Outlaw Cowboy (12 page)

“You're going to have to put some meat on those bones to have a chance against me.” And then he all but shoved her into the passenger's seat. Before she could protest, move off the seat, or punch him in the balls, he put his hands on both of her shoulders and his blue eyes blazed into hers.

“Do this one thing for me. Hear me out. Look at what I have to show you, and then if you're still ready to go off half-cocked, I'll drive you. Wherever you need to go.”

She didn't want to know what it cost him to offer that. Didn't want to be able to tell he was thinking through all the ways that statement could come back to bite him in the ass, and yet not taking it back.

Don't trust him. Don't trust him.
Instead, she would use him. Let him talk. Let him show her something. She wasn't going to be swayed, and then at least she'd have a ride to Steph.

And when you get to Steph? What are you going to do?

She swallowed down the lump in her throat with a shrug. “Whatever.”

He closed the door and walked around the truck to the driver's side. Delia was determined to keep her eyes on the windshield, her heart ice, and her mind
useful
. She would not be softened by a pair of troubled blue eyes or the amazing sensation of warm air pouring out of the vents of the truck.

He pushed the truck into reverse in silence and then backed it all the way to the opening of Shaw, flipping the heat and vent to the highest settings, though she doubted he needed it. It was for her.

Added to that throat-closing realization that he could still be sweet, even when she hated him, was the realization of how far she'd gone—which was not very far at all. Not even totally off Shaw land. She would
never
get to Steph on foot. Not in this weather—not in her current state.

He pushed into drive and turned the truck around so he could drive up around the rise. The buildings of Shaw settled into the earth as though they grew there, weren't built by men. As they drove, the sky to the west got brighter and more colorful. Swirls of dark orange and pink haloed around the mountain peaks, making the rock glow orange, while the farther she looked up, the colors went pastel and melded with purple and the blue of the sky.

It was possibly the most beautiful sunset she'd ever seen, mirrored in the places where snow and ice still covered the ground below, so it felt like the whole world was pulsing and alive with light.

It filled her chest with a kind of pressure that was both heart-achingly sad and euphoric. It was beautiful, and she was seeing it, and there was some weird hope in that. But how could this possibly give her hope?

So she turned to glare at Caleb, only to find him staring at her.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” she demanded, even if it came out a little shaky.

“Yes,” he said with a little nod before looking out at the sight before them again. “When I see something like this…it's the only thing that ever really makes me feel I can make something right.”

No. He didn't want to be right. He wanted… Well, regardless of what he wanted, he was going to crush her, and she couldn't let hope bloom only to be crushed. That was no way to live.

“Do you remember Tyler Parker?”

She sighed and looked out her window. What this had to do with anything, she didn't know, but instead of giving him crap for it, she was just going to play along. “Yeah, I guess. Weren't he and Mel a thing?”

“Yeah, years ago. I can't say I was very nice to him.”

Delia snorted a laugh. “No, as I recall you irritated him at every turn.”

“I did at that.”

“So, why are we talking about Tyler? You're going to run away with him?”

“No,” he replied, not even taking the bait and getting irritated with her. “He wants to lease a piece of Shaw.”

“Woop-dee-doo. What do I care?”

“The thing is, he doesn't like me at all, but he knows even though he needs me, I need him more. Which means he can put a lot of demands on me.”

She faked a loud yawn.

“Which means, he gets to back out if he thinks I'm having anything to do with alcohol, illegal behavior, or people who might be involved in illegal behavior. To use his words.”

Delia tried to remain bored with that, but she understood what that meant. Even if Caleb didn't know she had a warrant out for her arrest, he probably wouldn't put it past her. So he really couldn't ever find that out, and she was putting him at risk.

But she couldn't let him think she cared. “So what. So he backs out?”

“I get paid nothing for leasing
my
land, and as it is right now, it's my only chance to come out in the not-terrible-red this year.”

“I'm supposed to feel sorry for you because you might have a bad year? Oh, dear, cry me a river. How's this for a hard year: no house, no money…” There were things she could add like drug charges, but she'd keep those to herself.

“I know it isn't terrible. I get it, but… If I fail, I'm done. I never get my name on the deed, and Mel swoops in to be foreman again. Or hires someone else to do it. Maybe that's right and what we should do, but what would I have left? This isn't about comparing our situations. Okay, your shit wins. You win the shit-life-handed-you award. I'm not contesting that.”

“Woe is me is hard to swallow when you have actual fucking woe, Caleb.”

“I get that, Delia. I get it. I'm trying to…” He stared hard out the windshield, his skin taking on the warm orange glow of the sky, those blue eyes of his reflecting the orange sliver of sun almost completely behind the mountains now. “It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I get it. I do. But I'd be nothing to this place, and it's the only slice of sanity I have. What happens when it isn't mine anymore? What then? Who am I without it? How do I keep going?”

“It's a luxury to have anything.” She swallowed at the lump in her throat. It
was
a luxury to have anything, and she hated the tiny part of her that actually felt a little sorry for him.

“I know. I'm not comparing, Delia. I can't.” He shook his head as his gaze returned to hers.

If she looked closely enough, she could probably see her own reflection, but getting any closer than this already too-close cab of his truck held zero appeal.

“But if you had something that was yours, that made you who you are, that gave you a reason to get up in the morning, wouldn't you do everything to keep it? Wouldn't you fight to keep the thing that made you feel like you weren't a complete waste of space?”

She should look away. She should get out of the truck or demand he drive her to her family home. She should do anything but keep his gaze and let his words wrap around her heart and squeeze.

She didn't have a thing that made her who she was, or a reason to get up in the morning—at least not once Steph was out. Yet she'd always kept plowing ahead, because no matter how bleak things were, she knew who she was. Strong. Resilient. And she knew, deep in her heart most of the time, that once she did her duty to her sisters, there would be something waiting for her on the other side.

She hadn't planned on it being jail, but even in her darkest moments she knew even
that
would be a temporary thing, as long as she could get Steph safe first.

All the crap Caleb was complaining about was easier, but somehow sadder, because he didn't know how to go on without this beautiful, amazing piece of land that made her feel an aching kind of hope.

Hope. Somehow, it kept her going. It kept people like
them
going. And all of Caleb's was tied up in something that could be taken from him.

“I'm not expecting sympathy,” he said, his voice hushed and his eyes on hers.

She felt herself lean forward, as if there was some force pushing her there. Him or the sun disappearing in his eyes.

“I just want you to understand why I did what I did. Helping you isn't an easy choice for me. It threatens my only chance at this. But I want to do it anyway.”

She couldn't swallow the lump in her throat, and her eyes burned. It shouldn't make it better and it shouldn't make it understandable. It certainly shouldn't make her forgive him for trying to kick her off Shaw.

But she saw his battle, and that thing inside of him so lost he couldn't find a center without the beauty that surrounded them, and that seemed more depressing than getting up every morning ready to fight. Thinking the only thing that made you worthwhile could be so easily taken away seemed worse than working to save people you loved. At least, at the end of the day, she knew she'd have her determination.

He cleared his throat. “Christ, Delia. Why are you crying?”

“I'm not crying.”

He reached out and touched his thumb to an unruly tear trailing down her cheek. She had a handle on the rest, but that one escaped and now he was touching it. Her.

Why were they so close? Why was she letting him be this close? Letting him touch her? She should push him away. Knock that stupid hat off his head while she was at it. She should do everything but lean into that gentle touch. It was a lie, a distraction, anything but something she could believe in or allow.

But somehow their mouths were close, and her heart was beating frantically against her chest, pushing her even closer to him. With his mouth a whisper from hers, her body completely warm for the first time since she'd woken up in the Shaw house this morning, he didn't press his mouth to hers. He shook his head.

“I can't do this with you.” But he didn't back away, and when his eyes searched her face, they didn't seem to mean that at all.

“But here you are,” she managed to croak out, sounding not at all like the cool, unaffected, kick-ass woman she'd like to be. Here
she
was, letting him swoop in, letting him touch her and affect her. “I don't trust you,” she whispered, because she had to put that between them. She had to remind herself.

“Good. I don't trust myself.”

Why? Why did she feel sorry for
him
? He had everything, including all the power. But sympathy softened her heart against her will, because the jackass didn't know himself at all, and that was damn sad.

She'd rather be stupid than sad. She'd rather feel than run away from it. So she did the stupid,
feeling
thing to do.

She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his.

If Caleb were a romantic man prone to poetry, he might have thought the sunset reversed when Delia's mouth touched his. That everything became blinding and bright and right in a way he'd never, ever understand.

And even without an ounce of romance in him, he couldn't deny that feeling.

But this wasn't supposed to happen. It was supposed to be the last sacred thing, touching her like this. Kissing her back was more than just
not in the plans
, it was
against
the plans. Against all the things he'd promised himself.

But Delia's hands stoked up his jaw, holding him, claiming him, starting this whole thing. Initiating this fall that they'd been avoiding for years upon years.

Why? What for? What was the point in all that?

He couldn't for the life of him think of a reason, not when
she'd
kissed him, not when they'd been battling these feelings for over a decade. Them. Both of them. There were no reasons.

Not when he kissed her back or ran his thumb over the soft skin of her cheek, the tips of his other fingers brushing the straight black hair that hung around her face.

Kissing her, touching her face, letting her place her hand over his heavy-beating heart… The kiss didn't burn through him as he'd expected. The kiss slowly washed through him instead, more warmth than scalding heat. Her hand on his chest didn't bowl him straight over with lust. Her mouth was soft, and it soothed even as it pulsed some gentler desire to life.

But even gentle desire was
want
, and maybe even need. Tasting her was a
need
, but it was also a delicacy, so he took his time. He kept his fingers gentle on her check, on the ends of her hair, but he traced her bottom lip with his tongue, and then the top. He traced the seam of her mouth until she gave a little sigh and opened for him.

She was dark and sweet, and somehow it felt as if he'd been given access to all her secrets, to that core of her—so good and strong. Somehow his. And despite all the ways that it intimidated him—that she did, it humbled him more. It made him want to give, and take. It made him want to touch her everywhere, possess every last part of her.

But he held himself back, settling for a kiss, because possession, taking and giving, that would have to start with her. Just as this kiss had.

This kiss he never wanted to end. This moment he didn't want to leave, where things seemed light and good. Where the worry and the stress and the trying to do the right thing faded away into the softness of her mouth, the strong press of her hand against his heart. The way she smelled like leather and the faintest hint of his own soap, the way she tasted like he imagined sunset might.

It was right. No matter how he tried to tell himself it was wrong,
right
echoed over and over again in his head. Right to be here, touching her, kissing her, getting lost in
Delia.

When she pulled away, he knew he should too. Instead, he followed her retreat, but she kept the hand on his chest firm so he couldn't close his lips over hers again.

When their eyes met, he couldn't read her expression. It was shrouded in the dusk around them, and perhaps he just didn't have the mental faculties after his brain had been slowly dissolved.

“Drive me back to the cabin.” Her voice might have been soft, but it was also strong, determined.

This little moment of insanity was over, and he should be thanking every possible thing she'd had the presence of mind to end it. He hadn't. He'd wanted more—scratch that, he still wanted more. Even though it had infused him with a softness, he was throbbing with an ache he'd promised himself he wouldn't alleviate when it came to her.

But why?

He forced himself to move back into the driver's seat and had to stare at the steering wheel a few seconds before he could get his brain to engage enough to remember how to drive.

He couldn't count the years he'd wanted to kiss Delia Rogers and known he shouldn't, and at the worst possible moment he had.

Or she had.

Now she wanted him to drive her back to the cabin, instead of wherever she was headed. So, that was… He'd made this right.

Right?

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as he pushed the truck into Drive. She was touching a finger to her mouth, eyebrows drawn together, and he didn't know at all what that meant.

Best if he didn't. He focused on the darkening world in front of him and worked out what to say. He wanted to warn her about staying out of sight, but how did he follow up a kiss with a jackass warning like that?

How did he follow up Tyler's warning about having no contact with questionable characters by kissing a woman who was exactly that?

By being Caleb Shaw, he supposed. Always destined to do what few good deeds he had in him at the wrong-ass time.

He blew out a breath and drove them across the bumpy expanse between the main house and the cabin. Delia didn't move, didn't fidget, and most certainly didn't speak. She had stillness down to an art, and he didn't know how to read this.

So he didn't. He pulled up to the cabin and waited for…something. Any kind of explanation from her. Any kind of anything.

But she sat in the seat, looking at the cabin through the windshield with her fingertip still pressed to her lips.

He didn't know how long they sat there in silence, but it was a while, and it sorely tested his patience. He felt he had to speak, had to move forward. After all, if she was staying in the cabin, they needed to discuss ground rules and how they were going to help her sister and all manner of things.

So he couldn't sit here like some kind of moron teenager. “Are we going to talk ab—”

“Not right now.”

“Not right—”

She turned to meet his gaze with her chin up, everything about her a defiant challenge. “Come inside.”

Oh. Well. There was something dangerous about the energy around her. Like the air before a lightning storm that caused a wildfire. He had to clear his throat to speak. “I…”

“Come inside, Caleb.”

His brain was having a really hard time not short-circuiting at that. “I just think—”

“Problem number one. Thinking.” She shoved the truck door open and hopped out. “Come on now.”

She really needed to stop saying “come.” Or he needed to stop thinking about it the way he was thinking about it, but it was impossible. Her mouth had touched his, and that left him with a feeling of utter unease. Unfinished business.

They could not finish this business. He knew it, and she knew it, so maybe she simply wanted to discuss things inside.

Which meant his eyes needed to stop following the sway of her ass, and his erection needed to calm down. Because there were important things to discuss. Important things they had to make clear. He wanted to help, or maybe he felt compelled to. Compelled to make something right.

But it had to be careful and it had to be planned, and it couldn't risk the only thing he had left. Mel was off in married bliss, Dad was off in his own head, and Summer…for as sweet and happy as she seemed, he knew there were things she was keeping hidden.

He was alone. Shaw was all he had. He had to protect that, but he could find some way to protect Delia too. He could. He would. If she wanted him to, if she let him, surely he could find his way to the right thing.

They stepped inside, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat, afraid they'd do something of their own volition if he didn't.

She shut the door behind him and leaned against it, her eyes hidden behind the fringe of her bangs, and yet he could feel them on him. Assessing him.

“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.”