by Nicole Helm
“How can I help? With Steph?”
She ran her index finger over her bottom lip—not in some extra-sultry maneuver, though he could perfectly imagine his tongue following the path of her finger, or maybe his teeth. But there was something softer than sex in her expression, something more unsure.
“I need to know what’s going on there, you know? If she’s getting to school. If she ever gets out. I need a crack I can slip through to get her out. He’s…gotten more careful with every escape.”
“Every…escape. What? Like he’s keeping them prisoner?”
“Basically.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
She shook the hair out of her face, everything soft about her expression gone. “Who says I didn’t?”
“But—”
“But I’m a girl with a record. And until Burt Renkins stepped down from his sheriff position a few years back, he chose to look the other way when it came to anything we girls said, since him and Daddy Dearest were fishing buddies, and Dad let that jackass hunt on Rogers land. Besides, Dad and Mom denied it all, so we were shit out of luck. If you haven’t noticed, the Montana social services don’t do a great job of reaching Blue Valley.”
Christ, she made everything in his chest just ache. “So you…” He didn’t know how to finish that statement.
“So I took it upon myself. To protect them, and when I couldn’t be there to protect them anymore…” That earned him a pointed look. A reminder. You ruined my life.
“You got them out?” He couldn’t fathom what it must have taken. To go back there and to secret them out. To spend most of her life playing adult and weathering every blow—not just for herself, but for her sisters. “And then what?”
“I had to earn the cash to get them somewhere. Rose won most of hers at one of Dad’s poker games, and near about got her arm broken when she wouldn’t give Dad the winnings.” Delia sighed, still leaning against the door. “I got her out, but she disappeared on her own, wouldn’t take any help from me. Elsie, I got on a train to Billings, and she managed to earn her way to Seattle, so I sent Billie there to be with her once I got the cash.”
She should have been smiling or proud. She should have flashed him that screw-you lip quirk she was so good at, but instead she looked…devastated.
“Things were tough with Billie. Dad had figured it out, and the first try got botched.” She shook her head. “Second try went okay, but it’s been too long. It’s been too long with Steph being there by herself.”
“How did it get botched?”
She shrugged. “He got her before I did.”
“How…” How could this just happen? He’d seen the man hold a gun to Delia’s head. With his own two eyes, he’d seen that, and even knowing how downright evil the man had to be, worse than anything Caleb could possibly ever pretend to be—even at his drunken worst—he was holding his daughters prisoner?
“Look. The past doesn’t matter. What matters is I have to figure out a way to get her out. And I keep trying. I keep trying, but I don’t know how. Not without risking her even more than she already is. I have to know what’s going on there.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? What do you mean okay?”
“I mean, okay, we’ll figure out a way to do that. We will find a way to get her out. Maybe I can’t let Tyler see me with you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help.” Somehow, someway he had to be worthy of Summer’s faith, worthy of this second chance. Okay, more like tenth chance. “It doesn’t mean I can’t do what I can to give you help. To do the right thing. No one deserves to be in that.”
“Where is this coming from? You kicked me out this morning!”
“I told you—”
“Bullshit. The Tyler thing is fine or whatever, but you told me to go. I told you she’s there and I have to get her out and you let me walk away.” She took a step away from the door—toward him.
“I am trying to make it right. I am trying…” What was he doing? Do the right thing. Summer’s note. Summer’s belief. Delia had said she didn’t trust him, but kissed him anyway.
He wanted to be worthy of all this. He wanted to be more than that voice in his head telling him he couldn’t be. He wanted Shaw and he wanted Delia and he wanted… something to feel right. That kiss had been the most right his life had ever been.
“I want to do the right thing. Without ruining your life or mine. If you want my help—it’s here. You said you wanted my help. You came to me.” He stepped forward, because he needed to make the gesture. He needed to find her trust, because he needed to do this. He needed to find a way to make his life right, and somehow giving her life some kind of right seemed to be the answer.
He needed to find a way to make something right for her. So he touched her face, cupping her cheeks with his hands. “You are amazing. What you’ve done is amazing, and I want to help. Because it is right, and I may be slow to recognize it, to do it, but I am changing my damn life.” Maybe his damn self, if it was possible.
A big if, but a possibility nonetheless.
She shook her head, but he wouldn’t let her shake his hands off her face.
“I am doing what I have to do,” she said fiercely. “What anyone would do. I know you don’t think of yourself as much of a knight in shining armor, and you’re kind of a dipshit, but you did save my life—even if it fucked everything up, and I know…I know if the situation was reversed, you’d do the same for Mel and Summer.” She touched her fingertips to his jaw, lightly, so lightly he was afraid to move.
“I would,” he said before he even thought it through, before he could even talk himself out of it. If it meant Mel or Summer being safe, yeah, he would fight back with everything.
If he would do that for them, he could do that for Delia. Because the woman deserved someone to stand by her and help, even if he was the worst person for the job. No one else was here. He had to do it.
She lifted her chin, even though his hands were still on her face and her fingers were still on his jaw. “For what it’s worth, I still don’t trust you.”
He couldn’t possibly blame her for that, but he didn’t have to accept it. “I am going to make you trust me.” Maybe if he could earn her trust, deserve it, he could stop believing his mother’s voice in his head.
“Good luck with that.”
“I am. I know I screwed it up once, but I’m going to fix it. It’s not my area of expertise, but I am going to do it.”
“You can try.”
“I will. And I’ll succeed.” Damn right he would. Save Shaw. Find Delia some peace. He was going to do all the things he’d screwed up in his past. Something about Summer’s note and that sunset and Delia’s kiss had changed him, and he was going to hold on to that change, and fuck every old voice in his head telling him he couldn’t.
“Well, there’s something I want you to do before you start trying.”
“Name it.”
Her hand not touching his jaw knocked his hat off his head, curled into his hair, and tugged him down onto her mouth. The kiss was lacking all sweetness, all gentleness they’d had in the truck—this was hot and hard and maybe a little mean, and he gave himself over to it.
Because he had no answer for the why. So maybe it was time to ask himself a different question.
Why the hell not?
* * *
Delia wanted something raw and kind of wrong and all kinds of twisted. She wanted to forget there was bad and good in the world, because as much as her father was the bad, most of the rest was a nasty mist of gray.
Bad and good and wrong and right, and she was tired of trying to find the right path in the murkiness of it all.
So she’d fuck something senseless to feel good. She pressed her entire body to Caleb, and even with the bulky coat between their chests, she could feel the warmth of him. And when she a
rched her back just so, she could feel the hard line of his erection.
That was what she wanted. Something that didn’t involve words or thinking or hard stuff. Just sex. Sex, and then she’d use him to get Steph out. Tomorrow first thing. Somehow. Someway. He’d offered his help, and she would use it.
But for now the sun was down and her heart hurt. All she could think about was all the ways she’d failed Steph, and all the ways she’d keep failing her if she wasn’t more careful and more thoughtful. Like not tearing off in a huff because she was getting the boot.
She had to be smarter, above all the emotional shit. What would she have done when it was dark and cold and she was traipsing through the woods? You would have survived. It is what you do.
Yeah, well, her survival was about to include hot, sweaty, not totally nice sex.
The best kind, all in all.
She tugged at the zipper of his coat and pushed it off his shoulders. He didn’t move to do the same for her, so she did it herself, all but swearing when the zipper got stuck at the bottom.
“Lift up your arms.”
“Lift up my—” He tugged her arms up. “Why, yes, I’ve been in this position before. Don’t shoot.”
But without even a crack of a smile, without any of the painful intensity leaving his face, he simply pulled the jacket up and over her head. He dropped it to the ground and caged her against the door. Thrill and excitement zapped through her, a sizzling heat. She wanted to be caged, and she wanted his body against hers. She reveled in the excitement that pooled low, and gave herself over to it.
He grasped her chin in a way that should have felt threatening, not exciting. But every hard groove on his face, and every expelled breath across her cheek all worked together to make her desperate for sex—desperate for him to focus his intensity on her instead of all the crap that surrounded him.
“No jokes. Got it?”
She batted her eyelashes at him, because as desperate as her body felt, she was still in control. He did not get to tell her what to do, even if that gruff command made her stomach flip and her pulse beat faster. “And what are you going to do? Punish me?”
His grasp on her chin tightened, and he leaned closer, until they were almost nose to nose. “No. Jokes.” He held her gaze as he brushed his mouth across hers, gentle, sweet.
No, no, no, that was not what she signed up for. She did not want sweet. She couldn’t help but feel they’d been destined for this—this moment. It had been undeniable since they’d understood what sex meant.
But it had never been meant to be gentle. Not between them. There was too much energy and too much drive for either of them to bend easily.
Or so she would have liked to believe. The way his hand slowly, softly stroked down her throat, between her breasts, across her stomach before reaching the hem of her shirt and tugging upward, she didn’t just bend, she nearly melted.
She’d had a decent shower at the Shaw house this morning, but her bra was still the ratty, graying thing she’d left Eddie’s apartment in, and though there were a multitude of things she refused to be self-conscious about, this was one of those things she couldn’t quite stomach.
What was sexy about standing in front of a man in a piece-of-shit bra that had obviously made the rounds for a long damn time? He pulled the shirt completely off of her, and then she managed to leverage some space between her back and the door to work the aging clasp apart and drop the bra. She needed no reminder of what little she had.
Luckily, an interested man’s gaze on her chest was a great antidote for feeling self-conscious about her underwear.
He dropped her shirt next to the bra, then his hands squeezed onto her hips, anchoring her in the spot. Against the door.
His palm was hot and hard and rough as it slid up the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, the flare of her shoulder. She wanted more of that scraping, possessing touch, more of the tightness in her chest, the jittery longing low in her belly. He delivered, his entire hand following the line of her collarbone, the other hand still gripped tight and centering on her hip.
When his palm covered her breast, a callous scraping over her nipple, her head thunked back against the door. It had been a long time since someone had touched her in a way that hadn’t felt like… Well, she really didn’t want to think about how a lot of the sex she’d had felt more like payment than lust. Not when this felt like none of the former and all of the latter.
He needed to lose some clothes so she could keep riding this wave of good feeling. “Your turn,” she managed to croak. Unsurprisingly, because she was almost certain he’d do anything she told him to right now, he whipped off his shirt and let it fall on top of hers.
She sighed. Even though she’d seen that sight just last night, it wouldn’t ever get old. Caleb didn’t have to worry about old bras or bad razors or any number of things that severely threatened all the ways she made herself feel beautiful, put together, or ready to face the world. He was perfection. Unfair, really, that he could be perfect, but for the moment that broad chest, with dips and ridges of muscle, was hers.
And she wasn’t going to settle for less than everything. “Now the pants.”
“You first.”
“Uh-uh. I started this. I get to be in charge.” Because something was going to go her way. She was going to make sure of it.
He quirked a brow, as if to say yeah right, but his hands went to his belt, which he carefully unclasped. Then he stopped abruptly, his cocky expression falling into something like intense remorse. “I do…not have a condom.”
For the first time, her hastily packed backpack was about to be her saving grace. She rolled her eyes, pushing past him. “Ugh. Men.” She sauntered over to the pile of things she’d tossed out of her backpack when she’d packed earlier, holding up a hand to shush his protest. Amid the lipstick and the change of clothes, there was the little foil packet that had been left over from the time she and Eddie went to Summerville and she’d packed this bag.
Good luck charm indeed. “You’re in luck, but I’ve only got one, so you better make it good.”
The cocky quirk of a smile was back. “That is one thing I have no doubts about.”
She held the package between her index and middle finger. “So, drop the pants.”
The smirk turned full-on arrogant grin, and without looking down or breaking any kind of eye contact, he finished removing his belt, undoing his button, lowering the zipper.
A dreamy sigh would undoubtedly go to his head, but she couldn’t manage to keep it in. He was not a man who’d gone soft with age, or gaunt with the loss of alcohol in his life. Instead, that teenage ranginess had been honed into something broad and lean and… She wasn’t sure she had the vocabulary for what he was.
Strong, competent, gorgeous. Objectively, he looked like a dream or a movie star, and yet she knew this man’s faults, and they were legion. The bigger problem was she knew his good too. The calloused hands were from hard work, just as the masculine curve of muscles were.
His pants were undone, spread apart, but he stopped just short of pushing them over his hips and giving her what she really wanted. A faint frown creased his brow and he looked around the mostly dark room. “Christ, it’s cold in here. Haven’t you been building a fire?”
She pointed at his still-on-if-unfastened pants. “Are you changing the subject?”
He frowned at the fireplace. “You haven’t been keeping a fire,” he accused, his baffled expression meeting what had to be a baffled expression of her own.
She shrugged. “Didn’t want to draw any attention.” Hadn’t been able to coax the random pieces of wood she’d stockpiled to flame, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
His frown went deeper, faint lines etched from the corner of his mouth outward. It was a frown that was frustration and goodness all wrapped up into one. He frowned like that when he w
as confused, when he was wrong, and most especially when the right thing was also the hard thing.
He reached for his coat.
“Hey, where are you—”
He shoved his arms into sleeves, not bothering to redo the button or zipper of his pants. “Don’t move,” he instructed.
“Don’t…move. I’m half-naked and you’re putting on your coat and telling me not to move?”
But his frown lifted and his eyes took their time roaming the part of her that was naked. “Yes, that is what I’m doing. I’m going to get some wood—” When she opened her mouth to make a joke about wood, he steamrolled right over her. “And something to light the fire with—barring nothing has made its nest in there. You are going to stand there, or sit if you prefer, but you’re not going to put your clothes back on—got it? This is a pause, not a cease and desist.”
She took a prim seat on the couch, crossing her arms over her chest. It was cold. She should put her shirt back on. “Who says I’ll want you when you get back?”
He crossed the room, zipping up his coat. Then he grabbed one of the blankets he’d left her that first day from the end of the couch, and leaned down to wrap it around her shoulders. His mouth brushed her temple, lingered. “Oh, you’ll still want me.”
Before she could get irritated or come up with a pithy remark or, worst of all, laugh, he stalked to the door and disappeared outside.
She should put on her shirt. She should put the kibosh on this whole insane turn of events. Instead she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and waited.
Chapter 12
Caleb gathered everything he needed for a fire as quickly as humanly possible. He hadn’t wanted to leave, not when he was pretty sure they could make enough heat together to keep all of Blue Valley warm, but it had been unsettling to know as much as he’d helped her by getting her some food and supplies, she was still…barely existing, hiding in Gramps’s old cabin that he’d tried to kick her out of, with no fire, the crappiest food…
