by Becky McGraw
Tina groaned, and thought about ignoring whoever it was. She sure as hell didn’t want to see anyone. She glanced at the clock hanging beside the refrigerator. And she still had thirty minutes left to party. The knock came again and Tina sat up on the couch, knocking over the trash can.
“Tina, I know you’re in there, I saw your car in the parking lot!” Dean shouted and knocked harder.
Oh, Lord. The absolute last person in the world she wanted to see. She ran her hands through her hair, knowing it was a bird’s nest. She had seen it this morning in the mirror and almost scared herself, but was too exhausted to run a comb through it. Screw it. He needed to see this. Maybe then he’d leave her the hell alone for good.
What the hell could he want anyway?
Dean had pretty much told her she was just a good fuck to him, that he couldn’t give a shit less about her. The pathetic way he’d said goodbye to her when she left the ranch said it all. The fact that he hadn’t even bothered to come a hundred yards in the rain to see her at the bunkhouse for two days after they had sex should have been her first clue to how he felt. But not Tina. She had been stupid enough to hold out hope, until he gave her that flip of his hand that he tried to pass off as a wave on her way out the door.
She had nothing to say to the man. Anger replaced her sorrow as she stood and crunched her way across the chips on the floor to the front door. She slid the chain free, flipped open the deadbolt, then opened the door and Dean’s fist almost knocked on her forehead.
He dropped his hand to his side, and had the gall to smile at her. “You look like shit, buttercup,” he said cheerfully.
Tina shoved the door closed in his face, but he put his foot between the door and the jamb. “Open the door, Tina.’
Well, with his big ass boot in the door, she wasn’t going to be able to close it, so she huffed out a sigh then walked back to the sofa. The movie had ended, so she flicked the TV off and threw the remote onto the coffee table, then plopped back on the sofa and brushed the chip crumbs off of her feet, before she curled them under her. She jerked a pillow from beside her and hugged it to her chest. Dean pushed the door open and walked inside then shut it behind him. Her eyes took in his cowboy hat and the dress shirt and tie he wore, and her heart tried to do a little wiggle in her chest. She slapped the shit out of it and said, “What do you want?”
His eyes didn’t meet hers, they traveled around the room. The smug bastard evidently passed judgment that it looked like a nuclear wasteland, because when he finally looked at her his lip curled a little. “Good God, honey. This place is a mess.”
“It looks exactly how I feel. I’m sorry it doesn’t meet your expectations. I won’t be living here much longer, so I’m not too worried. Now what the hell do you want?” she asked shortly, hugging the pillow tighter.
“Hope asked me to come by and check on you,” he said evenly.
It figured, he wasn’t here of his own free will. He was doing his sister-in-law a favor. Well he sure wasn’t doing her one, and Hope hadn’t either. Emotion shot up to her throat, but she swallowed it enough to say, “Well you can tell Hope if she wants to know how I am, she can come here herself. She’s welcome here, you’re not. Now get out.” Tina pointed toward the door, and bit her lower lip to stop the trembling.
Dean didn’t move. He stood there staring at her with his stormy blue eyes.
“I said get out!” she repeated, dragging her eyes away, as the emotion got closer to the surface. Her eyes watered, and she sucked in a shuddering breath.
She heard a sigh, then footsteps, before a big body plopped beside her on the sofa. Dean dropped his arm over her shoulders. “You talked me down off the cliff the other night. It’s my turn. Spill it, what’s wrong? What happened with your job?”
Too late to pretend you care cowboy. Tina stiffened her body, lifted her chin and pinched her lips tighter. His arm slid behind her neck, as he pushed his other under her legs. Before she knew it Dean dragged her onto his lap and hugged her. Tight. His scent worked its magic, and Tina couldn’t help but inhale it. It made her mad that it comforted her a little.
“Let me go,” she growled pushing against his chest. His arms tightened even more, so she quit pushing. He was too strong.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me,” he said calmly.
“I got a promotion,” she mumbled into his chest taking one more sniff of him, because she couldn’t help herself. It was a little different mixed with the starch in his dress shirt. She wasn’t sure she liked it better. Dean wasn’t a starched shirt kind of man. The outdoors is what mixed well with his unique scent. “Why are you dressed up?” she muttered, because she couldn’t help but ask. Surely it wasn’t to impress her. Dean struck her as the kind of man who would rather be hanged than put on a tie. Probably thought it was the same thing.
“I went to see an attorney this morning. Cindy is suing me for custody of Jeremy,” he said as if he were relating the weather. “Now why the hell would you quit your job if they offered you a promotion?” he countered angrily. His arms loosened a little so he could look down at her.
He waited. She held her tongue. His eyes narrowed, and she finally said, “It wasn’t the promotion I wanted.”
“So you quit your damned job?” Dean asked incredulously.
“They would have fired me otherwise, because I can’t travel.”
Dean shook his head. “Why the hell not? You’re single. That sounds pretty exciting, actually.”
“If I was five years younger, and not a single mother now, maybe it would be.” He gasped and almost dumped her off of his lap. Tina grabbed herself with a hand on the coffee table, then he pulled her back up.
“You have a kid and didn’t bother to tell me about it?” Dean all but shouted.
“You’ve met her. My sister left town, and left Laney with me.”
“Good Lord,” Dean whispered.
The phone on the wall in the kitchen rang, and Tina eased off of Dean’s lap, crunched across the chips and walked over to answer it. “Tina Montgomery.”
“Miss Montgomery, I need Laney’s mother down at the school right now. We have a problem.”
Tina’s heart jumped to her throat. “Is Laney okay?”
“Yes, ma’am, but she’s in a lot of trouble. I need her mother to come down here and pick her up. The principal wants to talk to her.”
Tina’s heart rate went off the charts. Being called in to talk to the principal was never a good thing. It hadn’t been a good thing when she was in school, and she was sure that hadn’t changed. Laney was never in trouble at school, so she couldn’t imagine what she could have done.
“Um, her mother, is uh…out of town,” she stuttered.
“Well, we need someone to come down here and get her, and until we talk to her mother, she isn’t allowed back at school.”
“Can’t she ride the bus?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. This is very serious.” Tina eased the phone back onto the hook, then leaned her forehead against the wall.
Dean walked up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Laney’s in trouble at school and they want to see Lori before she can go back. I have no idea where my sister is. All I have is a note that said she was leaving with some cowboy. She didn’t say where she was going, but she asked me to take care of Laney. If the school finds that out, they’ll probably call somebody, and they’ll try to take her away from me.”
“You’re a good person, and take good care of her. Why would you think that?”
Tina laughed bitterly then turned around. Dean’s arms trapped her against the wall. “I’m unemployed now. My savings won’t last forever, so I’ll eventually lose my apartment. We’ll be homeless.” She rolled her eyes to disperse the tears gathering there then ducked under his arm to walk toward the bedroom. She stopped there, but didn’t turn around. She didn’t want him to know how upset she was. Dean Dixon had enough problems of his own.
“I’m single, which would be good for traveling, but not so good when they are gauging your fitness as a kid’s guardian.”
“Funny, my lawyer said almost the same thing to me today,” he replied with a strange tone to his voice. Almost reflective.
Tina wondered at it, but didn’t have time to talk. She had to go pick up her niece. And she had to figure out what she was going to do. “You can show yourself out. I’ve got to get ready to go pick her up,” Tina said as she walked inside shutting the door behind her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tina was sure she was out of tears. That last round in the shower made her feel practically dried up, and stopped up too. She walked to the mirror, cringing when she wiped the steam from the mirror and saw her red-rimmed eyes. She was not a pretty crier like her sister. She looked like a damned Puffer fish when she finished. Her face was swollen and her lips were too. That was not going to look good at the school, so she turned on the cold water in the sink and splashed it on her face until her cheeks cooled. She turned the tap off and breathed deeply of the steam cloud in the bathroom to clear away some of her stuffiness.
Jerking a towel off the rack, she dried off quickly, then wrapped it around her wet hair turban style. She’d towel dry it in the bedroom, and put it in a knot of some kind. Maybe one like the one in her stomach, she thought as she grabbed the knob and opened the door. She took one step out then squealed when she came face to face with Dean Dixon, who was still in her apartment. It looked like he had been about to knock on the bathroom door.
He looked as surprised as she did, but then his eyes tracked slowly down her body to her toes and she thought she heard him groan. Tina put one arm over her breasts and the other across the top of her thighs. “What the hell are you still doing here?”
“I was thinking that I have a helluva lot of experience talking to principals. Jeremy likes to visit his principal’s office frequently. You could probably use my help.”
Tina walked past him with her chin held up, pretending she didn’t feel him staring at her ass. She had to get dressed and get to school. She didn’t have time for this. And she didn’t want Dean Dixon’s help, or interference in the situation.
“I don’t need your help,” she said as she walked into her bedroom. The man had a habit of putting his foot into doorways, she found out when she tried to close the bedroom door. She’d like to pinch his damned toes off in there. Her eyes flew up to his. “Don’t you have anything better to do than bug the crap out of me?”
“Not really,” he said, leaning against the jamb.
Dean didn’t move his foot, and she couldn’t wait or fight with him. Tina left the door open and walked to the closet to yank down a skirt, and shirt. She figured if she had on professional armor she might be taken more seriously than if she wore the pair of blue jeans she really wanted to put on. The only pair she owned. The pair she’d bought to wear to the ranch for the photo shoot with Dean. A sob escaped her throat, and she found out she wasn’t out of tears just yet. One leaked out of her left eye, then another out of her right. She swiped them away with her wrist and turned to lay her clothes on the bed, but ran into Dean’s broad chest. He grabbed her shoulders, and her eyes flew up to his. The skirt and shirt dropped to the floor, and he slowly pulled the towel off of her hair.
“Let me help you, buttercup,” he said in that low growly voice that sent her hormones into overload. He tipped her chin up with his finger. “Please,” he added.
Tina’s heart stuttered in her chest, then sped up to road racer speed. Dean dropped the towel to the floor to put his hands on her hips, then bent and his lips met hers, in a slow comforting whisper of a kiss. Tina was confused by his gentleness, his concern, and Lord knew she didn’t need to be any more confused. But Dean’s presence there did make her feel less alone. If he went with her to the school, she’d probably feel the same there too.
“Okay, you can go, but don’t say anything.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Really?” he asked.
“Really. You can go, but I can’t let them know Lori is gone. I have no idea what Laney did, but her teacher said it was bad. I know they can be dramatic sometimes, but the way she sounded makes me believe I’m going to have to do some quick thinking to get Laney out of this mess. To keep myself from getting into more of one.”
“I’ll let you do the talking,” he promised. “I’ll just be there for moral support.”
Tina huffed out a breath and took a step back. “I damn sure could use some right now.”
“Well, I’m here for you,” he said, surprising her, as she bent to pick up her clothes.
When she stood back up he had that look in his eyes. The one he got a lot while they were up in the deer stand. A tingle floated through her body, but she snuffed it out. “Don’t go there, big boy,” Tina said putting her hand in the center of his chest to give him a push so she could get by. “I don’t have time for it.”
They had a lot to talk about before she let that look get to her again. And she had things to do that were more important right now. She pushed him again and he stepped back into the doorway. When he just stood there looking at her, she flipped her hand at him then grabbed the door knob. “Keep on going. I need to get dressed.”
“What if I want to watch?” he asked in that gravelly voice again. His eyes tracked down her still wet body, and he whistled. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before.”
Tina lifted a brow. Enough was enough. “At the rate you’re going, cowboy, you won’t ever be seeing anything again if you don’t MOVE!” she shouted.
Dean laughed as he stepped back out of the doorway. She closed the door, holding back a laugh herself. Why the hell did she always feel better when she was with him? It just didn’t make sense to her. He was just about the grumpiest, crankiest, most unpredictable man she’d ever been with. But he was also the sexiest and most exciting man she’d ever met because of that. She kind of liked never knowing what to expect from Dean. Tina shook her head and hurried to dress.
Two hours later, Tina wondered what she’d been thinking bringing Dean Dixon with her to the school. “Principal Landers, I think what my fiancé is trying to say here,” she said the word through her teeth, then shot Dean a hot glare, hoping he would take the hint to shut the hell up. “What he’s trying to say is that Laney was provoked into pushing that girl.”
Snipping off the end of the little shit’s braid in art class before that, though, was just a little added bonus for her niece, Tina was sure. That hadn’t been discovered until some other child tattled after the altercation on the playground.
“Well it resulted in bodily injury, so I’m afraid your niece will have to be suspended for ten days. It’s school policy. And as I said, before she is allowed back in school, her mother will need to speak to me,” he said with his nose up in the air. Tina wished it would rain, so the red-faced bastard would drown.
“Let me ask you this,” Dean said sliding to the edge of his chair. His jaw tightened and his eyes grilled the principal. “If someone called your mother a skanky whore, what would you do, Principal Landers? Would you just turn the other cheek? Or would you defend your mother? And where does a six-year-old learn to talk like that? Is the other child being disciplined at all here?” That seemed to be the theme of every comment Dean had made so far during this meeting.
Instead of being appalled that Laney had not only cut the end of the other girl’s braid off, she had pushed her at recess. The bodily injury was from the girl falling on a tree root and breaking her arm. That hadn’t been intentional, but the pushing had been.
Unacceptable. And even though it secretly pleased her, amazed her, so was Dean’s defense of Laney’s actions. Among other things. Like introducing himself to Principal Landers as her fiancé. Tina had been so speechless there for a second, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to introduce herself.
Tina stood and stepped in front of Dean to stick her hand out to the principal. “Thank you for your time, sir. I wi
ll make sure that Lori comes back to school with her in ten days.” Tina would make sure of that if she had to buy hunting dogs and a shotgun to find her damned sister.
This was all Lori’s fault. If Laney wasn’t upset because her mother was gone, Tina knew there was no way her niece would be in trouble right now.
“You’re welcome, Miss Montgomery. You may pick your niece up in the nurse’s office. I believe the nurse is attending to her scrape.”
That was another thing. When that little hussy got up from the ground, according to Mr. Landers, she had hit Laney in the face with her good hand. Hell, Dean was right. Why wasn’t Camille Petersen being raked over the coals like Laney was?
Tina bit her tongue though and said, “Thank you.”
Dean stood behind her, and Tina wasn’t sure, but she thought he growled as he put his hand at her lower back, and leaned around her to open the door for her. She could practically feel the anger radiating off of him.
“You have experience in the principal’s office, huh?” Tina hissed under her breath as they walked down the hall toward the nurse’s office. “Probably because you were in his office more than the classroom when you were a kid.”
“You didn’t ask what kind of experience I had,” Dean said with a dry laugh. “And that man deserved to be grilled. How he’s treating her just isn’t fair.”
“Fair is subjective, and he is the one who determines the rules, Dean.”
“Our taxes pay for this damned school. That makes him a public servant. Last time I checked, the school board makes the rules. He just enforces them. Interpretation of those rules is what is subjective. And his was damned wrong.”
“You should have been an attorney instead of a cowboy,” Tina said with exasperation. They stopped at the door of the medical office, and Dean opened it to let her go in first. The nurse, who was leaning over Laney, stood and stepped to the side to toss a gauze into the trash, giving Tina her first look at Laney’s injuries. Fear shot through her when she saw the huge gash on Laney’s forehead, and her quickly blackening eye.
