Courting Trouble (3 page)

“Savannah and Ash need you,” Emma said. “We’ll be fine.”

Tulsa appreciated Emma’s compassion and reassurance, she even appreciated Jo’s pragmatism and realism, and she especially appreciated Sylvia’s organization and dedication. Right now, though, what she didn’t appreciate was being yanked out of LA to clean up her sister’s mess.

“Did you get the pleading for Ash’s custody case?”

“That,” Sylvia said, waving the one file she held in her hand, “is a bit of a problem.” She flipped the file open for Tulsa. “I’ve been on the phone with the clerk in the Powder Springs Courthouse for two hours and so far they’ve only managed to fax me the signature page for the pleadings.”

“Who’s the attorney?” Tulsa tilted her head toward the page.

Which small-town bumpkin practicing in Powder Springs had agreed to represent Bobby Hopkins, a deadbeat dad who hadn’t been a part of her niece’s life? Her eyes fluttered down the page to the signature line.

Her heart quickened in her chest and blood thundered through her head.
What the hell?
Tulsa peered more closely at that giant C and M that ate up the line dedicated to opposing counsel’s signature. A clamminess chased by a tingle spread from her fingertips to her palms.

“Cade Montgomery.” Her mind spun and her chest tightened with his name on her lips. How could Cade represent Bobby Hopkins? He was married and he lived and practiced in New York.

“You know him?” Sylvia asked.

“I thought I did,” Tulsa whispered. The Cade Montgomery that Tulsa knew wouldn’t subject her or her family to any more pain—especially pain doled out by his family. A tangled knot of emotions pulled tighter in Tulsa’s chest. “We went to school together.”

Describing her relationship with Cade Montgomery by saying “We went to school together” was akin to saying Romeo and Juliet were childhood friends. She ran her tongue over her lips and breathed—she willed her heart rate to a more normal speed, willed the pounding in her head to cease.

Tulsa’s teeth bit into her bottom lip. She didn’t want to be opposing counsel in a case where Cade Montgomery represented Bobby Hopkins. She didn’t want to be in the same town as Cade Montgomery. Hell, she didn’t want to be in the same state.

“You better go,” Sylvia said. “You’ve got twenty minutes to get to LAX.”

Sylvia’s words yanked Tulsa back to the present. She grabbed her bag and shifted the laptop case higher on her shoulder. Her eyes drifted around her office, across the faces of Jo and Emma and Sylvia. The faces of her colleagues and three best friends. There was compassion on their faces and also steely resolve. Tulsa’s heart pitched forward. This was her support network—this was the family she’d built for herself in Los Angeles—and now she would be so very far from all of them.

Emma rose from the couch. “We’re here when you need us.” She encapsulated Tulsa in a hug. Jo nodded her head—her hard-faced demeanor looked as if it might crumble.

“Morning meeting, Skype?” Tulsa steadied her voice in an attempt to quash the unchecked emotions bouncing around the room.

“Every day,” Sylvia said.

Tulsa turned and walked out her office door, toward the front of McGrath, Phillips, & Lopez. At this moment what Tulsa really wanted was to prepare for a settlement conference, a deposition, even a motions hearing, anything that she might do on a normal day. She wanted to pretend that Ash’s custody case wasn’t real. Pretend that Bobby wasn’t trying to take Ash. Pretend that Savannah hadn’t gotten arrested for firing a shotgun. Even pretend that Cade Montgomery, the only man she’d loved and the son of a man who’d shattered her life, wasn’t attempting to destroy her sister and niece.

But today wasn’t normal. There would be no depositions, no client meetings, no denial. Not today. Because, today—whether Tulsa wanted to or not—today, Tulsa McGrath would return to her hometown of Powder Springs, Colorado.

Chapter Three

After a full day’s work, a one-hour trip to the DMV, and a full hour at the Yampa Valley impound lot, Cade—with his new Colorado license in hand—was finally settled into his truck. He rolled down the window and listened to the melodic sound of rubber slapping pavement. Cool air blew into the cab and
River of Love
drifted in and out over the radio.

Cade breathed deep and mountain air filled his lungs. He tilted his head to the right and breathed into the iron-fisted knot deep in his neck. He rolled his shoulder up and back. The grip of stress relaxed and finally surrendered.

Once George Strait finished crooning, fuzz took over his radio and Cade pushed the buttons, looking for a signal. He’d entered a dead zone high above any kind of tower. He rounded the curve on Yampa Valley Road and a stand of aspen, their leaves just beginning to turn gold, glittered in the sun. Beyond the cluster of white-barked trees, he spied an SUV on the side of the road with its hood up. He didn’t recognize the car and guessed some tourist leaned over the engine of the silver Durango.

Cade pulled to a stop and got out of his truck.

“Need some help?” he called and walked around the front of the disabled vehicle.

When Cade’s gaze landed on full curves, fair skin, a tiny tipped nose and head full of untamed curls, his heart stuttered. A jolt whizzed through his body like he’d just cut an electrical cord with a pair of metal clippers. Tingles burst through his spine and consumed his arms and legs.

He hadn’t seen Tulsa in nearly twenty years and still the impact of her body, her face, her presence, was immediate and intense. A silken heat coiled deep in his belly and followed the bolt of electricity down his legs. Desire. Desire mixed with anger. He wasn’t a teenaged kid anymore. Cade was now old enough to know when a woman was bad news for a man, and Tulsa McGrath was nothing but trouble for him.

“Cade.” Tulsa didn’t smile. Her voice was cool. Gone were all the emotions that used to glide transparently across her face. Her innocence replaced by the even-toned, flat-faced demeanor of a litigation jockey.

He wrapped his arms across his chest and cocked one hip. “You never did have much luck with cars.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anger flashed in Tulsa’s voice.

Cade didn’t feel a bit bad about causing her hackles to rise. Let her stew in a little bit of temper. After what she did to his heart, she damned well deserved it.

“You don’t remember that old Buick your Grandma gave you to drive? The silver one that spit oil and wouldn’t start if it got below fifty degrees? Which meant it only started in July.”

Tulsa’s eyes slowly traveled over Cade’s face and then her gaze drifted toward the ground. She revisited a memory she’d not pulled up in years. “I do remember that car.”

Cade remembered the Buick too, especially the back seat as big as a king-sized bed.

“Let me give you a ride.”

“No thanks.” Tulsa slammed the hood of her rental.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Tulsa yanked open the driver-side door and pulled out her cell phone from her purse.

“You won’t get any reception,” Cade rested his arm on the top of the SUV’s open driver-side door. “We’re higher than the tower.”

She pressed the phone to her ear. The sharp tone indicating no service beeped from the phone and Tulsa’s jaw muscle flinched. The tiniest crease formed between her eyebrows. Damn, she’d gotten good at hiding her emotions. The Tulsa that Cade once knew would have cut loose a string of expletives, but instead this older glamour-girl tossed her phone into her purse and crossed her arms over her chest. The crease between her brows remained and Cade’s heart softened with the picture of a flummoxed Tulsa—she was particularly cute when irritated.

“You’re just going to sit here?”

“I’m not riding into town with a traitor.” She said the last word slowly and softly—her tone filled with the disappointments of the past and the retributions of the present. Her face remained settled, the crease between her brows evened out but her eyes—her eyes flashed temper and betrayal and Cade even thought he saw a hint of sadness.

Cade kicked a piece of gravel toward the road. In the west the sun hung low in the sky, hovering just above the dark outline of the Rockies. Once the giant orb sank behind the mountains, a bitter chill would bite into the air and a cold wind would whip through this flatland pass.

Let Tulsa think what she wanted—he wasn’t a traitor—he was an officer of the court with a responsibility to the judge, but he’d rarely won an argument with Tulsa McGrath before and he doubted he could win one today.

Cade backed toward his truck, his eyes still locked on Tulsa. “Hope you remember how cold it gets in the Rockies once the sun goes down.” He pulled open the cab door.

Frustration curled inside his chest, an unwanted creature that rested just above his belly. She was a woman alone on a highway—but that wasn’t his problem. He slammed his door shut. Let her cute little butt freeze.

He grasped the steering wheel. It might be hours before another car drove by on this highway and well after dark, late at night even. His jaw tensed. She sat in the driver-side seat of her rental, the door still open, her gaze locked on him and his truck. A look that seemed to say “Go, I don’t care. I don’t need you, Cade, and I never did.”

He tore his eyes away from her stone-faced stare. Anger burrowed upward from his belly and tightened behind his ribs. His fingertips found the keys in the ignition. Served Tulsa McGrath and her bad attitude right. Her car trouble wasn’t his problem. Cade’s responsibility to Tulsa had ended the day she ditched him for LA.

Cade fired up the engine, pressed the accelerator, and gravel ripped out from under his rear tire. He glanced in the rearview mirror as Tulsa’s lame vehicle grew smaller with each slap of rubber on pavement. Then it hit Cade—the thought of his mother—what would she say about Cade leaving a woman stranded just before dark on the side of the road?

“Dammit to hell.”

Cade yanked the wheel of his truck and performed an illegal U-turn. He might be angry with Tulsa, he might think Tulsa was a pain in the ass, he might go so far as to say Tulsa deserved to sit alone on that long lonely hardtop cutting down the center of the rocky mountains, but his mother taught him better than to leave a woman on a long stretch of two-lane highway with only a half hour of daylight. There wasn’t a woman in the world that could make him mad enough to be that big of an ass—not even Tulsa.

Cade slammed the brakes of his truck and jumped from the cab.

“Get in the truck,” he growled as his boots scattered the gravel between them.

Tulsa reached for the power locks, but Cade was too fast and he yanked open the driver-side door.

“Did you hear me?” If the woman didn’t have sense enough to save herself then he’d do it for her—even if he had to weather that McGrath temper.

Tulsa’s eyes squinted. As if an empress on a throne, she tossed her head and flipped her curls over her shoulder. “Who do you think you are?” A shudder of anger rolled through her shoulders.

Dammit, she had the cutest nose. She infuriated him and yet part of him wanted to lean forward and kiss that smart mouth.

He changed tack, softened his tone, relaxed his jaw. “Tulsa, please get in my truck.”

“No.” She stared through her windshield and wouldn’t meet his gaze. She wouldn’t acknowledge his presence—this show of bravado and nonchalance was more like the Tulsa that Cade remembered.

“No?” He tried to keep the laugh out of his voice that wanted to burst forth.

“No,” Tulsa said a second time. This time her head swiveled and she stared at Cade, the McGrath temper finally flaming within those pretty blue eyes. “N. O.”

“Right.” Cade nodded.

No wasn’t an option. He reached across Tulsa and pulled her purse from the passenger seat.

“You got a laptop in here?” Cade scanned the car for valuables.

“What?” Tulsa pulled her head back. “You’re a thief now? You’re taking my stuff—”

“Not a thief.” Cade hoisted the laptop and purse over his right shoulder. “I’d leave you behind if I was a thief.” He reached into the truck, wrapped his arm around her waist, and hoisted Tulsa over his shoulder. Another electric jolt pounded through him to the tips of his toes. He breathed deep and reminded himself that this woman was not the woman for him.

“Put me down!” Tulsa shrieked. She flailed her legs.

Damn, he’d have to be careful—she had on heels.

“Tulsa, darlin’, you put on some weight in Los Angeles? I don’t remember you being this heavy when we were eighteen.” His boots crunched across the gravel to the passenger side of his truck.

“Cade Montgomery, when my feet hit dirt you better run like hell.”

A smile he couldn’t squelch burst across Cade’s lips. Now that sounded like the Tulsa he remembered.

“You stop that kicking or I’ll put you in the bed of my pickup and then maybe you’ll remember just how cold it gets in the Rockies after dark.”

Tulsa stopped flailing. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“What do you think?”

Her body stilled and Cade opened the passenger door. He tossed in Tulsa’s purse and laptop case. “Now I’m putting you down and I don’t want your guff. Got it?”

She didn’t respond and Cade took the stillness of Tulsa’s body on his shoulder for a yes. He bent forward and Tulsa’s butt gently landed on the passenger seat. He tucked her legs inside the cab and shut the door.

There was more than one way to take care of a McGrath.

*

Anger straightened Tulsa’s spine. She wasn’t a helpless little girl that needed rescue. She clutched her purse on her lap—her jaw locked tight and tension ran down the side of her neck. She closed her eyes and breathed. She couldn’t stem the flow of adrenaline that flooded her body—she could lock her face into a flat expression, but the rush of emotions was too much and she couldn’t still her heartbeat. Even her breathing was short and shallow. Fear and excitement twisted within her chest, fighting for primacy. Fear over Ash’s pending custody case and excitement about finally, after nearly a decade, returning home.

She slid her eyes to the left and maybe, deep inside, there was even a hint of leftover attraction to Cade. He was bigger, broader, the difference between an eighteen-year-old boy and a man. Against her better judgment a desire for him lay thick in the pit of her belly. His black, wavy hair danced at his shirt collar. The hollow of his cheek cut deep beside his full mouth and a shadow danced across his jaw.