by Alison Kent
Titles by Alison Kent
UNDENIABLE
UNBREAKABLE
UNBREAKABLE
ALISON KENT
HEAT | NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2013 by Alison Kent.
Excerpt from Unforgettable copyright © 2013 by Alison Kent.
Cover photograph by Claudio Marinesco.
Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
HEAT and the HEAT design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Heat trade paperback edition / February 2013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kent, Alison.
Unbreakable / Alison Kent.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61831-8
1. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 2. Texas—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.E5155U527 2013
813’.54—dc23
2012018224
ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON
To Loreth Anne White, for #RWA12.
For the laughter and the tears and the Starbucks runs.
For all the fun as we talked lives and families and
careers and story and dogs. I’ll make you a
viewpoint purist yet!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To HelenKay for the legal help with Faith. To Margaret for the story help with Faith, and for loving Casper, then hating Casper, then loving Casper again. This cowboy’s for you.
To the Berkley art department for the AMAZING Dalton Gang covers. Yee-haw!
To the couple at Millie Bush Bark Park with the Bernese mountain dog named Kevin. Bits and pieces of my own three mutts can be found in the Kevin I created for Clay. And thank you, Clay, for walking out that door when you did. This story wouldn’t have been the same without you.
But really.
Kevin?
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Special Excerpt from Unforgettable
About the Author
ONE
HIS BACK AGAINST the side of his truck, Casper Jayne braced for the bad news his gut said was coming. The same gut that had kept him in his bedroom when his old man had stumbled wasted through the door. That had sent him to the ground from his third-story window when his old lady had waved guns and threats. That had told him nearly two decades ago to get the hell out of that house if he wanted to live.
The very house he was now standing in front of.
The one-page handwritten letter folded to fit in his back pocket felt bulky and heavy. It made it hard to get comfortable as he watched the inspector circle the house he’d lived in before leaving Crow Hill at eighteen. The house was now his—as useless as tits on a boar hog—and would be hell to dump or to keep.
It had been a pit as far back as he remembered. His old lady hadn’t done a damn thing to make it livable the years they’d called the rambling monstrosity home, or even later, when his life was rodeo, his old man in the wind, and she’d been the only one keeping the fires burning.
Gutting the interior and starting from scratch might be his only option, but first he needed to know if the structure itself was sound. Check that. He needed to know what it was going to cost him to make it so. Especially since he was cash poor and getting his hands on the money he did have meant barreling his way through the woman who held his purse strings.
A woman tighter than a ten-day drunk.
He suspected he’d have an easier time getting her to give up what she hid beneath the suits she wore than the funds he needed. And he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t rather have the first than the second. But since both options hung off the edge of possibility’s realm, what he wanted didn’t matter a lick.
He took off his hat, ran a hand across the bristled buzz of his hair, resettled the beat-to-hell straw Resistol and pulled the brim low. But he didn’t push away from his truck. He stayed where he was, crossing his arms as the man with the electronic gadget in his hand and acorns popping beneath his feet kicked at the sidewalk, the cement buckled by the roots of the yard’s hundred-year-old live oaks.
The inspector pecked out another note on the screen before walking through the thigh-high gate, which was missing two pickets and also hinged at a cockeyed angle. He stopped, swung it back and forth, then screwed his mouth to the side before looking at Casper from behind sunglasses that hid his eyes but not his expression. They both knew there was more wrong with this house than was right, but Casper didn’t care what the other man was thinking.
He needed an official report to back up his request for the cash to do what was needed. Even shouldering the bulk of the labor himself, the supplies would set him back the cost of a herd of good horses. He doubted the house had been worth that much when he’d spent his nights staring at the holes in the ceiling and hoping the balls of newspaper he’d used to plug them would keep out the biggest of the spiders at least.
“Sure you don’t want me to take a look inside?” This was the third time the inspector had pushed to get through the doors. “Let you know what you’re looking at with your heating and cooling systems? Your plumbing fixtures? You
r outlets?”
Casper shook his head. He wasn’t ready for that. Besides, there was no cooling system. Never had been, unless he counted opening the windows and praying for a breeze. The space heaters he and his mother had used had been no match for the lack of insulation or the gaps in the siding—and the two of them hadn’t done more than try to control the temperature in the four rooms they used of the two dozen in the house.
Summers and winters. Both had been hell. “Just give me the external damage. What am I looking at?”
The other man glanced at the house again—the wraparound front porch and badly canted columns, the Victorian gables over windows made of cardboard instead of glass, the oaks spreading from either side to meet in the middle, branches laced as if praying for the house to be put out of its misery—before turning to Casper with a shrug. “You could raze the whole thing and come out ahead.”
Easiest solution, but it wasn’t going to happen. “I know it needs a new roof—”
“A new roof’s the least of it.” Frustrated, the inspector made an encompassing gesture that took in the house and the trees and the entire half acre that resembled a landfill more than a yard. “Your fascia board’s rotted through most of the way around. Eaves and gables both. Same with the soffit. Kid hits a baseball against the house, the vents are gonna fall plumb out. Your gutters are hanging on by a thread, and you don’t have a single attached downspout. Both of the chimney masonry caps, the support beams on all the porches, the grade of your lot…”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s a piece of shit. I got it.”
With a shrug, the inspector said, “This house is not where I’d be pouring my investment money. Like I said. Razing’s your best bet.”
And, again, that wasn’t going to happen. As long as Casper got his hands on the money, the risk of making over the house was his. What he did with it after that…He nodded toward the tablet the inspector held. “Can you print out a report on that thing? Give me a list or whatever?”
“I’ve got a printer in the truck, sure,” the man said, making his way to where he’d parked his mobile office behind Casper’s big black dualie.
“What about a fax machine?”
“Yep. I can send it wherever you want it to go.” He opened the passenger door and glanced over as Casper approached. “I can send the bill, too. All I need is a name and a number.”
For the first time since the letter from his old lady had hit his mailbox, Casper felt the hard tug of a smile. What he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall of the office when this particular paperwork arrived.
“Send it over to the First National Bank.”
“Attention of?”
His smiled tugged harder and grew just a little bit mean. “Faith Mitchell.”
ONE MORE THING. That was all Faith Mitchell needed to go wrong today. One more thing and she wouldn’t have any trouble telling the higher-ups to take this job and shove it. She got that the bank was not a charity and good business didn’t allow for extending a loan indefinitely, or offering additional credit to account holders already unable to pay what they owed.
But after the chewing out she’d just received for daring—daring—to suggest the bank give the Harts another month before foreclosing on property that had been in the family for more than a hundred years, she was beginning to think it took a special kind of heartlessness to turn one’s back on the honest-to-God need created by the nation’s depressed economy and the state’s ongoing drought.
The Harts were good people, struggling to make their living off the land the same way Henry Lasko, Nina Summerlin, and so many others were doing. The same way Tess and Dave Dalton had done for years, before passing on and leaving their ranch to Crow Hill’s notorious Dalton Gang.
As teens instructed to give the elderly couple a hand, the three had earned the Daltons’ love and trust while raising hell with the rest of the town. As grown men who’d returned to work the spread they’d inherited from Tess and Dave, the three were now fighting to get ahead like all of the area’s ranchers.
Since Faith’s brother Boone was one of the trio, she got to see his side of the picture as well as where the money men were coming from. That probably had a lot to do with the sympathy she felt for the Harts. Yes, they’d put up their land as collateral, but no one could’ve seen the drought coming—and staying—or anticipated the depth of the economy’s downward spiral.
Turning one’s back on the sort of ridiculous request outlined in the fax she’d received earlier was a different thing entirely. Casper Jayne knew exactly how tight the ranch’s finances were. His own were no better, and he wanted to pour tens of thousands into a house that would be better served by going up in smoke? Please.
Her position as loan officer aside, the risks involved in his request were innumerable. The wiring in the house would have to be brought up to code before he could even think about powering the tools to do the job. Unless he wanted to start a fire as a way to get out from under this newest burden.
Hmm. The camel, the straw. Did he even have a homeowners policy? If he did, and if she approved just enough—
“Faith?”
“Not now, Meg,” Faith said, dismissing the tempting thought of arson and waving one hand toward her assistant while reaching for the phone with the other. Might as well give the Harts the bad news.
But Meg insisted. “You’ve got a visitor.”
“Okay. I’ll be done here in—”
“How ’bout you’re done now,” said Casper Jayne, pushing past Meg before she could stop him.
Not that anyone had ever been able to stop him.
Abandoning the phone, Faith sat back and laced her hands in her lap to keep from jumping up and choking him. One more thing. Hadn’t the thought just gone through her mind? And he qualified in ways nothing else did, all long and tight and wiry, with thighs he’d used for years to grip the backs of bulls. Thick thighs. Purposeful thighs. Thighs she wanted to ride and had her close to moaning.
Her reaction was just stupid. She’d known him since he was sixteen and she was fourteen and he’d become best friends with her brother, Boone, and Dax Campbell, the group’s hell-raising third member. Playing his big brother role to the hilt, Boone had made sure she and Casper seldom crossed paths, and Casper hadn’t pressed the point.
So what if she’d been broken-hearted? She’d been a girl, and that had been forever ago. She should be immune to him now.
For some reason, she wasn’t. For some reason, as soon as he’d returned to Crow Hill her teenage crush had become a very adult fascination. And the way he wore his jeans didn’t help.
But he was crazy reckless, a lesson in insane abandon, wild and out of control. She didn’t need that in her life now anymore than she had in the past. If nothing else, that much was a given.
He was standing, staring, waiting. Taking up too much room in her office, breathing too much of her air. And God help her if she wasn’t undressing him, peeling away those jeans, wrapping her legs around those thighs, grinding against him.
Could this day possibly go any further downhill? “What are you doing here?”
He walked closer, taking slow steps, lazy steps, his hips at her eye level and causing her so very much grief. Please, please go away.
But he and his thighs and his championship belt buckle stopped in front of her desk to tease her. “I came to see you.”
“If it’s about the fax, you’re wasting your time and mine.”
“I wanted to explain things in person before you had a chance to say no.”
“No.”
“C’mon, Faith—”
“No,” she said again, watching his nostrils flare, his bright hazel eyes flash. Watching the tic pop in his strong square jaw. A bead of sweat crawled over his Adam’s apple to the hollow of his throat.
She swallowed hard, but held his gaze. She knew him, and she would not be tempted. She would not. She would not.
“You enjoy this, don’t you?” he asked, planting his hands on h
er desk blotter, leaning forward, bringing with him the scent of horses and hay. “Making it hard on a man.”
She took a deep breath and a long pause, then said, “No. I don’t. But you know as well as I do that you don’t have the money for the extreme makeover that house will need before you can even think about putting it on the market.”
He frowned, hovered a couple more seconds, then straightened, crossing his arms and raising one slashed brow. “Who said I’m going to put it on the market?”
“You’re going to live there? And still work the ranch?” She gave him a whatever shrug, because he needed to know he didn’t bother her at all. “What else would you do with it?”
“Dax lives in town with Arwen, and he still works the ranch.”
“Dax lives in Arwen’s house. He didn’t rob Peter to pay Paul for a place to stay.”
“It’s my money. I’ll be using it for me. No Peter. No Paul.”
“It’s the ranch’s money first, and only a third of that is yours. And not even that, really, because of the debt y’all are dealing with.”
“I added my rodeo winnings to the coffers, remember?”
She did, but he’d obviously forgotten the rest. “And you signed paperwork turning it over to the partnership. It’s not yours anymore.”
“Not any of it?”
She thought of old dowries and entailed estates. “Not enough for what you need.”
He paced the width of her office, his thighs, his jeans, his stride, and the roll of his hips bringing the word yes to the tip of her tongue. Bringing a sheen of sweat to her chest and her nape. Bringing one hand to her blouse’s collar where she pulled the two sides close. This ridiculous feeling—God, what was it? Lust? Longing?—had to stop.
Across the room, he curled his fingers over the windowsill and parked his backside against it, his eyes downcast as if a solution lay woven into the carpet’s pattern. “What about the oil money?”
She tried to contain her sigh. “You want a loan against your mineral rights when you don’t even know what’s down there?”
