Tangled Up in Texas

by Delores Fossen

  Shaw’s jaw muscles eased up enough for him to bare his teeth. He managed a growl. An honest-to-goodness, scary-as-shit growl.

  “Guess it’s not real funny to you,” Zeke babbled. “I mean, ’cause you were there and all. Well, maybe you were. And maybe all of this is made-up.” He paused. “You think I should tell people it’s made-up?”

  Shaw growled again. That’s because he’d already tried to tell his mom it was made-up, but when she’d called Sunny’s grandmother, Em had nixed the made-up lie by spilling that Sunshine had stolen the diary. At least, someone had stolen it, and the culprit had to be Sunshine.

  According to the last update from Em, Tonya wasn’t confirming the identity of her source, but this was exactly the kind of stunt Sunshine would pull. If that turned out to be wrong, Em would let him know. Thankfully, she’d stayed in touch with Shaw so that he hadn’t had to bug Sunny about it. In fact, he wanted to avoid Sunny since right now she was no doubt going through even more shit than he was.

  “I’ll tell people it’s made-up,” Zeke said, still babbling, placating and attempting to get out of this with his ass un-kicked. “And I’ll burn this copy of the magazine. Heck, I can burn any copies I find.”

  Because Shaw didn’t trust himself to grab the hand by the shirt, he got his jaw muscles to work enough for something more than a growl. He got out one word.

  “Run,” Shaw muttered.

  Apparently, that one word was effective. Zeke tossed the magazine to the floor and ran, not gracefully, either. It was a clomping gait, complete with flailing arms. It would have been funny if Shaw had been able to consider anything funny at the moment.

  He couldn’t.

  Shaw stayed put, but he knew he should make himself move. He should just skip the ride he’d planned and go back to his house. He had an office there, too, but it was a place he didn’t want to be because of all the calls and emails pouring in over the twenty-four hours since Tonya’s story had come out. It was the reason he’d wanted a long sweaty ride on a mean horse and turned off his phone, too.

  Granted no phone contact wasn’t good business practice, but he was treading water here to hang on to his temper.

  Shit. Why had Sunny gotten so graphic about that night? So...flowery? Hell, she’d called his body “chiseled” and his chest hair “dewed with moisture that carried his musky scent.”

  He’d been hot, hard and sweaty.

  And Sunny had doctored up the rest of the deal, too. They’d been in a barn, for Pete’s sake. This barn, with the smell of horse piss and liniment. Specifically, in the hayloft, where they’d gone after she’d found him coming in from a late ride. With no one else around, they’d had the barn to themselves.

  They’d climbed the wooden ladder, groping and kissing, giving each other bruises and hickeys and nearly breaking their necks when they’d stumbled. Shaw had gotten a skinned-up shin that had taken weeks to heal and so many puncture marks on his ass from the jagged bits of hay that he’d looked as if he had a case of smallpox.

  But all of that didn’t dampen his other memories.

  Yes, he’d kissed her in those places she’d mentioned, including the good parts. Of course on Sunny, all the parts were good.

  Shaw tried to force himself to remember that. To remember that he’d tried his damnedest to give her a pleasurable experience. It would have been easier to do that, probably, if she’d at least told him she was a virgin. Or if she hadn’t straddled him and impaled herself on his extremely hard hard-on only seconds after he’d gotten on a condom.

  He could still feel the sensation of being inside all that tight heat. That blast of pleasure that had nearly undone him. But then he could also hear her gasp of pain. Had seen it in her eyes, too, thanks to the crappy overhead light in the barn that had seemingly never shined bright enough to see squat.

  It’d been damn bright that night.

  Her eyes had watered. Her face had gone pale and tight. Then Sunny had whispered his name in the breathiest of breathy voices. Shaw. As if this had been some kind of betrayal.

  Hell, who was being flowery now?

  Betrayal? Yeah, right. That was a fancy word for ass-kicking pain. It’d hurt. Bad. And he’d tried to get her past the agony and onto the pleasure by using his fingers to touch her where they were joined. But he’d been twenty and an idiot. Clearly, his fingers hadn’t been skilled enough, and when he’d tried to move her off him, Sunny had shaken her head and asked him to help her finish it.

  Finish it.

  Yeah, not exactly flowery, and that’s maybe why Sunny had embellished things in her diary by saying it was the most wonderful night of her life. She hadn’t gotten off, although not from his lack of trying.

  Apparently, his dick had been stupid that night, too, because after Sunny’s constant whispered urgings to finish it—and tongue kissing his ear—Shaw had decided to fake a climax. Something he would have done, too, if Sunny hadn’t orchestrated a thrust of her hips that he was certain high-priced hookers couldn’t have managed. Getting off had never made him feel so shitty.

  He had put up with more pokes from the hay to kiss her and hold her afterward. He’d tried to say in his own fumbling twenty-year-old stupid way that he was sorry, that sex shouldn’t be this bad. But she’d said her own fumbling eighteen-year-old stupid thing by telling him that she was glad he was her first. That she hadn’t wanted to leave Lone Star Ridge without having been with him like this.

  Come to think of it, she’d said some flowery things then, too. Things like she’d never forget him and that it was amazing to live out her fantasy with him like this.

  That was BS, of course.

  A fantasy should have included at least one orgasm, maybe him going down on her. And it shouldn’t have included Sunny leaving town the very next day.

  Yeah, it especially shouldn’t have included that.

  Shaw still felt the sting of her goodbye, and now he could add a new sting. Everyone in town—hell, maybe even the entire country—knew very private details of his chiseled body and chest hair dewed with moisture and his musky scent.

  He was about to turn and leave when he heard the rustling sound overhead, and then something fell from the hayloft and plopped on a clump of hay by his foot. Shaw frowned.

  It was either a giant rat turd or a Milk Dud.

  Since there was suddenly the faint hint of chocolate in the air, he guessed it was the latter. A moment later, he got confirmation of that when Kinsley leaned over the hayloft and peered down at him.

  “What are you doing up there?” he asked. Last he’d checked on her, she’d been getting a cooking lesson from his mom.

  “Hiding out,” she snarled. She pulled the headphones from her right ear. “All people can talk about is that stupid story from Sunny’s diary.”

  Shaw couldn’t fault her for wanting to get away from that, and he tried the tactic himself. He went up the ladder and found Kinsley lounging against a hay bale. She had a giant box of Milk Duds, and when he saw her throw one up to catch it in her mouth, he realized that’s how the other one had fallen to the ground level.

  Candy wasn’t the only thing the girl had brought with her to her makeshift hideout. There was a large bottle of Coke and three photo albums. Each of those albums was open to pictures of Marty. Many of them had been snapped when he’d been performing while holding his trademark acoustic guitar that he’d named Darlin’.

  “Your mom said I could look at them,” she said, following his gaze to the albums. “I didn’t steal them. I didn’t steal the candy or Coke, either.”

  “I didn’t think you had.” Shaw sank down on the floor across from her. “Milk Duds are my mom’s favorite candy, but since they’re bad for our teeth, she keeps them hidden in the pantry.”

  He did consider mentioning that there wasn’t any nutrition in her snack choices, but he could say that about so many of the me
als that Lenore served. Or rather tried to serve. He made a mental note to have the diner deliver something that would qualify as an actual food group.

  “How’d you get all of this stuff up here?” he asked.

  Kinsley tipped her head to a burlap feed bag that she’d rigged with a metal hook. It appeared to be one of the hooks that his mom used to hang her macramé projects—which were often just as strange and unappealing as her recipes. “I used the rope to hoist it up.”

  Shaw also spotted the rope that Kinsley had looped around a post. It was a clever makeshift pulley system similar to the ones that he and Austin had rigged when they’d used this place as a hideout in an effort to avoid doing their chores.

  “Did you come up here to tell me that you’re making me leave the ranch?” Kinsley snapped.

  She was so defensive that it almost put Shaw’s back up. But he was feeling sort of whipped at the moment and didn’t want to fight with the one person who was seemingly avoiding what he wanted to avoid—anything to do with Sunny’s diary. He suspected Sunny was trying to do the same thing because, other than short apologetic texts, he hadn’t heard from her.

  “No, I didn’t come here to tell you to leave,” Shaw said. “But if your mom doesn’t turn up soon, I’ll have to call social services. It’s the law,” he added.

  Kinsley had been about to go for another Milk Dud toss, but that stopped her and frosted her eyes. “I’m a Jameson. I have a right to be here.”

  “Yes, you’re a Jameson,” he confirmed. “But legally your mom decides where you have a right to be. That’s something we’re going to have to get straight with her and have her spell out.”

  Of course, any sane person could argue that Aurora had given up that right by disappearing, but Shaw was holding out hope that the woman would calm down, come back and beg Kinsley to forgive her. Or at least show some interest in bringing her daughter home. His hope was dimming though because it’d been nearly a week since Kinsley had shown up at the ranch, and Aurora wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  He hadn’t lied when he’d told Kinsley that it was the law that her mom had the right to tell her where she could or couldn’t be, but technically Aurora had given the girl permission to be at the ranch. Or rather Aurora had demanded it. That was the sole reason Leyton hadn’t already called social services, but as Shaw’s cop brother had pointed out, there was no written agreement, and Aurora could come back on them and deny saying that. Or even claim that Shaw and his family had hidden the girl from her. That could land Shaw in legal hot water.

  “You’d really let me go into foster care?” Kinsley asked but didn’t wait for him to answer. “You want to get rid of me that bad?”

  This was tricky. He wanted to get rid of her. Or rather he wanted her to leave. But he didn’t want her to go into the system. This was the rock and the hard place he’d been between since she’d shown up.

  Shaw wished he could make a rule that no more half siblings could arrive at the ranch until they were eighteen. Better yet, twenty-one. Then, he could buy him or her a beer while they trash-talked Marty and his condom-phobia ways.

  “He’s not going to come here, is he?” Kinsley asked. No snap and sting in her voice now, and he didn’t think it was because her mouth was clogged with Milk Duds. She was looking at a picture of Marty.

  Their dad was standing next to a bay mare, the reins gripped in one hand and his other hand lifted in a gesture of “lookee here” jubilation. Shaw didn’t know why Marty was so proud of that horse, especially since there were no other photos similar to that one. He’d posed for shots, of course. The Christmas gatherings and such. But Marty hadn’t beamed like that in any of them. In those, he’d looked more like someone caged and trying to get out.

  “Probably not,” Shaw answered honestly. Because he hated that look that came over Kinsley’s face, he added, “I’ll keep trying to find him. Leyton will, too.” He was about to add his sister, Cait, to the list of helpers when he heard her voice.

  “Is this a turd or a Milk Dud on the ground?” Cait called out.

  “Milk Dud,” Kinsley and Shaw answered in unison. “There’s more up here,” he told her because he knew that would be good news to his sister. She loved them as much as Lenore did. Apparently, as much as Kinsley did, too.

  A moment later, Cait came climbing up the ladder, and he recognized the metal sound as her deputy sheriff’s badge clanged against the rungs. She would have it clipped to her belt as she usually did.

  Cait grinned when her head popped above the floor line. “Are you two hiding out up here?” she asked.

  Shaw and Kinsley answered in unison again. “Yes.”

  “Not a bad idea. Oh, you’ve got Coke, too.” Cait hoisted herself up, dropping down next to Kinsley. “Hand over the goods, little sis.” She gave Kinsley a nudge with her elbow.

  Kinsley didn’t scowl and didn’t balk when she handed over the goods, and Shaw wondered if that was because Cait had called her little sis.

  Maybe.

  To the best of his knowledge, Cait and Kinsley had only seen each other once before and that’d been three nights ago when Cait had come for dinner. They hadn’t eaten anything that Lenore had fixed. That would have in no way enticed Cait to drive over from her place, which was on the other side of town. Shaw had had to lure Leyton and her there with pizza that he’d picked up from the diner.

  He was still working on a way to arrange for their brother, Austin, to meet Kinsley, but that wouldn’t happen until Austin’s two girls got over the “snots” as Austin called their bad colds. Shaw suspected, too, that Austin might not want to attempt an explanation to his kids about who Kinsley was. And there was the fact that Austin just wasn’t very social these days. Losing the woman he loved to cancer could do that.

  “They’re a little melted,” Kinsley warned Cait when she dug into the Milk Duds.

  That didn’t stop his sister. She tossed a candy blob into her mouth and wiped her fingers on the hay. Cait then pulled out something tucked in the back of her jeans. A copy of the tabloid. And she flung it on the ground next to Shaw.

  “You had chest hair back then?” Cait asked in a smart-ass way that only a sister could manage.

  “Apparently so. It was dewed with moisture that carried my musky scent.” He instantly regretted saying that in front of Kinsley, but judging from the girl’s reaction—which was no reaction at all—she’d already heard it or read it enough not to snicker or scowl about it.

  Cait made a snorting laughter sound. “More like horse pee and liniment.”

  Exactly, which hit too close to home for Shaw to be amused by her nail-on-the-head assessment.

  “So, you’re looking at pictures of Dad?” Cait asked, giving Kinsley another nudge.

  Kinsley either muttered a yes or else she burped.

  Chewing a Milk Dud that was obviously sticking to her teeth, Cait hauled one of the thick albums into her lap. The bubbly plastic covered the pages of yellowing photographs.

  Other than Milk Duds and finding bad recipes, another of Lenore’s loves had been to take pictures. Lots and lots of them apparently, but that hobby had slowed down some by the time Cait had been born when Shaw was three and a half and Austin was two. Shaw figured that was because Lenore didn’t have time to click any pictures what with chasing three kids around and with little or no help from her husband.

  “Say, I just thought of something,” Cait said, looking sideways at Kinsley. “I’m no longer the kid sister. Marty’s other kids are all boys. Well, the ones we know about anyway. But now that we know about you, you’re the kid sister.”

  Kinsley eyed her with some suspicion, maybe wondering what that title meant in the pecking order. “You don’t expect me to do like chores for you?”

  “Absolutely,” Cait readily answered. “Along with taking some ribbing and handing over any and all snacks that you sneak from my mom’s
secret stash in the pantry. She doesn’t offer up Milk Duds very often, but she’s doing that because she probably wants to make you feel welcome.”

  Kinsley stayed quiet a moment. “Why? I mean, she should hate me, right?”

  “Not Lenore,” Cait assured her. “And not us. We don’t hate you, either, and we won’t judge you for your DNA or your choice in boots. But those are really bad boots,” Cait added in a sisterly voice.

  A small smile worked its way onto Kinsley’s mouth, but it didn’t have time to fully form before someone called out.

  “Uh, what’s this on the floor of the barn?”

  Sunny.

  “Milk Dud,” Kinsley answered just as Cait said, “It’s a really big mouse turd. Don’t step on it.”

  Because Sunny knew Cait, she gave a fake hardy-har-har laugh, and before Shaw could get to his feet, he heard the familiar sound of steps coming up the ladder. Hell. Sunny wasn’t in any shape to be climbing into haylofts.

  He hurried to the side of the loft. “Stay put. I’ll come down.”

  “It’s okay. My stitches don’t come out until tomorrow, but they don’t hurt. I’ll go slow.”

  She did just that, easing her way up, and Shaw wondered why she was here. It wasn’t as if this was a den or game room. Then again, it had been Sunny’s choice location for losing her virginity.

  Once she was at the top, Shaw took hold of her non-stitched arm and helped her the rest of the way. He watched to make sure there were no signs of pain. There weren’t. If she was hurting, she was covering it well.

  “Your mom said you were in the barn so I came out looking for you. I wanted to get away from the ranch hands.” Sunny sat next to Cait, and Kinsley passed her the box of Milk Duds. “They’ve obviously read the story from my diary and they’re looking at me funny.”

  Maybe it was because that was a big-assed understatement, Kinsley and Cait looked at her funny, too. Shaw hadn’t quite managed to move on to the stage where any of this was amusing so he kept the scowl he’d been sporting pretty much all day.