Unforgettable (The Dalton Gang #3)

by Alison Kent

  He started to wipe it off, decided against it. Decided he could use all the good karma he could get. Then, less than ten seconds later, Everly climbed onto the stool beside him. “Want some company?”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “I was hungry. And I’m all out of grapes.”

  He signaled to Adelita, tonight’s bartender, for a third beer since this one was going fast.

  “Make it two,” Everly called to the other woman, causing Boone to look over and frown.

  “Since when do you drink beer?”

  She turned on the stool to face him, cocked her head, smiled. “Since you’re drinking beer.”

  “Huh,” he said, wondering what she had to smile about. He couldn’t imagine it was being here with him. He didn’t even want to be here with him. “Surprised to see you. Thought you’d moved back to Austin or something and just didn’t want to tell me.”

  Her smile picked up steam. “I’ve been working, silly. I have a story to write. And it’s hard to concentrate on work with you around. I was going to call you tomorrow. I should have my first draft done by then. Except for the holes I’ve left to plug in what I learn from your interview.”

  He grunted. He’d been grunting a lot tonight.

  “C’mon. Let’s move to a booth. I’ll order some supper.”

  “I’m not in the mood—”

  “I am,” she said, grabbing both beers and giving him no choice. “And I know Faith already ordered for you.”

  “How do you . . . She texted you, didn’t she? Told you to come babysit.”

  “So, you are acting like a baby,” she said, wiggling both bottles as she did, as she turned away, laughing.

  He grunted, but he got up and followed her, the click of her heels and the swing of her ass doing a lot to cheer him up. The swing of her hair, too. He loved how it fell down her back, the blond waves skimming just below her bra strap. Her pants tonight were black, her shoes black and white zebra stripes, her blouse, with its too many buttons, zebra striped, too.

  She made him happy, the way she was happy, the way she knew herself, how she refused to be anyone else, or change to fit in. She fit in just fine. And she fit with him. That’s what he was having hell with tonight, having signed the papers earlier to sell Tess’s antiques. He had to sell what he had to keep what he had. What kind of life was that to offer a woman like this?

  “Come with me to the football game tomorrow night,” he heard himself asking once they’d settled at a booth near the bar.

  “Really?” she asked, her eyes lighting up. “Your dad’s team? The high school game?”

  “Only one I know of in Crow Hill.”

  “I’d love to go. Faith and I were actually just texting about my helping out with the holiday carnival. It’s like my childhood all over again.”

  “You had a good one?” he asked, because this felt like safe territory and it was one they hadn’t covered before. As grounded as she was, he didn’t doubt she’d had a solid upbringing.

  “I did,” she said, nodding as Luck Summerlin slid his plate in front of him, avoiding his gaze as she did.

  She avoided Everly’s, too, as she asked, “Can I get you something? Do you need a menu?”

  “Hmm. A bacon cheeseburger with jalapenos, medium well.”

  “Fries? Onion rings?”

  “Just the burger,” Everly said, reaching for her beer.

  Boone watched Luck go, wondering if it was a touch of schadenfreude tugging at the corner of Everly’s mouth. “I’m not sharing my potato.”

  “The burger will fill me up,” she said, sticking out her tongue and sitting forward. “Anyway, yes. I had a wonderful childhood. I grew up in Austin. I’m the oldest of four, and our parents were the best. They remind me a lot of yours, actually. Very involved. Very . . . parental in that they were always there for help with homework and school programs and extracurricular stuff, the cheerleading and gymnastics and dance and piano, but they didn’t spoil or indulge or skimp on the discipline.”

  “Did your mother ever sign you up for the dunking booth at her holiday carnival?”

  “Oh, no. Seriously? She roped you in, too?”

  “All three of us,” he said, picking up his knife and fork. “We’re supposed to wave the white flag or some community bullshit.”

  “I love this,” she said, sitting back in the booth, crossing her legs, holding her longneck on her knee. “It’s going to be so much fun. I can’t remember ever being so excited about an invitation to get kissed by a bunch of strangers.”

  Wait a minute. His knife and fork stilled. “Get what?”

  “Kissed,” she said, and waggled both brows. “I’m going to work the kissing booth while you work the dunking booth.”

  “I thought Faith was doing the kissing.”

  “She was, but I guess Casper objected.”

  Huh. “But my objecting to you doing the kissing doesn’t rate?”

  “Are you objecting?” she asked after a long moment searching for something in his eyes.

  “I don’t know. Is that too close to hovering?”

  “Why would you ask me that?” she asked then brought the beer to her mouth.

  He waited while Luck set Everly’s burger on the table, shook his head when she asked if either of them needed another beer. “The night we danced. You mentioned you didn’t like men hovering.”

  “I did?”

  “It’s stuck with me all this time, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t make it up.”

  “Huh. If I knew the context—”

  He sawed through his steak, thinking back. “It was about what Faith and Arwen were wearing. You liked their costumes. But you didn’t like Casper and Dax hovering.”

  “I remember now,” she said, her smile fading, the laughter like fireflies in her eyes vanishing. “My objection was because of my ex.”

  Calf nuts on a motherfucking cracker. He’d done that, made her sad, and he wanted to kick the shit outta himself. “He didn’t like other men looking at you, so he hovered.”

  “No,” she said, her expression wry. “He wanted to show me off, so his hovering was about making sure I dressed so men would look.”

  “That’s fucked-up,” he said, his wrists on the edge of the table, his appetite gone.

  “A lot of things about him were,” she said with a shrug, as if what she’d gone through was nothing.

  What he’d gone through with Les Upton was nothing compared to what he sensed she’d endured. “You don’t talk much about him.”

  “There’s not much to talk about,” she said, pulling a strip of bacon from her burger, popping it into her mouth. “He’s not a part of my life anymore.”

  “But he is the something that happened, isn’t he? The something that brought you to Crow Hill?”

  She looked down at her plate, as if she’d find an answer, like another slice of tomato, inside her burger’s bun. Or a reason to get out of answering him altogether. “He is. Our breakup was rather ugly.”

  “Ugly enough that you had to go into hiding?”

  “That’s closer to the truth than you know. I don’t like to talk about it. Or him,” she said, wrapping her hands around her burger and bringing it to her mouth so she wouldn’t have to.

  And it frustrated him that she didn’t. Because he knew the something that had happened was the very thing in the way of their moving forward.

  “So,” he said, back to sawing at his steak. “Friday night. The football game. You still want to go?”

  “Of course I want to go. None of this changes anything. Trust me.”

  “I’ll pick you up at six thirty?”

  “Sure. I can’t wait,” she said, and he hoped to hell she was telling the truth.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EVERLY HADN’T BEEN to a high school football game since her years leading cheers, and the two after graduation when she’d watched her brother Ethan play. Those days, she’d been to them all, at home, away, but saw more of the spectators in
the stands than the plays on the field.

  Tonight, the Crow Hill Hurricanes were playing the Hope Springs Bulldogs, obviously hoping to blow them away. Judging by the section where she found herself sitting, that could very likely happen. The volume of breath used by the fans’ voices and the air stirred by their waving arms was enormous.

  Boone sat to her right, and in front of them were Casper, Faith, and Catherine Mitchell. Coach Mitchell was on the field, and Clay, only a freshman and too new to the semester to play, had been shown a little nepotism by his future adoptive grandfather and put to work as water boy.

  In the two weeks she and Boone had been together, she’d never seen him so animated, jumping up, yelling encouragement to the players, whistling like it was his kid on the field, not his father calling plays, nor Casper’s son dispensing water on the sidelines. Faith was just as loud, as was Catherine.

  Casper was a bit more reserved, and Everly couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking about next year, when Clay would officially be his, and no doubt want to be more than a water boy. Casper had played on this very field, along with Dax and Boone. He knew the score of being a Hurricane, and she wasn’t talking about the numbers on the ramshackle board in the end zone.

  She also understood what high school football meant to the families of everyone involved—the players, the cheerleaders, the drill team and band members and pep squad. Even the concession stand and ticket window were staffed by the booster club, security provided by off-duty sheriffs for free.

  The television show had it right. During the school year’s fall semester, Friday nights in small Texas towns saw the entire community pitching in for one goal—supporting the boys on the field to a win.

  Outside the city limits, away from the cars and trucks honking up and down Main Street, the sounds of the band playing and the crowd cheering carried through the night, along with the lowing of cattle. The stadium lights shone like beacons, and the smell of popcorn and hot dogs permeated the air.

  Everly couldn’t believe how much she’d missed this. And how experiencing it with the Mitchell family made it brand new.

  “Does this bring back memories?” Boone asked into her musings.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, hooking her arm through his and leaning close. “Though the view’s all wrong. I’m used to being down there, and looking up here.”

  “But you’re having a good time?”

  “I am,” she said, giving him a smile and a rapid nod of her head.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” he said, his gaze narrowed and making sure.

  “I’m having a good time. Especially watching you.”

  “You’re supposed to be watching the game.”

  “I’m doing that, too.”

  He pulled off his hat, ran his hand through his hair, then looked to the field as he settled it back in place. “Except for the equipment being a whole lot better than what we had, this could almost pass for a night when the boys and I were on the field. The band’s a little better. The cheerleaders a little hotter—”

  “Boone!”

  He gave her a wink, flicked the tip of her nose with one finger. “Even the waxy plastic cheese on the nachos smells the same. Those were some good times.”

  “The games? Or just high school in general?”

  “Being part of the team. Lots of perks came with being part of the team.”

  He was talking about girls. Everly was sure of it, and reached up to clear away the hair blowing in her face. “What was it like playing for your father?”

  He shrugged. “He did a good job of keeping things fair. Not being harder on me than on anyone else, or being more lenient.”

  “How was he with Dax and Casper?”

  “He was a slave driver,” Casper leaned back into their conversation to say.

  Boone snorted. “He didn’t drive you any harder than he did me.”

  “You forget the week he made me walk home from practice. Drove behind me all the way to make sure I didn’t hitch a ride.”

  Faith turned toward him. “And whose fault was that?”

  “Your brother’s. He’s the one who switched out the liquid detergent with the bleach and ruined a whole wash load of jockstraps.”

  At that, Catherine looked back over her shoulder, an authoritative arch to her brow. “Is that so?”

  Boone waved them all off. “It was a long time ago. I don’t remember who did what.”

  “That’s because you weren’t the one walking,” Casper said, swinging back around as the crowd surged to its feet.

  Everly stood along with everyone else, watching the Crow Hill wide receiver outrun the two Hope Springs defensive backs and score. Even Casper jumped up at that, grabbing Faith at the same time Boone’s arms came around Everly. He lifted her feet from the bleachers. She held on to his shoulders, screeching with surprise, the sound swallowed up by the screeches of others.

  She’d really had missed this, she realized, as he lowered her, slinging his arm around her shoulders as the crowd remained standing for the extra point. She’d been in Crow Hill four years, but had spent very little of her time away from work doing more than having lunch with her girlfriends. She’d stayed home alone and read books and watched movies and drank way too much wine.

  It hadn’t been a purposeful thing, keeping herself apart. She’d wanted to make friends, have as active a social life as Crow Hill could provide, and she was certain that meant more than a weekly girlfriend lunch. But she didn’t have relatives here, so she didn’t have nephews playing football or nieces leading cheers. She didn’t attend the First Baptist Church services, so she didn’t serve on youth or food service committees.

  She didn’t volunteer at Coleman Medical Center, so she didn’t spend time reading to patients or delivering flowers to brighten their days. And now that she’d taken the time to enumerate all the things she didn’t do, it sounded a lot like the only thing keeping her from the social life she wanted was herself.

  So why in four years had she not gotten involved? Was she that afraid of getting hurt again? Did she actually think forming friendships outside of those she’d made with her girlfriends was going to put her in harm’s way? Had she really let one incident from her past prevent her from leaving it behind?

  Another cheer erupted, bringing her back to the present, and she took in the small group that had claimed her as one of their own, even while remaining an active part of the very large surrounding whole.

  In fact, she mused, her gaze roaming the filled bleachers, she’d had no idea this many people lived in Crow Hill to come out for Friday night football. Then again, how could she, holed up in her tiny piece of the tiny town with her books and her movies and her wine?

  “Hey,” Boone said beside her as they sat. “You’re back to being quiet again.”

  “How would you know? Can you actually hear anything in all this noise?”

  “Do you want to leave?” he asked, frowning. “Is it too loud?”

  She laughed, took hold of his arm and squeezed. “No, it’s not too loud and I don’t want to leave. I’m having a great time.”

  “I wasn’t sure. I know the football thing can be overwhelming if you never played. Or your dad’s not the coach.”

  “You played and your dad’s the coach, so it’s fun watching you.”

  “You’re supposed to be watching the game,” he said, dimples pulling at his cheeks when he smiled. “We’re winning.”

  We’re winning. Because this was his home, his town. This was where he belonged. This was his world. The world he felt he was losing because the ranch, the reason he’d come back, was falling down around him. Yet as bad as all of that was, he hadn’t allowed the incident with Les Upton that had left so many scarred keep him away, or keep him from moving forward.

  In fact, he did his best to blow off Les Upton completely. She was the one giving importance to that night, wanting to know why it hadn’t defined Boone the way Toby’s abuse had defined her. Or maybe it had, but he’
d made the choice to move on while she hadn’t.

  One thing was certain: She would never be able to create a life with Boone if she kept living in the past.

  * * *

  “BRR,” EVERLY SAID, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as she walked through her kitchen, leaving Boone to close and lock the door. He didn’t bother locking his own, but ever since she’d mentioned the need to feel safe, he’d made sure her doors were bolted. “I think I need some hot cocoa or coffee or tea or something. I’d forgotten how cold icy metal bleachers could be.”

  Silly woman. Cute silly woman. “There was no ice. The temperature’s only just in the forties. And if you’d sat closer to me instead of keeping a respectable distance between us, I would’ve made sure you were warm.”

  She turned from the living room entrance and gave him a look. “Your mother was sitting in front of us. After last Sunday’s hangover lunch, I thought respectable was a good idea.”

  He could buy that, he decided, tossing his hat to her table. “Now that it’s just you and me, can we ditch it?”

  He’d been aching to get his hands on her all night, and the reasons were making a mess of his head. Everly being a part of his extended family shouldn’t be a turn-on. Her tits were a turn-on. Her buttons, her hair, her ass when she walked in those stupid high heels. Those things were turn-ons.

  So the idea of her belonging to his clan, being a Mitchell, wearing his name as her own . . . He wanted her out of her clothes. He wanted to bury himself inside of her, to claim her and brand her. To make her so fully his, she would never feel frightened again.

  “We can, but I’m still cold, so . . .” She glanced down the hallway, and took a step that direction. “Maybe we ditch respectable and warm me up in the shower at the same time?”

  He took a step toward her. “I like that plan.” Then she took another, and he did the same, until Everly was running, kicking out of her heels, and he was chasing her, his boots thundering against the hardwood floor, the sound echoing through the small house.

  She beat him to the bathroom, and stood there breathing hard and waiting, her eyes wide, her hair a tangled mess, her skin covered in goose bumps. She’d worn a long-sleeve blouse with her skinny black pants beneath a coat that reached her knees.