Texas Fall (11 page)

No. Just no.

The shouting when it came
had Jack sitting bolt upright in bed and searching for the fire, the danger,
the emergency, or whatever had Riley calling out in his sleep. Riley was curled
tight on his side in a fetal position, his back to Jack, and some of the noises
he made sounded inhuman.

Jack made to touch Riley
but pulled his hand back at the last moment. You were supposed to leave people
in nightmares alone, weren’t you? After a while, Riley settled back to sleep, but
Jack found it hard to fall back to slumber himself. Riley had cried, he’d told
Jack everything he was holding inside, but the nightmares hadn’t left.

And that scared Jack more
than he would admit. To Riley, or to himself.

None of the columns in the
damn spreadsheet made sense. The raw data appeared reasonable, but as soon as
Riley placed the numbers into Excel, it seemed like nothing made sense at all. Jack
came up behind him and kneaded the tight muscles in his neck and shoulders
until Riley was putty in his hands.

“Figures getting to you?”
Jack asked.

Riley rolled his shoulders
and leaned back into Jack. He’d been analyzing data from home today, and one of
the benefits was being near the family. Hayley had brought him in contraband
cookies on her way out to school, he’d helped to feed the twins and got covered
in mashed banana, and he’d spent a good twenty minutes talking to Max as he
arranged all his Thomases in a row on the landing outside his room. Tomorrow he
was out in the field again for the first time since the kidnapping, and he
couldn’t help but be nervous.

“Sean is out in the
kitchen,” Jack said. “Asked to talk to you.”

Riley looked up from his
work, surprised, “Eden’s here?”

Jack shook his head as he
put his Stetson on, “Nope, just Sean.”

“What did he want?” Riley
pushed himself away from the desk.

“He didn’t say.” Jack left
the room, and Riley wasn’t far behind. He stumbled when Jack suddenly stopped
and turned to face him. “Don’t forget, Eden is in love with him,” he warned.

“I don’t know what you
mean,” Riley lied.

“It means all you want for
Eden is for her to be happy, and Sean is a good guy.”

Riley nodded. Sean and
Eden were happy—they’d gone through a lot, Sean with his accident, the PTSD—but
Riley had only judged Sean because he wanted Eden happy. Jack was right.

Jack cradled Riley’s face and
kissed him on the end of his nose. The touch was so perfect, so
Jack
, that
love welled inside Riley until he could do nothing except cling tightly to the
man who held his heart. He just wished he could feel more, that he could be
physically intimate with Jack, but there was something frozen inside him and he
couldn’t break it. They separated, and Jack picked up his coffee and wrapped
cookies that he always took with him on mornings he was at the school site.

“Bye,” he said and left
without offering Riley anything in the way of backup. Bastard. Riley caught Jack’s
eye as he walked past the window, and dammit if the man wasn’t smirking.

“Hi, Sean. Coffee?” Riley
asked.

Sean stood up and extended
a hand, which Riley shook. “Jack already made me some.”

Riley made his own coffee
and decided conversation was probably a good place to start. “Is Eden okay?”

Sean frowned. “Why
wouldn’t she be?” he said defensively. “Every time we meet up, you—” He
subsided. After a few deep breaths, he began talking again. “Sorry, no, she’s
fine, working hard with the hospital charity.”

Riley indicated they
should sit at the table, which gave him a moment to calm his thoughts. “What
happens every time we meet up?” he asked. He’d been trying hard with Sean. He
liked him, and he and Eden were good together, even if the proposal a few years
back had amounted to nothing in the way of a wedding.

“It’s my problem,” Sean
muttered.

“Sean—”

“You and me? That’s not
what I came to talk about. I have something to ask you, but first I have
something for you.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a sheaf of
paper bound with a plastic cover. He carefully nudged it across the table.

Riley turned it around and
looked at the front sheet through the clear plastic. “
The Roadside. Equine
therapy and PTSD.
By Sean Harris,” he read out loud. “Is this for Jack?”
Seemed like it would be with a title like that. He recalled that Sean had
written a couple of horse books before they first met him to do the interview
when Hayley had first joined them at the ranch. Jack had read them cover to
cover. In fact, Jack had mentioned only last night that he needed to get Sean’s
input in the school area and have a conversation about the California cowboy’s
take on equine therapy.

Sean shook his head. “No,
it’s for you.”

Riley was confused. “Me? I
don’t understand.”

“I want to marry Eden,”
Sean blurted out.

Riley heard the words, but
they didn’t register as he was still wondering why Sean had given him a book on
horses. Then the words caught up with him. He said nothing, just looked from
book to Sean and back again.

“But you’ve proposed to
her already, and she said yes,” Riley said. He offered the words cautiously,
like he’d somehow missed something vital in this whole conversation.

Sean pushed back from the
table and began to pace the small area between chair and sink. “I asked her,
and we said when I got back from Afghanistan we’d set a date for the wedding. Hell,
that wasn’t going to happen, was it?” He indicated his face. “She’s not going
to want to marry this.”

Riley stared up at him. He
was used to the scarring that twisted from Sean’s eye down to his cheekbone.
The pupil had a different color haze to it, and Riley was well aware that
Sean’s eyesight was impaired. He’d been in a fight at a restaurant, and lost an
argument with a mirror. Of course, the mirror was heading for Eden and Sean had
pushed her aside, which kind of made Sean a hero in Riley’s eyes, even if it
was Sean in the argument in the first place, but that was neither here nor
there.

“Why not? If you’re
feeling…”
better? happier? safer?
How did you talk to someone who’d seen
what Sean had seen? How did you put a positive spin on PTSD?

“I want to ask her to set
a date,” Sean began. Then his coherence level subsided and he appeared to be
talking to no one at all. He pushed his hands in his long blond surfer-style
hair and gripped it hard. “I’ve done it so many times over the last few months,
and every time she just smiles at me and says that there is no rush. And she’ll
probably say no, but you were held prisoner, and you might have some idea of
what I went through and why I lost it so spectacularly and why I never wanted
to really commit before. She used to suggest a date, and I would always have an
excuse because I was scared and I thought who the hell would want someone as
damaged as I am? When I realized what I was doing, it was too late and she keeps
saying no.”

As Sean paced, Riley could
see the agitation building by the way his pacing was jerky and slightly
uncoordinated. When he managed to knock his ankle on the cupboards for the
third time, Riley stumbled to stand in his way, cursing as pain shot through his
ankle, and stopped Sean’s walking with a hand to his chest.

“Sean? Are you okay?” he
asked carefully.

There was panic in Sean’s
eyes and wariness in the way he held himself. He looked pale and scared, and
Riley didn’t know what the hell to do.

“Shit,” Sean cursed.
“Fuck.”

“Sit down,” Riley ordered.
At first Riley thought Sean would say no, but finally he sat back down, which
left Riley able to go to the good room and pull out Jack’s whiskey and two cut-glass
tumblers. Sean seemed to need a drink, and the feeling was obviously catching.
He poured two fingers in each and placed the whole lot on the table between
them. As an afterthought, he grabbed chips from the cupboard. Jack would kill
him for mixing chips with ten-year-old whiskey, but hell, Sean looked like a
stiff wind would knock him over at the moment.

Sean swallowed a healthy
amount of the amber liquid, then sipped a few more times, grimacing at the
burn. Riley waited for a few moments before tasting his own drink.

“You want to start from
the beginning?”

“Yeah, sorry.” Sean
shuffled in his chair. “I know it looks like I don’t have any idea what the
fuck I’m doing…” He trailed off and looked expectantly at Riley for a response.

“Yeah,” Riley said. He
realized it was lame, but he really had no clue what else to say. Not for the
first time, he wished Jack was here.

Sean sighed heavily, and
Riley knew he’d said the wrong thing.

Pulling himself upright,
Sean continued firmly. “The way I see it, after last year, you and I? We came
to an understanding. You said you were good with me being with Eden, and I’ve
been seeing someone about my PTSD, and I wrote the book.” He tapped the bound
papers. “It’s all about PTSD and horses, about therapies, and how I managed to
work my way through a lot of my—” He paused and swallowed. “—issues. With Eden
I’m in a good place, and we have something real. Jack talked to me, did you
know that?”

Riley was thrown at the
abrupt change in direction of conversation. “Jack? What about?”

“He said I may want to
consider spending some time at the therapy center working with the horses and
the kids.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t answer him yet.
I want to be part of this family but not on the outside, so before I… Look, I
love Eden.”

“I know you do,” Riley
said simply. This was one hell of a conversation to keep up with.

“And you were kidnapped,
and I made cookies.”

“Sorry?”

“When you were kidnapped
and when you were in hospital, I helped the kids make cookies, but what I
wanted to do was see you and tell you that none of what happened, what you saw,
your guards being shot, where you were kept, none of those are memories you
should bury. Look, it’s easier if you just read the manuscript because I’ve
written it all down in there.”

“I’ll read it.” Riley
realized that was an easy promise to make. He wasn’t sleeping well, and he knew
he had to do something
.
Not that reading was his first option in bed but
he couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm with Jack and maybe this could help.

“It’s hard, you know,”
Sean said. His tone was back on the defensive. “Eden never says it, but she
relies on you to, I don’t know, she wants you to approve of what she’s doing, I
guess.”

Riley was instantly on the
defensive as well. “I never meant to give the impression I didn’t want her to
marry you—”

Sean interrupted forcefully
but without heat. “You’re her big brother. She lost her dad, her brother. You
and Sandra are the ones she looks to, and I know your blessing for a wedding would
be a good thing. So when you’ve read what I wrote, I want your understanding
and support that I am in a better place and that you would maybe feel okay
talking to Eden and telling her as well.” Sean spoke with conviction this time,
and something inside Riley clicked into place. Apart from the hero mirror move,
he and Sean might not have seen eye to eye in the past, but all that was pushed
to one side. Sean loved Eden, and he was deliberately coming to Riley for a
blessing and for help. It suddenly seemed wrong. He shouldn’t need to ask for
that, Riley should be the kind of brother who just wanted Eden happy.

“I’m her brother, not her
father,” he began gently. “I respect you have come to me, but Sean, you have to
know Eden is her own woman. Just ask her to set the date.”

“I tried to talk to her
last week about a date again, but she avoided the subject. I think maybe it’s
gone too far. Maybe she’s done with me now.”

“Just talk to her, Sean.”

Sadness and despair ghosted
over Sean’s face. His jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He simply stood up
and extended a hand again. Riley knew he’d fucked up big-time, and he wished
Jack was there to smack him upside the head. What had he said wrong? What did
Sean want from him? Then it hit him. Sean needed backup; he needed a wingman, a
friend.

“Yes,” he said abruptly.

Sean turned to face him.
He looked half-angry, half-resigned. “What?”

“You have my blessing on
getting this wedding done. For what it’s worth, I know you love my sister, and
I admire what you have done with turning your life around after what you saw in
Afghanistan.”

“Thank you,” Sean said. He
looked a little spaced out, and Riley thought maybe he’d said too much. Then
the wariness subsided and Sean grinned. “Really. Thank you.”

Riley had to build on
this. Some part of Riley called out for someone to talk to about what had
happened to him over the border. It hadn’t been anywhere like what Sean had
seen, but he felt safe in Sean’s company and that was a start.

“Tell you what,” he asked.
“Do you have some time?”

Sean blinked and said
nothing, then nodded. “All day.”

“Wait here a minute.”
Riley picked up the manuscript and took it into his office. While he was in
there, he fired an email to Tom saying he’d be in later. Then grabbing his
Stetson, he went back to the kitchen. “Jack wants to talk to you about the
therapies. Want to walk with me?”

Riley would kill two birds
with one stone. He and Sean could talk normal shit, the weather, sports, the
kids, Eden, PTSD, hell, anything. And maybe Sean was exactly the right person
to talk to about why Riley was struggling to sleep and why he kept having the damn
dreams that dragged him under every night. He might have admitted what he’d
done to Jack, but it was still eating away at him. He wanted to admit to what
he’d done to the authorities, tell someone, but all the Feds said was that
there was no point: it was a firefight, cartel, it happened every day. Nothing
for Riley to worry about.
Easy. Done. Over.