“That’s okay. I’ll take one anyway.”

“You want a hot Diet Coke?”

She nodded and licked her lips again. “My daddy died last night.” She shook her head. “This morning, I mean.” The keys rattled in her hand and her brows lowered. “The hospital called. I have to go make arrangements.” Her brows lowered as if nothing made sense. “I guess.”

He dipped his head and looked into her eyes. “Did you drive here, Sadie?”

She nodded. “My mouth is dry.” Her eyes were wide, glassy, with the thousand-yard stare of someone in deep shock. He recognized that look. He’d seen it in the eyes of hardened warriors. “Do you have water?”

He grabbed his coffee mug and filled it with water from the sink. He took the keys and shoes from her and handed her the water. “I’m sorry about your daddy.” He put her things on the old desk and walked back toward her. “I didn’t know him, but everyone who mentioned him had good things to say.”

She nodded and drained the mug. “I need to go.”

“Hang tight.” He took her wrist and placed his fingers over her pulse. “Not yet.” He looked at his watch and counted her heartbeats. “Do you feel light-headed?”

“What?”

“Is someone in your family driving you to Amarillo?” Her pulse was fast but not dangerously high. “One of your aunts or cousins or uncles?”

“My daddy was an only child. My aunts and uncles are on my mama’s side.”

“Can one of them drive you?”

“Why?”

Because she shouldn’t be driving around in shock. He let go of her wrist, then grabbed her shoes and keys from the desk. “I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to.”

He dropped to one knee and put her flip-flops on her feet. “I know I don’t.” He rose and placed his hand on the small of her back.

She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

She wasn’t hysterical, but probably not anywhere near okay. They moved down the hall, her shoes softly slapping the soles of her feet. “Will Clara Anne contact everyone for you?”

“I don’t know.” They stopped and he pulled a set of keys out of his pants pocket. “I should probably tell her.”

Vince looked across his shoulder into Sadie’s face as he locked the back door of the Gas and Go. “You didn’t tell her before you left?”

Sadie shook her head. “She would have asked questions and I don’t know anything yet.” Together they moved to his truck and he helped her into the passenger seat. “I’ll call her from the hospital when I know something.”

Vince grabbed a bottle of water out of the cooler in the bed, then moved around to the other side and climbed inside. As he started the car, he handed her the water and studied Sadie’s face. She looked a bit pale, that certain shade of shock white. Her blue eyes were dry, and for that he was grateful. He hated to see women or children cry. It was a cliché, he knew, but he’d rather face a tribe of Taliban insurgents. He knew what to do with terrorists, but crying women and children made him feel helpless.

He pulled out of the parking lot and asked for the address of the hospital. She gave it to him and he plugged it into his GPS. Silence filled the truck as she unscrewed the bottle. He didn’t know what to say, and he waited for her to talk so he could take his cue from her. He drove a few blocks and turned onto the highway. When she finally did say something, it was not what he expected.

“Am I the only woman you’re sleeping with at the moment?”

He glanced at her, then back at the road. “What?”

“It’s okay if I’m not.” She took a drink. “I’m just wondering.”

Okay his ass. No matter what a woman said, she was never “okay” with that shit. “That’s what you want to talk about?”

She nodded. “It’s half an hour to Amarillo, Vince. I can’t talk about my daddy right now.” She placed a hand on her chest as if she could keep everything inside. She took a deep breath and slowly blew it out. “I can’t do it. Not yet. Not until after I know everything.” Her voice wavered and almost broke. “If I start to cry, I won’t stop. Talk to me please. Talk to me so I won’t think about my daddy dying all alone without me there. Talk about anything.”

Shit. “Well,” he said as he looked back at the highway, “you are the only woman I’ve slept with for a long time.” He still couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep in her bed. He hadn’t allowed that to happen since he’d left the teams. If that hadn’t been bad enough, he got busted like a kid sneaking out. “And ‘at the moment’ you are the only woman I’m having sex with.”

“Oh.” She looked out the passenger window and screwed the cap back on the bottle. “At the moment you are the only man I’m having sex with.” She paused for a few seconds, then added, “In case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t. No offense, darlin’, but I’ve met some of the single men Lovett has to offer.”

She looked down and almost smiled. “There are some really good guys here. Not that I want to date any of them. Mostly because I’ve known most of them since grade school and remember when they used to pick their noses.” The corner of her lip quivered as if for a few seconds she’d forgotten where they were going and why, then suddenly remembered. “Thank God I didn’t sleep with any of them.”

That surprised him a little. Probably because he’d grown up in several small towns and there hadn’t been a lot to do but roll around in hay fields. “None?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t lose my virginity until I went away to college.”

“What was his name?”

“Frosty Bassinger.” Her voice wavered.

“Frosty?” He chuckled. “You gave it up for a guy named Frosty?”

“Well, his real name was Frank.” She unscrewed the cap and took a drink from the bottle. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen. She was eighteen and her name was Heather.”

Sadie choked. “Sixteen? And your girlfriend was eighteen? That’s illegal.”

“It was my idea and she wasn’t my girlfriend.”

“You weren’t even a relationship guy at sixteen?”

He glanced at her and smiled. “I had a few girlfriends in high school.”

“What about since?”

He glanced across at her. At the flat Texas plains, the green and brown grasses passing in the window framing her head. At the desperation in her blue eyes, pleading with him to talk. Just to keep talking so she didn’t have to think about her daddy and the reality of what waited for her in Amarillo. “Nothing really since I joined the teams.” He’d never been good at small talk or talking just to talk. He’d give it a try if it distracted her. “I don’t know anyone on his first marriage, but I know a lot of guys on their third. Good guys. Solid.” He pulled to the left lane and passed a Nissan. “The divorce rate in the teams is around ninety percent.”

“But you’re not in the military now. It’s been five years.”

“Almost six.”

“And you’ve never fallen in love?”

“Sure.” He hung his wrist over the steering wheel. “For a few hours.”

“That’s not called love.”

“No?” He looked over at her and turned the tables. “Have you ever had a real serious relationship? Ever been engaged?”

She shook her head and set the bottle in the cup holder. “I’ve had relationships, but no one’s ever put a ring on it.” Her anxiety leaked out her fingers and she drummed the console. “I date emotionally unavailable men, like my dad, and try and make them love me.”

“Did a shrink tell you that?”

“Loveline with Mike and Dr. Drew.”

He’d never heard of Loveline, but he’d certainly had a shrink tell him why he ran from relationships. “Apparently I have a disconnect with deep emotions.” He glanced at her, then back at the road. “Or so I’ve been told.”

“By a woman?”

“Yep. A Navy psychiatrist.” He could feel her gaze on him. “A damn smart woman.”

“Why are you emotionally disconnected?”

He was willing to distract her . . . to a point. That point did not include digging into his head or his past. “It’s easier.”

“Than what?”

Than living with guilt. “Did Mark and Dr. Drew give you tips on avoiding emotionally available men?”

“They gave me warning signs.”

“Did you heed their advice?”

Sadie studied Vince’s profile from the passenger side of his big truck. His strong jaw and cheeks were covered in dark stubble. He hadn’t shaved since she’d seen him earlier, but he looked like he’d showered, and he’d changed his clothes. “The fact that I am in any way involved with you points out the glaringly obvious fact that I didn’t listen.” Just below the surface of her skin, she could feel her pain and grief aching. It was so close. So close to leaking out if she let it.

“Clearly.”

She looked out the window at the dusty Texas plains. Her daddy was dead. Dead. It couldn’t be possible. He was too cantankerous to die.

For the next half hour, Vince kept up her plea for him to talk. He didn’t run on and on, just a few observations about Texas and Lovett. Every time the silence pushed her close to the edge, his voice drew her back. She didn’t really know why she’d pulled into the Gas and Go. She could have driven to Amarillo, but she was glad for his strong, solid presence.

At the hospital, he placed his hand on the small of her back and they moved through the automatic doors. He waited outside her father’s room with the nurse while she moved inside. The daisies she’d left the other day sat on the bedside table next to his nonskid socks she’d left out for him. Someone had pulled the sheet up to the chest of his pajama shirt. His old hands lay at his sides and his eyes were closed.

“Daddy,” she whispered. Her heart pounded in her chest and throat. “Daddy,” she said louder as if she could wake him. Yet even as she said it, she knew he wasn’t asleep. She took a step closer to the side of his bed. He did not look asleep. He looked sunken . . . gone. She placed her fingers in his cool hand.