Undeniable (20 page)

His eyes never wavered. Neither did his voice or his resolve. She couldn’t imagine that he’d manhandle her, but the threat rang with enough conviction that she found herself nodding. She was
tired, and she was hungry, and she was not wearing the last few hours gracefully. Leaving didn’t sit well, but her staying wasn’t doing anyone any good.

“He’s right,” said a voice behind them.

Darcy spun to see the Campbell family physician running a hand through his hair and looking as tired as she felt. “Dr. Kirkland? You’re here. Have you seen him? No one will tell me anything.”

“I have, and no one has told you anything because there’s been no change since he first arrived.” He shoved his hands to his hips, his tie askew, his dress shirt wrinkled.

He’d been in Austin at a conference luncheon when The Campbell had collapsed, but had come when the hospital called. “So, what? We just wait?”

“I wait. You go home,” he said, raising his hand when she opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t going anywhere. “He’s being monitored, and you have my word I’ll let you know the minute there’s an update.”

“I’d rather stay here. So you won’t have trouble reaching me.”

“Darcy—”

“No,” she said, before the doctor could say more. “I want to be here.”

The moment the words left her mouth, Josh placed his hand on her shoulder. “C’mon. At least to get something to eat. If you want to come back after that, I’ll bring you. I promise.”

She kept one arm crossed tightly over her middle, rubbed at her forehead with her other hand. What she wanted was for everyone to leave her alone, but since her wants didn’t seem to be in the cards, she nodded, and let Josh guide her through the ER doors to the parking lot and his truck.

They made the ride to the diner without speaking, a Blake
Shelton playlist at low volume keeping the silence from growing awkward and nearly lulling her to sleep. She knew her exhaustion was fueled more by worry than needing to rest; it was only eight o’clock. But knowing didn’t change the urge she had to close her eyes, just for a minute or two.

When she finally stirred, they were parked in front of the diner, Blake Shelton was still singing about a red roadside wildflower, and Josh was reading a book on his BlackBerry. Reading, as if they’d been here long enough for him to need something to do.

She pushed her hair from her face, glanced at the clock’s dashboard display. Then she bolted upright. “Josh?”

He hit a couple of buttons on his phone, tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Ready to eat?”

“You let me sleep. We’ve been here half an hour.”

“More like forty-five minutes, but yeah. You were tired enough to doze off. I didn’t want to wake you when you obviously needed the nap.”

She wanted to argue that his letting her sleep wasn’t part of their deal, but found she had no ground to stand on. He’d brought her to eat, fulfilling his part of their bargain. “Did the doctor call?”

“He didn’t call me, and I didn’t hear your phone go off.” He pulled the keys from the ignition, opened his door, and got out, rounding the cab to open hers. “Let’s grab a bite before they close.”

It was just getting dark, the only lights those from the parking lot and the diner’s big front windows. She slid to her feet and looked up at Josh, his face a mosaic of shadows. “I really hate that you keep seeing me at my worst. I don’t want you to be here because you think I need to be rescued.”

He reached for both of her hands, pinned them to her sides and stepped closer, backing her into the truck’s rear quarter panel and blocking her body with his. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

She swallowed, a tingle of apprehension tripping down the fuse of her spine. “What? That you’re here because I need rescuing?”

“I doubt you’ve ever needed to be rescued in your life.”

She smiled at that. “I fell in the pool at home when I was five. It caught me off guard and I panicked. My nanny jumped in to save me, dress shoes and all.”

He shook his head, his eyes dark as he held her gaze. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“You rescued me the day I stupidly walked away from the office,” she told him, and wondered now if the stupid part had been walking in a near triple-digit temperature or leaving the office instead of standing her ground.

“I gave you a ride. Got you out of the heat.” He squeezed her hands, let them go, slid his palms to her wrists then her elbows. “You would’ve done the same for yourself sooner or later.”

His hands were on her shoulders now, and the firecracker in the small of her back was burning. She raised her arms, settled her hands at his waist. “I was so mad that day. I wasn’t thinking straight. If not for you, I might’ve fainted dead away in the middle of Main Street.”

“Are you thinking straight now?”

How was she supposed to answer that when her mind was torn between being here with him and what was happening at the hospital? “I’m worried about The Campbell. And I don’t know if I’m more afraid that the doctor will call or that he won’t. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but that’s where my head is.”

“Sounds like pretty straight thinking to me. If you’d had anything else on your mind, then I’d have been worried.”

She gave him a grin, cocked her head to the side. “I do have one other thing going on up there.”

“Yeah?”

“Food,” she said, digging her fingers into the trim muscles above the waistband of his jeans. “I’m hungrier than I’d thought.”

“Then let’s go,” he said, but he didn’t move away.

And since he didn’t, she did. Away from the truck and into him. Against him. Moving her hands to his back and pulling him to her. Slowly, she rose up on her tiptoes, her breasts flat to his chest, her hips cradling his as he pushed back toward her.

“Dessert first,” she whispered against the corner of his mouth before she caught at his lips with hers, nipping with her teeth, nudging with the tip of her tongue.

Still, he didn’t move, and she worried she’d been too bold, that she’d read him wrong, heard him wrong. That his wanting to see her wasn’t about… this. Except what else could it be?

And then she felt him growing stiff, thickening against her belly, and she kissed him harder, and his hands at her shoulders slid into her hair. He held her, stepped her backward into the truck, pushed his body to hers and finally kissed her back.

His tongue found hers unerringly, and was slick and hot and sure. He took her with purpose as much as passion, leaving his mark, claiming her. She melted into him, lost her breath, lost her head.

Her breasts grew heavy, her nipples as hard as his cock behind his fly. He tasted like goodness, and he made her want more, want everything, want all of him because he also made her forget.

She wanted to stay here, to live here, to wake up and have this be her world. Josh and his mouth and his hands that made everything better. Even at the end of the day he smelled like sunshine and fresh air and he centered her, kept her from coming undone.

When he pulled free, she closed her eyes because he had the
strength she needed, the control she lacked. Not always, but tonight. Tonight she was a mess of emotion and knew better than to trust any of what she was feeling.

He walked to the back of the truck. She stayed where she was, giving him the time and space he needed. Time and space she used to steady herself, too. To gather her thoughts for when he returned.

Moments later, she heard the scrape of his boots over the parking lot’s loose gravel. He stopped in front of her, nodded in the direction of the diner’s door.

She held up a staying hand. “Just so you know, that wasn’t about me needing to be rescued.”

“I never thought it was.”

“And it wasn’t about tonight, the hospital, any of that.”

“Okay,” he said, moonlight catching on his dimple as he smiled.

“Just so you know.”

“I know.” And he left it at that, taking her hand and not letting go until he’d tucked her away in the back corner booth and settled in the seat across from her.

The wink he gave her said he knew as well as she that they’d stopped more than a few conversations. And the wink she gave him in return said she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

D
AX SAT IN
his truck in front of Arwen’s cottage looking for a reason not to shift into gear, not to drive away and return to his vagabond life. It was tempting, that existence, no expectations save for those of any rancher he’d hired on with. No family wanting him to step into shoes that didn’t fit. No debt dragging him down and taking the fun out of what he loved doing.

No woman making him comfortable enough to want to hang around.

Yeah. That.

Three days ago, Arwen had come to the ranch and delivered the news of his father’s condition. He hadn’t seen her since. He hadn’t talked to her since. He hadn’t talked to Darcy. He hadn’t been to the hospital. All he’d done was work, laboring dawn to dusk until he couldn’t move his arm to lift a longneck, his feet to step into the tub at the end of the day.

He’d eaten only because he had to, and not much at that since it had been Boone doing the cooking recently and the boy had a heavy hand with the salt. Sleep had been a matter of his exhausted body demanding he stop running on empty, and turning off his mind when he couldn’t find the key. What was left of his common sense knew he couldn’t keep going like this and live to tell the tale.

All these years later, he’d thought his past settled, yet his father, even in a coma, was still running his life. And for some bizarre reason he was letting him.

More than once while lying in bed and staring at the roof in the bunkhouse, he’d thought about packing up, signing away his share of the ranch to Casper and Boone, telling Darcy good-bye, promising to keep in touch. Then he’d thought about making those calls from down the road, once Crow Hill was nothing but a speck on the map of his memory and he didn’t have to look anyone in the eye.

But he couldn’t do that to his sister, or the boys. He couldn’t do it to Arwen. Most of all, he couldn’t do it to himself. If he was going to go, he had to do it right—the right way and for the right reasons. He wasn’t going to be a hotheaded dick about it the way he’d been at eighteen, even if not sticking around was still a dick move. At least he’d come far enough to be able to admit that.

In the meantime, he was damn sick of his own company, and he knew Arwen, who’d been clear about wanting him only for sex, wouldn’t ask questions—though she might want the answer to the one he was mulling over:
Why was he still sitting here when she was inside?
That was assuming she wanted to see him at all after the really shitty way he’d treated her when she’d come to deliver the news of his father.

It was nearly four a.m., and the lights in her bedroom and bath were both on. He thought about her in her tub, thought about
joining her there. Thought about leaving for the ranch an hour from now smelling like a citrus grove and having to put up with shit about it from the boys.

Best he could figure, he hadn’t yet moved because a part of him was still stuck on her rushing to tell him about his old man when she knew they weren’t close, they didn’t speak, hell, they hadn’t seen each other for sixteen years. And yet it had meant something to her for him to know his father had come up against something out of his control and been cut down. Maybe for good.

Darcy knowing, he got. Darcy had devoted a lot of blood, sweat, and tears establishing her position as a Campbell, which was a totally fucked up thing to have to do. But Arwen, more than anyone, had to know bloodlines didn’t make family.

Respect took care of that, as did discipline handed down from a place of caring, not power, instruction offered as guidance, not grudging obligation. Expectations driven by investment, not some bullshit tradition that was more for show than anything.

Tess and Dave Dalton had been his family. Boone and Casper were his family. Darcy, too. And watching Arwen’s truck bounce across the pasture to find him, he’d been hit again with a powerful sense of everything in his world coming together, a close-knit bunch of misfits, the Dalton Gang, extended.

Even after hearing what she had to say, that sense had stuck, and he couldn’t deny that feeling of rightness, completeness, as much as his desire to lose himself in her body, was the reason he was here.

His hand was on the door handle to make the body-losing thing happen when the interior of his truck’s cab lit up like the fourth of July. Squinting, he looked out his side mirror at the red, white, and blue cherry top spinning on the sheriff’s cruiser behind him.

Great. Just great. News of his affair with Arwen was about to become grist for the ridiculously efficient Crow Hill gossip mill, his efforts at lying low slapped useless.

He cracked open his door, only to be greeted with Sheriff Orleans loudly belted, “Hands where I can see ’em, bub. Step out of the truck slowly. I want you on your belly, now.”

Well, that shit wasn’t going to happen. The belly part anyway. He ached and creaked and didn’t want to chance getting stuck on the ground. With his arms extended through the window, he used a boot to shove open the door and climbed down.

Standing there, he leaned forward, forearms on the frame, and turned his head, grinning into the beam of the sheriff’s flashlight. Then—not that it would do a damn bit of good—he poured on the Dax Campbell charm. “Hey, Sheriff. Long time no see.”

Switching off the light, Ned Orleans gave a loud guffaw then holstered the big Colt revolver he’d drawn, keeping his hand on the butt as he came closer. “Dax Campbell. Should’ve known I’d find one of the Dalton Gang skulking around one of Crow Hill’s prettiest ladies.”

“The more things change, the more they don’t. Or something like that, eh, Ned?”

The sheriff stopped, braced his free hand on the top of Dax’s door. “Does that mean you’re sitting out here because you drank a little too much while watching the saloon’s Kittens dance? Cuz I’ve got a cell where you can sleep it off if so.”

“Nope. Sober as a judge,” he said before he could think better of it. Judge brought to mind courtroom, which brought to mind attorney, which brought to mind Crow Hill’s one and only law firm.