by Alison Kent
“The well’s due to spud in a couple of months. Sooner if the rig can get there. Everyone’s saying the prospect looks good.”
“Until the well’s producing, good doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well, fuck me.”
She didn’t get it. Why in the world would he want to put money into a second losing proposition? Why didn’t he sell the lot and the house as is and be done with it? She didn’t get it, but she wasn’t going to ask because asking meant personal involvement, and even though her brother was a partner in the ranch, she had to separate her business from her personal life.
That’s what he needed to understand. She wasn’t singling him out or punishing him. As much as this was about his request, it wasn’t. “Casper. If I approved this expenditure, I’d lose my job.”
He brought up both hands, scrubbed them down his face, looking as exhausted as he was resigned. “Guess I’ll have to get one that pays then.”
Or he could start acting like he had some sense and let this go. “A job? Doing what? You already work dawn to dusk.”
“That leaves me about ten hours,” he said, walking back to her desk. He stopped between the two visitor chairs, gripped the back of both with strong, capable hands…hands with short, clean nails, golden hair trailing along the edges from his wrists. “That should be enough.”
“To do what?” she asked, imagining the thick slide of his fingers and squirming in her seat. “And when are you going to sleep?”
“I don’t sleep much as it is.” He rocked back and forth against the chairs. “I hear Royce Summerlin’s looking for someone to break a few horses.”
“You. Breaking horses.” She gave a scoffing laugh because he was too close, the seams of his jeans worn and nearly white and messing with her head.
“Why not?” he asked, his hat brim casting a shadow across his eyes.
She sat forward and picked up a pen, looking at the Harts’ paperwork on her desk instead of giving Casper any more of her time. She had work to do, and he was bothering her. Making her itch. Making her damp. Making her heart race and her blood run hot.
Making her foolhardy. “Because you’re a bull rider.”
“I’ve ridden a lot more than bulls.” He pushed up to stand straight. “And I’ve broken more than a few of my rides.”
She brushed him off without looking up. “Don’t be sex talking me. It’s not going to get you anywhere. The answer’s still no.”
He came closer, until his thighs in her peripheral vision were the only thing she could see. “Sex talk? Really?”
Heat bloomed beneath her white blouse and blue blazer. What in the world was wrong with her? It was his fault. All of it. She wasn’t herself when he was around. She wasn’t anyone she recognized. She was imprudent, allowing in thoughts she had no business thinking, saying things that came with trouble attached.
“Sorry,” she said, returning her pen to her desk and meeting his gaze. “It’s just…I know you. Everything out of your mouth is a double entendre, and that’s only when you’re not being outright provocative or crass.”
“Crass? Are you kidding me?” He narrowed his eyes. The corner of his mouth lifted dangerously.
Her laugh was more nervous than she liked. She knew she didn’t have him wrong. “More like you’re kidding yourself.”
“You, Faith Mitchell, have wounded me.”
“And you, Casper Jayne, are a scoundrel and you know it.”
He took a minute to respond, as if first running his life through the filter of her words. He looked confused and suddenly not quite sure of where they stood, or where to go next. “Is that why you wouldn’t have anything to do with me in high school?”
Now who was kidding whom? “You didn’t want anything to do with me. I got that message loud and clear.”
“Oh no, sugar.” His voice was deep, hungry, his gaze sharp and to the point. “The message you got was your brother’s.”
“Whatever,” she said because this conversation was one step away from precarious, and she could so easily fall.
“And anyway. You know the gang’s got a hands-off policy about sisters.”
That sounded as much like a coward’s way out as a challenge. She couldn’t stop herself. “You’ll climb on the back of a two-thousand-pound bull, but you won’t stand up to Boone?”
A vein throbbed in his temple. Heat rolled off his body to wrap her up, tangling her in his scent and the strength of his thighs. “You want me to stand up to Boone? Is that what you’re saying here, Faith? Because all I need is a sign and I’ll make it happen.”
She’d been giving him signs for years. He needed to figure this out for himself. And she needed to figure out if this was really what she wanted—and why his company had her flirting with a trip off the path of straight and narrow and onto the road less traveled where so many things could go wrong.
Why it always had. “Look. Can we talk about this later? I’ve actually got work to do here.”
She wasn’t any keener on calling the Harts now than she’d been before Casper barged in. In fact, having to turn down his money request made her feel even worse about giving the family their bad news.
But she was too close to making a mistake here. She knew that. She couldn’t think when he was around. She knew that, too. And so she waited for him to go.
A wait made in vain.
He hadn’t moved, hadn’t turned so much as his gaze away. It was as if he were looking for, waiting for that sign. “Later when?”
His voice, when it came, was gruff and demanding, and it was all she could do to breathe. Be careful what you ask for, Faith Mitchell. “I’m coming out to the ranch tonight to go over our parents’ anniversary party plans with Boone. Will that work for your very busy schedule?”
“I’ll be there,” he said, and then strode out of her office. It took her a very long time to get back to work and stop thinking about his thighs.
TWO
BEFORE HEADING FROM the bank back to the ranch, Casper swung once more by the house. He wasn’t sure why he bothered. Nothing in the last hour had changed. The place was still the nightmare it had been for years. Paint peeling. Shingles ripped away by high winds and branches. Weeds and rotting wood and broken windows and heinous neglect.
It was a home fit for rats and rattlesnakes, spiders and cockroaches—all apt descriptions of the woman who’d had zero interest in bringing him up.
He shook his head free of childhood memories no adult should have stuck there, thinking it strange the neighbors on either side hadn’t gone to the city to have something done. Or maybe they had. Before returning to Crow Hill for good this summer, he’d only stopped by twice in sixteen years. Neither time had been to catch up.
The house had seemed an obvious place to recover after getting hung up to a couple of rank bulls. He’d stayed out of sight and mostly drunk. He hadn’t wanted anyone to see him busted all to hell. He sure hadn’t wanted any curious sorts offering to nurse him back to health, coming into the house where he’d lived, sniffing around, getting all nosy, and breaking out their holier-than-thou.
Snorting under his breath, he climbed down from his truck and hopped onto the roller coaster of a sidewalk, tripping once before getting his feet solid under him. Most likely, the city had finally found his old lady plying her wares in Vegas, instead of on the interstate at Bokeem’s, and told her to do something with the property before they did. As always, her solution had been to pass the buck, this time leaving him the one in a bind.
And because of that bind, if Faith was willing to talk tonight about the money he needed, because he couldn’t imagine her wanting to talk about fucking him, it might be a good idea to decide where to start spending it rather than jumping into a time-suck of a renovation with no plan. Though, really, talking about the money was easy. Coughing it up was going to be the hard part. The woman was tight with a capital T.
So tight, in fact, he doubted she’d spare a thought to squeezing out the sign he’d told h
er to give him—even if everything he’d seen in her eyes told him the idea of doing so heated her up. Faith was a prize. More of a prize than he deserved, for certain. That didn’t mean he’d turn her down if she offered, the Dalton Gang’s no-sisters rule be damned.
Still, he couldn’t see the two of them together. He was a broken-down son of a bitch who owned a ranch on the edge of belly up and a house turned over and waiting to be scratched. What he didn’t have was anything to offer a woman like Faith.
Anything, he mused, but his damn fine cock, nearly losing his footing as he stepped over a tree root and into an ankle-deep hole. Served him right for going there, he supposed, and hell if the inspector hadn’t been telling the truth about the grade of the lot.
’Course since rain wasn’t an issue, neither was standing water, but cleaning the trash from the yard—newspaper, dead leaves and acorns, aluminum cans, cigarette butts, foam cups, and downed limbs—and getting a tractor over here along with a truckload of soil would go a ways toward making the place more picture perfect and less of an eyesore.
Set up a couple of spotlights, and he could get it done in three or four days, an hour or two a night as long as the neighbors didn’t complain about the disturbance to their peace and quiet. Though where he’d come up with a generator and fuel to run it since the electricity to the place had been turned off ages ago…
Why the hell did everything have to depend on money?
He’d made a good bit on the PBR circuit, blown what he didn’t spend on his gear on good times. But when he’d come back to Crow Hill, he’d poured what was left into the ranch’s near-empty bank account. That investment could’ve given him more than a third of the ownership, but when Boone and Dax had pressed the point, he’d told them to make a fist and use it.
The Dalton Gang had always been an all-for-one, one-for-all proposition. As teens, they’d worked the ranch as a group. As adults, they’d inherited the business together. Things should’ve been just peachy. He was doing what he loved best with the guys he loved best.
But a lack of funds was still making a big, fat mess of his life—just as it had every day he’d spent here as a kid. Even after the piece of shit who’d been his old man had split, nothing had changed, he realized, glancing up as he rounded the northeast corner of the house where he’d taken most of his beatings from that man.
And that’s when he saw the dog. Some kind of shaggy mutt, looking about as broken as he was feeling. It hadn’t been here earlier, though with the gate unhinged it would’ve been easy enough for anyone to come through. The question was why? There wasn’t any garbage for it to dig through, and there sure as hell weren’t any enticing smells of home cooking to lure it close.
The animal had a round head, floppy ears, and fur that should’ve been white but was the color of coffee and mud. It lay on the back porch, between the swing hanging from one chain and what was left of the railing, chin resting on its front paws. Its black eyes were the only part of the mutt that moved, following Casper’s every step as he zigzagged closer.
A dog meant dog shit and one more thing he didn’t want to have to clean up. He picked up a stick, aiming to shoo the thing on its way, but had only taken two steps when the back door opened, and there stood a kid, maybe thirteen, fourteen, as unkempt as the mongrel and asking, “Who the hell are you?”
Huh. He was pretty sure that was his line.
“If you’re vandalizing, I’m the guy who’s going to call the cops,” he said, knowing he wouldn’t but watching the kid for a response. He got nothing, no fear, no attitude…just nothing. Had the kid and the dog been inside earlier? Watching while the inspector checked the outside of the house? “If you’re squatting, I’m your landlord, come to collect the rent.”
The boy let go of the screen door. It banged shut behind him as he disappeared into what had been designed as a pantry and mudroom but hadn’t been used for anything but storing trash during Casper’s day. Grumbling, he headed for the steps, stopped by a growl and a baring of teeth. He didn’t retreat. He’d lost a couple rounds today already, and sharp canines or not, he was not backing down from this fight.
“Hey. Kid. Call off the dog or I’ll shoot him dead.” He wouldn’t do that either. He wasn’t even carrying his piece, but the kid didn’t have to know it.
“Kevin,” came the boy’s voice from inside the house. The dog quieted, returned to watching Casper with those big dark eyes.
Kevin? Seriously? Casper climbed the steps slowly, his eyes sticking to the dog as he pulled open the door. Blowing out an audible breath, he passed through the garbage dump into the kitchen. The dog followed him, catching the screen with his snout before it banged closed.
Even without shades hanging over the windows, it was dark inside, the film of dirt on the glass shutting out what light the trees didn’t block, both keeping the room cooler than he would’ve expected to find. The floor tiles, never as white as originally billed, were now as brown as the yard.
Dishes were scattered from the kitchen island to the stovetop to the acreage of counters. Cereal bowls. A pan his old lady had used to heat Chef Boyardee and Campbell’s Chicken Noodle. Beer cans. Aluminum TV dinner trays. Empty bottles of Jose Cuervo and Jack.
A box of Frosted Flakes had been knocked from the top of the fridge and torn open by varmints. Claw and teeth marks showed on the shredded cardboard and Tony the Tiger’s head. And it was quiet. Quiet like a crypt, consuming memories and breathable air and dirty little secrets. A time capsule best left unopened.
Or as he liked to call it, home sweet home.
The smells kept him from getting totally maudlin. Mold and rot and urine and things once living that had to be dead. He shook it off—he’d deal when the time came—and followed Kevin, who seemed to know where he was going, from the kitchen down the long first-floor hallway to what would’ve been the front parlor had the Jaynes had use for such a thing.
There he found the kid sprawled on a sleeping bag, a paperback thriller in one hand, a backpack for a pillow. Some of the odor was coming from in here. The boy could use a bath. Tough to manage with the water off, but otherwise…
Casper looked around. The kid had certainly made himself at home. Matches, a candle, a flashlight. Crumpled foil and soda bottles and takeout containers that looked an awful lot like they’d come from a restaurant Dumpster.
He’d been here a while. And with no water. Which brought to mind the question of what he was doing about a toilet, and that was an answer Casper wasn’t exactly excited to hear.
He pushed up on the brim of his hat, his hands moving to his hips. “Let’s try this again. What are you doing here?”
“Trying to read,” the boy said, his face hidden behind the book. “Do you mind?”
“And you’re doing it in my house why?”
All he got in response was silence, so he moved closer, kicked at the worn sole of the kid’s tennis shoe. “You answer me or you answer Sheriff Orleans.”
The boy slammed the book shut. “That’s uncool, dude, calling the man.”
“I’m the man you need to worry about,” Casper said, shaking off the idea of being the very authority figure he’d had his own skirmishes with back in the day.
“I found the house,” he said, rolling up to sit, legs crossed, shoulders hunched. “It was empty. I needed a place to crash, okay?”
A fourteen-year-old should not need a place to crash. Casper might not know much, but he knew that. “You got a home? Family?”
“Would I be here if I did?”
Yeah. That’s what he’d thought. “You got a name at least?”
The boy hesitated before offering, “Clay. Whitman.”
Whitman. Casper blinked, frowned. “Do I know you?”
“You just asked me my name, dude.”
Fucking smart-ass. “Okay, then. One more time. What are you doing here?”
The boy held Casper’s gaze as he gained his feet. He was all gangly limbs, awkward, but a solid five foot eight. Sti
ll growing. Still figuring things out, finding his place. On his way to being a man.
“I came looking for you,” he said, tossing off the bullshit for a man’s honesty.
This couldn’t be good. Casper was thirty-three. If the boy was fourteen…“What do you mean, you came looking for me? I just asked if I knew you.”
“But you didn’t ask if I knew you.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. Or I did. About six years ago.”
Six years ago…God, how many places had he been? He recalled a good dozen. And then he remembered Albuquerque. That was where he’d met one of the bulls to nearly do him in.
He’d also met a couple of buckle bunnies who enjoyed tag-teaming their cowboys. One of their names, he was pretty sure, had been Whitman, though he’d been drunk a lot of that time.
“Are you from Albuquerque?”
Clay nodded, his face drawn and sober.
“You’re Angie’s kid?”
Another nod.
“She’s not here, is she?”
“She’s dead.”
Fuck me. Fuck…me. “I’m sorry, man.”
Clay shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his filthy jeans and shrugged. “Okay.”
“What happened?”
“She died.”
Casper bit his tongue. Angering the boy wasn’t going to get him any answers. “How did you get here?”
“Walked. Hitchhiked.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t really. I knew this was where you were from. My mom used to caw like a crow when she talked about you. I couldn’t think of any other place to go.”
That didn’t make a lick of sense. Casper barely remembered the eight-year-old Clay. It wasn’t like he’d been the boy’s father figure…And Angie making like a crow? What the hell? “What about social services? They didn’t find you a family to stay with?”
Clay turned away, nudged his foot against his backpack. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You talk, or I talk.” And then for some reason he added, “To the sheriff.”
“I don’t know why I thought you’d be cool about this,” Clay said, the sentence ending on a break Casper did his best to ignore.
