by Alison Kent
“That makes me hurt, thinking he was here all that time with no one in his corner.”
“He had your brother. And Dax. And your mother and me by extension.”
But he hadn’t had her. She’d been too young, too naive. She’d had very little clue as to the truth of his life then. Even now, she only knew what he’d told her from his adult perspective. Not what he’d suffered in the moment.
She’d been young, but she could’ve been a friend. “I wish I’d known him better then.”
Her father’s chuckle spoke to his protective nature. “I’m damn glad you didn’t. That boy raised more hell than Dax and Boone combined. No way would I have let my little girl anywhere near him.”
“I don’t mean I wanted to date him.” Though hadn’t she? Hadn’t he played into her fantasies of throwing off her straight As for a walk on the wild side? “I just meant…The things he’s told me…I don’t think he could’ve had too many people in his corner.”
“You’re right about that.”
And it made her so sad. “Can I tell you something?”
“You can tell me anything,” he said, turning a concerned frown on her. “Anytime. You know that.”
“I know. I just don’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
“I could never be disappointed in you.”
“You were. In the past.”
“I was, yes,” he said, sighing. “But more so in myself than in you.”
That didn’t make any sense. “Why would you have been disappointed in yourself?”
“Because I failed you somewhere. I didn’t give you something you needed.”
Was he kidding? “How can you even say that? You gave me everything!”
“Keeping your brother on the straight and narrow required a lot of time and energy, and that took away from what your mother and I had for you. But you seemed so confident, so happy. It was easy to let you do your own thing and think everything was fine.”
“Oh, Daddy. Don’t think that way. Everything was fine.” Emotion rose like fog, blurring everything around her as she remembered the past. “But I did want to be more like Boone. To have fun, and even get into trouble if it meant not keeping my nose stuck in a book all the time. He made it look so easy. Getting the same straight As without having to work for them. Even now…”
“What?”
“I want to be more like him. He’s doing what he wants to do. He’s struggling. I know that, but he loves his work, the ranch, his boys, his damn horse.”
“And you don’t love yours.”
“I don’t,” she admitted, shaking her head.
“Oh, sweetheart. You’re financially set. That money’s been earning interest for ten years. Why not take it and do what you want to with your life?”
“Because I don’t know what that is.” She was thirty-one years old, and had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up. How pathetic was that? “And using that money for me seems so selfish. I didn’t earn it. Or deserve it.”
“But it’s yours.”
“I’ve tried so many times to get Boone to let me pay off the ranch’s debt. But he won’t.”
“So you used your money on Casper instead.”
“I did.” She looked up to meet the loving gaze of the man who had always been in her corner, and then rushed out with, “I paid for all the renovations.”
Her father nodded, smiled, reached up to push a lock of hair from her eyes. “I was pretty sure from the start that you had.”
She waited for him to say something more, but when he didn’t, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you mad?”
“Why would I be mad? It’s about time you did something good with it.”
“I didn’t want to tell you. Or anyone. He has no idea how I got it. I doubt he’d be happy to find out.”
“But you’ll tell him,” he said, his tone wise and knowing.
“I can’t.” It would kill her for him to know how stupid she’d been.
“Give him a little credit, Faith.” He got to his feet, gave her a hand, and pulled her up. “How you came about that money isn’t important here. It’s in the past. Done and gone. None of that can be changed. All that matters is that you spent it on Casper for the right reason. And that reason better be more than a place to have this party.”
She breathed in, breathed out, let go of the words that had been strangling her. “I love him.”
“I know you do.”
“Oh, Daddy.” She pulled in a sob, wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him close. “I didn’t think love was supposed to hurt this much. I feel like I’m bleeding with it.”
Beside her, her father smiled. “That’s how you can trust it, sweetheart. That’s how you know it’s the real thing.”
THIRTY-FIVE
THOUGH CASPER HAD arrived late to the party, he’d been able to park right in front of the house. Perk of being the owner, he guessed, though more than likely all he’d done was block a path kept free from the street to the gate. And anyway, he only owned half. Faith owned the rest. And her car wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
Bracing his arms on his truck bed, his beer dangling from one hand, he stood facing his past and his brightly lit present, but not his future because he’d just fucked all of that up. Except no matter his earlier musings, he’d come too far to accept that he ruined everything he touched.
He wasn’t going to buy that things between them just weren’t meant to be. He might be drunk, but he knew that wasn’t the case. They’d been perfect together. They were perfect together. So what in his old third-floor bedroom had gone so terribly wrong?
Seeing Clay headed toward him, he shoveled the question to the back of his mind. Then he circled the truck to lean against the other side, the side with the new sidewalk, with the newly sodded yard, with the white picket fence like a big toothy grin.
Clay raised a tentative hand. “Hey.”
Casper raised his beer. “Hey, yourself.”
“I can go,” the boy said, his steps faltering, jerking a thumb over his shoulder and glancing back. “If you’re busy.”
“I’m not busy.” He took a deep breath, cracked his neck side to side. “Just needed a break from the noise.”
“Band’s pretty dope. I mean, for being country and all.”
Casper smiled at that. The kid definitely had his feet planted in rock ’n’ roll. “It’s not the music as much as it’s all the talking. Sometimes, I just can’t stand talking.”
Clay was quiet for several seconds, his hands stuffed in the pockets of the dress pants he’d bought along with a white shirt and vest. He hitched his shoulders like he didn’t care either way. “Like I said. I can go.”
“Uh-uh. You come here,” Casper said, waving him over. “Talk to me all you want.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” He was done being a dick. “How’s Kevin today?”
“Better,” the boy said, bobbing his head. “Think he’s missing Bing and Bob, but there’s some cool dogs up at Mal’s shelter.”
“Good,” was Casper’s only response because his mind was drifting again to Faith. “You having fun? Country music aside?”
Clay shrugged. “House is pretty awesome.”
“Turned out okay, didn’t it?”
“You going to live here now?”
Was he? “What do you think? Would you like that?”
“To live here?” he asked, his eyes going wide and staying that way, his grin nearly reaching his ears. “Are you kidding me? Wait. Does that mean—”
“I don’t know yet,” he said, swallowing an emotion he thought might be pride, “but Greg says things look good.”
Clay gave a fist pump and a loud, “Sweet.”
“I wouldn’t be countin’ chickens or anything,” Casper said with a laugh. “I’ve got to make it through the approval process.”
“To foster me?”
“Or adopt you. If that’s what you want.” When Clay looked away, his throat working, Casper w
ent on. “Having the house helps. Means I can prove you’ll have a safe place to live. Then there’s the ranch, making me a legit business owner, so the system knows I’m not a deadbeat. Plus I’ve got a few friends in high places to vouch for me.”
“Sounds cool,” he said, tossing back his hair, in control again, but only just.
Kids. Women were almost easier to understand. “You’ll have to go to school.”
“I know.”
“And you’ll have a curfew.”
“I figure.”
“There’ll be rules.”
“What kind of rules?”
Rules to keep you from turning into an asshole. “Don’t worry. I’ll come up with some,” he said, watching Clay’s gaze shift across the yard. He glanced over, saw a vision in white walking toward him. A vision wearing his mark on her throat. A vision come to save him.
“I’ll get outta here,” Clay said, patting his stomach. “Think I’m ready for more cobbler.”
“I’m not cleaning up any puke from you eating too much,” Casper said, pointing at him with the hand holding the bottle.
“Yes, sir,” he said, his mouth twisting upward as he jogged away in reverse. Then he called back, “If I puke, I’ll clean it up,” before turning as Faith walked up on Casper’s other side.
He wasn’t ready for her, so he asked, “Did he just call me sir?”
“I think he barely stopped himself from calling you dad.”
That nearly sobered him. “I’m not his dad.”
“Which is probably why he stopped himself.”
“Hope I don’t fuck this up,” he muttered under his breath, more to himself than to her.
“You won’t. The changes you’ve made in him are amazing.”
She was really a fan of that word tonight, wasn’t she? “I haven’t done anything.”
“Oh, but you have,” she said, stepping closer, her heels clicking on the sidewalk, a tick-tick-tick counting down time. “He looks…happy. The first time I met him he looked like he’d lost all hope.”
“He’s a kid. What does he know?”
“You’re good with him.”
“He makes it easy,” he said, lifting the bottle because he’d changed his mind. He didn’t need her to save him.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she said anyway, trying. But he wasn’t going to let her, so he stayed silent, leaving her to finally ask, “Do you want to come back in? Get something to eat?”
“Not hungry.”
“We could dance, or just have a glass of champagne and listen to the band.”
“I’m done dancing. I can hear the band from here. And if I’m going to drink, it’ll be Jack and it sure as hell won’t be inside that house,” he said, his gaze searching out Clay who was talking to Philip Hart’s kid of the same age.
Faith’s gaze followed. “You’re not your father, Casper. You’re not going to get drunk and beat Clay—”
“It’s not about Clay. It’s not about my father. Or Suzanne or anything but…”
“But me?”
And here we go. “I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you do this,” he said, waving the beer he really didn’t want anymore. Drinking wasn’t going to make any of what was going on here easier, and he was too old to work the ranch with a hangover. Then there was the part about taking on the role of a father, and he better than anyone knew that was best done sober. “Should’ve left well enough alone, sold the place, stuck to the ranch.”
“It’s okay, you know, for good things to happen to you. You deserve them.” She raised a hand, rubbed it down his arm.
He spun on her, dislodging it. “Why, Faith? Why do I deserve anything good?”
She backed away, frowning. “Are you out here having a pity party? Because the sex wasn’t great?”
“For you, maybe. I had a goddamn good time.”
Her brows came together in a dark, somber vee. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what? Like I’ve always been? A sonuvabitch?”
“That’s not how you’ve been lately,” she said, her voice going soft, that softness breaking. “That’s not how I know you.”
“Guess you’ve been living in fantasy land. Fucking the cowboy. Redeeming the cowboy. Riding the cowboy. Yeah. You do that one well.”
She shook her head, crossed her arms over her middle, and held herself tight. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“In Spanish, they say adios!”
“I’m not going to say good-bye. We can still be…”
“Friends? Amigos?” He laughed, the sound ripped from his gut. “Do you really think we can be amigos?”
“We were friends before.”
He straightened, and with his heart pounding like horse hooves at full gallop, he advanced on her, stopping with inches between them. He glared at her from beneath the brim of his hat. “I hadn’t been inside your pussy before.”
She swallowed, looked away, and rolled her eyes, her nose coming up a notch as she said, “Reverting to being crass won’t get you—”
“I’m not reverting, Faith. Don’t you get that? This is who I am. Who I’ve always been.” He waved a hand over her head. “This is who this house taught me to be.” Then he caught sight of the girl from the porch headed toward him with a wave and a big bright smile.
“Shit,” he said, looking back at Faith, but not quickly enough.
She glanced over her shoulder, turned back to him, fuming. “You’re right. You are a son of a bitch.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the girl said, slowing her pace as she approached. “Is this not a good time?”
Faith spun on her. “No, Luck. It’s not a good time. And if you want to keep your job with Arwen, it’ll never be a good time.”
“Hey,” Luck said, holding her small purse at her waist as she backed away in her heels that were almost taller than her skirt was long. “It was his idea. I thought that meant the coast was clear.”
“The coast is not clear. The coast will never be clear,” Faith said, her voice pitched low and barely audible but that much more powerful for it.
Casper watched Luck’s retreat before looking back at Faith, something like hope pulling at his chest. “Did you just threaten her job?”
Faith didn’t answer. “Your idea? Seriously? What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting on with the rest of my life?”
“Are you kidding me? After everything we’ve—”
“We’ve what? Done together? Been to each other? Your money and my cock make a great team, but other than that—”
It was all he got out before she knocked the beer from his hand and slapped him square in the face. He reeled, shook his head, lifted his hand to his cheek. She covered her mouth with her hands, the moisture in her eyes shimmering and threatening to spill.
He wasn’t going to let her guilt get to him. They needed to have this out. Put an end to an affair that was obviously making her miserable.
He picked up the longneck, looked at what was left of the contents before looking at her. “Tell me it’s not the truth.”
She hitched her shoulders as if shaking off bird shit and made fists. “If I have to tell you that, then maybe it is, and if that’s what you think of me, I don’t know why I’m here.”
He snorted. “Then go. Maybe I can still catch Luck.”
“Why don’t you do that? In fact, why don’t I find her for you?” She advanced, stabbing a finger to the center of his chest and causing him to wince. “Your cock and her daddy’s money should make a really good team.”
Then she whirled away, her skirt a cloud of white against the dark of the night.
“Goddammit. Goddammit!” Rearing back, he slammed his fist into his truck’s bed, then the door, over and over until he missed and drove his arm through passenger-side window. The glass popped and shattered. Pain bolted like lightning from his wrist to his shoulder, and he stumbled two steps before catching himself. “Aww, shit. Shit.”
“Ca
sper!” Faith ran toward him. “What did you do?”
He waved her away, then cradled his hand to his chest. It was wet and sticky and a really dark color of red. “You’re going to get blood on your dress.”
“I don’t care about my dress. Let me see your hand.”
“Here,” Clay said from where he’d sprinted up from the other side, jerking open his shirt and skinning it off. He handed it to Faith. “Use this.”
“Thanks,” she said, shaking it out then reaching for Casper’s arm and wrapping him like a mummy from elbow to fingertips, grumbling words he couldn’t hear all the while.
That made him smile. Her muttering. Her attention. Clay’s concern was in there, too. He felt as if he were standing in some twisted family drama, his woman on one side, his kid on the other, his house behind him full of friends who were full of booze and good barbecue. Except none of it was real.
The only thing real was his hand swelling to the size of a bull scrotum. “I should probably go to the ER.”
“Ya think?” Faith yanked open the door with the broken window. “Get in. I’m driving.”
“It’s my truck.”
“And your hand is bleeding everywhere. Just get in,” she said, using the hem of her dress to sweep the glass from the seat to the floor. “And don’t say a goddamn word.”
THIRTY-SIX
HIS ARM IN a sling, his hand bound to his chest like a football, Casper sat on the foot of the ER table, thinking come morning, it might just be his head giving him the most hell. Damn Boone and those stupid designer beers. Damn himself and his lack of control. Damn Faith for being everything he wanted and not letting him in. Why he’d been so slow to the realization that he’d been the only one taking a knife to his past and bleeding out…
It was the sex. It had to be. He’d been too wrapped up in her body to see that she’d held back the rest. He knew nothing that had gone on with her between his leaving Crow Hill and now. The things she’d shared these last few weeks were things he’d been there for, the breakfasts and dinners and overnights in her family’s home. Boone had been more forthcoming, hinting at a terrible happening and demanding he not judge.
After needles and x-rays and all sorts of new pain driving home the fact that he was too old to be stupid, he’d sobered enough to return to thinking about her, that room upstairs, her pushing and pulling and all those mixed signals. But thinking about her wasn’t going to get them anywhere, so when he heard the strike of her heels on the tiled floor, her steps determined, he decided it was time for a come-to-Jesus meeting—whether she liked it or not.
