Special Forces.

Adam closed his eyes.

“Ignoring me,” Brady said. “Good plan.” He dropped onto the bed, sprawling out on his back next to Adam. Tucking his hands behind his head, he crossed his feet, and studied the ceiling. “You’re going to have to get a duster up there, man,” he said idly, staring at the dust bunnies in the rafters. “Women don’t want to look at that shit hanging down on them while they’re concentrating.”

“Your women have to concentrate?”

Brady grinned. As his wife, Lilah was the only woman in Brady’s life now. She’d grown up with Adam and Dell, and Adam loved her like a sister—he absolutely did not want to think about what Lilah did to put that particular smile on Brady’s face.

“Lilah has no complaints,” Brady said.

Adam grimaced. “Why are you in my bed, then, if you’ve got Lilah in yours?”

“She’s got a duck emergency.”

“She finally decide to cook Abigail?” Adam asked, referring to the duck that Lilah watched at her kennels. Abigail was a menace, and half the town had been threatening to cook her for years, but Lilah loved that thing. Lilah loved everything. Even the idiot currently lying in his bed.

Brady looked pained. “Do yourself a favor and don’t let Lilah hear you talk about cooking Abigail.”

Adam just looked at him and Brady sighed. “Look, I know something happened to you when you went after Donald with Holly. What was it?”

If he let himself, Adam could still smell the caves. Smell his failure. Turning his head, he eyed the dust bunnies in the rafters.

“Okay, tell me this,” Brady said. “Is something wrong, or are you feeling sorry for yourself for some reason?”

“I’m
good
.”

Brady went still for a long beat. “Shit.”

Adam nearly smiled. “I’m good” was code for “I’m not going to talk about it.” It had been evoked years and years ago, when they’d been punk-ass kids. Adam had gone out and done something stupid. Shock. He’d had a run-in with a guy several years older than him, and Adam had actually gotten the best of the asshole. Said asshole had vowed revenge, and he’d gotten it a week later, when he and four of his friends had jumped Adam and beaten the shit out of him.

He probably should have gone to the hospital, but they’d been in a foster home, the best foster home Adam and Dell had ever landed in, run by a guy named Sol Anders. Sol had been a good man, the best any of the three boys had ever known, and they hadn’t wanted to risk getting sent away.

So Adam had invoked the “I’m good” code. They’d managed to hide his injuries, and he’d recovered. Ever since, if any of them needed to be left alone, they said, “I’m good,” and that was that.

But Brady was lying there looking like he’d just swallowed
a bitter pill, though he held his tongue as he rose from the bed. “Whatever. I’ll stop asking if you’re okay, but you’re on your own with Dell. You know he’s as bad as a chick.”

This was true.

Milo was on his own bed at the foot of Adam’s, and Brady crouched in front of him. The yellow Lab rolled over on his back, exposing his junk and a big grin, a blatant invitation to pet him. Brady obliged, then rose. “Going running. You coming, or you too pussy?”

Milo understood the tone if not the words, and he bounded to his feet, totally game.

They both looked at Adam.

Like he could stay in bed now. He got up and, ignoring Brady’s grin of satisfaction, pulled on his running clothes.