Undeniable (36 page)

She knew it to be the truth and it seemed so obvious when encouraging someone else. Hard to remember when she was the one needing to be encouraged.

The irony in that had her smiling, and doing so at her own expense. The one thing she’d been most afraid of as a child had never happened, and yet she’d lived all her young years with the fear her father would forget her.

“Arwen?” Callie called, interrupting her musings. “There’s something outside you need to see.”

Good Lord, again? She sighed. At least this time she knew it wouldn’t be Dax surprising her with a picnic. “Don’t you mean someone who wants to see me?”

Callie shook her head. Amy and Stacy and Luck moved to hover behind her, their eyes wide as they waited. “No. You need to come and see this for yourself.”

This. Not her. Not him. She pushed back from her desk, putting weights on top of her paperwork so she didn’t return to receipts and invoices caught in the ceiling fan blades, and when she stood and moved away from the hum of her computer and the streamed music, she heard it.

Heard more than the thunder that had been teasing Crow Hill all day. “Is it raining?”

“It is,” Luck said, moving out of the doorway. “Buckets and gallons. The patio’s almost deep enough for ducks.”

They wanted her to see the rain? Oh, hell. Why not? It had been so long since they’d had more than a spit, it was like Christmas coming down, Santa pouring presents from the sky. She could use a gift or two, she thought, especially after the week she’d had, and she followed the trio down the hallway to the door.

“There,” one of the girls said, pointing across the saloon’s backyard toward Arwen’s cottage. She brought up a hand to shade her eyes from the glare and squinted into the rain.

The first thing she saw was the truck. Big and black. Dax’s truck. Then she saw him. Dax. Sitting on the steps in front of her cottage. Not on the porch or the porch swing but sitting on the steps in the rain.

She started across the patio, not even stopping when Luck called, “Do you want an umbrella?” She just kept going, desperate, splashing through the puddles as she wound her way around the picnic tables, stepping into pools overwhelming the parched ground in the yard.

Her boots kept her feet dry, but when she reached the sidewalk that would lead her to Dax the rest of her was soaked. She didn’t care. She didn’t care. He was here, not on the road, not halfway out of town.

Once in front of her house she slowed, gathering the thoughts bouncing off the trampoline of her pounding heart. What should
she say? What should she ask? Should she wait for him to speak first? She didn’t want to do anything that would drive him away, and yet she didn’t want her words to be the reason he stayed.

That decision had to be his. It had to come from his heart.

“I thought you were gone,” she said, approaching him slowly.

He looked up at her, the brim of his hat keeping the rain off his face, and he smiled. “I got held up. Casper needed help with the fencing for the new holding pen we’re putting in behind the bunkhouse.”

We’re
putting in. Not
they’re
putting in. “Nice of you to help him out. I’m sure he appreciated it.”

“What he appreciated is not having to pay me,” he said, but he laughed about it, and without any bitterness at all. “And then Boone wanted to settle on a contractor to take down the bunkhouse. We had several bids and I told him to handle it, but he wanted to nail it down before I left.”

We
had several bids. Not
they
had several bids. “Did you?”

“Yeah. We’re going to use John Massey’s company. Or they are anyway. The boys.”

Oh. There was the
they
she’d been dreading. She’d been reading too much into his words. Putting too much hope into a pronoun when she should’ve remembered he always talked about the Dalton Gang in the plural. His leaving Crow Hill would never change that. She came closer to better hear and sat beside him, wrapping her arms around her middle and hunching forward over her knees. “Callie will be happy. I know she’s been worried about the slowdown in his work.”

“Huh. Didn’t know they were together.”

“About three months now.” She was wet and strangely cold and it was really hard to have a conversation with rain beating her in the face. But she wasn’t about to suggest they move. Dax didn’t seem bothered at all.

“Thanks to Faith’s finagling, looks like we’re not going to have to lease any of the acreage to Henry.”

“That’s good news, yes?”

“Really good. We won’t have to sell off any of the herd either.”

“I’m glad it worked out. I really didn’t want you to have to. It just seemed like a temporary solution.”

“It was a good suggestion. Just hard to hear.”

Hard to hear? She could tell him a thing or two about hard to hear, sitting here listening to him talk about the ranch like he still lived there, like they were a couple discussing this thing he did for a living that he loved.

“I wanted to tell you, too…”

“What?” she prompted when he let the sentence trail.

“Darcy talked to Nora Stokes and she wants to buy some of Tess’s antiques. Thinks she can get several thousand bucks for a couple of the pieces.”

“That’s great. That’ll help y’all a lot.”

“That’s not all. Darcy found some old oil surveys. She gave them to Greg and he had the Trinity Springs Oil folks look at them. Seems the Dalton Ranch is sitting on a very promising sweet spot.”

“Oil? Seriously?”

He nodded, slinging water from the brim of his hat. “Boone and Casper are meeting with them next week.”

“But not you?”

“I wasn’t going to be here so they made the plans.”

Wasn’t.
He wasn’t. Not that he wouldn’t, but that he hadn’t planned to be. God. Oh, God. “But now? Are you going to be here? For the meeting? Since you haven’t left yet?”

“I did leave. Earlier. This morning. Took off before daybreak.”

She could hardly breathe. “Is this as far as you got?”

“No. I got to the edge of town. Saw the sign. Crow Hill, Texas.
Population 2,875. How long ago do you think that was? Twenty ten? Was that the last census?”

He wanted to know about the census? Her heart was pounding like the Kittens’ boot heels on the bar, and he was asking about the census? “I don’t know. I think so. I remember filling out the form.”

“Huh. I think it said twenty-two hundred when I left after high school.”

“No reason to live here unless you’re born here. No reason to come back if you leave.”

“You’re wrong about that,” he said, and finally, finally turned toward her. “I saw that sign and I pulled to the shoulder and I just looked at it. And I thought what the hell am I doing leaving when the only thing I’ve ever wanted is here?”

“The ranch?”

“No, Arwen,” he said, and she swore the water in his eyes wasn’t rain at all. “You.”

“Okay,” she said, choking because she knew there was more. That his wanting her wasn’t going to be easy. The fight between his head and his heart had been going on as long as she’d known him.

He reached for her hand, and she gave him both, and he squeezed them tight. “Tell me we can do this. I need you to tell me. I need to hear you say it.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Dax.”

“Then how does it work. I don’t know shit about making anything work.”

“Of course you do.” She bounced their hands on his thigh. “You’ve worked the ranch. You’ve kept your friendship with the boys. You and Darcy did a good job making up for lost time. You and I worked beautifully.”

“We did, didn’t we?”

“Do you trust me?”

“I do.”

She closed her eyes, let that settle, opened them, dripping, and asked, “Do you love me?”

The grin that broke over his face was all teeth and dimples and happy happy joy. “Yeah. Oh yeah. Hell yeah. Shit yeah.”

She was nodding like a maniac and sobbing. “Then we can make this work.”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?” she nearly screamed.

“You have to love me, too.”

Her chest burned, constricted, her love for him drowning her. “I never wanted to love you. It scared me, the idea of loving anyone, but especially you.”

“Why?”

“You… consume me. You make me look twice to see if I’m doing the right thing. You make me feel things I don’t know how to balance with the rest of my life. I thought I had everything figured out. I thought if I stopped wondering about you, that would be it. But thinking I could ever work you out of my system has to be the biggest mistake I’ve made in my life.”

“I like that I upset you. You needed to be shaken up.”

She held out a trembling hand. “Like this?”

“So? Do you love me?”

“With all my heart.”

“That makes staying worthwhile.”

“You are? Going to stay?”

“Believe I will. But the pink bedroom’s going to have to go. No pink, and no goddamn brown.”

She leaned close, took his face in her hands, and nuzzled her nose to his as water sluiced between them. Then she kissed him,
his lips warming her and his tongue arousing her and his hands holding her reaching all the way to her heart.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, her mouth at the corner of his. “I am so, so happy you came back,” she added, dropping a dozen tiny kisses across his brow. “And you can paint the bedroom any color you want,” she finished with, her arms around his neck so tightly she heard him gag.

“So, maybe I can go tell the boys now? Let ’em know they can stop bitching about having to hire on a couple of new hands?”

“Two?”

“Casper wanted three. Boone said Faith was too tight. Then Casper said… Never mind what Casper said.” He got to his feet then, shook the water from the brim of his hat like a dog shaking its bath. “Let’s go.”

She was drenched. She was freezing. She was so in love she could hardly stand still. “You want me to come with you?”

“Arwen Poole,” he said, hooking an arm around her waist and pulling her to him. “I want you with me every day of my life. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. For poorer or for even poorer than that.”

“Oh, Dax,” she said, sniffling, brilliantly happy. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, baby. I love you, too.”

W
ITH HIS BACK
against the side of his truck, Casper Jayne braced for the bad news his gut said was coming. The same gut that had kept him in his bedroom when his old man had stumbled wasted through the door. That had sent him to the ground from his third-story window when his old lady had waved guns and threats. That had told him nearly two decades ago to get the hell out of that house if he wanted to live.

The very house he was now standing in front of.

The one-page, handwritten letter folded to fit in his back pocket felt bulky and heavy and made it hard to get comfortable as he watched the inspector circle the house he’d lived in before leaving Crow Hill at eighteen. The house was now his, as useless as tits on a boar hog, and would be hell to dump
or
to keep.

It had been a pit as far back as he remembered. His old lady hadn’t done a damn thing to make it livable the years they’d called the rambling monstrosity home, or even later, when his life was
rodeo, his old man in the wind, and she’d been the only one keeping the fires burning.

Gutting the interior and starting from scratch might be his only option, but first he needed to know if the structure itself was sound. Check that: He needed to know what it was going to cost him to make it so. Especially since he was cash poor and getting his hands on the money he did have meant barreling his way through the woman who held his purse strings.

A woman tighter than a ten-day drunk.

He suspected he’d have an easier time getting her to give up what she hid beneath the suits she wore than the funds he needed. And he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t rather have the first than the second. But since both options hung off the edge of possibility’s realm, what he wanted didn’t matter a lick.

He took off his hat, ran a hand across the bristled buzz of his hair, resettled the beat-to-hell straw Resistol, and pulled the brim low. But he didn’t push away from his truck. He stayed where he was, crossing his arms as the man with the electronic gadget in his hand and acorns popping beneath his feet kicked at the sidewalk, the cement buckled by the roots of the yard’s hundred-year-old live oaks.

The inspector pecked out another note on the screen before walking through the thigh-high gate missing two pickets and hinged at a cockeyed angle. He stopped, swung it back and forth, then screwed his mouth to the side before looking at Casper from behind sunglasses that hid his eyes but not his expression. They both knew there was more wrong with this house than was right, but Casper didn’t care what the other man was thinking.

He needed an official report to back up his request for the cash to do what was needed. Even shouldering the bulk of the labor himself, the supplies would set him back the cost of a herd of good horses. He doubted the house had been worth that much
when he’d spent his nights staring at the holes in the ceiling and hoping the balls of newspaper he’d used to plug them would keep out the biggest of the spiders at least.

“Sure you don’t want me to take a look inside?” This was the third time the inspector had pushed to get through the doors. “Let you know what you’re looking at with your heating and cooling systems? Your plumbing fixtures? Your outlets?”

Casper shook his head. He wasn’t ready for that. Besides, there was no cooling system. Never had been, unless he counted opening the windows and praying for a breeze. The space heaters he and his mother had used had been no match for the lack of insulation or the gaps in the siding—and the two of them hadn’t done more than try to control the temperature in the four of the two dozen rooms they’d used.