Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance Read online

  “What are you—” Dalia began, then stopped because it was obvious what he was doing. He was arranging bales of coastal Bermuda hay onto the trailer, no doubt in preparation for the hayride at the firefighter fundraiser.

  “Oh, sorry,” Tony said at almost the same moment.

  He had on yet another Texas T-shirt, one where the shape of the state was formed by the various city names all written where they belonged.

  “No, that’s okay,” said Dalia. “I just need the tack room.”

  “I know it’s a little early to get the trailer ready,” said Tony. “But, well, we were already out here, and your mom asked us to go get the small bales from the feed store, and Alex said why not go ahead and load ’em up and put ’em on the trailer while they’re still nice and bright. But I don’t have to do this now. I’ll just—I’ll get out of your way.”

  That flash of anger he’d shown at the lumberyard encounter was gone without a trace. Now he just looked unhappy. Because he felt guilty?

  “I said it’s fine,” said Dalia.

  It wasn’t fine. It was painfully awkward. But it was also a perfect opportunity, probably the best she’d ever get.

  Maybe memory was unreliable. But the truth was real. And the truth mattered.

  She steeled herself, opened her mouth—

  “Don’t,” Tony said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “You’re getting ready to talk about—about what happened. And I...I just can’t do that, Dalia. I’ve got to keep my head on straight. When we—when things ended between us—that was the worst time of my life, and it was no picnic for Alex and my mom and grandparents, either. I can’t get sucked back into the way things were then. I’ve got too many people depending on me. I know you have good reasons for thinking I’m unreliable. But I’m good at what I do. And I don’t rip people off. You can go over my bookkeeping if you want, check receipts against delivered materials, talk to Alex, whatever. Just let me do my job.”

  She swallowed hard. “Okay. I, uh, I’m sorry I was so...hostile before, in the lumberyard. That was uncalled for.”

  “Thank you for saying that.”

  A long uncomfortable moment passed, and then Dalia turned back to her horse.

  She took off Buck’s bridle, clipped his halter to a rope and tied the rope to the hitching post near the tack room door. Buck kept his head turned, eyeballing the hay with mild interest.

  “Never mind that,” Dalia told him. “You’ve got plenty of green stuff in your pasture.”

  Working from the left, she undid the back cinch, then the breast collar, reaching around Buck’s neck to drape it across his back, and then the front cinch. As she was tying up the latigo, Tony came up to the horse’s other side and hooked the cinch straps over the saddle horn.

  “Is this Buckleberry Finn?” he asked.

  She felt a smile coming on but managed to hold it back. “Sure is.”

  “Whoa! What is he now, twenty? He looks amazing! What’s your secret, huh, buddy?”

  His voice sounded all high and sweet, like it had that day in the barn with the kittens. He’d always been goofily affectionate with animals.

  “Remember when I rode him?” Tony asked.

  Their eyes locked across Buck’s back. In an instant, the years fell away and they were eighteen again, Tony in still another graphic T-shirt with the state of Texas on it, Dalia pulling him to his feet and brushing the dust off him, both of them stumbling and laughing and falling into each other’s arms.

  She couldn’t hold back the smile anymore, but she turned her head to hide it. “I don’t know that I’d call it riding.”

  For about two seconds after Tony had gotten into the saddle, Buck had stood there with a comically shocked look on his face. Then he’d lowered himself to the ground and begun to roll.

  Tony dragged off the saddle and pad and put them away on their racks. “Half a ton of angry horseflesh tryna crush me into the ground,” he said. “I thought I was dead for sure.”

  “It was your own fault,” said Dalia. “You weren’t confident enough, and he could sense that.”

  “Well, of course I wasn’t confident. I was nervous.”

  “Nervous? What do you mean? You’d been riding since before you could walk. You rode a bull.”

  His eyes lost focus, and he chuckled. “Yeah, I did, didn’t I? And I won, too.”

  “I know you did. I was there.”

  She remembered how it felt, watching him from the stands that night—that hot choking mixture of excitement, fear and pride. His first time out, eighteen years old, barely old enough to qualify, and he’d taken home a prize.

  “I was lucky,” he said. “It was a small rodeo, and other guys, guys who were really better than me, were having an off night.”

  “You still made it to eight seconds. Luck was part of it, sure, but you were good.”

  He smiled at her. “Thanks. Anyway, yeah, I could ride. But with the Buckster, here—that was different. He was your horse. It was a big deal, meeting him. Almost as bad as meeting your dad. Maybe worse, since your dad didn’t actually try to kill me. So yeah. I’m sure I was giving off some sort of vibe. And Buck Rogers here was like, ‘Whaaat? Get this riffraff outta here. You can do better than this loser, girl.’”

  His tone was light, but there was something sad in it. Dalia didn’t know what to say. For some reason it had never occurred to her that Tony could have been nervous about meeting her horse. He’d seemed so big and strong and unbeatable to her back then, but he’d only been a boy.

  Tony went back to the hay trailer, and Dalia took a towel from a shelf and started wiping the sweat off Buck’s coat, trying not to think of the smooth fit of Tony’s jeans or the contoured fade pattern of the denim over his thighs.

  By the time she finished with the currycomb, Tony had gone.

  She felt relieved and disappointed at the same time. Being around Tony was... unnerving. He made her lose her head. It was good that they were on better terms now, probably the best terms she could hope for, but all things considered, she ought to stay away from him as much as possible. And she was about to have a full day of him at the FFF, starting with an early-morning football game between Limestone Springs and another department.

  But Tony wasn’t the only firefighter in Limestone Springs, and plenty of people besides firefighters would be at the fundraiser, spread out over several acres. How hard could it be to avoid one man at a huge community-wide event?

  She’d manage. She had to.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A WHOLE LOT of compressed action took place in the three seconds between the snap and the throw. It was like time slowed down, or Tony suddenly acquired superspeed. Every detail stood out sharp and clear—the end-to-end lengths of fire hose outlining the playing field in the smooth stretch of mown pasture, the pale blue of the early-morning sky, the relative positions of the players on both teams, the weight and texture of the football in his hand.

  Directly before him, a mass of blockers in red and blue jostled and grunted. Downfield, potential receivers struggled to get free.

  His attention narrowed to a single receiver in a red Limestone Springs VFD T-shirt, arms wildly waving, eyes wide with hope.

  Tony raised the ball to ear level and threw.

  The ball spiraled cleanly through the air. Clint sprang, arms stretched way above his head, rising higher and higher.

  His fingertips just grazed the ball before it sailed past.

  A collective groan rose from the crowd.

  Tony clenched his teeth, biting down on his anger. At himself, mostly, and maybe a little at Clint for not being a few inches taller. But there was no point in showing it. The purpose of the annual exhibition football game between the volunteer fire departments of Limestone Springs and Schraeder Lake, as Mad Dog insisted on reminding Tony year after year for some r
eason, was really three purposes. First, to foster team spirit within each department. Second, to get to know the guys on the other side. The two departments often cooperated on big fires and floods, so it helped to interact regularly in a different context. Third, as a draw to the community. The residents of Limestone Springs turned out in droves to watch this game, and that meant more money in the coffers, which meant better equipment and potentially more lives saved.

  All pretty worthwhile goals, the kind that didn’t leave room for personal ego. So prior to the start of the game, on Mad Dog’s orders, he always gave the guys the whole all-in-good-fun, teamwork-is-what-counts, just-give-it-your-best-shot speech. And it was fun. It felt good to play again, even at this level. Losing football had been like losing part of himself. Of course, he’d lost other things at the same time, not least of which was his girl, so for a while it’d been an all-around depression fest. Just being out of that dark fog was reason enough for gratitude. Playing football with his guys was icing on the cake.

  Still, winning would be a lot more fun than losing—especially with Dalia over there by Mad Dog, watching. And they weren’t going to win if Tony couldn’t place the ball where it needed to go.

  “Looks like Reyes is hearing footsteps,” said one of the Schraeder Lake players, loud enough for Tony to hear.

  The common taunt meant the quarterback was so scared of getting tackled that he kept fumbling the ball. Tony ignored it. He’d never been afraid of being hit, but there wasn’t much he could say in the way of a comeback. I didn’t fumble, I just overthrew—that wasn’t much of a defense.

  Then another Schraeder Lake guy, a Mitch Somebody, said, “Or maybe his old man bet against him and got him to throw the game.”

  Tony threw back his head in a long, hard, exaggerated laugh. He even added an actual knee slap. “Oh, man, that is so funny! You’re cracking me up here. How do you come up with this stuff? Have you been waiting all year to use that?”

  Mitch didn’t laugh, just smiled a smarmy sort of smile. “Come on, man. Don’t get mad. You know I don’t mean it.”

  “Sure, I know. You’re just kidding, right? It’s all in good fun. We’re all here to encourage a spirit of cooperation between departments for the good of the community, so we can do a better job at stuff like, you know, saving lives. Nobody would want to ruin that by being an egotistical jackass. Right?”

  As he spoke, Tony stepped up to him, closer and closer, until their faces were only a few inches apart. Mitch took a step back. Other guys started to gather around, Limestone Springs on one side, Schraeder Lake on the other.

  “Come on, Tony,” Wallace Griggs said. “Let’s just play.”

  “Yeah,” said Tony, with one last look at Mitch. “Let’s just play.”

  Mitch gave Tony another smarmy smile before oozing off. He was in Tony’s head now, and he knew it.

  Because the thing was, there really had been a scandal with betting on high school football during Tony’s day, and to no one’s surprise, Tony’s dad had turned out to be right in the middle of it. It wasn’t the worst thing his dad ever did, not by a long shot, but it did not look good. The best thing that could be said about the nasty episode was that contrary to what Mitch said, there was never so much as a hint that Tony had thrown a game. Limestone Springs had been undefeated that year. And Tony knew without asking that his father had never, would never, bet against him.

  Still, it stung. Tony was just glad Alex wasn’t around to hear what Mitch said, because no way would his brother have kept his cool.

  It was rough on both of them, growing up with a smooth-talking, conniving, unreliable compulsive gambler for a father, but in different ways. Alex was such a completely different kind of guy. He’d been at odds with their dad for pretty much his whole life, and as soon as he was old enough, he’d all but severed ties with him. For Tony, it wasn’t that simple.

  Just like your father. How many times had Tony heard that growing up? It’d taken him a while to realize it wasn’t always a compliment.

  The funny thing was, his football obsession actually did start with his father. Long before Tony understood the game, he’d enjoyed the sense of closeness he’d felt watching games on TV with his dad. Alex didn’t care for it, so it was just Tony and his dad’s special thing. Carlos was the kind of guy whose emotions were contagious. If he got excited about something, the people around him got excited, too. He’d been a good player himself in high school, and when it became clear that Tony was going to be very good, he was ecstatic.

  On the next play, Mitch hit Tony just after the throw, driving him into the ground. It was a cheap shot, but that couldn’t be blamed for Tony’s bad pass, which was even wider of the mark than the one before. Tony spat out some dirt and got back on his feet. He would have rolled his shoulder some to work out the soreness, but he didn’t want to give Mitch the satisfaction. It was a minor ding, along with some bruised ribs and a scrape down the side of one leg—nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a hot bath, some New-Skin and a couple ibuprofens.

  He darted a quick glance at Dalia and caught her looking. She used to watch him play when they were little, but even back then it was hard to catch her in the act. Used to drive him crazy. He’d wanted her to look at him for real, the way other girls did, in more than quick cool glances. He’d wanted to matter to her.

  He still wanted that.

  Well, he’d just have to give her something worth watching.

  Some of the guys were dawdling on the field, wiping the sweat off their faces, complaining about the heat. Tony clapped his hands together twice, quickly, and said, “Line up!”

  This time, when Mitch came after him, Tony deftly spun away, leaving Mitch to dive into empty ground. Tony threw, and as the ball made its arc he thought please, please, please, and Clint caught it.

  The Limestone Springs fans erupted in cheers. Tony looked over toward Dalia again, but she was gone.

  What wouldn’t he give to be eleven years old again, throwing the ball around on the playground? All those possibilities, all those things he hadn’t messed up yet. Dalia doing her best to ignore him, same as now, but for different reasons.

  “All in good fun,” Tony said softly.

  Right.

  * * *

  LA ESCARPA LOOKED all wrong, like a surreal version of itself in a fever dream. Everywhere Dalia looked she saw wooden signs, hand-lettered in that fancy, loopy, uneven cursive that was so popular nowadays, grandly proclaiming the way to the pumpkin patch, the corn maze, the hayride, the mechanical bull. The feed barn had raffle prizes and items for sale laid out on tables and booths, while the machine shed, unnaturally clean and festive, had been converted to an eating area. A wooden platform stage stood ready for the band, the Chicharrones, next to an outdoor portable dance floor, which Dalia hadn’t even known was a thing before today. Even the house itself looked wrong, with the two-by-sixes of the newly framed kitchen standing up against the sky, as bright and clean as fresh hay.

  Weirdest of all was the actual football field marked out on a one-acre stretch in the low pasture.

  How many times had she watched Tony play? She started to calculate—eight games in a high school regular season, times four years, plus playoffs, plus middle school, plus playground ball in elementary school... On second thought, she didn’t want to know.

  Had he always done that head-swiveling thing before he threw the ball? He looked like a cat getting ready to pounce. It was outrageously adorable.

  But it could not be denied that his game had seen better days. He still had plenty of power, but his accuracy had suffered. It hurt, seeing him misthrow the ball and then try to act like it didn’t bother him.

  Someone called her name. Mad Dog was sitting in a camp chair, waving to her. He had on his big straw hat and a long-sleeved shirt, and there were white streaks of sunscreen on his face.

  “Come on over and set a spell,
” he said.

  It was kind of hilarious how Mad Dog affected all these Southern idioms, when everyone knew he was a latecomer to Texas. Moved there as an adult from Iowa.

  Dalia took the camp chair next to him.

  “Looks like a good turnout,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. All the admission tickets sold out weeks ago, and we’ve still got folks showing up at the gate. Raffle items are bringing in a good bit, too.”

  “Great! You’ll be able to buy yourself a nice new fire hose.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, and maybe knock a few other items off our equipment wish list. I got my eye on a fancy defibrillator machine.”

  “Good for you. My dad was always very particular about using the right tool for the job and investing in high-quality equipment.”

  “I know he was, and he was right. Trouble is, you can’t always afford what you really need. It’s a juggling act for the department, keeping our existing equipment in good trim and adding new stuff. Some years it’s all we can do to keep our heads above water, financially speaking, but once in a while we get to buy us some new toys that’ll help us do our job better. But some things don’t change. Our response time is about as low as it’s gonna...”

  He trailed off. Something was happening on the field. A Schraeder Lake player, a big ox-like guy, said something to Tony, and Dalia could tell it was something nasty. First Tony was laughing in an exaggerated way, then he was bowing up and getting in the guy’s face, and players on both sides started gathering around like something was about to go down.

  But suddenly it was over and the teams were lining up again.

  Dalia let her breath out slowly. She’d forgotten what a rush it was, seeing Tony’s warrior side. He was usually so friendly and funny and good-natured, but that all fell away in an instant on the field, or whenever someone got out of line.

  Mad Dog let his breath out, too, and took a draw from his craft beer.

  Then Dalia said, “This is long overdue, Mad Dog, but I want to thank you for what you did for my dad.”