Ray: Riding Hard Book 7

by Ashley Jennifer

  “She didn’t want to hurt him,” Ray suggested. “Or she wanted to forget about it and live her life.”

  Drew kissed Ray’s chin. “I’m sorry. I imagine this makes you think of you and Christina.”

  “Sort of,” Ray said, uncomfortable. “Not really the same thing, though.”

  “At least she told you.”

  “Yeah, she did,” Ray said. “I’ve always admired her for being honest. But trust me when I say I’m real glad Christina is with Grant.”

  “They seem happy. And Emma is sure cute.”

  “Yeah, that.” Ray brushed Drew’s face, turning her to look at him. “And it left me free when I met you.”

  A flush stole across Drew’s cheeks, one Ray hoped meant pleasure. He leaned to her and kissed her slowly, putting an end to the conversation in the best way he knew how.

  * * *

  When they returned to the B&B, Drew in her own car, Manny came racing from the house and the men working there to meet them.

  “Ray. Drew. Sure am glad to see you. You took forever getting home.”

  Drew opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong, but Manny plunged on, excited and impatient.

  “I think I figured out who wrecked your place the other night. But I can’t prove it. I wanna set a trap for them and have Ross catch their asses. That okay with you?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Manny’s idea for a trap consisted of Drew and Ray conspicuously going out and leaving the house unguarded. Meanwhile, Manny would lie in wait and pounce on the vandals when they arrived.

  Drew supposed Manny thought he’d knock out the guys and tie them up, single-handedly, to present to the sheriff. Or maybe to Deputy Harrison, to impress the brother of his girlfriend.

  “Not by yourself,” Drew told him. “Too dangerous.” When Manny started to look hurt, she quickly added. “You need someone to have your back.”

  Ray gave Manny a nod. “Jack will do it. He’s not happy about the vandalism.”

  Manny brightened. “Yeah, Jack’s a badass. We’ll take ’em down.”

  Ray nodded as if all was settled. Erica would spend the night with Faith—she was becoming a regular at Circle C Ranch—and Drew and Ray would go out and stay late.

  When Riverbenders wanted to make a night of it, Drew was coming to understand, they went to the diner and then the bar, or else the touristy cowboy bar, Dino’s. Special occasions warranted a drive to White Fork and the restaurant Chez Orleans, or a longer drive into Austin or San Antonio.

  Ray suggested the diner and bar, because they’d be close if something happened. Drew agreed. This wasn’t a date, she reminded herself, but the pretense of a date. No dressing up and sitting at a table loaded with silverware—Philip used to deride her if she picked up the wrong fork.

  “The diner sounds great,” Drew said. “I need more of that harvest apple pie before the season ends.”

  They finished up work for the day. Drew changed into a cute skirt she’d been saving, and Ray, after giving her a smile that promised much for later, led her out to the truck.

  “You kids have fun,” Manny said as he waved them off. Jack stood near the house, looking around far more seriously, which relieved Drew. She didn’t know Jack well yet, but she believed he’d keep an eye on Manny.

  “Don’t be too good,” Manny yelled, and Ray chuckled as he started the truck.

  “I think I used to be that full of shit,” he said, pulling out. “Seems like a long time ago now.”

  He didn’t sound sad—he was just stating a fact.

  For now, Drew had a full evening with him. Though Ray had been staying at the house most of the time, she hadn’t seen much of him. He worked all day and far into the night, often showering and dropping off to sleep on the couch, a nice one he’d brought from his own house, after she’d gone to bed.

  Like a real married couple, she’d think wryly.

  No, that was too flip. Ray was working his ass off helping out without asking for payment. She was grateful and shouldn’t expect more.

  But then she’d think of how they’d lain together in her bed more than once, wrapped in sunshine and each other and content. How they’d kissed lazily in the meadow during their impromptu picnic.

  She loved how she and Ray came together so easily, untroubled. No discussing it, no taking stock of what they’d done and where this relationship was going. No analyzing it to death.

  Simply enjoying each other in the autumn days, no worries of what winter might bring.

  At the diner Ray’s conversation turned to the house and what he and his team were finding—wiring was shot, yeah, but they’d discovered decent plumbing pipes, great old wood, beams that were solid, with only a few that needed replacing, like the ones that had crashed down on them in the dining room.

  “Sorry, I’m rambling,” Ray said after a time. “What’d you usually talk about with your boyfriends in Chicago? The latest musicals? Or am I confusing it with New York?”

  Drew moved her fork through the whipped cream on the largest slice of apple pie she’d had here yet. “The same stuff everyone talks about in Riverbend. What our kids are doing, fixing up our houses or apartments. TV shows, movies, and sports. People are mostly the same everywhere—I’m getting that now.”

  Ray’s eyes glinted with humor. “What’d you expect? That cowboys would chew on strands of hay and spit through our teeth?”

  “Pretty much. That’s the picture painted of life in a ranch town.”

  “And we say shucks, ma’am. If we aren’t saying ain’t and Well, dayum.”

  “Manny says Well, dayum,” Drew pointed out. “I’ve heard him. And ain’t.”

  “He picks it up from television.”

  They laughed together. So nice, Drew thought. Sharing laughter, anecdotes about friends. Someone to be with, to go through life with. That was true love.

  She stilled, the thought jolting through her.

  Love. Not wild passion that dropped her on her ass and left her bereft. She’d been madly in love with Philip, which had blinded her to the kind of person he’d truly been. Witty and smart, she’d thought, when he’d just been plain mean and trivializing.

  Not that passion with Ray hadn’t been wild. It was over-the-top wild, and Drew wanted to experience it again, many times over. Whenever Ray smiled at her, eyes warm, her body heated in anticipation.

  Ray grounded her at the same time, protecting her while she rode the fire with him. They’d reach their peaks together, and she’d not felt alone for an instant when making love with Ray.

  To distract herself from grabbing Ray and jumping his bones right there, she glanced around the diner, pleased she already recognized so many faces. Clint, who did the announcing at the local rodeos. Mrs. Kaye, the older woman who’d known her grandparents. Polly, who helped out at Grace’s bakery. Hal Jenkins, the ranch hand, eating by himself. Drew had seen the way he’d looked at Lucy … might be something in that.

  Her gaze rested on a booth holding five people she hadn’t seen before. “Strangers in town,” she said in a low voice, motioning with her fork. “Could they be our vandals?”

  The strangers in question were three men and two women who didn’t speak much as they shoveled in chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. They wore beat up jeans and shirts, or cargo shorts with bulging pockets.

  Ray twisted around to look, not hiding his stare. “Oh, those are the archaeologists,” he said, righting himself and lifting his coffee. “Some of them, anyway. They come into town from time to time.”

  “Archaeologists?” Drew raised her brows. “What are they excavating?”

  “Ancient Native Americans,” Ray answered. “I asked them about it once. They’ve found traces of settlements from ten thousand years ago or so in the caves up around the river. Makes sense. River Country is a nice place to live. Probably was back then too.”

  “The archaic period.” Drew’s inner librarian awoke. “We have mounds in Illinois with all kinds of artifacts—I w
ent with Erica a couple times on field trips. North America has civilizations going back thousands and thousands of years, had cities as organized and sophisticated as any in Ancient Rome.” She broke off as she found Ray’s eyes on her. “Sorry. I’m a history nerd. Occupational hazard.”

  “It’s cool you know all that stuff. Erica’s going to grow up smart.”

  “She’s already very smart. The problem is, she knows it.” Drew softened in fondness. “I’m blessed with a wonderful kid. As pissed off as I ever got at Philip, I was grateful for Erica.”

  “You should be.” Ray took a sip of coffee, unworried.

  “Does it bug you when I talk about Philip?” Drew asked, watching him.

  Ray carefully set down his cup. “What bugs me is he was such a bastard to you. I can’t believe he didn’t understand or appreciate what he had. I’m glad you broke up with him. I’m sorry he died, mostly because it makes you feel guilty.”

  “I don’t know why it does.” Drew turned her cup on the table, the pie long gone. “It wasn’t my fault he’d decided to drive to Milwaukee. I didn’t even know.”

  “And one day, you’ll be able to let that go. When my dad died of a heart defect, I blamed myself out the butt, though wasn’t a thing I could have done. He was born with the problem, and lived as much as he could while he could. Took me a long time to understand all that, but eventually I did.” He touched her hand. “It’s not a door you can just close. I kept trying that, and beating myself up when it didn’t work. Time’s the only cure. And living your life.”

  “Yeah.” Drew caressed his fingers. “Living.”

  They shared a long look, then Ray said, “Tell you what. Let’s get out of here and go do some dancing. Less depressing.”

  “You dance?” Drew looked him up and down.

  “I’ve been known to.”

  They left the booth and Ray held her hand as he walked with her to the register. He paid for Drew’s meal, in front of God and everybody, and Mrs. Ward gave them an indulgent smile.

  Halfway to the bar, Drew stopped. “I just remembered. I don’t dance. I don’t know how.”

  “That’s okay.” Ray drew her close and led her on, music blaring from inside the bar. “I’ll teach you.”

  * * *

  Drew had seemed surprised Ray knew how to dance, but he’d been two-stepping around floors since junior high. Around here, a guy who could dance had plenty of girlfriends.

  He had Drew laughing as he showed her how to catch the rhythm. It was a good dance, the two-step, where a couple could be close but still get into the beat.

  She didn’t mind at all that he kept hold of her hand as the dance ended and they moved to a table, sipping drinks the bartender brought. Wouldn’t be much drinking, because they needed to stay alert—more dancing would help with that.

  Ray wished this date was real and not about catching vandals at the B&B. He wanted to have Drew here with him as his girl, the one who smiled at him as they spun slowly around the dance floor.

  By midnight, when they hadn’t heard a word from the B&B, Ray suggested they go home. He realized as he said it that it didn’t matter whether they went to the Malory ranch or the B&B or a tent in the middle of nowhere—home would be where Drew was.

  The B&B was quiet when they reached it. Ray parked, and as he and Drew entered the garage, Jack appeared from the shadows.

  “Nothing yet,” Jack said, his voice a low rumble. “Manny swears they have something planned for tonight. He’s positive, he keeps saying. Tell you what—turn off all the lights when you go upstairs and make like you’re not paying attention to the rest of the world.” His teeth flashed in a grin, the silver earring on his lobe sparkling.

  “Good advice,” Drew said lightly, moving past him and up the stairs.

  Jack started to laugh, but suppressed it. “Lucky bastard,” he whispered to Ray.

  Ray growled at him and went up the stairs after Drew.

  As Ray suspected, Drew was far too shy to make love when she knew Jack and Manny waited below. But she didn’t mind snuggling up to Ray in bed, watching moonlight and shadows shimmer on the ceiling.

  Ray drifted to sleep, hard and unfulfilled in body, but the rest of him pretty happy. He had Drew’s hair across his shoulder, her even breath brushing his skin, her body curled into his. He’d found a place of his own right here with her.

  Around dawn, shouts sounded outside, and Ray jumped awake, Drew sitting up in sleepy alarm. Ray heard Jack’s gruff voice and Manny laughing. Flashing red and blue lights leaked through the shutters to stain the morning.

  Ray and Drew scrambled out of bed and into their clothes, and Ray led the way downstairs.

  Ross and Deputies Harrison and Sanchez surrounded three teen boys Ray recognized from White Fork. They were big guys, sandy-haired—cousins—and looked furious.

  They didn’t protest their innocence. Sanchez and Harrison were removing tools of destruction from their hands—crowbars, sledgehammers, bricks. The caved in door on the B&B was more evidence they’d been caught in the act.

  “You’re dead, Judd,” one of the boys snarled at Manny.

  Manny didn’t look worried. “Your folks can afford good lawyers—you’ll be fine. Just cough up who put you up to this and I bet Sheriff Campbell will go easy on you.”

  Ross looked irritated, but he only gave the teens his steady stare, the one that made hardened criminals back down. Baby Campbell was no soft touch.

  Ray didn’t know if it was Ross’s grim look or the sight of Ray and Jack looming out of the darkness that made the boys break. The younger one took a step behind the others.

  “It was some dude,” the oldest boy said. “I don’t know him—he’s not from River County. But he said he’d pay us five thousand dollars. Five thousand. Enough to get us out of this dump.”

  “Name?” Ross asked. “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe from him in jail.”

  The older boy shivered. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about him. Like I said, he wasn’t from around here. I don’t know his last name. He told us to call him Bolo. Stupid.”

  Ray heard Drew’s gasp. He turned quickly and found her face ashen in the flickering lights.

  “What is it, baby? You okay?”

  “Jules,” she whispered. “Bolo was his nickname. His and Philip’s both.”

  “Shit,” Ray said softly. What the hell was Drew’s brother-in-law doing wrecking her house? What was it to him that Drew didn’t succeed?

  Right now wasn’t the time for those questions. Drew was hurting. He put his arms around her and pulled her in.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack Hillman rode to town after Ross wrapped things up at the B&B. He was cramped and tired after his night of the stakeout, which made him cranky. He was glad it had been resolved—those idiot boys needed to learn they couldn’t get away with anything they wanted—but he had to open his own business at ten, and there wasn’t much chance of shuteye between now and then.

  It didn’t improve his temper to pull up on the corner of a row of pretty painted houses in White Fork to see Deke stomp out of one of them and explode at Karen.

  Jack turned his motorcycle down her street to let it idle in front of her house. He wore the half helmet he liked—gave him protection but let him look around without restriction. He scowled at Deke as the young cowboy lit up the neighborhood with his half-drunk, half-hungover foul language.

  Karen, fully dressed in a business suit despite the early hour, listened patiently from her porch.

  “The truck is yours, honey,” she said. “Take it and go. Stop waking up my neighbors.”

  “That’s your fault.” Deke thrust a thick finger in her direction. “You are making a big mistake, sweetheart. It’s not every guy like me who’d take up with an old bitch like—oof.”

  Deke’s words choked off as Jack, who’d quietly slipped from his bike, got one arm around Deke’s thick neck. Deke was plenty strong, but he was unsteady from a night full of beer, and Jack knew exac
tly how to bring down even a big guy like Deke.

  “She told you to go,” Jack said in a quiet voice, staring into Deke’s confused eyes. “Get the hell out of this town and don’t let me see you in it again.”

  Deke puffed up belligerently, but then he saw something in Jack’s gaze that made him ease back.

  “Fine, fine. I’m going. No reason for me to stay. Are you fucking her now? Is that what’s going on?”

  Jack turned Deke around and shoved him off the porch. Deke flailed as he landed on the sidewalk, regained his footing, and marched to his gleaming pickup with what dignity he could.

  Deke looked back as he reached the truck. He opened his mouth as though to make a parting shot, caught Jack’s deadly gaze, and quickly closed it again. The pickup roared to life once Deke hopped into the driver’s seat, and Deke squealed away. He rounded the corner at high speed, nearly tipping the truck, but he righted it and zoomed off with a street-shaking rumble.

  Jack watched him go. “I notice he wasn’t too proud to walk away from the truck.”

  Karen studied the corner around which Deke had disappeared. “Can’t blame him. It’s a nice truck.” She switched her focus to Jack. “You look awful. Want some coffee?”

  Jack unstrapped his helmet and pulled it and his sunglasses off. “Coffee sounds great.”

  He followed Karen into a pristine designer world. Her house had polished hardwood floors, a boxy sofa and chairs in a tweedy gray material, stainless steel appliances, and a refrigerator made to look like the rest of the cabinets.

  Sunlight poured through the windows, plantation shutters open, and gleamed on the surfaces. The only softness in the place was an orange striped cat who’d stretched itself out across the back of the sofa.

  The cat was such a weird note in the chill surroundings, that Jack peered closely at it to see if it was real. The cat opened one brilliant green eye, gave him a vaguely interested stare, and closed the eye again.