And then, the day before, she’d been driven from the float-making squad at the gym by people wanting her to take the blame for being attacked.
If she hadn’t been an outsider, the story would have been different. At the least, there would have been a lot fewer people on Catherine’s side. But Catherine was a local girl, a town daughter who’d done well and hired other locals, and a lot of people saw her sudden struggles with the ranch as the fault of an outsider who didn’t know how things worked.
Everywhere he went, people stopped talking and started staring when he came in, and it had to have been worse for Gabe. He was used to it, he’d dealt with it for years, but she was young and innocent. She’d tried to find somewhere she could have a life that wasn’t shaped by what had happened to her, and all she’d found was a place where more shit had happened, and all of it was common knowledge.
Not knowledge—rumor. Gabe was absolutely right that what people thought they knew was almost never what was actually true.
If he could have beaten every single mouth that spilled shit about her, he would have. Maybe he should have beaten Richard Cross after all. Starting there might have ended it there.
No. It would have made things even worse. But Heath was having a hard time holding his shit together now. He couldn’t just turn off his anger because it was Founders’ Week, and seeing how isolated Gabe felt, even when she was being superficially included, only made him angrier. Not even Emma’s influence was enough of a buffer.
Everything he did to try to help her—move her in with him, help her buy a little SUV, take her to walk around the Boise community college campus and register for fall classes, enlist Emma to get her involved in organizing the Founders’ Week stuff—it all seemed to make Gabe tentative and wary, each day a little more.
She was loving and sweet and grateful, but he didn’t want her gratitude. He wanted her happiness. Instead, that old, haunted look edged her eyes, and, except when they were alone together, she almost seemed to hide behind him.
She was strong and resolute, and she put on a decent show, but he saw it anyway, and he didn’t know how to fix it.
Walking around with her on the Fourth, studying her every chance he could without her realizing it, he saw the melancholy behind her smile. And he saw the sidelong looks around them. Setting aside differences for the week hadn’t stopped some people—too many—from sneering and whispering.
Before they’d become a couple, Gabe had started making a home here, finding friends. And now she was that troublemaker from away who’d sicced her boyfriend on a harmless guest and put dear Catherine’s livelihood—and her employees’—at risk. With each new telling of the story, Gabe became more unreasonable, Heath more violent, Cross more harmless, and Catherine more victimized.
Pretty soon, he was going to prove them right, at least where he was concerned.
On the Fourth, they stood outside the Jack and watched the parade. Gabe was quiet, smiling with calm rigidity. All day, she’d been like that, assiduously ignoring the stares and murmurs, always saying hello to the people they passed, clapping and cheering and laughing along with others as appropriate, but all of that pleasantness seemed locked onto her face.
Heath stood behind her, one arm hooked around her waist, keeping her close, keeping her steady. In his other hand, he held a plastic pint cup of beer. He’d lost track of how many pints he’d had, but beer didn’t have much of an effect on him. He only felt it a little, just a warmth in his joints, a calmness he needed.
Gabe was drinking more freely than he’d seen before. He’d never seen her drunk or anything more than a bit tipsy, but she’d taken a fresh beer almost every time he had, and she was obviously feeling it much more than he was. She was half his size, too. He’d been watching, hoping the alcohol would relax her, let her have an actual good day, make that smile on her face real, but the only effect he’d noticed was an extra carefulness about her movements, like she had to aim.
The Moondancer Ranch float rolled by, with Catherine in full Dale Evans regalia—a bright red embroidered western shirt, dark jeans, red boots, and a white Stetson with red feathers—standing front and center, waving, a broad smile on her face. Pearl Wilkes and Ellen Emerson were perched up there with her, also in their western finery. A few of the ranch hands walked alongside the float, doing rope tricks.
When Catherine met Heath’s eyes, she stopped waving—dropped her hand abruptly and erased the smile from her face. But she didn’t look away. She stared for a beat, then dropped her eyes to Gabe. Heath noticed that Pearl and Ellen had stopped waving, too. Everybody on the float had gone still and was staring.
And everybody on the sidelines had noticed and turned their attention in the same direction. The whole fucking town, it seemed, was staring at Gabe now, in contempt or in curiosity, depending on which side they’d fallen in the feud.
When they could no longer hold eye contact, Catherine and the others resumed their smiles and waves. Gabe stood pat until the float, moving at a fucking snail’s pace, finally passed out of their line of sight. Then she spun in his arms and buried her face against his chest. He’d had to grab her to keep her upright; the swift motion had obviously made her dizzy.
So much for a truce. He wanted people to pay.
Ignoring the people around them, he finished his beer and tossed the plastic cup into a nearby bin. “C’mon, little one. Let’s go home.”
He pulled her away from the crowd, and she came willingly, but then she stopped and looked up at him. She was obviously tired, and that fake smile was gone. “No. Anya and Kendall have their thing this afternoon. We can’t leave before that.”
His niece and nephew were both participating in the Kiddie Rodeo, which had events for very young kids, like Anya, who had her pony entered in an agility competition, and kids a little older, like Kendall, who was riding his gelding in an egg and spoon race. Older kids, up to age fourteen, did some more polished stunt and agility riding. It wasn’t really a rodeo, and Heath had no objection to the harmless and fun events.
He really needed to be there for the kids. But Gabe didn’t. “I’ll take you home, then come back out in time to see them.”
She frowned, and he didn’t know what he’d said. Then she told him: “You don’t want me there?”
Suddenly, she was sobbing.
At first, he was too surprised to know what to do. Gabe wasn’t closed-off like he was, but neither was she normally effusive with her emotions. He pulled her close. “Ah, Gabe, of course I want you there. I want you with me everywhere. Let’s go inside. We’ll sit and have a drink. Maybe get Reese to fix us something to eat.” Food was probably a good idea—she seemed more drunk than he’d even thought.
Still crying, she shook her head. “I’m not-not h-h-hungry!”
Keeping her under the shelter of his arms, her head pressed to his shirt, he led her into the Jack.
For the Fourth, Reese put up a temporary bar on the parking lot that served the Jack’s cheap pints and shots, so the saloon itself was dark and quiet. Reese, who had always hated Founders’ Week, stayed inside behind his real bar and served those people who wanted to get away from the frivolity for a spell.
His attention devoted to Gabe, Heath didn’t make note of anyone else inside. Vaguely, as he ushered her to the bar and sat her down, he recognized that the place was almost, but not completely, empty, but there was no one at the bar itself except Reese, leaning on his elbows, snacking from the garnish tray.
He stood up as Heath eased Gabe onto a stool. “Everything okay? What’s the matter, dumplin’?”
Reese called every woman he felt friendly affection for ‘dumplin’,’ but at this moment, in Heath’s heightened sense of protection and aggravation, the word sounded too familiar, and he glared at his friend.
Before he could say something, Gabe swiped at her cheeks, shook her head, and plastered that stiff smile onto her face. “I’m okay. Just…maybe I’m drunk.”
Reese reached across the ba
r and squeezed her arm. “This is gonna pass, Gabe. They’ll find something else to be mad about soon enough. You want a sandwich? Tuna on toast?”
“Okay, thanks.” Gabe sucked in and released the shaky breath that said she was finding her level.
“Make it two,” Heath said. “And water. Bourbon for me.”
“You got it.” After he’d poured their drinks, Reese went back to the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Gabe muttered when they were alone at the bar. “It just got to be too much for a second. It was dumb to drink today. My head is sideways.” She wasn’t slurring her words, but she was articulating them with a bit more precision than usual. Still, he felt reassured that she wasn’t too far gone.
Heath poured the glass of bourbon down his throat, and Gabe gave him a look that was almost wry. She had suggested more than once that he drank a lot. He had assured her that he drank only enough.
He returned a smile and rubbed his hand over her back. “It’s keeping me calm, little one. I’m steady. Worried about you, though.”
“I’m okay. I just needed a break from it. It’s hard to pretend like it doesn’t bother me.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. Tell you what—let’s stay in here until it’s time to go to the park for the kids. We’ll sit and eat, maybe have a lesson playing pool.” He wiggled his eyebrows, and she laughed—a true, full laugh—and leaned on his shoulder.
“Thank you. I love you.”
*****
Gabe breathed a sultry chuckle against his cheek and tipped her head, taking her lips from his. “If I’m ever going to learn this game, I think somebody else is going to have to teach me.”
With his hands grasping her hips, Heath rocked against her, letting her feel his need. She moaned, and the sound pulled its husky echo from his chest. “Anybody even offers, I’ll break their hands.”
“Tsk, tsk. So violent.” She smiled and brushed a finger over his bottom lip. He sucked it into his mouth and watched as her tongue peeked out in response and wet her lips.
After that one glass of water, Gabe had reverted to beer, and as she’d eased and found some enjoyment in the day, Heath was glad to keep them coming. Her eyes were heavy-lidded with drink and arousal. She was relaxed and happy. His cock strained against his jeans. He was just about beyond caring that they were in public. Technically, at least.
In the hour or so since they’d come into the shelter of the Jack, they’d had the place almost entirely to themselves, with the exceptions of a couple of tables across the room and the random stumbler-in seeking the restroom.
Denny Whitt sat alone at one of those tables, and had been since they’d come in, but Heath had decided to put anything but Gabe and his family out of his head for the rest of the day, so he tried hard to ignore him. After a couple more glasses of bourbon and his share of their pitcher of beer, he’d finally arrived at a place of not giving a weak fuck about Denham Whitt or any other rattlesnake in town.
Especially not with Gabe sitting on the side of the pool table, her legs around his hips.
“Damn, I want you so bad,” he murmured and bent down to kiss the spot just under her ear, the place where his lips never failed to make her pulse quicken, right where he could feel it happen. A faint scar crossed her throat, starting there and traveling almost to the front. She no longer covered it with the black leather choker; the only necklace she ever wore now was her mother’s crucifix.
Her arms twisted around his head and held him in place, and she leaned back until her shoulders touched the table, bringing him down with her.
His erection was pressed so hard against her pubic bone that he thought he might end up bruised, and he could tell—by the way her chest heaved into his with every inhale, the way each exhale left on a whimper, the way her legs were locked around him—that she would let him do whatever he wanted. Whether she’d forgotten where they were or just didn’t care, she was wholeheartedly open to him. She was naturally private and reserved, so Heath knew it was the alcohol at work.
He’d wanted her to relax, and she finally had. Too much.
He knew he was drunk, too, when he realized how close he was to taking advantage of that fact.
Groaning, he backed off, forcing himself to ignore her whimpering, writhing, ready body. He reached back and took hold of her arms, prying them from around his neck. She fought him, wearing a pouty little frown, but she didn’t even sit back up.
“We gotta stop. We’ll pick this up when we’re home, okay?” In fact, he should take her home now; she was too drunk to deal with the rest of the day. But Heath did not drive if he’d had more than two drinks in the past two hours. He felt okay, just warm and loose, but his lack of restraint only moments before told him he was not in full control.
He’d had a vivid and agonizing object lesson on the evils of driving drunk.
Still standing at the side of the pool table, Gabe’s legs still wrapped around him as she lay on the red felt like an offering, Heath pulled out his phone and texted his brother: At the Jack. Drunk. Need a ride home. ASAP.
Logan had main charge of the ranch work these days, and he always kept his phone on and close. He texted back in seconds: 5 minutes. All OK?
He looked down at Gabe. Her eyes were closed, and her legs had gone slack around him; she seemed to have fallen asleep. Yeah. Thanks, he texted back.
It was his intention to sit with her and let her sleep until Logan showed up, then carry her out to his truck. He unhooked her heels and put her legs down, letting them dangle against the side of the table. Then he turned, meaning to snag a chair and pull it close.
Brandon Black stood not two feet behind him.
He took a protective step backward, toward Gabe, and set a hand on her leg. That made no sense; Black had never been violent to women, and even in the deepest hole of his grief and rage, Heath had recognized that what Black had done was negligence and cowardice, not malice, but still he felt a mammoth surge of protective instinct push through his veins, so big and so fast that he thought he might have literally swelled.
“You want to get the holy fuck out of my sight right now, Brandon. Right. Now.”
Black didn’t move, except to weave a little on his feet. “Won’t you ever let up, Heath? I made a mistake. I live with it every day.”
He was drunk out of his head, and his tongue had clocked out for the day some time before. If Heath hadn’t known him so well and been around him drunk so often, he might not have understood any word of what he’d said.
“If you don’t back off NOW, I will break your jaw for you again.” His fists were ready. He had a mountain of stress and anger he’d been standing on; beating the shit out of Black again would do a lot to clear it out of his way.
“I don’t need to be friends. I know I can’t ask that. But you won’t even take my apology.”
Heath cocked his arm back, but Reese was there, grabbing on, holding him back. “C’mon. Not here again. Take a breath and let it go. It’s the Fourth, man.”
“Brandon. Come on, son. Come sit back down.” Denny Whitt had shown up in the middle of things. He stood just in front of Brandon, facing Heath. “Nobody wants to turn Independence Day into a melee, right?”
With Reese still holding him back, Heath watched as Whitt took Black’s arm and led him to his table on the other side of the room. There were baskets of food and empty glasses at the table, as if those two had been just hanging out together all afternoon. Heath had been so wrapped up in Gabe he hadn’t noticed Black come in.
He always noticed when Black was near.
“He’s calling him ‘son’? What are they doing together?” Heath asked, not expecting an answer.
“Whitt gave him a job,” Reese answered. “They’ve been in a couple of times, past week or so.”
Yanking his arm from his friend’s grasp, Heath wheeled around. “And you didn’t fucking tell me?”
Reese barely blinked at Heath’s outburst. “Buddy, you have been on edge worse since the Moondancer thin
g than you’ve been the past couple of years. And I gotta say, you ain’t been the picture of calm in a damn long time. So sue me for not wantin’ to add to your reasons to lose your shit.”
Logan came in just then, and he noticed Whitt and Black sitting together, but he didn’t show any surprise. He came over and cocked his eyebrow at Heath and Reese.
“Somethin’ wrong? You two look about ready to go at it.”
With a final scowl at his friend, Heath shook it off. “No. We’re good. I need to get Gabe home.”
Logan turned that cocked eyebrow to the pool table. “Yeah, I’d say you do.”
*****
Heath carried his passed-out girl out of the Jack. The air was redolent of horse manure—as usual, many of the beasts of the parade had left steaming mementos behind. The parade was long over, and the celebration had moved to the park, so there were far fewer people around, though a small crowd had decided that the cheap shots and pints were the highlight of the event.
He wanted to let her stretch out on the back seat with her head on his lap, so he stood at the side of the truck while Logan cleaned his crap out of the back and tossed it into his truck box.
As Logan climbed in behind the wheel, Heath lay Gabe on the seat. He was about to get in himself, when that radar for Black, which almost never missed, blipped, and he swiveled his head as he climbed into the truck.
Black was shuffling across the parking lot.
Heath froze and watched as Black fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.
Heath slid back out and stood at the open truck door.
From behind the wheel, his brother said, “Heath?”
Black’s truck honked, and again, and again, and the lights flashed as Black pushed the locking button on his fob. Finally, he got it right, the lights flashed again, and he pawed at the door handle until the driver’s door opened.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 17
