Cowboy Fairytales Omnibus

by Lacy Williams

  He hadn't spoken to his mother in months, not since she'd coerced an orderly to help her escape the mental health ward he'd admitted her to. He had no idea whether she was on her stabilizing meds for her schizophrenia, or if she was harboring an agenda toward him. There was no telling.

  But he couldn't just stand by and let her continue to threaten his royal cousins. #

  4

  He hadn't come.

  Kylie knew it was silly to be so disappointed by it. The sun had gone down hours ago, and she'd tucked herself into her sleeping bag early, but she couldn't sleep, shifting on the ground that felt harder than it must be. Her breath wasn't quite fogging in front of her face, but there was a definite autumn chill.

  The two older couples that still shared the campground with her had had some kind of party tonight. They'd had the outdoor lights on and had settled in with a campfire near their picnic table, playing cards or something for hours past sunset.

  Kylie could have blamed her sleeplessness on their noise, but that wasn't it.

  It was her life that was bothering her.

  Even after things quieted at the other campsites, she couldn't sleep. There was no moon out tonight, but she slipped from her tent and woke Snow with a poke.

  Her feet found the familiar path around the lake, one that she and Mom had hiked often when they'd lived here. Apparently, even a decade and a half of being away didn't erase those childhood muscle memories.

  Stars lit the sky and reflected off the dark water that lapped off to one side as she stepped almost silently, Snow tracking just behind her.

  It took a while, longer than she remembered from her childhood, to find the little offshoot path. It was more overgrown than she remembered but led right to the huge, flat rock that jutted out over the lake. With it being dark, she didn't go all the way to the edge but perched in the middle, folding her legs up and putting her arms around them. Snow settled next to her, a comforting weight, leaning against her side.

  She and Mom had come out here once, late in the night, and watched a meteor shower. Mom had whispered about God's power. Kylie had thought the whole experience magical.

  Tonight, she shivered with loneliness.

  Even after a year of searching, of backtracking through her life with Mom, she couldn't reconcile things.

  How did you love someone but resent them as well?

  How could she forgive her mother when Mom had died without resolving anything between the two of them?

  She'd hoped to find something among her mom's things. Maybe a journal or even a painting that would explain why Mom had been such a wanderer.

  Because if she could figure out why Mom had been like that, maybe she could figure out how to belong somewhere.

  Reconnecting with Nick had given her a false sense of hope. She knew better than to trust that such an old friendship would hold up.

  He'd forgotten her, or avoided her. It hurt more than it should've.

  Something shifted in the quiet night.

  A shiver of unease slithered through her. She didn't register a noise that didn't fit with the night, but her senses heightened, and the hair at her nape rose.

  She'd felt it before, sensed it in the last two cities she'd visited. A sense that someone was watching her. It made her infinitely uncomfortable. As if she were in danger.

  What was it? Someone after her? Something more innocent, or her imagination?

  Beneath the arm curled over the dog's back, Snow tensed. A low growl came from the dog's throat.

  That was enough for Kylie. She reached in her pocket for her phone. It wasn’t there. It must have fallen out somewhere between the campsite and her rock. She was sure it had been in her pocket when she'd started her hike.

  She let go of Snow and scrabbled around on the rock face to see if she could feel it, but only rock scraped her palms.

  Breath caught in her throat. If someone was out there, she had no way to call for help. Would the older couples even hear her if she screamed? They would have no way of knowing where she was.

  What should she do?

  The next morning, Nick braked his pickup truck behind two patrol cars in the early-morning brightness. He slammed the truck into park and jumped out, not caring that the door didn't fully latch behind him.

  He was off-duty today, which meant he didn't have to be here.

  But the moment the police scanner in his apartment had burst out with a report of vandalism at the state park, he hadn't had a choice.

  Everything else had shut off, and his entire being had cried out Kylie! He had to see for himself if she was all right.

  The park was nearly empty, just two RVs and a ransacked campsite. Two police cruisers parked in front of the tent site. The familiar woods were still and silent. Barely visible across the lake stood some cabins on the opposite shore.

  He nodded to the other officers, his brothers in arms, but didn't approach them in his hurry to get to Kylie. He couldn't help noticing her stuff was trashed. The tires of her car were slashed, all four windows broken. Her tent was slashed through, her clothes and food scattered across the grass.

  He averted his eyes, heart pounding.

  He found her huddled in the backseat of one of the patrol cars, the door open and her dog lying on the grass at her feet. She had her arms wrapped around herself as if she was holding herself together by sheer will.

  She was whole.

  She was safe.

  Relief crashed through him, culminating in a huge huff of breath that pushed out of his chest.

  She'd been staring at the ground, or the dog, but at his noise, she looked up. And her face crumpled.

  He didn't have a right, not after he'd abandoned her last night, but he reached for her anyway. She came out of the squad car and into his arms, tucking her face into his chest.

  He was such an idiot. When military-man had come in to the precinct looking for her, Nick had gotten spooked. She was from out of town. Staying in the state park, not at a hotel. And with his history with Farah, he’d decided it might be better to keep his distance, at least for the moment.

  Obviously, he was a jerk. Look what had happened to her campsite.

  She was shivering, or he was shaking, or both. He tried to calm his galloping heartbeat as he held her and let relief barreled through him.

  He touched the back of her head, felt the silkiness of her hair slip through his fingers. Moved his hand to touch her back.

  She seemed content to let him hold her, burrowed into his embrace. He wasn't arguing, not while he still felt the terror of knowing she'd been involved in a violent crime.

  His chin nudged her temple as he raised his head enough to watch Officer Stokes, who'd graduated the academy two years ahead of him, lift the corner of what must've once been her tent and peer inside the ripped canvas. It was completely shredded, as if someone had taken a knife and sliced it.

  He had to close his eyes against the thought of what such an action could do to the human body.

  She was here, in the circle of his arms. She was whole.

  He forced his eyes open again, trying not to focus on the shards of glass that glittered in the grass around her car.

  The second officer, Boortz, was across the campground, speaking to an older man with salt-and-pepper hair standing outside a fifth wheel.

  And all Nick could think about was the man—former military, he was sure of it—who'd visited the station yesterday, asking about Kylie.

  He let her go slightly, enough to look into her face even as he used one hand to cup her cheek.

  He needed to look at her.

  Her eyes were red-rimmed and bright, and he had to clear his throat before he could speak. "What happened?"

  She took a shaky breath. "I couldn't sleep, so Snow and I took a walk. A hike, I guess. I got spooked by something—we were far enough I wouldn't have been able to hear anything happening here at the campsite…and…"

  She bit her lip, her words cutting off abruptly as sobs shook her.


  "If you thought something was wrong, why didn't you call it in?" Or call me? His number was in the public phone directory. He held back the second part, because really, how could he expect that after he hadn't shown up last night like he'd promised.

  "I lost my phone."

  He exhaled hard. She was safe. It could've been so much worse.

  But he had to know. Especially after yesterday.

  He held her gaze. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

  5

  Kylie huddled on Nick's couch in the small efficiency apartment. It was mostly clean—she'd seen him quickly swipe several balls of laundered socks off the couch and into an empty laundry basket when she'd first come inside. It was less bachelor-like than she'd expected, with tasteful framed prints on the walls, pictures of Nick and his sister on a side table, even colorful pillows on the neutral sofa.

  He'd brought her inside and then excused himself to take a phone call on the upstairs balcony outside the second-floor apartment.

  Snow lay across her feet, the dog sensitive enough to know there was still something very wrong with her master.

  Kylie had been through the gamut of emotions when dealing with her mother and the situations they'd found themselves in.

  But she’d never felt as vulnerable as she did right now. Violated, broken.

  Someone had slashed her tent, her tires. Had gone through her things. Had touched her stuff, maybe stolen from her.

  She couldn’t think about what might've happened if she'd been in her tent.

  Nor could she think about Nick's question. Are you in some kind of trouble?

  She'd told him no, but the shadows in his eyes hadn't cleared. One of his coworkers, another officer, had interrupted, telling her she could leave the scene for now. All her belongings, her car, were part of the crime scene until they finished searching for clues.

  Nick had taken pity on her, had brought her here, but she still wasn't sure she could call him a friend. Where did she go from here?

  Where would she stay tonight?

  How could she find enough peace to sleep, after what had happened last night?

  Snow's head came off her paws as Nick came back inside, the balcony door closing with a soft snick behind him.

  "You okay?"

  She ran a shaky hand through her bangs, tucked back the strands of hair that wanted to fall into her eyes. "Not really."

  He went to the small kitchenette and flicked on a Keurig single-cup coffee maker. "I mostly have dark roast, but I might be able to scrounge up something else..." His voice trailed off as his head and one shoulder practically disappeared into an upper cabinet. "Aha!" he cried triumphantly, coming out with a small box. "My mom gave me a mixed basket last Christmas. There's...hazelnut, a lighter roast, pumpkin spice..."

  He looked up expectantly, waiting for her answer.

  She was so cold, still shivering, she wouldn't mind anything to try and get warm. "Surprise me."

  He plugged the coffee canister in to the coffee maker, opened the fridge, and bent to peer inside.

  Snow nudged Kylie's foot with her chin, and she let herself relax enough to lean down and scratch the dog's head and ears. If she just focused on that, on keeping everything else at bay in her mind, then maybe she could get through the next few minutes.

  The next day. The next year?

  It didn't work as her thoughts spiraled and emotions crashed over her like waves battering a rock at the seashore. Problem was, she didn't feel like a rock. She felt like a sandcastle, eroding more with every attack.

  Minutes later—hours?—Nick entered her tunnel vision as he knelt next to her knees, nudging Snow out of the way.

  He set a white plate with two pieces of toast and a scramble of eggs next to the matching white coffee mug.

  The scents of food and coffee roused her slightly from her panic. Maybe more so was his hand on her knee, warm and steady even through the fabric of her jeans.

  "I'm guessing you hadn't thought about breakfast."

  The sunlight outside was bright now, edging closer to midmorning. It had been dawn when she'd discovered what had happened and run to the nearest camper, pounding on her neighbor's door.

  But she didn't reach for the food. "If you need to get to work, maybe I can find a room at the motel."

  "Today's my day off. I'm not going anywhere."

  And then he picked up the coffee mug and pushed it into her hands, where it almost, but not quite, burned her chilled skin. He settled onto the sofa next to her, casually draping an arm across the back and using a remote to turn on the wall-mounted flat-screen television across the room.

  She sipped the coffee, and a slight amount of tension seeped from her shoulders.

  "Cooking competitions?" she asked when he'd settled on the channel.

  He tilted a sideways glance at her. "I've been bacching it since I left for the police academy. Sometimes I pick up tips watching these."

  She smirked a little at this secret side. Had he done it to distract her?

  She kept the coffee and picked up the plate, slouching into the couch and criss-crossing her legs to make a table for it. With her coffee in one hand and her fork in the other, she ate.

  The toast and eggs were simple enough, and he'd been right that having the food settled her a bit.

  They sat shoulder to shoulder through two episodes of a crazy timed chef competition. By the end of the second episode, she'd scraped her plate clean, and she'd stopped shaking.

  And then she knew the small reprieve was over when Nick turned to her.

  Whatever happened, friends or not, she was grateful that he'd taken the time to take care of her this morning.

  Nick hated to break the fragile peace that had settled over Kylie, but they weren't done yet. There were too many unanswered questions.

  He'd called in to the precinct and asked Boortz to hold off on filing the paperwork into their system. There had been a very long silence, one in which Nick read all the skepticism Boortz didn't say aloud. His coworker had agreed not to create the official report until Nick had spoken to their captain about the man who'd been in asking about Kylie. Likely they had his image recorded from the surveillance camera, and maybe they could figure out who he was and what he wanted from her.

  Of course, if Kylie could give them the info, it would save some time.

  He cleared away her plate and mug. She used the restroom while he puttered in the kitchenette, then she met him at the high bar.

  "At lunch you mentioned you'd been traveling. Is there a reason...something you've been running from?"

  Her eyes clouded. "Not exactly."

  "If there's something you can tell me, some reason someone might be following you or want to hurt you?"

  She shook her head. Perched on the barstool. "It's nothing like that." She blew out a huge sigh. "My mother and I... After we left here, things got a lot more difficult for us. Or maybe they were difficult here too, and I was just too young to notice."

  "What do you mean?"

  She idly traced a water ring on the counter. "Mom... She was such a dreamer. I think." Her brow furrowed. "She wanted to take pictures, but you know, freelancing doesn't pay that well, and..." She swallowed hard. "She wasn't all that great at holding down steady jobs. At paying rent. Keeping us fed."

  He'd had no idea. He let his hand cover hers on the counter, stilling her nervous motion for the moment. "I'm sorry."

  She shrugged slightly, her head down. "Things started unraveling when I was a freshman in high school. I started working what jobs I could find to try and supplement our income. So maybe this time we wouldn't have to move in the middle of the night or be evicted. It didn't help that much."

  He hated thinking about a teenaged Kylie going through that. In all his imaginings, all the wondering he'd done about where she'd ended up and what she'd been doing, he'd never thought of that.

  "We had a falling out my freshman year of college. I'd managed to wrangle some scholarships and had
a somewhat steady waitressing job. She was ready to move on. And I wasn't. So I got a crappy apartment in a not-so-nice part of town, and she left. I'd only seen her once since our split before she died." She shrugged again, trying to play off her emotions, but he saw the tears sparkling on her lower lashes. "I took a leave of absence, and I've been revisiting the places we lived, trying to find...her, I guess. Find some piece of the connection we must've once had."

  His heart ached for Kylie. Sure, he and his parents didn't always get along perfectly, but he'd never felt unsafe during his adolescence. Never wondered where his next meal was coming from.

  He also couldn't forget Military-Guy who'd been looking for her. He wanted to believe her story, but the memory of Farah and everything that had happened made him cautious. He’d give her the benefit of the doubt…for now.

  He squeezed her hand beneath his. "When she died, did she leave anything to you? Anything valuable, anything someone might have a reason to come after?"

  A near-hysterical laugh burbled out of her, not one that had any trace of humor. "She was dead broke. Her apartment was full of junk."

  He didn't tell her about the man who' been asking about her. Not yet. She was safe enough here and after her story, after how shaken she'd been this morning, there was no reason to throw gas on the fire. He could do some quiet checking, make sure her story panned out. Later. All that could wait.

  But the hug he wanted to give her couldn't. He rounded the counter and went to her, intending to offer a friendly shoulder-hug from the side, but she turned into his chest.

  And he was more than happy to give her the comfort she obviously craved. The sense of protectiveness that had risen in him this morning when he'd seen her destroyed campsite, when he'd glimpsed her, hadn't diminished. If anything, he felt more protective now after hearing her story and getting a glimpse of what she'd been through.

  He allowed himself to bury his nose in her hair.

  But he didn't want to be a creeper. Didn't want to hold onto her too tightly when what she most needed was a friend.