Hard Ride (Clean Slate Ranch) Read online

  She wrapped strong fingers around his index and gummed him. He patted her behind but the diaper felt okay. No obvious stinkiness. Probably just tired of napping and ready for another go at Mommy’s boob. He sat in the rocking chair with her and simply studied her perfect face and big, round eyes.

  Kids were great when they belonged to other people, and Derrick had never longed to be a father the way Conrad had. Their parents had been terrific examples of loving, supportive parents, and they had a great extended family. Most of them quietly ignored the fact that Derrick was bi, but he also didn’t bring dates, male or female, to any family functions anymore. Not after the first two disastrous relationships he’d been in. Too bad he couldn’t find someone to pose as his girlfriend or boyfriend for a few months this summer—just so he could get through the weddings without all the questions.

  Even better if it was a guy. Maybe it would hammer home to a few of his relatives that him liking men wasn’t a phase or Derrick acting out, but that he was bisexual and genuinely attracted to men.

  Like I’m attracted to Slater.

  Their chemistry was undeniable, and Derrick didn’t usually have so much trouble forgetting a hookup. But Slater had a long recovery ahead of him, and they weren’t even really friends, so if Derrick did go the “fake relationship” route, he’d have to find someone else willing to play along.

  “Nah, what do I need a girlfriend for?” Derrick said to Mia. “I’ve got you, princess. I will spoil you rotten. Only the very best of everything for you. Toys, schools, colleges, you name it.”

  “Setting rules for my kid?” Conrad asked from the doorway.

  “Yup.”

  “Do I get a say?”

  “Maybe.” He studied his brother, who watched Mia with so much love in his eyes that it made Derrick’s heart hurt a little bit. “You did good, bro. You take care of my best girl, you hear me?”

  “I will. Promise. They’re my whole life.”

  “Good.”

  One day Derrick hoped to look at someone else with that kind of love and devotion in his eyes. Maybe it wouldn’t happen this year, maybe not next year. But eventually.

  He hoped.

  Chapter Four

  Slater only knew it was Friday because his phone told him so. His habit of leaving it behind at the ranch during overnights was the only reason it hadn’t ended up crushed to bits during his long descent down the summit four days ago. Four? Three? Whatever. He was sick of this hospital and wanted to go home, but his stupid fucking ankle was scheduled for surgery today. And he had to stay at least one more damned day after that.

  He vaguely remembered what might have been the slam against the rock that first damaged his ankle, but most of the fall was a blur because he’d banged his head pretty early on. Coming to an abrupt stop in a cluster of brush had knocked him out briefly, but when he came to he hadn’t been able to move. Everything had hurt—even his fucking hair had hurt—and he’d waited for death to claim him.

  Instead, rescue workers had claimed him, and he’d ended up here. Very much not dead.

  Not that Slater wanted to die. But in that moment on the cliff, knowing he could take Reyes with him, he hadn’t been afraid of it.

  The first time he’d seen Reyes in the hospital, the man had been beside himself with worry and gratitude, and he’d assured Slater his expenses would be covered by the ranch’s insurance. Slater hadn’t cared about that. He just wanted to be sure Reyes didn’t feel guilty about the fall; it hadn’t been his fault. Sure, Slater had slurred his words a little, and he’d momentarily forgotten how to say “forgiven” but that was all his stupid head injury’s fault.

  TBI. Three small letters with one huge meaning.

  He couldn’t remember the meaning in that moment, but he did know it.

  Thankfully, he was in between visitors. He wasn’t given breakfast and wouldn’t get lunch, because of the damned surgery later, and he was pissy as a spring bear when he was hungry. Miles and Reyes had visited him every day, often bringing him boxes of Cracker Jack, and Slater had no idea how they’d known it was his favorite snack food. He pulled his last box out from behind his pillow and started munching, despite orders not to eat. He had a mighty bruise on the left side of his jaw that made eating the crunchy stuff somewhat painful, but everything else throbbed anyway, so whatever.

  Other guys had been by to visit, but he was fuzzy on who. Definitely Judson. Maybe Hugo and Arthur. Hadn’t Patrice come by with a loaf of homemade banana bread?

  Sure, they cared, but all Slater could think about was how much of a burden he’d become to his coworkers. Instead of the independent adult he’d been since he was a teenager, now he couldn’t walk without assistance, and he fucking forgot words! He hated that beyond anything else, but the only thing the doctors would say was “it’ll take time.”

  Slater didn’t have that much time. Rachel graduated in...seven weeks? Give or take? He had to be up near Sacramento to see her walk the stage. Get her diploma. After being mostly absent in her life for the last decade, he owed his daughter that much and more. But his right ankle was damaged, and he’d never be recovered enough by then to ride his bike to the ceremony. Hell, he didn’t know how he’d manage getting around Clean Slate with his foot in a cast and on crutches. How he’d shower in that small tub. Manage his own laundry when the machines were in the guesthouse basement.

  Sure, the others would volunteer to help, but Slater was no mooch. He didn’t take from others without thought for their feelings, not like Rachel’s mom.

  Someone knocked and Slater suppressed a groan. It could be another nurse poking at him as much as an unwanted visitor. “What?” he yelled. The door was half-open, and he waited.

  Derrick Massey surprised the shit out of Slater by walking into the room with a plastic bag in one hand, the other dangling loosely by his side. “What are you doing here?” Slater asked without thinking.

  “Sophie and Conrad told me what happened.” Derrick stooped his shoulders and angled his head low, as if self-conscious of being there. He also wore a tentative smile that was...oddly cute. “I needed to see you for myself. For someone who tumbled over the side of a mountain, you...look good.”

  “Liar.” While Slater used the bathroom with a nurse’s assistance, he’d never bothered looking at himself in the mirror. He felt every cut, bruise and scrape vividly when he spoke or even smiled. He was a mess and they all knew it. “I feel like shit, so I must look like shit, but at least I’m alive, right?”

  “You sound disappointed.” Derrick stopped an arm’s reach from the foot of the bed. “You got a death wish?”

  “Nah. Don’t have much of a life wish, but I don’t want to die. I also didn’t want to take Reyes down the mountain with me. I made a choice. Destroyed my ankle. Busted my head. But I’m alive. Gonna try to stay that way.”

  “Good.”

  Slater held his snack up. “Cracker Jack?”

  “No, I’m good. I, uh, wasn’t sure how bored you were.” Derrick fished a magazine out of his plastic bag and tossed it onto Slater’s lap.

  Slater picked it up. A professional wrestling magazine. He started laughing but that just made his bruised ribs hurt, and he cursed Derrick for the amusement. “Bastard.”

  Derrick snorted. “I couldn’t help myself. Look, I know we aren’t friends. We aren’t really anything besides acquaintances who banged once, but I’m glad you’re semi-okay. I mean, not-dead is better than anything else, right?”

  “We’ll see.” He stared down the length of his battered body to where his right ankle was immobilized. “If they can’t fix that mess so I can walk again, being not-dead probably isn’t worth it. Hard to mount and ride a horse with a bum foot.”

  “You could get another job with a bum foot.”

  Slater snorted but left the comment alone. There weren’t very many companies willing to employ an ex
-con, especially one with a bum foot. But Slater couldn’t think that far ahead yet. He was too terrified of having surgery in a few hours. He’d never gone under the knife before. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “I bet you’re pretty tired of people calling you a hero, huh?”

  “Little bit. Wasn’t about to let a six-year-old die.”

  Derrick took four steps closer, his hand resting on the blanket by Slater’s leg. “Rumor is you made Reyes let you go so he didn’t go over, too.”

  Slater looked at the opposite side of the bed, beyond exhausted of defending that decision. The first time he’d seen Reyes after the fall and been halfway conscious, Reyes had alternated between berating Slater for his hero complex and thanking Slater for being so brave. And Reyes had babbled a little, drifting in and out of Spanish, until Miles got the man to calm down and think clearly.

  “I wasn’t gonna take another man down with me,” Slater said. “The cliff was crumbling, and he would have died a fool, instead of living to love his husband.”

  “Maybe, but he strikes me as a loyal fool.”

  Slater grunted, way too at ease bantering with this man. “Why are you still here? I’m alive, you saw it with your own two eyes, and I appreciate the magazine. Now you can go. Shouldn’t you be at work, anyway?”

  Instead of annoyed, Derrick seemed amused. “You this grumpy with everyone who tries to be your friend?”

  “Yup. Especially when every single part of my body hurts, even with painkillers on a steady drip. I went over a cliff, Derrick.” And I finally thought I’d give my family the peace they deserve.

  Derrick took another step closer, too damned observant, his eyebrows slanted in a deep V. “You sorry you lived?”

  Instead of answering the question Derrick had already asked him once, Slater simply held his dark, sad gaze until Derrick looked away first. Derrick spotted his phone on the mobile tray and grabbed it. Slater didn’t even try protesting, fully aware Derrick was adding his cell information to the contacts list. As much as Slater wanted to delete it the moment Derrick left the room...he wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

  A strange part of him that enjoyed Derrick’s company didn’t want this to be their final goodbye. Slater had survived his fall, by some miracle. Maybe being friends with Derrick was part of his second chance at life.

  “I’ve never had surgery before,” Slater said without thinking.

  Derrick returned the cell to the table and eased onto the side of the bed by Slater’s hip. His expression was so clear and supportive that Slater didn’t mind he’d let such a stupid thing slip out of his mouth. “They putting you under?”

  “No, doc said they’d do a local, so I’ll be awake but won’t feel it.” That was the part that worried Slater the most. He’d heard stories of people who’d woken up in the middle of surgery. What if he started to feel them installing steel rods, or whatever the surgeon said they’d be doing?

  “If it helps at all,” Derrick said, “I had my wisdom teeth removed a few years ago. All four. I was scared to be put under but it wasn’t so bad. Counted back from a hundred, got to ninety-four, and then the surgeon was telling me he was all done.”

  “Sounds perfect. Maybe I can beg them to just knock me out.” Slater tossed another piece of popcorn in his mouth. “Probably won’t with my head injury, though.”

  “If you’re having surgery, you probably shouldn’t be eating that.”

  “I know.” With a grumpy sigh, Slater stuffed the box back under his pillow. “Contraband from a friend.”

  “So when are they springing you from this joint?”

  “Day after tomorrow.” There was another reason the hospital had kept him this long. One of his organs had been bruised and they’d needed to monitor his...blood pressure? Reyes would remember. Slater had given his consent for all his medical stuff to be shared with the man, so at least one of them could keep it all in his head.

  “You gonna go stay with family?”

  Slater snorted so hard his nose ached afterward. “Hell no.”

  “Not close to anyone?”

  “That’s an understatement.” One Slater was not unpacking with Derrick right now, thank you very much. “Besides, they’re not close by and my insurance is through the ranch. Can’t risk losing the therapy I’ll need to walk right again if I move away.”

  And think right again, thanks to my busted-ass head.

  “So you’re going to recover at the ranch?”

  “Don’t have much of a choice. Why? You offering me your guest room?”

  Derrick didn’t respond right away, and Slater studied the man harder. He was definitely considering something, which made Slater nervous. Sure, Derrick was practically an in-law to the ranch itself, thanks to his relationship with Wes, and Wes’s with Mack, but he had no reason to be so invested in Slater’s recovery. Unless he thought Slater was suicidal or something and wanted to keep an eye on him.

  “I’m not sorry I lived,” Slater said, answering Derrick’s earlier question. Unsure why he needed to reassure the guy. “I don’t like being so uncertain about my future, that’s all.”

  “I get that. And this is going to sound really bizarre, but I have a proposal for you.”

  “I only accept white gold and twenty-four-carat diamonds for all engagements.”

  Derrick chuckled, a deep, comforting sound. “Not that kind of proposal. Although between my insurance and the ranch’s, you’d probably have way better options for physical therapists if I did marry you.”

  Slater blinked hard at the completely casual way Derrick said that. “You are a very strange man, do you know this?”

  “What can I say? I think outside the box, which is probably why Wes and I get along so well. And it helps with my day job.”

  “Which is what exactly?”

  “I work for a nonprofit called Open Hearts, Open Hands, which works with various corporations, local businesses and outreach centers to provide funding and assistance for other, smaller entities like shelters, community gardens, food banks, etcetera.”

  “Wow. Sounds complicated.”

  “It can be and it won’t make me rich, but it’s good work.”

  “So am I another assistance program for you? Help the injured cowboy to earn brownie points with your bosses?”

  Derrick narrowed his eyes, a bit of temper peeking through. “No, this is because I like you, and I want to help if I can. Pay it forward, you know?” He seemed to debate how much more to admit. “My parents hit a rough patch when Conrad and I were kids. Money disappeared and so did food. Without the generosity of friends and strangers, and a local food bank, we wouldn’t have gotten through it. So if I’m in a position to help, I help.”

  “Out of the kindness of your heart?” Slater wasn’t buying it. No one invited a near-stranger into their home for the karma points.

  “Not completely, no.”

  “Thought so.”

  “Look, I’m the oldest of seventeen cousins on both sides of my family, and I’m also the last single one. I’ve been getting crap about it for years, but it’s gotten worse now that the last cousin is engaged, and I have to go to five weddings over the course of the spring and summer, and I need a fake boyfriend so my relatives will stop meddling.”

  Fake boyfriend? Is he serious?

  Slater had recently slammed his head into the side of a mountain, so he needed to be sure he’d heard that correctly. “You want me to pose as your fake boyfriend in exchange for recovering in your spare room?”

  Derrick’s face shifted into discomfort, and Slater imagined the guy would be blushing if he was able. “My place only has one bedroom, but my couch is a futon.”

  Annoyance heated Slater’s skin. “I’m not a houseboy, Derrick.”

  “Oh, hell, man, that’s not even where I was going with all this. Just because we fucked once doesn’t mean w
e ever do again. That’s not part of the terms and conditions of living with me. And it will give you a stable place to recover, plus a lot more choices of physical therapists being closer to the city.”

  “And give you a fake boyfriend for five weddings?”

  “Yes. You aren’t someone my family knows, so when the wedding season is over and we—” he made air quotes “—‘break up,’ it won’t be a huge deal. You should be recovered and able to return to work by then, and I’ll go back to being happily single. No sex, no housekeeping, and I don’t expect you do more than chip in for groceries. No expectations other than friendship and mutual respect.”

  Slater stared at Derrick, unable to puzzle the guy out with his generous—if truly bizarre—offer. And equally unsure what Slater wanted.

  * * *

  Derrick hadn’t been sure what to expect when he walked into Slater’s hospital room, and he hoped he’d kept his shock off his face. Almost every visible inch of skin on the man was either bruised, scraped or otherwise marked. He had bandages on his hands and neck, and the side of his head, probably the site of the fracture. One black eye. The skin on his nose looked raw and swollen. His right leg was propped up and suspended in something to keep it immobile.

  Slater was a mess, so his actual level of alertness surprised Derrick a bit. As had the Cracker Jack, but the man was alive and eager to get out of the hospital. And Derrick had mad respect for how honest Slater had been with him about his feelings and fears. Maybe they were barely friends, but Derrick cared about the guy and wanted him to fully recover.

  The whole “live with me and be my fake boyfriend” had been completely off the cuff, but he didn’t take it back. Not even when Slater continued to stare at him like Derrick was insane for the offer he’d just made. It was a little insane and completely un-thought-through, but the more Derrick considered it, the more he liked it.