Just Shoot Me (Cowboy Way, #1) (22 page)

According to the paperwork Dean had finally
made himself read last night, he was supposed to turn Jeremy over
to Cindy tonight. Now he didn’t have to do that. If nothing else,
meeting with the attorney had bought him more time with his son.
Maybe years, if the man was right. Dragging things on for years
though, playing legal football with Cindy, would cost him a lot of
money. His son was worth every penny. He would sell his soul if
that’s what it took to keep his son. His sanity was worth more
though.

If he lost his son, Dean would lose his
mind.

He was sure Tina Montgomery was losing hers
too at the moment. She had lost her job. Or quit it. Hope still
hadn’t told him the entire story. But she did ask him to stop by
Tina’s apartment to check on her on his way back home, which worked
out perfectly. That gave him a good excuse to go by there without
having to answer a million questions from Hope. Seeing her was the
last thing Dean wanted to do, but he was worried about her. Damned
worried. Like his son was to him, Dean knew that job meant
everything to her.

When he was having a breakdown out by that
lake that night she had been there for him. He owed it to her to be
there for her, drag her back from the edge, or just
listen.

Right now though, he was going to have that
test done then pray like hell while he waited for the results to
come back.

***

Tina paused the movie for a moment so she
could shuffle to the bathroom to get another box of Kleenex from
the cabinet. When she walked back to the sofa, she picked up the
wastebasket, shoved the empty Oreo bag inside, then gathered up the
full trash bag and tied it off. She didn’t take it to the kitchen,
she just didn’t have the energy. Instead, she set it beside the
other full wastepaper bag she’d changed out last night, before she
plopped back on the sofa.

She had to finish the movie and her newest
crying jag before Laney got home from school in two hours. Her pity
party was only allowed when her niece was sleeping, crying herself,
or at school. Tina jerked up the remote and pressed the button,
then threw it down beside her to pick up the bag of nacho chips she
still had to finish. Between the Oreos, chips and flat soda she had
in her stomach, Tina felt sick, but she couldn’t seem to stop
herself. Last night, she’d eaten an entire box of chocolate covered
cherries she’d gotten as a Secret Santa gift from someone at her
office for Christmas. Yeah, she’d thrown them up, but they had been
good going down.

The same would probably happen when she
finished the chips.

Since Friday when she’d quit her job before
they could fire her, Tina had done nothing but cry or throw up.
When Laney wasn’t watching that is. Her niece did enough crying of
her own from missing her mother, and Tina could at least justify
her tears to the kid then as sympathetic tears. Otherwise, she held
her own in until she could wallow in her misery alone.

Like now, she thought as her eyes welled up
again. She jerked a tissue from the box to blow her nose. The scene
in the sappy movie she was watching caught her attention. The guy
had just told the woman he was dying. Fixated on the scene, Tina
bit her lower lip, then sucked in a sob when the woman started
crying. She jerked the blanket beside her up to her chin, and the
chip bag fell, scattering chips all over the floor. Tina didn’t
care. She eased down on the couch, pulled the cover over her head
and just cried.

A heavy knock at the front door woke her up.
Tina’s eyes popped open like rusty shutters, and she was scared for
a minute, because it was pitch dark, then realized the blanket was
over face. She shoved it off and looked toward the door when
another round of knocking started. It wasn’t Laney coming home,
knocking because she’d forgotten her key. The knock was too
heavy.

Tina groaned, and thought about ignoring
whoever it was. She sure as hell didn’t want to see anyone. She
glanced at the clock hanging beside the refrigerator. And she still
had thirty minutes left to party. The knock came again and Tina sat
up on the couch, knocking over the trash can.

“
Tina, I know you’re in there, I
saw your car in the parking lot!” Dean shouted and knocked
harder.

Oh, Lord. The absolute last person in the
world she wanted to see. She ran her hands through her hair,
knowing it was a bird’s nest. She had seen it this morning in the
mirror and almost scared herself, but was too exhausted to run a
comb through it. Screw it. He needed to see this. Maybe then he’d
leave her the hell alone for good.

What the hell could he want anyway?

Dean had pretty much told her she was just a
good fuck to him, that he couldn’t give a shit less about her. The
pathetic way he’d said goodbye to her when she left the ranch said
it all. The fact that he hadn’t even bothered to come a hundred
yards in the rain to see her at the bunkhouse for two days after
they had sex should have been her first clue to how he felt. But
not Tina. She had been stupid enough to hold out hope, until he
gave her that flip of his hand that he tried to pass off as a wave
on her way out the door.

She had nothing to say to the man. Anger
replaced her sorrow as she stood and crunched her way across the
chips on the floor to the front door. She slid the chain free,
flipped open the deadbolt, then opened the door and Dean’s fist
almost knocked on her forehead.

He dropped his hand to his side, and had the
gall to smile at her. “You look like shit, buttercup,” he said
cheerfully.

Tina shoved the door closed in his face, but
he put his foot between the door and the jamb. “Open the door,
Tina.’

Well, with his big ass boot in the door, she
wasn’t going to be able to close it, so she huffed out a sigh then
walked back to the sofa. The movie had ended, so she flicked the TV
off and threw the remote onto the coffee table, then plopped back
on the sofa and brushed the chip crumbs off of her feet, before she
curled them under her. She jerked a pillow from beside her and
hugged it to her chest. Dean pushed the door open and walked inside
then shut it behind him. Her eyes took in his cowboy hat and the
dress shirt and tie he wore, and her heart tried to do a little
wiggle in her chest. She slapped the shit out of it and said, “What
do you want?”

His eyes didn’t meet hers, they traveled
around the room. The smug bastard evidently passed judgment that it
looked like a nuclear wasteland, because when he finally looked at
her his lip curled a little. “Good God, honey. This place is a
mess.”

“
It looks exactly how I feel. I’m
sorry it doesn’t meet your expectations. I won’t be living here
much longer, so I’m not too worried. Now what the hell do you
want?” she asked shortly, hugging the pillow tighter.

“
Hope asked me to come by and check
on you,” he said evenly.

It figured, he wasn’t here of his own free
will. He was doing his sister-in-law a favor. Well he sure wasn’t
doing her one, and Hope hadn’t either. Emotion shot up to her
throat, but she swallowed it enough to say, “Well you can tell Hope
if she wants to know how I am, she can come here herself. She’s
welcome here, you’re not. Now get out.” Tina pointed toward the
door, and bit her lower lip to stop the trembling.

Dean didn’t move. He stood there staring at
her with his stormy blue eyes.

“
I said
get out
!” she
repeated, dragging her eyes away, as the emotion got closer to the
surface. Her eyes watered, and she sucked in a shuddering
breath.

She heard a sigh, then footsteps, before a big
body plopped beside her on the sofa. Dean dropped his arm over her
shoulders. “You talked me down off the cliff the other night. It’s
my turn. Spill it, what’s wrong? What happened with your
job?”

Too late to pretend you care cowboy
.
Tina stiffened her body, lifted her chin and pinched her lips
tighter. His arm slid behind her neck, as he pushed his other under
her legs. Before she knew it Dean dragged her onto his lap and
hugged her. Tight. His scent worked its magic, and Tina couldn’t
help but inhale it. It made her mad that it comforted her a
little.

“
Let me go,” she growled pushing
against his chest. His arms tightened even more, so she quit
pushing. He was too strong.

“
I’m not leaving until you talk to
me,” he said calmly.

“
I got a promotion,” she mumbled
into his chest taking one more sniff of him, because she couldn’t
help herself. It was a little different mixed with the starch in
his dress shirt. She wasn’t sure she liked it better. Dean wasn’t a
starched shirt kind of man. The outdoors is what mixed well with
his unique scent. “Why are you dressed up?” she muttered, because
she couldn’t help but ask. Surely it wasn’t to impress her. Dean
struck her as the kind of man who would rather be hanged than put
on a tie. Probably thought it was the same thing.

“
I went to see an attorney this
morning. Cindy is suing me for custody of Jeremy,” he said as if he
were relating the weather. “Now why the hell would you quit your
job if they offered you a promotion?” he countered angrily. His
arms loosened a little so he could look down at her.

He waited. She held her tongue. His eyes
narrowed, and she finally said, “It wasn’t the promotion I
wanted.”

“
So you quit your damned job?” Dean
asked incredulously.

“
They would have fired me
otherwise, because I can’t travel.”

Dean shook his head. “Why the hell not? You’re
single. That sounds pretty exciting, actually.”

“
If I was five years younger, and
not a single mother now, maybe it would be.” He gasped and almost
dumped her off of his lap. Tina grabbed herself with a hand on the
coffee table, then he pulled her back up.

“
You have a
kid
and didn’t
bother to tell me about it?” Dean all but shouted.

“
You’ve met her. My sister left
town, and left Laney with me.”

“
Good Lord,” Dean
whispered.

The phone on the wall in the kitchen rang, and
Tina eased off of Dean’s lap, crunched across the chips and walked
over to answer it. “Tina Montgomery.”

“
Miss Montgomery, I need Laney’s
mother down at the school right now. We have a problem.”

Tina’s heart jumped to her throat. “Is Laney
okay?”

“
Yes, ma’am, but she’s in a lot of
trouble. I need her mother to come down here and pick her up. The
principal wants to talk to her.”

Tina’s heart rate went off the charts. Being
called in to talk to the principal was never a good thing. It
hadn’t been a good thing when she was in school, and she was sure
that hadn’t changed. Laney was never in trouble at school, so she
couldn’t imagine what she could have done.

“
Um, her mother, is uh…out of
town,” she stuttered.

“
Well, we need someone to come down
here and get her, and until we talk to her mother, she isn’t
allowed back at school.”

“
Can’t she ride the
bus?”

“
I’m afraid not, ma’am. This is
very serious.” Tina eased the phone back onto the hook, then leaned
her forehead against the wall.

Dean walked up behind her and put a hand on
her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“
Laney’s in trouble at school and
they want to see Lori before she can go back. I have no idea where
my sister is. All I have is a note that said she was leaving with
some cowboy. She didn’t say where she was going, but she asked me
to take care of Laney. If the school finds that out, they’ll
probably call somebody, and they’ll try to take her away from
me.”

“
You’re a good person, and take
good care of her. Why would you think that?”

Tina laughed bitterly then turned around.
Dean’s arms trapped her against the wall. “I’m unemployed now. My
savings won’t last forever, so I’ll eventually lose my apartment.
We’ll be homeless.” She rolled her eyes to disperse the tears
gathering there then ducked under his arm to walk toward the
bedroom. She stopped there, but didn’t turn around. She didn’t want
him to know how upset she was. Dean Dixon had enough problems of
his own.

“
I’m single, which would be good
for traveling, but not so good when they are gauging your fitness
as a kid’s guardian.”

“
Funny, my lawyer said almost the
same thing to me today,” he replied with a strange tone to his
voice. Almost reflective.

Tina wondered at it, but didn’t have time to
talk. She had to go pick up her niece. And she had to figure out
what she was going to do. “You can show yourself out. I’ve got to
get ready to go pick her up,” Tina said as she walked inside
shutting the door behind her.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Tina was sure she was out of tears. That last
round in the shower made her feel practically dried up, and stopped
up too. She walked to the mirror, cringing when she wiped the steam
from the mirror and saw her red-rimmed eyes. She was not a pretty
crier like her sister. She looked like a damned Puffer fish when
she finished. Her face was swollen and her lips were too. That was
not going to look good at the school, so she turned on the cold
water in the sink and splashed it on her face until her cheeks
cooled. She turned the tap off and breathed deeply of the steam
cloud in the bathroom to clear away some of her
stuffiness.