Johnny’s dad had always told him that perseverance was as important as talent. With so many unpredictable elements in rodeo—horse, calf, weather, arena conditions, pure bad luck—cowboys stayed sane by repeating the mantra, “All you can control is your effort.” So Johnny had kept backing in the box, nodding his head, and giving it his best shot.
If he had applied any of that to raising his kids, his son might not have needed psychiatric care…and his daughter wouldn’t be calling on a Saturday morning to see if Johnny had driven him back into treatment.
“How are you feeling?” Melanie asked.
“I’m sleeping more every night.” Which Bing claimed was doing wonders for his disposition. “I offered Hank a job for as long as he wants to stay.”
“Oh. Wow. That’s great.”
“So far.” He wasn’t feeling quite as optimistic today, with Hank barely speaking while they did chores and Johnny pretending he didn’t notice that massive new dent in the side of the old Chevy. He’d assumed things hadn’t gone well with Grace, but then Hank had announced that she was coming for dinner.
“I thought you’d want to get to know her,” he’d told Bing.
She’d narrowed her eyes at him. “When her friends are here to stop me from getting too personal?”
“Yep. Do not scare her off.” And the look Hank had given her made it clear he expected her to be on her best behavior.
She’d met it with one that expressed serious concerns about his motives, but finally shrugged. “It’s your call.”
Johnny turned his attention back to his own conversation as he fumbled a shirt one-handed off a hanger in the closet. “Did you hear what happened at the Buck Out yesterday?”
“A full play-by-play from both Joe and Violet. And she sent video.”
Johnny shook his head, still in awe. “It was incredible.”
“I’m glad you got to see it.”
“It helps if you’re looking.”
“Yeah, it does. I’m glad things are going so well.” Her tone shifted in a way that made him pause. “But it makes me think it would be best if we didn’t come home for Christmas.”
Johnny frowned. “You can’t stay out there alone.”
“We’re not. I have my own version of Miz Iris, you know. Helen is cooking up a big ol’ Christmas feast at the Bull Dancer for anyone who doesn’t have someplace else to go, and Wyatt’s footing the bill. We’ll have a full house.”
It was wonderful to open up their bar and their wallets that way, but she and Wyatt shouldn’t have to skip Christmas with family and their closest friends. With Bing to mediate, Johnny and Hank had gotten closer in a handful of days than all the years before. Now all the secrets were out—sweet Jesus, what more could there be?—imagine what they could do with another month.
“Let’s see how things go. You don’t have to decide now.” Since Wyatt had his own plane, they didn’t have to worry about getting tickets.
“And if we do come home and it goes really wrong?” Melanie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Hank might never forgive Wyatt for helping Grace hide her pregnancy, or me for not telling him the truth as soon as I found out. In his place, I’m not sure I would get over it.”
Johnny dropped the clean shirt on the bed. “I’m not going to choose between my kids.”
“I already did it for you, Daddy.” Resignation drained the color from her voice. “I picked Wyatt and Oregon instead of Hank. I haven’t been there to take care of you or help on the ranch, but he is, and there’s a chance he might stay. From where I’m sitting, that makes it a no-brainer.”
The familiar knot began to tighten in his chest. He was so damn tired of having options snatched out of his hands. But Melanie had made her life halfway across the country. The most he could hope for were fleeting visits, these phone calls on Sunday mornings, and emailed photos that would be there and gone. Everything he could have with Hank stretched into the future. Someone to ride beside him across the pasture and in the pickup, a voice that didn’t come out of a radio, a second set of shoulders to bear some of the load. If Hank did decide to try fighting bulls again, they’d make it work. And eventually there could be a daughter-in-law, grandkids…
Well, more grandkids, he corrected.
“You see what I mean?” Melanie asked softly.
The knot twisted, wringing acid out of his stomach. “We can work this out.”
“I hope so. But you need to think about what’s at stake before we decide to gamble—or you could lose him all over again.”
After they hung up, Johnny got both arms into his shirt, then just sat, scratching his jaw as he brooded. This goddamn beard was driving him nuts. That, at least, he could fix.
Or so he thought. The third time he cut himself, he threw the razor at the mirror. That felt so good, he grabbed the shaving cream and slammed it into the trash, knocking the metal can over with a satisfying crash. Goddamn helpless bastard…
The door to his bedroom flew open. “Johnny? Did you fall? What—” Bing stopped dead when she saw him standing at the sink, his face blotched with shaving cream, patches of missed whiskers, and drops of blood. Then she took in the trash can and the shaving cream that had rolled over to rest against the tub.
“I’m trying to shave,” he said.
“And giving me heart failure. I was sure you’d passed out in the shower. Don’t you own an electric shaver?”
“They give me a rash.”
Her shoulders climbed toward her ears, then dropped as she huffed out an aggravated breath. “Just a minute. I have to set the bread dough to rise.”
He barely had time to retrieve the razor and shaving cream and pick up the trash can before she was back, carrying one of the kitchen chairs. She thumped it down, facing the mirror. “Sit!”
He sat. She plucked the razor off the vanity and positioned herself behind him.
“Are you going to put me out of my misery?” he asked, a little unnerved by the glint in her eyes.
“I managed to shave my uncle after his stroke without cutting his ornery old throat.” She grabbed his chin and jerked his head up. “I can see where Melanie gets her temper.”
The fury had drained away as quickly as it had risen, and as usual, he felt stupid and ashamed. His gaze met Bing’s in the mirror. “Hank will forgive her eventually, won’t he?”
Her grip gentled, and her night-flower scent wrapped around him as she drew the razor carefully up his neck and over the corner of his jaw. “I think he wants to.”
“But?”
“It’s complicated. Hank can’t help wondering if he was mostly just a mess she had to clean up after, and Melanie has to deal with the guilt of knowing she felt important to you and he didn’t.”
Christ. It always came back to Johnny. But on the other hand… “If Hank and I fix things, that should make it easier for the two of them.”
“Theoretically…but there’s still Wyatt. Baby aside, the man tags every one of Hank’s insecurities. He’s intellectual, driven, reeks of culture…and gorgeous on top of it.”
Yeah, Johnny had noticed. Hank wasn’t the only one who felt like a country bumpkin next to his brother-in-law. “His family is one step removed from the Rockefellers. Of course he’s got class.”
“But he turned his back on all that and made himself into one of the best bullfighters in history, with no rodeo connections or background—unlike Hank.” She poked his cheek. “And quit making faces or I’ll nick you again.”
Johnny smoothed out his expression and tried to talk without moving his lips. “He had money, though. That makes everything easier.”
“I know. But it’s also one more example of how Wyatt has all the power, and Hank has none. His mentor is Wyatt’s closest friend. His sister married the man. From Hank’s perspective, Wyatt is holding all the cards except one—his approval. Withholding it is the only thing he can control.”
Christ. Why couldn’t Melanie have just married one of the Sanchez boys, or Cole?
Johnny sighed and settled deeper into the chair, but relaxing was out of the question. The slide of the razor over his skin was a disturbingly intimate caress in the close confines of the bathroom. Bing’s fingers were dark against his cheek, the pink of her nails bright points of color as she pulled the skin taut and stroked, gentler than he was with himself.
He was suddenly, intensely aware of each individual point of contact, and the stir of her breath against his temple. Grasping at any distraction, he asked, “Do you have a real name?”
“Joan.” She rinsed the razor, tapped it on the side of the sink, then squirted a dab of shaving cream onto her hand and stroked it onto his neck. Damn, that felt nice. “Wagner,” she added.
“Joan Wagner.” He couldn’t make that incredibly ordinary name stick to the woman who leaned over him, smelling of chili, bread dough, and hot tropical beaches. “Why Bing?”
She tilted his chin up, carefully negotiating his Adam’s apple. “When I was a toddler, every time someone tried to leave the house without me, I’d chase after them yelling, ‘Bing! Bing! Bing!’”
“And it stuck all this time?”
“On the rez, nicknames are forever.” She bent lower to inspect the underside of his chin, and in the mirror he watched her blouse gap, giving him an unobstructed view of the full, brown curves of her breasts and the cream-colored lace that fought to contain them.
His breath hitched and she glanced up, catching him dead to rights. Her eyebrows lifted. “Enjoying the view?”
“It’s…stunning.”
Her gaze drifted down to the open front of his shirt. “It’s not bad from where I’m standing, either.”
Much to his disappointment, she set down the razor to fasten another button on her blouse. But now every brush of her fingers and shift of her body sent tingles racing over his skin to settle in his groin. Shit. He could not look at her that way because…because…
He lost track as she laid her finger along his bottom lip to shave just below. It was all he could do not to suck that finger into his mouth. And oh crap. Did he just lick her?
This time, she did jerk away.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean…” To taste you? Christ. He plastered the towel over his face, scrubbing away the shaving cream. “None of this would be happening if they’d had a decent father.”
She paused for a deliberate beat, then said, “Or if their father had gotten the treatment he needed.”
He dropped the towel to his lap. “Me? For what?”
Her gaze traveled from the trash can to the shaving cream and then back to him.
His face heated. “I get pissed sometimes. That’s not the same.”
“Are you sure?” She leaned against the vanity and folded her arms over breasts that were now directly at his eye level. Dammit, Johnny. Focus. “According to Hank, there were a lot of days when your temper was totally unreasonable. Like a rattlesnake with a sunburn, he said.”
Johnny wadded the towel in his one good hand. “Yeah. I can be a real prick.”
“Why?”
The blunt question made him blink. “Money, work, my wife, you name it. I’d swear this time I was gonna be patient with Hank, I wasn’t gonna yell, and the next thing I knew…”
“What did it feel like?”
What? The sour bile that filled his gut when he heard the echoes of his angry voice? The way it made him even more furious at himself and everything else?
“When you get irritated, what do you feel?” she persisted. “Shortness of breath, pressure, heart palpitations?”
He stared at her. How had she guessed? “Tightness. A weird tingle in my chest. And so edgy that anything sets me off.”
She nodded, looking awfully pleased about it. “Extreme irritability can be a manifestation of anxiety, and both are common in the aftermath of a catastrophic event.” Her face softened along with her voice. “Think about it, Johnny. The fire took your home, your entire life history, plus there was the horror of all the livestock. You had to watch your career and your father’s health go down the tubes, and then your marriage came apart. It would be a damn miracle if there wasn’t something wrong with you.”
He shook it off. “Everyone around here went through the same thing.”
“So therefore everyone should just suck it up?”
Well, yeah. “Are you saying I have PTSD or something?”
“Possibly. Regardless, you are a textbook case for irritation anxiety.”
His jaw sagged. “I’m pathologically cranky?”
She laughed. “Hey, at least you’re not a true asshole. You just act like one sometimes.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Their gazes caught, and her amusement faded. She reached out a fingertip to scoop up a dab of shaving cream that had dropped into his chest hair.
“Damn fine scenery.” She studied the foam for a moment before flicking it aside. “Just my luck, it has to be out of bounds.”
She made her getaway while he tried to remember how to breathe. Then he closed his eyes and swore. Yeah. That was pretty much how his luck ran, too.