01 Do You Believe in Magic - The Children of Merlin (5 page)

“You got a horse in there to
pull it? I’m six-four, two twenty-five. Plus the ramp.”

“You could push with your good
leg,” she said doubtfully.

He rolled his eyes to her.
“You’re what, a hundred pounds?”

“A hundred and ten, all muscle.”
Well, a hundred and six. That rounded up to ten.

“Get real.” In the baleful glare
of the flashlight his pale, sweating face looked green. “I can hop
if you can get me up.”

That would hurt like hell. “Your
funeral.”
Not the best metaphor.
“Let me get the truck.” She
scrambled up the bank, trying not to think too far ahead, and ran
for her truck, fumbled with the keys, and backed it up to where the
cycle had gone over the edge.

As she slid down the bank again
she could see that he had pushed himself up on one arm. His other
arm hung limp from his shoulder. Not good. He hung his head. “Go
away,” he rasped. Then he vomited into the dirt. She turned away
lest her own stomach rebel in sympathy. Poor guy couldn’t even wipe
his mouth with one arm out of action. She stripped off the flannel
shirt she wore over her tee and knelt beside him.

He turned his head away, but she
cupped his cheek to pull him back around. The jolt that shot
through her was like she’d touched a battery cable. Well, not
quite. The charge was definitely sexual. What the hell was that?
Slow down, girl. You’re kneeling in the dirt next to an injured
guy who just lost it all over the desert
. Not exactly sexy. She
set her lips and wiped his mouth and then used the other sleeve to
wipe the sheen of sweat from his forehead.

“We’d best get to it,” he
gasped.

She surveyed the situation.
Okay. Damaged shoulder was on the opposite side of the broken leg.
Don’t think about how much this is going to hurt him.

Tris might just have lied to
her. He wasn’t sure he could get up the embankment and into that
truck. How much could she help? She was such a little thing.

“Lie back so I can pull you up
by your good shoulder.”

He did it. That disturbed his
leg. He grunted in pain. At least he didn’t scream. That was sort
of an achievement. He saw her blanch. He’d better not scream no
matter what happened or she’d faint. But she set her lips and
grabbed his good arm, then squatted and got her shoulder under his.
He pulled up his good leg. He could manage about one try to get it
under him.

“On three,” she said. “One, two,
three
.”

They heaved up. Tris couldn’t
help the wrenching groan as pain stabbed through his leg.

“Ready?” she gasped.

“As I’ll ever be.”
God, it’d
be really good if I didn’t faint right now.

The first hop forward was hell.
His leg screamed at him. Something wrong with his shoulder too. He
took one glance up at the bank, saw how steep it was, and didn’t
look again.

“You’re doing good,” she lied.
Another hop. He squeezed his eyes shut against the jolting pain. He
was panting like he’d run five miles. “Really good.”

He held on to the sound of her
voice as she crooned encouragement. She’d been right about one
thing. She was strong for being little. The heat of her body
pressed up against his was calming somehow. They half crawled, half
scrabbled up the steep bank, him dragging his bad leg. Was she
moaning with his weight? Somebody was moaning. No, that might be
him.

When they got to the top, she
pulled him up to stand and glanced from the cab of the pickup to
the trailer. “We better lay you out in the trailer.”

“No,” he bit out. That would put
him far away from her. Suddenly he needed the comfort of her voice,
her touch. A lot.

“I can tie you in with lead
ropes so you don’t get knocked around.”

“Ride in the cab like a
human.”

She looked dubious. “That’s
gonna hurt like hell.”

“Cab,” he repeated and hopped to
the right. “Everything’ll hurt like hell.” Her choices were to come
with him or let him fall. He was kinda glad she came along.

“Stubborn brute,” she muttered
under her breath.

But they got there and she
opened the cab door. He grabbed the doorframe with his good hand.
She shoved at his butt when he hopped up with his good leg. The
broken one hit against the running board. That was worth a scream,
though he managed to make what came out something less. He sat on
the seat of the truck sideways, panting. Her hands shook as she
lifted the boot of his broken leg. Pain jolted through him. He bit
his lip and somehow emitted only a kind of a grunt. He swiveled
into the cab and she set it down against the floorboard. Not enough
room to straighten it. She was right. Hurt like a son of a bitch.
He sat gingerly back in the seat as she slammed the door and ran
around the front, fumbling in her jeans pocket for keys.

She scrambled up into the cab,
giving him a wary look. He tried to get control of his breathing.
“I won’t puke in your truck.”

“That’s the least of my
worries,” she muttered, stabbing the keys into the ignition and
grinding the engine to life. She reached over him and pulled his
seatbelt harness into the latch.

“Shutting the barn door after
the horse is out.”
Huh.
He’d mustered a horse joke.

“Let’s not make this any worse
than it is. Brace yourself. I’m going to go fast.”

He rolled his head in her
direction. “This thing, go fast?”

“Don’t dis my Ford,” she warned.
“It’s the only thing between you and permanent disability.” She
pulled onto the highway, the trailer clattering behind her, and hit
the accelerator.

Tris tried to focus on the huge
tumbleweeds, bleached white by the lights of the truck, flashing
past. The pain was really ramping up now. He was panting, no matter
how hard he tried to breathe slowly. Maggie gripped the wheel, the
gas pedal plastered to the floorboard. Good thing the road out here
was straight as an arrow. Sweat broke out on his forehead even as
he got colder. “I might bleed on your upholstery,” he said, trying
to focus on anything besides how cold he was. Was he bleeding out?
Don’t be dramatic. Just shock setting in
.

“I’ll deal,” she replied, her lips
tight.

*****

A low sound broke Maggie’s focus
on the road. She glanced over at Tris.
Great.
He was
breathing in shallow gasps. Should she have used her belt as a
tourniquet? But a tourniquet on his leg for over an hour and he
might lose it. She’d seen that on the Discovery Channel.

She glanced over again. His eyes
were closed, his brows drawn together into a frown. The obscenely
long fringe of dark lashes sweeping his cheek was still discernible
in the light from the dash. The most disturbing part about getting
him into the truck had been his arm around her shoulder. She’d had
to be right up against him. His body was hard and ribbed with
muscle. And let’s not talk about having to put a palm on each of
those jean pockets and shove. What was she, some kind of perv to be
turned on like that?

She hated to see him in pain on
some elemental level that made her crazy to do something for him.
If she could calm his breathing, maybe he could master the
pain.

“Hey,” she said, and chanced
moving a hand from the wheel to put her palm on his left thigh. A
kick of sensation flooded up her arm, through her heart, and down …
there.
Definitely a perv.
“You’re gonna be okay.” She could
kick herself for the remarks about disability and funerals. He
opened his eyes. He was shaking. She could feel it in his thigh.
Can you spell shock, boys and girls?

“What happened?” He looked
confused.

Uh, and concussion.
“You
got hit by a truck. Let’s just crank up the heater.”

As the old truck began to blast
hot air, she realized it felt good to her too. And come to think of
it, her chest hurt. Which she wouldn’t think about. Not when he was
so much worse.

She was drawn to touch his thigh
again.
Glutton for punishment.
His eyes snapped open and
fixed on her hand. “Easy, now,” she said. Somehow the pull between
them was more than just sexual. This guy felt … right on such an
elemental level it was as if her bones were settling into her
ligaments in new and more comfortable ways. She felt heavy, steady,
good. Her chest didn’t hurt that bad. He took a huge, shuddering
breath. “That’s right. Now let it out.” She glanced between his
poor scraped-up face and the road ahead as a kind of sureness
saturated with sexuality poured up her hand, into her chest, and
down to her loins. It was almost spooky, way out here in the middle
of nowhere in the night.

He exhaled. She felt his pain
and anxiety seep into the air around her. “You’re okay now,” she
said and her words came out in what she always thought of as her
“horse” voice. “We’ll get you to Washoe Med. They’ll take care of
you.” He breathed in and then out, more calmly.

She took her hand away. His
tension ramped up again immediately. And her? She just felt
wrong.

“Keep talking,” he said as
though the request was torn from him.

“Okay. Okay.” What do you talk
about to a man with a bone sticking out of his leg? “So why are
you
on the run from your family?” He’d implied that in the
diner this morning.

He swallowed convulsively. “I
don’t belong.”

Interesting. Thus his outsider,
bad-boy aura. Actually she was totally shocked he’d admit that.
“Brothers, sisters?”

“Three sisters. Two brothers.
No, three brothers. Parents took in a distant cousin. He’s like a
brother.” Tris was gasping now, speech difficult. Making him talk,
maybe not so brilliant.

Panic surged inside her. She
couldn’t protect him from the pain and they still had an hour to
Washoe Med. What to do?

She reached out and put her palm
on his thigh again. Again with the shocking sensation. She felt his
pulse between her legs, hammering. And she felt … complete. The
hard, muscled flesh under the denim was hot.

Get a grip. This is not about
you and your stupid urges.
It was about helping him bear the
pain he must be in. All she had was what she tried to do with
horses. She made her breathing calm and steady. From somewhere
inside her she felt something unlock. She could swear she heard an
audible click in her chest.
That
had never happened before.
Her lungs expanded, sucking in air, and as she exhaled she breathed
out calm.

“Family is difficult,” she said,
but the words came out in her horse voice, only steadier and surer
than she’d ever been. “I know.”

He looked at her as though from
a distance, with a strangely objective curiosity. His breathing
slowed. She felt it synchronize with hers. “Just relax,” she
murmured. The tension went out of his muscles, just like the horses
when she touched them. But the feeling was much stronger. “I’m
going to tell you a story.”

“What kind of a story?” He
sounded almost drugged. Good.

Except she had no idea what to
tell him. She bit her lip.

“Tell me why you ride bulls.”
His eyes were blinking slowly now, but there was no painful grimace
between his brows.

She kept her horse voice on,
smooth and calm, coming from deep inside her. He was
half-conscious. He’d never remember later anything she said now. So
it didn’t matter if she told the truth. “To prove a point. To
myself, I guess. That I’m brave enough to take on whatever life
deals out. And to be good at something. Special.” That hurt to
admit. She glanced to his face. His eyes were closed, his brows
relaxed. “It’s hard to be so ordinary nobody ever looks twice.” She
looked back at the road. The sagebrush flew by, flattened by the
truck lights into a streaked black and white photograph. “You
wouldn’t know about that. I bet all the women in the room turn and
stare anytime you show up. Not so much for me. Easy to overlook.
Easier to leave. That’s Maggie O’Brian. But I’m good at riding
bulls. I’ve always had something with animals.” She smiled
crookedly. “I wish they’d let me ride against the men. Winning the
men’s division would be really special.”

His breathing was soft and even.
He gazed out at the flashing sagebrush, then over at her. “Would
that make you happy?” he asked sleepily.

Would it? She felt raw and open
to him, the way she had to be to let the calm out. And open as she
was, she had to admit it wouldn’t. What she wanted wasn’t a lonely
life wandering from rodeo to rodeo, never connected to anyone. She
wanted ... permanence. She wanted to know someone loved her. She
wanted to be sure they had a future together and that the someone
would never leave. And she wanted to be just as committed, sure she
wouldn’t turn out like her mother, leaving devastation in her wake
as she grew bored with commitment and moved on. She’d never been so
clear. It was as if she’d just glimpsed another, truer version of
herself.

Stupid girl. You can’t have
that.
They leave, just like Phil the Rat left, just like
your mama left. Because you aren’t enough to hold them
. She
couldn’t endure that again. So it didn’t matter what she wanted. It
was all about what she could afford to lose. And she’d lose herself
entirely if she kept letting people leave her, or hate her as Elroy
seemed to do. There’d be nothing left of her.

So she didn’t answer Tris.
Instead she sang some nonsense words with the melody of an Irish
folk tune her mama had once sung to her. He actually got a smile at
that. It was unexpectedly sweet. Satisfaction thrummed inside her.
His eyelids drooped shut. This was what she was meant to do and her
mama, or Elroy, or Phil the Rat or anybody else couldn’t stop
her.

She kept her palm on his thigh
for the whole hundred miles into Reno, though he had long ago lost
consciousness.