by Alison Kent
“No, this isn’t like that.” First of all, because she wasn’t a hooker, but more importantly, because falling in love meant losing everything else in her life that was important.
“Then what’s it like?” he asked, pulling off his hat, plowing rows through his hair with his fingers before settling his hat back in place. “And, yes, I want to know, and I’m listening, because I’m sorry. I really can’t figure out what we’re doing.”
Simple. “We’re having sex.”
“That’s it?”
“Do you want more?” They had to resolve this now. She couldn’t deal with revisiting it every time they touched.
He rubbed at his eyes, his frustration as obvious as hers. “No, it’s just—”
“Good, because I don’t either.” There. Black and white. As clear as it could possibly be. “I’ve got a business that takes up all of my time. It provides my living, so it has to be my priority.”
He crossed his arms, leaned against her open door. “We can play without getting serious, you know. And I think with our schedules we could both use the distraction. At least I could.”
“Then you’d better define what you mean by play. Just so I’m clear.” And why wouldn’t he drop it? Why was he making this so hard?
“Shit. I don’t know. Dinner. Dancing. A movie. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie on DVD. Or the last time I took a date to see one.”
She held his gaze as she hopped into the truck’s cab, thinking she could put an end to this by driving away, realizing too late he still had her keys. “You don’t have to wine and dine me to get in my pants.”
He stared at his feet, kicked the toe of his boot at the dirt, brought his head up and looked at her from beneath the brim of his hat. “What if I want to wine and dine you? Show you a good time?”
She took in the sun-darkened skin in the hollow of his throat, the scruff covering his chin and his cheeks, the deep-set grooves at the corners of his eyes. Then she took in his earnestness, his vulnerability.
The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. “Trust me. You’ve been showing me a very good time.”
“But it’s not all about you,” he said, still holding her gaze, his own searching, probing. Daring.
His words took her aback, sending an uncomfortable shiver down her spine. “You’re not having fun?”
“Hell, yeah, I’m having fun.”
But… He didn’t elaborate, even after she waited, so she asked, “Do you want to watch a movie?”
After several tense seconds, he nodded. “I think I do. And I want popcorn.”
“Popcorn. Okay.” She took a deep breath, draping an arm on the steering wheel. “What kind of movies do you like?”
“Movies that don’t star Julia Roberts. No chick flicks or romantic comedies or sick girls who die. What was that one? Steel Magnolias? I can’t even tell you how many times I walked in on my mother bawling at that one.”
She laughed. “She’s done suspense, you know. And psychological thrillers.”
“Really?”
“Erin Brockovich? Sleeping with the Enemy?”
Dax shook his head. “How about some Quentin Tarantino?”
“No gratuitous blood and guts.”
“Fine. You pick the movie. Just make sure there’s no Julia Roberts.”
Oh, please. “No Julia. No blood and guts.”
“Is this what they call a compromise? Because I’d heard it was a great way to deal with women,” he said, and then smiled when she rolled her eyes, his expression full of good times and bad times and really bad good times.
For an extra long moment she remained speechless, her body sizzling, her sex needy. She looked up at him then, nodding, hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake by taking this leap of faith. It frightened her to think that she was. Frightened her to think she’d have to call this off if she was.
She didn’t want to call this off, and that frightened her most of all. “I need to go.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you soon?”
“Yeah,” he said, scrubbing at his jaw. “Though we’re going to have to figure out how to manage popcorn and a movie with our schedules.”
Was he second-guessing this date thing already? “Sunday nights are pretty slow. I can’t take off the whole night, but if you come over once you’re done for the day, I can go into work for close.”
“Control freak?”
“I’m my own business manager. If that makes me a control freak, I cop to it gladly.”
The look he gave her was equal parts heartbreak and exhaustion. “Maybe you could come over here and manage the ranch, turn it around like you did the Buck Off Bar.”
“I thought Faith was managing things for you.”
“Faith is pinching our pennies. We’re on our own after that.”
She’d listened to their dinner conversation, heard more frustration than joy or pride. “Just the three of you? Doing it all?”
He shook his head. “We’ve got Diego Cruz and his brother-in-law part time. Besides Boone and I know what we’re doing. We’ve been ranching all our lives.”
“Just not in Crow Hill.” Where the sun baked the land and the men who worked it, and dried up hopes and dreams along with creek beds and all things green.
As if reading her mind, Dax sighed. “Just not in Crow Hill. But we listened for years to Dave Dalton telling us how things should be done. That may not seem like much, looking at this place now, but he was a rancher to the bone.”
He looked around, shaking his head as he took in the view. “I don’t know what happened here, but I’m gonna blame bad luck and Mother Nature. No one can wrangle either one worth a shit, and more often than not, they plot and plan and gang up on a man.” He focused his gaze on something in the distance, if not all the way in the past. “It’s a tough life. But it’s the only one worth living.”
Unaccountably moved, she cleared her throat and lifted her hand to his cheek. “You surprise me, Dax Campbell. You’re a lot deeper than you let on.”
He waggled both brows. “Does that mean we can go steady?”
“It means you get your date.”
“What if I want another?”
Too much, too soon. “We’ll see.”
“We make time for one, we can make time again.”
She took a different tack. “And what are we going to do? Because I can’t think of anything that won’t require leaving town.”
“Ah, I’m the man,” he said jabbing an index finger into his chest. “You leave the date planning to me.”
Oh, good Lord. “That sounds awfully male chauvinist.”
“Just taking the bull by the horns, baby. Taking the bull by the horns.”
THIRTEEN
“THAT DIDN’T LOOK like a host just walking a guest to her car.”
Still thinking over his conversation with Arwen, Dax wasn’t exactly ready to get into anything with his sister. He dropped a kiss on Darcy’s head where she stood at the back door, and returned to the table to graze. “What, not only are you the lawyer I was supposed to be, you’re a spy, too?”
“I’m nosy.”
“Same thing.”
“If I were a spy, I’d be reporting on you to the parents,” she said, following him across the kitchen and wrapping her hands around the top rung of a chair.
He sat, and his jaw grew taut. “Do they want you to?”
“Mom’s hinted at it but won’t come right out and ask. Just wonders if there’s any news from town. And The Campbell just guzzles his Glenlivet and snores.”
The Campbell. That always made him laugh, Darcy taking their Scottish heritage so seriously here in the middle of the wild wild west. He was surprised she hadn’t had them all wearing kilts instead of jeans and spurs.
“I’m still waiting.”
“For what?” Gnawing on the end of a rib, he gave her a lazy glance.
She circled th
e table, turning the chair next to him sideways to sit. “What’s going on with you and Arwen?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, continued to gnaw.
“But you’re sleeping together.”
He nodded. “Kinda came out of nowhere.”
“I knew it,” she said, punching his shoulder and laughing. “Bet Mom would have a coronary if she found out.”
That drew a snort. There was some really bad joke here about dipping his wick in the wrong Poole, but he was too tired to make it. “No reason for her to.”
“Is your affair a big secret?”
Good question. Better question. Was it an affair? Or just wick dipping?
It had been like pulling teeth to get Arwen to agree to a date. And why the hell was he insisting on buying the cow when he was getting the milk for free?
He reached for another rib, thinking not for the first time that he was off his game. He couldn’t decide if it was the years away or the coming back to blame. “The boys know. Now you know. Can’t think of a reason anyone else needs to.”
“Do you like her?”
He gave Darcy a side-eyed frown. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean? I hope I like her. I get naked with her.”
His sister rolled her eyes. “Yes, she’s hot. Even I can see she’s hot. Every guy in town knows she’s hot. I doubt many wouldn’t like to get naked with her. But getting naked with someone and liking that someone are not mutually exclusive, as I’m sure you learned during the Dalton Gang’s younger years.”
“What do you mean, every guy in town knows she’s hot?” And then he remembered Bubba Taylor and his crew eyeballing Arwen at Lasko’s. A memory that had him feeling mean.
“You’re not really that dense, are you? Or wait.” Darcy leaned closer, her eyes wide as she studied his face. “Are you jealous?”
He shooed her away. “No, I’m not jealous. I’m in her bed. They’re not. Why should I be?”
“Because they want to be there?”
“Wait,” he said, changing the subject. “What did you say about our younger years?”
“That you three boinked like indiscriminate bunnies.”
“Huh.” And then he went silent because there wasn’t much to say. She was right. He and Boone and Casper had made a lot of bets while doing a lot of drinking, and bedding the girls they put on their lists didn’t have much to do with liking them.
He’d been a hell of a jerk. He hadn’t been alone in it, but that didn’t relieve him of the responsibility of owning up to it. Which he supposed he’d be doing on a regular basis—whether he liked it or not—if he didn’t keep his hat brim pulled low.
He tossed his last rib bone back in the pan, licked his fingers, and wiped them clean on his thighs, then rubbed his gut that was overstuffed and aching. “I guess we should get this trash out of here.”
But Darcy ignored him, picking at loose cotton threads puffing out of a crack in the tablecloth. “What are you going to do with the house?”
“What do you mean?”
“Casper said y’all haven’t felt right being in here. That it feels too much like trespassing.”
He let that settle, looking from his sister to the sideboard and Tess’s collection of salt and pepper shakers covering the surface. He knew if he opened the top drawer, he’d find the expensive silverware she’d never used but polished every other Saturday.
If he opened the door on the left, he’d find clipped recipes she kept meaning to try filed in big black binders. One for cookies, one for cakes, another for pies because she knew he and Boone and Casper all had a thing for desserts. But she’d kept baking their favorites instead, and that had been just fine with them.
The door on the right was where Dave had stored the bottles of Jack Daniel’s and Jose Cuervo he rarely had occasion to use, so he never noticed how watered down the booze had become over time. Dax leaned an elbow on the table, rubbed at his jaw. He wasn’t sure it was trespassing keeping them out of the house as much as missing what they’d never known they had.
They certainly knew it now.
“Do you want help going through the Daltons’ things?” Darcy asked, nudging him back to today. “I’m happy to do it. Nora Stokes might take some of the furniture on consignment. I’m pretty sure several pieces are antiques.”
Nope. “We’re not selling the furniture.”
“Okay. What about their personal effects?
He sat back, scrubbed both hands through his hair. “I don’t want to talk about this, Darcy. Not right now.”
“I get that, Dax, but I’m in a bind.”
“How so?”
“Because I really need a place to stay. I thought if it wouldn’t be a problem, I could use the house for a while, maybe help y’all sort through things, make the house yours so you’d be comfortable here. The bunkhouse is a wreck.”
“It’s worse than that,” he said, before his mind kicked back to something else. “Wait. Why do you need a place to stay? The folks boot you out for consorting with the enemy?”
“Not exactly,” she said, looking away, her mouth twisting.
Now this was interesting. “You crossed the big man?”
She leaned forward, her arms on her thighs as she worried one of her nails. “Remember the other morning with Henry Lasko? When I asked him to come to the office to talk to me?” Dax nodded and Darcy went on. “The Campbell heard about it and gave me my walking papers.”
What the hell? “He fired you? Over that?”
“Not really. Not yet. But he threatened to.” She looked up, shrugged. “And so I walked.”
“Darcy, shit.”
“Yeah. Shit.
“So, what? Are you done there? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure I could go back. But…”
Ah, the elephant in the room. Or in this case, in clan Campbell. “You don’t want to go back. You’re there because I’m not.”
“Someone in the family has to take over the family firm.”
He didn’t think it was possible to dislike his father more than he did, but the old man screwing over Darcy had Dax’s blood pressure rising. “What about his partner? I heard he has a new hotshot in the office.”
Darcy shrugged, looked down, went back to picking at the crack in the time-and-sun-dried tablecloth. “Greg’s not a partner, though not for lack of putting in the hours. Odds are he’ll be The Campbell’s choice, even though I’m family and he’s not. For one thing, I’m a woman. For another—”
“You’re not me.”
“Sad, but true.”
“Hey, now. It’s not so bad being me.”
Darcy’s only response to that was an arched brow.
“C’mon. Give your worn-out brother a break.” When she still said nothing, he added, “I hear I look really good in jeans.”
“Jesus, Dax,” she said, punching him again. “Bad enough I have to hear that crap from other women.”
“Yeah?” He rubbed at his shoulder. “Women talk about me?”
“You’ve got Arwen. What does it matter?”
“Just keeping my options open,” he said, the words choking him like a big fat lie.
“You’re a pig. Look what she did for you.” She waved her hand over the spread of leftovers needing to be stored in the fridge. “She sure didn’t bring all this out here for me or the boys.”
Which reminded him. “Why are you driving Josh Lasko’s truck?”
“My car’s at the office. I wasn’t in the mood to go back.”
“Hmm. So, you’re out a job, out a vehicle, and out a place to live.” He reached for her hand, lifted her arm into the air. “Ding, ding. We have a winner. At least I have a piece-of-shit ranch to my name.”
Growling, she jerked her arm away. “Like I said. You’re a pig.”
God, he had missed this girl. Missed her sassy mouth. Missed her way-too-solid punches. Missed her growing up. And that was a shame he’d be a long time getting over. “Is that any way to
talk to the brother you’ve just asked to get you out of a jam?”
“Does that mean I can stay?”
He feigned a careless shrug. “I guess it can’t hurt.”
“Seriously?”
“As long as the boys don’t object.” He raised both palms, staving her off before she landed in his lap. “But don’t touch anything. Not until I check with them.”
And then he hooked a boot around the leg of the table, bracing himself as she launched into his arms.
“You’re the best, Dax. The absolute best.”
Yeah, the best at abandoning a sixteen-year-old girl to fend for herself in a family where selfishness seemed to be the one Campbell trait he’d embraced. “Not a pig? Not an ass?”
“Not today,” she said, taking his face in one hand, squeezing as she dropped a kiss to his cheek, then exhaling and letting him bear her weight as if she’d been waiting for sixteen years for someone to lean on.
At that moment she could’ve called him any part of any animal’s anatomy and he would’ve felt like a king.
FOURTEEN
ARMS CROSSED ON the corral’s top rail, one boot braced on the bottom, Dax looked out at the wide-open spaces and watched the shadows shift with the setting sun. The last of the rays cut across the prairie, doing their best to convince him there were greens and yellows out there when all he saw was brown.
He wasn’t that easily fooled. The light was a trick, playing with his imagination, making him remember what this place had looked like before Mother Nature had fucked the Daltons, leaving them with little more than a penny to their name. Now it was his penny, his name, Casper’s, Boone’s.
They were broke as old horses, poorer than dirt, strapped like beggars needing pencils. But hey, they owned a ranch. Acres and acres of fenced land, horses and cows, a flatbed truck and a tractor, a bunkhouse and a barn. Both of those could use tearing down and rebuilding. And a whole lot of the fencing wire was hanging on creosote posts approaching the end of their days. Then there was the big rambling house they’d left sitting empty since settling in.
Nothing about this homecoming was turning out like he’d expected. Not that he’d thought he’d come back to a ticker-tape parade, but neither had he expected… brown. From where he stood, things were looking pretty well screwed. For him, for Darcy. For the boys. Arwen was about the only one who seemed to have it together, and that in itself was fucked up.
