Here to Stay

by Debra Webb

  He smelled good, like leather and rain. Reluctantly, she surrendered and allowed her gaze to wander over his profile while he stared into his brandy. Every feature spoke of strength and beauty. She had never met another man like Nathan Blackrope. And no one else had ever made her feel the way just looking at him did. Everything about him appealed to her senses. The way his clothes fit his lean, sinewy body. His long, silky black hair. The heat in his eyes that spoke of passion and fire. She sighed. But it was not to be.

  “I should go,” Nathan muttered then stood. He walked to the bar and set down his glass.

  Disappointed that he was leaving so soon, she deposited her glass on the table and followed him to the front door, the trusty lantern in her right hand. “Thank you. It was very sweet of you to bring me a light.”

  He shrugged into his duster and took his hat in his hands. He offered a strained smile. “It was just one of those spontaneous things, you know…” His voice tailed off as his gaze dropped to her mouth and then jerked back up to her eyes.

  Paige’s heart leapt in her chest when she recognized the hunger in his eyes. Need radiated from his entire body. She could almost feel the vibrations. The realization rattled her. She felt breathless. Nathan wanted her.

  He settled the hat on his dark head. “Good night.”

  Before Paige could catch her breath, he had opened the door and walked across the porch. She stood, rooted in the doorway.

  “Good night, Nathan,” she called to his retreating back. He paused on the bottom step and turned around. The way he looked at her had her feeling weak and suddenly too far away. Rain dripped from the edge of his Stetson, but still he stood there…looking at her like no one else had ever looked at her, with a need and a hunger that dwarfed everything else into utter insignificance. Rivulets of water slipped down his rain-slicked duster. She wanted to run to him, but she couldn’t move. She prayed he would run back to her, but he remained perfectly still—motionless in the falling rain.

  A blaze of lightning flashed through the dark sky, and Paige saw in his eyes, for just the briefest fraction of a second, the love that had once bound her to him. Before her heart took another beat she sensed that that bond was as strong and powerful as if it had never been broken. But suddenly the spell shattered. Nathan turned and strode to his truck. Mute with regret, she watched him drive away.

  Could he—no ,no he couldn’t. Don’t build yourself up for this kind of letdown, girl. It was just physical. A man and a woman with a past getting a little too close for comfort. That’s all it could be.

  Paige shivered as the cool spring night swept away the warmth he had elicited. She closed her eyes and inhaled the last of his lingering scent. Her body echoed with need. She wanted him so much she felt like crying. Could she have had Nathan tonight? Just one last time. Before she told him the things that would forever change his feelings toward her. Now she would never know. Why couldn’t she—just this once—take what she wanted and to heck with the consequences? Live for today and forget about tomorrow.

  She grasped the lantern, sucked in a breath and hit the darkness and rain in a dead run. With no neighbors for as far as the eye could see and no traffic on the long stretch of country road, Paige dashed through the night with no worry of being seen in the now rain-soaked nightshirt. She didn’t slow down…didn’t look back. She ran through the wet grass and across the blacktop, all the way to his house.

  Paige shivered when she at last stopped at the bottom of the steps that led to his porch. She took a moment to catch her breath. The rain had decreased to a slow drizzle. A car she didn’t recognize sat next to Nathan’s truck. Maybe it belonged to one of his ranch hands. She shrugged and bound up the porch steps two at a time. Light poured from the windows. The power was back on. She glanced back at Robert’s house. Two rectangles of light glowed from her bedroom windows. She smiled. She could chase away the darkness now.

  Paige set the lantern down and swiped at the water running down her face. Before she reached Nathan’s door, she came to an abrupt halt. Through the window she saw Celine, her long arms draped around Nathan’s neck. His duster had been tossed on the floor and Celine was unbuttoning his shirt. Anger and bitterness welling inside her, Paige swallowed back the tears she would not allow to fall and turned away. What had she expected? The hunger she had seen in his eyes wasn’t exclusively for her—any warm body would do. Just like before. Paige had gone back to Memphis and Nathan had quickly replaced her. She had been a fool to believe anything else.

  Silently, she slipped back into the darkness.

  ~*~

  “Celine, you are going home,” Nathan insisted for the third time. “This isn’t going to happen.” He pulled her exploring hands from his chest and urged her toward the door.

  “I don’t get it, Nathan,” she whined breathlessly. “I thought we would be good together.”

  “Just go home, Celine. I don’t appreciate you showing up uninvited like this.” He was quickly losing patience with the pushy female. Asking her out had proven to be a big mistake. Now she wouldn’t leave him alone.

  “Fine,” she huffed. “Obviously you’ve got big problems, Nathan.” She jerked on her translucent raincoat and pinned him with a loathsome glare.

  “Bigger than you know, Celine,” he agreed as he ushered her out the door.

  “Don’t expect me to come back the next time you get lonesome,” she called back over her shoulder as she stamped down the steps.

  Nathan shook his head. The gentleman in him wouldn’t let him close the door until he had seen her safely in her car. Celine spun away in a spray of gravel and mud. Nathan flipped off his porch light and started to close the door. It was then that he noticed the lantern.

  The air rushed from his lungs.

  His gut wrenched when he realized what must have happened. Paige. He sagged against the door frame and closed his eyes with a frustrated groan.

  Paige had followed him home.

  Chapter Six

  Paige paced the length of sidewalk in front of Calvin’s house once more. She ignored the stares bestowed upon her by Calvin’s neighbors. She looked as out of place in this neighborhood as Calvin would look on her father’s front lawn in Central Gardens. Looks of curiosity and disapproval stopped bothering her long ago. Between her father’s condemning glances and other people’s curiosity about Jesse’s heritage, Paige had received more than her share of stares.

  She replayed the telephone conversation she had gotten from Myers over and over in her head. Why would Calvin take off with two known felons? It didn’t make sense. The kid had kept his nose clean until this drug possession incident and Paige still thought the whole incident smelled a little fishy. Calvin didn’t do drugs. Her instincts couldn’t be that wrong.

  Pacing in the other direction, she shook her head. Someone wanted to get Calvin in trouble. Someone who stood to gain by putting him between a rock and a hard place. Paige knew Myers was working double time to bring down one of the biggest drug dealers in Memphis. There had to be a connection. Myers seemed to think one existed. And he was too smart to waste his time chasing dead ends.

  She still couldn’t believe that Myers actually had one of Calvin’s neighbors keeping an eye on him. Winning his case would mean a tremendous career boost for the newest addition to the DA’s office. Obviously the man intended to cover all the bases to ensure a victory.

  The breeze shifted and Paige shivered. The image of Nathan standing in the drizzling rain distracted her concentration. She hadn’t left the lantern on his porch as a message, but its presence had obviously alerted him that she had been there. He had called a dozen times and when it finally became clear to him that she had no intention of answering, he had driven over to pound on her door. Nathan had called her name over and over. She closed her eyes and fought the memory. She had huddled in her darkened room, staring out the open window and crying tears she had sworn she would never again shed.

  Before Nathan had gotten back in his truck, he had s
tood there—in the rain—staring up at her window. He couldn’t possibly see her in the darkness, but she could see him. Every flash of lightning had revealed a clear picture of rain pelting down against him.

  The roar of a car’s engine jerked Paige from her tortured thoughts. A cherry-red Mustang skidded to a stop on the street in front of Calvin’s house. Darkly tinted windows concealed the vehicle’s occupants. The powerful engine purred and then revved as the passenger-side door opened. Loud, thumping music vibrated, filling the entire neighborhood with its beat.

  Paige watched with growing apprehension as a pair of high-top sneaker-clad feet settled to the ground before the owner of those feet raised himself from the car’s interior. Even with the mirrored sunglasses and the baseball cap pulled down low, Paige recognized Calvin. She released an unsteady breath and held her ground at the bottom of the steps leading to his front door. He ambled up the sidewalk in her direction. The Mustang sped away in a squeal of tires and a scream of fuel-injected horsepower.

  Calvin jerked off his sunglasses and glared at her. “Miss P., what are you doing here?” He shot an anxious look right to left.

  “I’m checking up on you, Calvin,” she told him bluntly. She crossed her arms over her chest and fixed the six foot, eighteen-year-old with a firm look. Calvin towered over her in his baggy, low-slung jeans and black T-shirt that displayed a large ghostlike X, but Paige felt nothing that resembled fear. Right now the only thing coursing through her veins was irritation.

  “Why you checking up on me? I ain’t done nothing.” He clipped his sunglasses on the neck of his shirt and then propped his hands on his slim hips.

  “Calvin, you promised me that I could count on you.” She matched his defiant stance.

  “I told you I ain’t done nothing wrong, just took a ride that’s all.” He defended himself with typical adolescent arrogance.

  “Who’d you take a ride with?” She looked him straight in the eye. If he lied she would know it. Calvin wasn’t very good at hiding his true feelings.

  He dropped his gaze to the cracked sidewalk. “You don’t want to know,” he mumbled, defeated.

  “Calvin, if you need help, I’m your attorney. I’m the person to ask,” she spoke firmly, gently.

  “You don’t want no part of this, Miss Paige.” He shook his bowed head in defeat. “I don’t want no part of it either, but I ain’t got no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice, Calvin.”

  Calvin lifted his gaze back to hers. “They gonna hurt me bad if I talk. But if I don’t talk the DA won’t drop the charges against me.” Hopelessness registered in his eyes, his voice, even in his posture.

  “Myers made you an offer?” Paige asked in disbelief.

  Calvin nodded.

  She expelled a hot curse under her breath. If the charges stood against Calvin, he would lose the athletic scholarship he had been awarded for college. If he talked to Myers he would lose something much more personal, maybe his life. “Do you know something that important?”

  Calvin glanced nervously from side to side again. “Somebody seems to think so.”

  “Those two guys who gave you a ride, did they threaten you?” Paige held her breath as she waited for his response.

  Calvin slowly nodded.

  She thought about her options, only one seemed feasible at the moment. “Next week is spring break, right?” Calvin nodded again. “Okay. I want you to pack up a few things, you’re taking a little vacation. Call your boss at Pizza Hut and tell him you’ve got the flu.”

  Calvin frowned. “I ain’t sick.”

  “Do it, Calvin,” she ordered. He reluctantly obeyed. While Calvin packed what he would need for a few days, Paige called his grandmother. Twenty minutes later, they were on their way to Trinity.

  Steam practically billowed from her ears as she considered that Myers had made her client an offer behind her back. He would regret that move. Not only had he behaved in an unethical manner, he had endangered her client’s life—a boy barely old enough to be treated as an adult in the eyes of the law. Somehow Paige had to keep Calvin safe until they could sort all of this out.

  ~*~

  Once Paige had gotten Calvin settled into Robert’s guest room, there had been plenty of time to take a long, relaxing ride. Calvin had never been on a horse, and the kid had thoroughly enjoyed himself. With dusk beginning to settle, they still had time to groom the horses before dinner.

  “One of the things you always do for your horse after a ride is give her a good brushing and rubdown,” Paige told Calvin. He watched closely as she smoothed the brush over Ariel’s broad back.

  “I do the same on Moonbeam?”

  “That’s right,” she said with a smile. The excitement in his eyes reaffirmed the decision she had made in bringing Calvin to her uncle’s ranch.

  Calvin took a brush and stroked the horse’s velvety white back. “Like this?” he asked, looking to Paige for approval. He brushed with long, smooth strokes just as she’d shown him.

  “That’s right,” Paige praised. “Talk to him while you work,” she added, continuing to groom the mare.

  “Talk to the horse?” Calvin asked, he scrunched up his face in disbelief. “You gotta be kidding? This ain’t Mr. Ed, you know.”

  “It’s common practice, Calvin.” Paige smiled. “Some people believe that if you talk just right to a horse it can understand what you’re saying.”

  “Do you believe that?” His cinnamon-colored gaze connected with hers. His hand stilled on the horse’s back.

  Paige considered his question for a moment. She had always talked to the horses without stopping to ask herself what she believed. She had simply followed Robert’s example. Robert treated the animals as if they were human. The image of Nathan whispering in Midnight’s ear and the horse’s ardent response leaped to mind. Her nerves jangled as she recalled the low, gentle sound of his voice as he spoke softly to the animal.

  “Of course she believes it.”

  Paige jerked her head around as Nathan’s words echoed through her soul, the sound resurrecting the emotions she wanted to deny. He entered the barn with slow, deliberate strides. Paige saw Calvin stiffen as Nathan moved out of the shadows and into a shaft of light. He made an intimidating picture. Tall, dark, and dangerous-looking.

  Nathan gave Calvin a thorough appraisal before shifting his gaze to her. Her pulse reacted instantly. Paige summoned the image of Celine to mind to counter the impact his presence had on her senses.

  “Where the hell have you been, Paige?” Nathan demanded when he stopped, close enough to loom over her. The fire in his eyes and the irritation in his voice belied his casual stance; thumbs looped in his front pockets, his weight shifted to one leg.

  “Where I go and what I do is none of your business, Nathan,” she told him with a smile on her lips and a bite in her words. She turned her back to him and continued to brush Ariel.

  “I thought we were going to at least act like friends.”

  “You already have a friend.”

  “Dammit, Paige, listen to me,” he ground out.

  She ignored him.

  “You don’t understand. I tried to explain last night, but you wouldn’t answer the telephone or the door.”

  Paige whirled to face him. She had to retreat a step to keep from being breast to chest with him. Ariel nickered in protest and sidled away. “What’s to explain? I know what I saw.”

  “You don’t know—” Nathan began hotly, but Calvin darted between them, interrupting.

  “What’s your problem, Tonto?” he asked in that belligerent tone teenagers were famous for. His posture reflected his streetwise instincts and warned that he would fight if he had to. He glared up at Nathan, who stood two inches taller, with no fear.

  Paige placed her hand on Calvin’s rigid forearm and moved to his side. “It’s okay, Calvin.” She took one look at the clenched fists hanging at Nathan’s sides and that lethal look in his eyes and quickly slipped between the two angry
men.

  “Who the hell is he?” Nathan demanded.

  “What’s it to you, Chief?” Calvin asked in his cockiest tone, reaching over Paige and jabbing Nathan in the chest with a long, mahogany finger.

  A muscle twitched in Nathan’s jaw as he jerked his gaze from Calvin to Paige. She doubted she would ever forget the collection of expressions she saw flash across his face in that next instant; surprise, outrage, disbelief, restraint.

  “Nathan Blackrope, meet Calvin Jefferson.” Paige held Nathan’s gaze, trying to diffuse the emotionally charged situation with her calmness.

  “This dude a friend of yours, Miss Paige?” Calvin looked at her in astonishment and then back at Nathan in aversion. “He’s kind of mean looking if you ask me.”

  Paige had to bite her lip to prevent a grin. The urge to grin dissipated immediately when she heard Nathan’s ragged intake of breath. “Yes, Calvin, he’s a friend.” She ushered Calvin toward the barn door. “Why don’t you go have a cola or something? And maybe start dinner. I’ll join you in a little while.”

  Calvin gave Nathan a cool once over before he sauntered out of the barn. Paige released the breath she had been holding when the kid disappeared. “What do you want?” She glared at Nathan with all the anger she had suppressed since seeing Celine in his arms the night before.

  “Who is that little—?”

  “Calvin is a client of mine and a friend,” she interrupted coolly, “if that’s any of your business. He’s going to be spending a few days with me.” Paige walked back to the mare she had been grooming.

  “You’re letting him stay here?”

  “Yes.” She turned her attention to brushing Ariel, her wide strokes rustling in the tense silence.

  Nathan stood behind her, his body so close she could feel his simmering agitation. “It wasn’t what it looked like,” he aid quietly, though not completely composed. “I didn’t invite Celine over. She just—”