King's Country (Oil Kings Book 4)

by Marie Johnston

  I was not envious of the girls Dawson dated. There were too many to count.

  “Is there a friend you can call?”

  My cheeks burned, the warmest they’d been all day. I didn’t bother to shake my head and confirm her assumption that I had no friends. The whole town knew I was a loner.

  “Boyfriend?” she asked softly.

  “None of your business,” I mumbled, the conversation with Marshall pinballing through my brain.

  “Well, Dawson’s willing to help. I say you hear him out. Can I bring him in?”

  “No.” At her steady gaze, I sighed. “Fine. Then I can tell him to leave.”

  She nodded and left. I combed my fingers through my hair. It was a tangled mess. I was a tangled mess. I had on a worn Montana State sweatshirt I’d gotten from a thrift store in Miles City. Marshall had scoffed at secondhand stores, so I’d only stopped there before going to his place.

  Dawson swaggered through the door, his expression guarded, like he expected me to attack. He had on a black stocking hat with the King’s Ranch logo and his hands shoved into his dark brown coat. How his brown coat hid all the grunge that came with working on a ranch and mine only looked dirtier, I didn’t know.

  Emma closed me in with him. The small exam room shrank even further around his broad shoulders. I wasn’t short, but he towered several inches over me.

  Dawson’s brown gaze was serious by the time it collided with mine. He didn’t start with small talk. “Why can’t you stay with me?”

  “Because I don’t need to.”

  He cocked an arrogant brow, and it only added to his rugged manliness instead of making him repellent. “The snow’s started. I have your horse, your cow, and your dog. You might as well stay.”

  I gave him a tight smile. “Are you going to put me in the barn too?”

  “I have nice straw, what can I say?” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what cave you think I crawled out of, but I have a big house. You won’t even have to see me that much.”

  I gestured to my cast. “All your bedrooms are upstairs.”

  “Not mine.” Grief hid in the depths of his whiskey eyes. “I have Mama and Dad’s old room downstairs,” he added softly.

  The reminder of his mom peeled open the haphazard bandage I’d slapped over my heart years ago. Sarah King had been one of the best people who roamed the earth, and one of my dad’s stupidest decisions had stolen her from us.

  “I don’t want to sleep on a couch.” Dawson’s couch was probably nicer than the salvaged mattress I had in the RV, but I didn’t want to sleep under the same roof as him. If only the trailer were more inhabitable.

  “I’ll stand at the end of the stairs so when you fall hopping up them, I can catch you.” His tone was dry. “You can use my bed.”

  Heat swamped my body. There was no reason on God’s green earth that I needed to be near or in Dawson’s bed. I didn’t care if it was for convalescence. No. “I’ll be fine at home.”

  That wasn’t true. I had no goddamn clue how I was going to stay in my RV and do what needed to get done, but I’d figure it out like I had all my life.

  “Bristol.”

  “Take me home.” I sat up and scooted my legs over, biting back a grimace. My right leg was killing me and my cuts screamed. “Never mind. I can call for a ride.”

  “And pay them how? I didn’t see a purse on you.”

  “I can call . . . someone else.”

  “Like a boyfriend?” His voice was stilted. Odd.

  I gave him a careful glare. “Yeah, like a boyfriend.”

  He pulled out my phone and handed it over. The screen blinked on. The barrage of messages from Marshall would’ve been easy to see. My cheeks burned. Would there be a time I wasn’t ashamed around Dawson King?

  I snatched the phone away from him but had nowhere to put it. I slapped it facedown. “Reading my stuff?”

  “Didn’t mean to,” he said softly. “I saw it when—look, I’ll bring you home and maybe you’ll come to your senses before we get there.”

  “Fine.” I sounded like a petulant child. Pop used to hate when I said fine. “Let’s go.”

  “You need to get dressed.”

  “I am dressed.”

  He frowned and it did nothing to detract from his good looks, like the square jaw. The dark lashes around eyes that didn’t miss a single detail. Or the silky hair sticking out from under his hat. Dawson King was the hottest man I’d ever seen, and I hated him even more for it. “You need more than that.” He spun and left the room. Probably to go find equally hot Emma.

  By the time he got back holding a foam-green pair of scrub pants, I was in my ratty winter coat, grateful that I hadn’t gotten blood on it. I pulled my stocking hat out of the pocket and stuffed it on my head.

  He dropped the pants on the bed and left the room. I slipped the scrubs over my good leg and then wiggled around to get them over my cast. Pain screamed over my skin as wounds opened.

  There was a soft tap at the door and Emma popped her head in. “Oh goodness, let me help you with that.”

  “I don’t need—” I gave up. My chest was heaving and I hurt. Who the fuck cared anymore? At least she wasn’t Dawson.

  “I’m glad you finally agreed,” she said as she slid the pants over my cast. “Recovery will be so much easier with an extra pair of hands.”

  I didn’t reply. I hadn’t agreed, but the less I had to fight everyone, the better. Recovery was the first and last of my problems. Running my ranch and limping through the financial storm to come was the mountain between.

  “Going to the bathroom sucks with a broken leg,” she said as she tugged the waistband over my cast.

  My gaze jerked to hers. “What?”

  Emma’s kind gaze rose to meet mine. “Going to the bathroom? Anything in the bathroom, really. And getting food. It’s hard to carry anything with crutches.”

  I looked around. I hadn’t thought about crutches.

  “I gave them to Dawson,” Emma said. “We’ll use the wheelchair to leave. But if you think you need your own wheelchair for the first couple of weeks, just let us know and we can get you one.”

  Another thing I couldn’t pay for. A wheelchair would be useless anyway. Did it come with snow tires? If not, I wouldn’t even get to the RV Pop had dumped a hundred yards from the cesspool he’d lived in. With this damn cast, I couldn’t even drive.

  What the hell was I going to do?

  I wanted to scream, but showing any emotion was as pointless as wishing for more money. Nothing good ever came of it.

  Emma helped me stand, pull the pants up, and then pivot me until I could drop into the wheelchair.

  Sweat dotted my brow. I pulled my hat lower and Emma wheeled me out. “I need to grab the pain meds the doctor prescribed. It’ll be enough to get you by until you can get to the pharmacy.”

  “I don’t want pain meds.” I avoided looking at Mr. Tall, Dark, and Stubborn in the waiting room.

  “Bristol—”

  “No.”

  Emma bypassed the nurses’ station, skipping the medicine. Dawson made small talk with her on the way out.

  “How much snow do you think we’ll get?” she asked Dawson.

  “The news said six to eight, but you never know,” he replied. “It’s hard to tell in the country. It all blows around.”

  I ached to add to the conversation, but personal experience told me that my opinion was never welcome. Snow did blow all over the country. Amounts mattered but so did wind and the direction it blew. Would there be ice? The duration? So many things. But I kept my mouth shut.

  Dawson had his pickup running. A wave of heat hit me when he opened the passenger door and Emma wheeled me closer. I pulled myself up, ignoring any and all pain, and lifted myself in.

  Emma made sure everything was tucked in. “Take care, Bristol.”

  As she shut the door, I looked straight ahead, wishing the earth would open up and swallow me. A beautiful couple was helping poor old me
. They could gossip later about how all my medical bills were overdue just like Pop’s.

  Dawson got in on a wave of cold wind. “You could’ve said thank you.”

  “She was doing her job.” No one cared if I thanked them or not. They expected me to snap at them like Pop and half the time I did. “I’m sure you’ll thank her thoroughly later.”

  Dawson’s brows dropped and he gave me a What are you talking about? look. “I’m not dating Emma.”

  I rolled my eyes toward him. “I’ve seen you two.”

  “That was only a couple of dates.”

  “Not my business and not interested.” I was so interested. Why had they broken up? They seemed to get along. I didn’t talk to my exes. They were all assholes and had treated me like a conquest. If it wouldn’t get me into legal trouble, I’d go back and nut punch every one of them.

  “Manners aren’t just for people who’ve dated.”

  I rested my head back and crossed my arms. The seat was back as far as it could go. I shifted my leg and the bulky cast. “As if people care whether you say thank you or not.” I snorted. “They probably say it for you.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “You’re a King. You and your family walk on water. They gossip about who you’re seeing, what you buy. They gush over who your dad and brothers married. The town adores you, all of you. People love to hate me.”

  I snapped my mouth shut. What had happened to my verbal filter? I tried not to say much around anyone. I didn’t need to add to their ammunition or confirm their preformed opinions. Around Dawson, all my filters dropped. Was it because we’d started out life as friends?

  “People don’t love to hate . . .”

  I stared at him and he clamped his lips shut.

  “All right, I’ll give you that. But you can still say thank you.”

  My filter failed me again. “Why? So Emma can go tell her friends about how my jeans are so old they practically fell off when she cut them? But that the doctor didn’t care because my family owes the hospital so much money, and if he got a little pleasure from ruining my clothing, so be it? But ‘Oh,’ she’d say. ‘Bristol has some manners.’ Is that how it would go?”

  Dawson’s brows rose but his gaze stayed glued on the windshield and deteriorating road conditions. Swirling snow masked the pavement underneath. “One, I’m sure Emma has to adhere to some confidentiality rules and all that. And two, you’re really jaded.”

  “If your grandparents hadn’t screwed mine, then we would’ve been King’s Creek royalty instead.”

  His jaw clenched. He couldn’t argue the facts. “Look, I get that my mom’s parents sold your grandparents some land and then later oil was found on it, but keeping mineral rights when selling land isn’t criminal. It’s common practice. As for ‘King’s Creek royalty,’ I can’t help it’s named after Dad’s great-great-grandparents.”

  He’d skipped over a critical detail about the land sale, but I stuck on the royalty argument. “Your mom’s side became filthy rich by wielding those rights like a broadsword cutting across my family’s land. Then when your mom married a wealthy rancher, it was like a redneck fairy tale. One that I’m reminded of every damn day. So excuse me if a lifetime of being treated like shit because of my last name makes me a little jaded.”

  “It’s not because of your last name. It’s how you act.”

  I twisted in my seat. He couldn’t look me in the eye without going off the road, but I had to make my point. “They judge me on how Pop acted. I never had a chance. I owe them nothing, not a smile, not a goddamn thank-you. And I especially never thought I should have to drop my pants just because Pop couldn’t pay his—”

  Dawson’s head whipped toward me, his golden eyes blazing. “Who the fuck tried that?”

  His rage pushed me back in my seat. I cringed. He wasn’t angry at me, but I’d been yelled at too many times for my mind to leave my heart rate alone when someone’s voice rose.

  “Bristol.” His voice cracked like the cold wind. “Who tried to get you to sleep with them over your dad’s debts?”

  “I took care of it,” I mumbled. “But I’m sure it just gave the town another example of how difficult I am to work with.”

  His eyes narrowed as he glowered out the window. “It was Buck from the Car Garage, wasn’t it?”

  My mouth dropped open. “How’d you know?” Buck wasn’t the only one, but a fist in the nose had made him the last.

  “He was spouting off about some night with you. His story was so full of holes I called him on it.” He slid his gaze toward me for a heartbeat. “Said you punched him cuz you were clingy and he wanted to end it. I said that if he looked up clingy in the dictionary, your picture would be under antonyms and then I recommended he look up the definition of antonym.”

  I stifled a giggle. “He wouldn’t know how to spell either word.”

  He chuckled and we exchanged a grin.

  I swallowed hard and turned to the passenger window. My place was coming up. The snow was falling heavier. I hoped Daisy stayed at Dawson’s. He had a nice barn that wasn’t full of old hay and drafts. Bucket likely wouldn’t want to come back home. Dawson wasn’t as smart as I thought he was if he assumed I didn’t know he snuck Bucket corn on the cob every year.

  Words clogged my throat as Dawson turned into the long drive that would take him to the trailer house Pop had lived and died in.

  I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t.

  But the RV didn’t run, therefore I couldn’t take it anywhere to empty the sewage. Its bathroom was little more than a mirror and storage. How would I run the generator and get back and forth to use the trailer’s bathroom?

  Panic clawed at my chest the closer he got. There was no way I could stay there. No way I could live there. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to tell Dawson that I lived in the RV during the winter and the hunting cabin in one of the pastures in the summer. How would I do this snow with crutches? A band tightened around my chest.

  Dawson parked and I didn’t move. I stared out the window at the trailer with its boarded-up windows, its saggy roof, and its peeling paint. The place was decrepit. Should be condemned. One match would solve the problem, but I needed its plumbing.

  Several moments went by. Dawson put the pickup in gear and drove off without saying a word.

  Dawson

  My online search came up with several ideas that Bristol was going to fucking hate. Her leg was in a long, bent-leg cast. Emma had said that the doctor didn’t think Bristol would need anything more. The cold had kept the initial swelling down, but I also thought the doctor hadn’t given a shit whether Bristol did fine or not.

  What Bristol had said on the drive home resonated. Did I treat her the way I did because of what my family thought of her family? Had I been unfair? The questions plagued me. She was blunt, opinionated, and had a knack for finding any topic I was a little bit sensitive about. I tried to recall our interactions over the years, but they all ended with me being an insensitive bastard to her.

  My chest tightened and I huffed out a cough. It was heartburn. Had to be. Bristol had earned every snarky remark.

  Hadn’t she?

  Those questions had led to the shittiest night of sleep ever and it wasn’t because I’d slept on the couch.

  I’d started my morning trudging outside to check on everything and feed the dogs. Daisy had even stuck around, sleeping in the barn with Bucket. Then I’d researched.

  Tibia fractures like Bristol’s should heal fine as long as she rested and didn’t try to do too much too early. I’d feel better if she got a second opinion, but no doubt she’d refuse.

  Her cast couldn’t get wet, so that’d make showers and bathing difficult. Several inches of snow were on the ground, so running anywhere for a bath chair was out until the roads were cleared. I could find something for her to use.

  I’d heard her clomping to the bathroom. She never asked for help, and if she fell, she got herself up and didn’t say anything. La
st night I’d gotten her a water bottle and some acetaminophen. Hopefully she’d taken it. Her adamant refusal of the pain meds at the hospital had surprised me—and it hadn’t. After living with a raging alcoholic, who could blame her?

  I read up on tips for using crutches. Shorts or loose pants were easier—

  Damn. Bristol didn’t have any clothes. I had plenty of shirts and she was tall enough that she wouldn’t drown in the couple pairs of flannel pants I had. Whether she’d actually wear them was a different story. I couldn’t help with the other stuff. Had Kendall or any of my sisters-in-law left things that would work?

  Nothing would. Eva was shorter than Bristol, and Bristol had a lean, athletic body that I absolutely had not checked out the few times I’d crossed paths with her in the bar. She had strong legs from growing up on the back of a horse and well-defined muscles from throwing bales and doing chores. Much of the time, she’d been the only help her dad had on the ranch. Even when he’d hired someone, the quality of Bristol’s work had far surpassed anyone else’s.

  Hell, I knew who’d come out on top of a ranch rodeo. Tucker and Kiernan would lose any event in the cowboy’s version of driveway basketball.

  My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten supper and neither had Bristol. She’d been ready to drop when we’d gotten home last night. The way she’d stared at her trailer . . . I’d never seen anyone so despondent, like the hope had gotten sucked out of her. But she hadn’t fought me when I’d driven away, saving me from feeling like crap for dropping her off to be alone in a storm with a broken leg.

  I popped up and went to the kitchen. I had eggs, sausage, and leftover bread that’d make excellent French toast. I went to work, keeping an ear out for Bristol. When I was wrapping up, I finally heard the toilet in the master bathroom flush. I loaded food on a tray that I’d found tucked deep in a cupboard. Mama had used it when me or my brothers were home sick.

  I went to the bedroom door, tray balanced on one hand, and knocked.

  “Yeah?” She sounded more cautious than annoyed.