Bounty

by Kristen Ashley

  His attention turned back to me.

  “Chace called. The DNA was a match for Caswell.”

  I watched the same relief I felt flare in his eyes so bright, I could see it even from a distance.

  But he only said a soft, “Good.”

  “And Faye and Chace want us to meet them for drinks at Bubba’s Saturday night.”

  “You up for that?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll text Chace,” he said, looking back to the outlet.

  It hadn’t even been two weeks since my assault. Since my world changed. Since Deke, who had already been in it, came roaring into it, thundering my name.

  And here we were, making plans for drinks with his friends like this was what we did. Like this was a part of life. Like this was the natural order of things.

  I’d flown around the world and back again, the kind of girl who did that sort of thing and didn’t bother to count how many times she’d circled the globe.

  And twice, those meanderings put me in Deke Hightower’s path.

  It was clear that Deke thought it uncommon for someone like me to recognize life’s bounties.

  But watching him work on my outlet, the sandwich I bought him in a bag curled in my fingers, knowing I was going to share one with him, and by the end of the week, I’d have a study (though, for me it’d be a music room) where I could hang and stay warm because he’d made that so, I wondered how he thought I’d ever miss them.

  * * * * *

  “Selfie!” Lauren yelled. “Everyone, back of the bar.”

  The music was loud. Bubba’s was packed.

  It was Saturday night in Carnal.

  “I don’t do selfies,” Jim-Billy declared. “I don’t even do pictures,” he went on.

  “C’mon, Jim-Billy,” Lauren cajoled. “I’m gonna send it to Krys. She won’t be back in for a while, she’s already stir crazy, and we should let her know we’re thinking of her.”

  “Right, I don’t do selfies but more, my ass doesn’t leave this stool,” Jim-Billy retorted.

  Lauren was undeterred, ordering, “Everyone, surround Jim-Billy.”

  Jim-Billy looked unhappy, but considering his ass actually didn’t leave that stool, he was not about to vacate it to avoid a group selfie.

  “Specific kinda torture, the genius who decided to put a camera on a phone. Fuck,” Tate muttered but he did this doing as his wife told him.

  I gave Faye, sitting beside me, a smile, not for the first time since I met her several hours before thinking that Lauren was the perfect match for Tate, Lexie’s lush gorgeousness the perfect match for Ty’s outrageous handsomeness, but Faye’s redheaded sweetness was beyond the perfect match for Chace’s lawman with an edge.

  I did not know Chace and Faye’s story. I knew she was the town librarian. I knew he had the same mountain man good looks that it seemed all of Deke’s friends had (though his was the only one that was fair rather than dark). And I knew she was the one who’d been buried alive.

  I hadn’t thought about it, considering most of my interactions with Chace were during my drama or on the phone (after my drama).

  But seeing him with his wife, I realized there was something different about him.

  It had been Faye who’d been buried alive, but chatting with her, I’d noted that utter insanity seemed not to have touched her.

  It was Chace who had somehow been broken and you could see the shards that had been carefully glued together.

  Unless he was with his wife, who was definitely pretty but in a much more subdued way, not to mention a lot shier and more soft-spoken than all the rest.

  But when Chace was with Faye, only then was he whole.

  It was a beautiful thing.

  And they were both so cool, I was glad they had each other. That Chace’s obvious strength led Faye to seem completely unfazed by an event that would probably break most people, and Faye’s clear but quiet love was what smoothed out the dents in a knight’s armor.

  I stopped thinking this when Deke claimed me with an arm around my chest, pulling me off my stool, shifting me and securing me in front of him, my back pressed close to him, Deke not a guy, I was noticing, who had a problem with having his picture taken.

  Lexie pressed in at my right side in the same hold with Ty behind her. Lauren had handed her phone off to Tate, a good choice since he had a long arm. She then curled both her arms around Jim-Billy in front of her, Lexie sandwiched in between Laurie and me.

  Faye and Chace got close at Deke and my other sides and Tate leaned over his wife as he held the camera out in front of us.

  “Give Krys a big, fat smile!” Lauren yelled.

  I had no idea about the others, but in our huddle, mellowed by several beers, in good company, it was not hard for me to aim my eyes at the camera and give Krys a big, fat smile.

  I saw the screen snap a bunch of images before Tate dropped his arm and we all shifted, separating, the men going back to their drinks, the women forming a new huddle around Lauren so we could bend over her phone and check out the pictures.

  But when I caught sight of the photos, my body stilled and I stared.

  Everyone had given Krys a big, fat smile. Even the men hadn’t held back.

  Drinks and bonding in a nowhere biker bar in the mountains of Colorado.

  Me right there in the middle surrounded by these good people, smiling huge.

  Me.

  Jussy.

  There it was in that picture.

  Proof.

  Here, I was not a Lonesome.

  In Carnal, I was just me.

  I was just me, and in that instant I understood something that I was getting, but it hadn’t quite come to me.

  After a lifetime as a gypsy, I’d found home.

  “I’m so totally printing this out, framing it and putting it up behind the bar,” Lauren declared then her gaze came to me. “If you’re cool with that, Jus.”

  Not only taken out of my thoughts, also taken aback by her saying that, I asked, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Don’t want to raise a profile you want to keep low,” she replied.

  Good people.

  Surrounding me.

  Home.

  “I’m totally cool with being a part of this bar, Laurie,” I said quietly. “And can you text those to me?” I asked, not sharing I wanted them not only because I dug those pictures, me surrounded by friends, but also because they were the first pictures taken of Deke and me.

  “Sure,” she replied.

  “Me too,” Lexie put in.

  “And me,” Faye added.

  Laurie bent to her phone, mumbling, “On it.”

  “Cool, thanks, Laurie,” I murmured, intent on moving back to my beer, and Deke, who had been standing behind me while I sat on my stool gabbing to Faye on one side, Jim-Billy on the other, Lexie beyond Jim-Billy. Deke had been standing in a man cluster, talking with Ty and Chace, as well as Tate, when he wasn’t with Lauren working the back of the bar.

  I got close to my man. Putting my hand on his waist, I circled him from behind, trailing that hand along the small of his back in order not to interrupt the conversation he’d returned to with Chace and Ty.

  And as I did, he automatically lifted his other arm high so I could duck under it. When I made it to his other side, still with his attention on the men, he curled his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in for a sideways hug before he released me so I could hit my seat.

  All this participating in a chat with his buds.

  But doing it managing to let me know he knew I was close. He liked me close. And he wanted me to know that.

  And when I took my stool, he shifted into me so I could use his long body as a seat back then I felt his hand weave through my hair and come to rest, lightly fisted, on my shoulder.

  This wasn’t claiming. Deke did not have to claim me around these people.

  This was entirely affectionate.

  This was just Deke being Deke.

  I
felt Faye climb up on her stool beside me but I didn’t look to her. I memorized the feel of Deke behind me, his hand in my hair, thinking for me, but also for Deke, that we came easy. That this came easy. That the lives we’d led brought him to me so he could give me this easy.

  But more, so I could give that back.

  On this thought, I felt something funny, lifted my gaze and caught Tate’s eyes on my shoulder where Deke’s hand lay.

  He must have sensed he had my attention because I’d barely looked at him before his gaze came to me.

  He did not smile. He did not lift his chin. His face didn’t soften. He looked reflective, actually borderline brooding. And when he looked in my eyes, he didn’t wipe any of that to hide it.

  From what Deke had said, it was clear of all these folks, he was tightest with Tate.

  And that look, I knew, was the look I could not see that Joss had when she was talking to me on the phone about her concerns I was getting in deep with Deke.

  Catching Tate’s eyes, knowing this, I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been on the receiving end of a guy looking over the chick his best bud was into, wondering if she was right. Wondering if she’d make his friend happy. It had always been me that had to be cautious, my loved ones a hundred times more cautious than me.

  But I was rich. I was famous. I was settling into a big house in the mountains.

  And none of that fit with the man who was Deke.

  My guy was thirty-eight-years-old and he’d looked, he’d been open to it, and he’d waited for the right woman who fit into his life as he liked to live it.

  Tate was sharp. Tate was a man who cared about the people who meant something to him.

  So Tate knew that.

  He just didn’t know how I fit.

  I didn’t suspect dudes had in-depth conversations about the women they chose to make their own, so Deke wouldn’t be sharing this with him.

  And I knew there was no way for me to put Tate’s mind at ease. I couldn’t say anything that would make him know how I felt whenever I made Deke laugh. How I felt sitting right there, Deke’s hand on me, Deke doing something so casually thoughtful as positioning his body so I’d be more comfortable on a barstool.

  I could not give him a big cocky smile. It was way too much to put in a look. And there were no words I could say that would put his mind at ease that I not only had this, it was beginning to mean everything to me.

  The only thing I could do was sit there and hold his eyes, accept his challenge and walk the walk to give Tate the things he needed to know that I not only meant to make Deke happy, I was made to do it.

  For the first time in my life, I had something to prove.

  And staring into Tate’s eyes, I was intent on proving it.

  I knew he understood his challenge was accepted when he reached out a hand and rapped his knuckles once on the bar in front of me before he broke eye contact and moved away.

  Yes, Tate was sharp.

  And Deke had good friends.

  I had thought they were coming to be mine. Hell, Lauren wanted me in that photo at the back of the bar.

  But I knew then I still had to earn it from all of them.

  And I was going to accept that challenge too.

  * * * * *

  Late that night, Deke opened the door to my house and moved in in front of me.

  He had a habit of this, both house and trailer.

  It wasn’t ungentlemanly. I knew that by the way he blocked the door so I couldn’t get in and he didn’t shift aside until he’d done a scan of either space with his eyes.

  This he did right then before he got out of my way by turning to the alarm control panel and punching in the code.

  I closed the door, locked it and was caught by Deke with a hand at my neck.

  I looked up at him, mellow, not tipsy, but I had a sweet buzz on that meant our next activities were going to rock.

  Sex with Deke with a sweet buzz?

  I couldn’t wait.

  I must have communicated this to him in some way because his lips quirked and his eyes heated before he muttered, “Gonna turn off the lights. Meet you in the bedroom, yeah?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, honey.”

  He bent deep and brushed his lips against mine before he let me go.

  He moved to the study, which was done, but my furniture and the rest of the stuff that I’d chosen for that room wasn’t going to start getting there until Wednesday.

  But still, that room was fab, it was ready and waiting for me to make it into my music room where I could work the laidback way I liked to do that and it was just one more thing Deke had given to me.

  These thoughts in mind, I moved through the space that now had a partial floor laid because Deke had finished the study mid-morning Friday, Bubba had been in that day, and Deke didn’t mess around. Bubba didn’t either.

  Deke and Max had both told me that, with the added crew starting on Monday, it still would take at least two, maybe three weeks to finish the rest of the house. There was a kitchen to install. Acres of floor. Stairs. Bathrooms. The chimney hood.

  And as I wandered to my room, it was the first time I thought I could wait. I could wait to have it all.

  And I could do this because getting it in two to three weeks meant it would no longer be just me and Deke.

  Then again, as the days got colder and shorter, cuddling with Deke by an inside fire after having eaten some magnificent Crock-Pot recipe I’d made for us wouldn’t suck.

  I hit my room, lifted the strap of my bag over my head and went to a nightstand. I twisted the light on but only to a dim glow, moved to the dresser, dropped my purse to it but did this only after I pulled my phone out.

  I engaged it, went to my texts and saw Lauren had sent me four versions of our group selfie, only slight nuances of differences in each, in all of them I was surrounded by people that were coming to be my people and smiling.

  I had it, it was within my grasp. Hell, I was holding the evidence of it in my hand.

  My less that was more.

  I was living it and all I had to do was take care of it, nurture it, make it stronger.

  Then it always would be mine.

  Everything I’d ever wanted.

  My place in this universe.

  And it felt amazing.

  So much so, my thumb started to move over the picture in order to save it to my phone so I could forward it to my dad and do what I always did with Dad. A habit. The habit we both had.

  The habit he’d taught me because he’d started it, sitting under stars, on tour buses, in dressing rooms, whenever we had a quiet moment.

  And when our lives led us separate ways, we kept at it with texts, sending photos.

  Sharing our blessings.

  My thumb stopped and I felt a sharp stab of pain pierce clean through my heart.

  I lifted my head, turning it to look into the night. All I could see was the faintly filtered silvering of moonlight on pine trees.

  My feet took me to the light on the nightstand I’d switched on so I could turn it off.

  They then took me to the windows and I stared into the dark.

  And for the first time since he passed, having held it back, unable to cope, terrified it would crush me, the full weight of his loss bore down on me as images assailed me.

  These images were photos that would never be taken, all of them chasing themselves in quick succession through my mind.

  Dad on my deck, the fire pit blazing, a big smile on his face, his feet up on the flagstone, a guitar on his lap, pads of his fingers on the frets, the other hand to the strings.

  Dad in the morning—his morning, like mine, that being late morning—slouched over the marble I’d chosen for a countertop for the kitchen island. His hair a mess, his face creased with sleep, the fingers of one hand hooked through the handle of a coffee mug, his other arm wrapped around the hips of Dana, who always stood close to Dad like Deke had that night stood close to me.

  Dad in my stu
dy, making music with me.

  Dad at Bubba’s, telling stories of the road, making everybody laugh.

  Dad at my dining room table, shoveling Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing into his mouth, his favorite holiday, his favorite meal.

  Dad sitting on one of the couches I’d ordered for the great room, a bottle of beer in his hand, Dana curled into his side, his eyes across the space, a smile on his face.

  This smile would not be aimed at me.

  It would be aimed at Deke, who I was curled into on our own couch.

  It would be a smile of male camaraderie. A smile of happiness. The smile a dad would have that I’d never see. A smile he’d have safe in the knowledge his only daughter had found the man who’d make her happy until she was no longer breathing.

  A hand touched my waist lightly and, caught up in these images, I gave a slight twitch in surprise at the touch when Deke called softly, “Baby?”

  I stared into the dark, into trees my father would never wander through, not able to see through the dark to the river that he would have sat on the deck, listened to and known peace.

  “That night, back when, when we were in Wyoming,” I spoke to the window, “before I saw you at that fence, I was moving out of the bar to get some air. To take a breather. Get away from my thoughts or maybe give into them because my head was fucked up and I needed to clear it. Or at least sort it out.”

  I felt Deke get close to my back, felt his words stir the top of my hair, heard in his tone that he felt my vibe and was falling into it, so I knew he’d bent to me there when he asked, “How was your head fucked up?”

  It would be hard to share this, especially with Deke, all I’d had, all he didn’t.

  But even knowing it would be hard, deep inside I knew he’d get it.

  “It sounds bad,” I told him. “I know it does. But that doesn’t make it any less true that at that bar, I’d begun to realize that in all I had, I didn’t have what I wanted.”

  I shook my head, still staring at the night, Deke’s hand moving from my waist to my belly, his other arm wrapping around my ribs below my breasts.

  I felt his chin hit my shoulder and I kept talking.

  “The thing is, it wasn’t about what I wanted. It was about what I needed.”