River Road (River's End Series, #4) (11 page)

AJ GOT UP AT seven and showered, dressing in the only outfit he had that wasn’t ripped, stained, or work-worn. To church, he always wore the same dark slacks and blue button-up shirt. That outfit was reserved for church and only church, and he carefully washed it each week in preparation for the next Sunday. Services began at ten, and he was always on time. He sat in the same pew, four rows from the back, six from the front. He drew no attention to himself, but he wasn’t hiding in the back, or trying to avoid participating. He listened to the preacher speak about Bible verses and he sang along with the hymnal. Guilt sat heavily on his heart. He didn’t actually believe he would be struck dead by lightning, but he couldn’t deny a sense of general displeasure and disappointment with himself. For three years, he lived completely sober; no alcohol, drugs, prescription or otherwise, no swearing, no fighting, and no sex. It was all a healthy package to AJ’s way of thinking. He had abandoned all the wild, reckless living that might have sounded fun and exciting and what someone like him would seek, but it really was lonely. Most days, he felt sick or hollow over whatever he’d done the night before. However, in the last three years, he could remember every single day, and every thing he’d done. He had real conversations and real connections. And although he didn’t have anyone special in his life, he lived in a place that people knew and respected him. He had an address that his hard work and integrity earned him. That was enough for AJ.

What he did last night with Kate wasn’t something he wanted. He was out of control and satisfying a baser urge inside him. And while many people did so and enjoyed it, as Kate was saying, when he did, it seemed way too far. It led him to remember long benders of sex and alcohol, and gambling to get money to fund it. He often woke up puking or staring in wonder at a naked girl he had little memory of. It wasn’t fun when he tapped back into it. He believed his genetics predisposed him to overindulge in the urge to have sex, or drink, or fight, or gamble.

Kate Morgan had been driving him nuts since her arrival. The body and face were enough to make a monk break his vows, but when she wore that micro-bikini that made her long body simply go on and on and on, it was almost impossible not to fall at her feet and worship her. But AJ resisted. No lurid stares. No ogling. He kept his eyes diverted, and his mind and hands occupied by the work he needed to do. The savior of his life was work, the ranch and the sense of community he found in the church. He never belonged to anything before. Joining something like the church was humbling.

No, he didn’t partake in church socials or even really talk to anyone. The preacher didn’t invite him over for dinner or anything else, but he went to church and enjoyed it all. Sometimes, while watching the young families and little kids running around the church lawn, or yawning in their pews, or throwing spitballs behind their parents’ backs, he imagined what it was like to be part of a family. He understood he never would be. He just liked knowing that families like those around him in church existed.

But not in AJ’s world.

Sleeping with Kate was a fluke. He sensed by her presence at the tavern and coming over to his table that she might have been interested. That’s why he hightailed it out of there as soon as he could. He never expected her to follow him, much less, to so boldly and crazily put her hands on him. It happened so fast, his body was unaware of what she was doing and then bam! She was touching him intimately and all his rational thoughts fizzled and dissolved. The only thing left were his feelings. So many overwhelming feelings. He hadn’t dealt with them in so long, he forgot he could have said no. He could have managed his desires. But like the old days, he did not. The old days that led him to HIV clinics to be tested after nights of unprotected sex. Or getting patched up by some bar girl after another drunken fight. Or being hauled off in handcuffs to prison after breaking a bottle on a man’s head and giving him a serious concussion.

So it wasn’t lightly that he’d broken his commitments. In church, while listening to the sermons he’d never heard before the last three years, he became accountable to someone, and something. As it turned out, he realized he was never accountable to anyone before. Since his father encouraged such behavior, and bought him a damn hooker for his thirteenth birthday present, how was he supposed to learn right from wrong? Without any kind of restraint? Or any kind of respect for others, especially women, and most of all, himself? He had no sense of purpose when he got out of prison, and knew he needed to find something to live for. Being trapped behind bars was a strong motivator. He couldn’t tolerate that possibility again. He needed lots of space, air, and sky. Though he deserved his sentence, his entire life became dedicated to finding a way to become a better person. Different.

He succeeded in all that here at River’s End. That is, until Kate Morgan pulled in that afternoon. As a dirty ranch worker, sweaty and uneducated, there was no reason to believe someone like this exquisite woman would even notice him beyond the directions to her destination. He was admittedly beyond flattered when she seemed to flirt with him. He knew she was hitting on him. He also understood it was because of his body. No other reason. She liked his muscles. After seeing her city guy, he understood what appealed to Kate. Along with the extent of Kate’s interest in someone like AJ.

And he fully intended to make sure nothing came of it. But then… it did. However, it didn’t have to happen again.

****

Kate’s head popped around the corner of his trailer before he saw her body. She smiled, nearly sheepishly. He jerked upright in the lawn chair he occupied. First, because she was
there
, and second, because she looked almost uncertain. Something he never observed in her before. She stepped on the bottom step of the stairs that led to the deck where he was sitting. Her pink boots clunked down on the wooden surface. She wore jeans shorts tonight. They made her long legs seem all the slimmer and more shapely, not to mention, they were cute as hell. Even if he restrained himself and managed not to ogle her as if she were a piece of cheesecake, he didn’t want to be like that anymore.

She walked towards the small table beside him. From her back, she withdrew two glass bottles and set them down with a
thunk!
Water dripped down the sides of them. He glanced up at her, then at the bottles, about to protest until he realized they held lemonade.

Without asking, she sat down in the other lawn chair. “Hello, AJ.” Her gaze was strong and bright on him. She had incredible eyes. Blue and bold, capped by delicate, almost white eyebrows that she darkened some days, although not on others. He noticed too much.

“Hi, Kate,” he answered, shifting his butt around. Her presence made him uncomfortable. He was much too aware of her body, and therefore, his own. Plus, she was intimidating as hell. Whatever her life consisted of, it wasn’t like his. It wasn’t living in a damn trailer, or carrying around manure and dirt for a living.

She leaned forward, popping off the bottle caps on the drinks and handing him one while taking her own. She swallowed a long gulp, lifting her eyebrows as if to say, “your turn.” He took the cool drink and did the same. It was real lemonade, sour and sweet, and so refreshingly cold in the heat of the afternoon.

She set hers down with a soft clunk and wiped the moisture on the back of her arm. He didn’t expect the almost childish gesture. “So, how was church this morning? I assume that’s where you went.”

He nodded. “It was fine.” He had no idea where they stood now, or what to say or do. Kate stopping by on Sunday afternoon at five o’clock was like they were friendly neighbors about to engage in a regular chat. Never mind that they shared the craziest, wildest kind of dirty sex he’d had in years… in so many years.

The tip of her tongue came out and moistened her lower lip. “So did you confess?”

“Confess?”

“For being a fallen man?” Her smile was quick, lifting one side of her mouth up.

He cleared his throat, and leaned forward to wrap his hand around the cool drink and stare at the label, anything to divert his eyes from staring at her. Her hair was tousled; the blond strands that should have looked manly didn’t. Instead, it seemed like his hands had been combing through it, just like last night, while her head…

That was why he hoped Kate Morgan would end her vacation today and go home. He had a few too many fantasies leaning her way. Now that he had images, pictures, and feelings to match the fantasies, he was overwhelmed by how easily his body responded to her. “It’s not a Catholic church. There is no confessional,” he mumbled. The humor she found in something that meant everything to him really set him off.

“Oh, so you intend to just carry on now as a sinner?”

His jaw clenched harder. “Well, I guess. I don’t know. It isn’t like anyone polices it. I was only trying to be a better version of myself.”

Her chair legs scooted over the deck as she slid closer to him. She leaned over the table and used her painted, long fingers to squeeze his arm. “I’m sorry. That was callous of me. I guess, maybe, I’m feeling a little ashamed here, and it’s not something I’ve ever felt before in regards to my sex life. My parents were both atheists. I wasn’t taught anything about religion. Never even been to church, unless it was for marrying or burying. So I don’t totally get it, but I don’t mean to sound like a bitch.”

His gaze fell to her elegant fingers on his arm. They looked so odd. All slender and bony with rounded, long tips of nails in a soft pink color. He picked at the bottle’s white and yellow label, thinking the premium brand probably cost more than he’d spend on dinner. “It’s not shame. It’s just not how I want to live anymore.”

She nodded, her gaze drifting towards the view over the fields beside the river, up towards the small town of River’s End, and higher to the big, rolling mountains that dissolved into the sky, swallowing the horizon. AJ didn’t have a lot of time to gander at the view during daylight hours, but anytime he did, it never ceased to give him pause and pleasure. So much pleasure that he lived there very gratefully. That was his view each time he stepped out of the small trailer behind him. He felt a peace settling over him. God must have had a reason for his previous life, with prison and all, because it led him there.

“My mom was pretty liberal. She always taught me that sex and my body were my business and no one else’s. It wasn’t something to be ashamed of, or hide or act as if I didn’t deserve to have it in my life. Lots of women get embarrassed by it, as if they shouldn’t feel pleasure. That’s more how I look at it, a right to feel good, rather than the religious, taboo factor of right or wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t really understand the teachings about it.”

“I don’t either, to be honest.”

“You didn’t grow up religious?”

He snorted. “No. I have no idea what my parents were.”

“Were?”

He shrugged. “My mom was never part of my life. She ran off long before I could remember her. My dad was around, but only sporadically. He was a gambler.”

“Then who raised you?”

“Foster care sometimes. Myself others.”

“I didn’t know that.” Her tone lost the brazen confidence that usually filled it and took on a subtle, subdued gravity he hadn’t observed from her.

He waved it off, staring towards the raging river down the valley. “I survived.”

“Surviving and getting out unscathed by it are two different things.”

“Maybe.”

“What happened to your dad?”

AJ kept his gaze on the river. Stony faced. He hated thinking about his father. “Last I saw him, I was sixteen. He’d just pulled some damn scam on an unsuspecting couple. They found out and chased us out of their place with guns, literally shooting at us. I decided I was done with him then. That made my father done with me. We parted ways and I never heard from him again.”

Silence ended his statement. Finally, she asked, “What did you do?”

“I made do.”

“At sixteen?”

“I was strong. I could always do the physical work of one-and-a-half men. Plus, I had a history of bull riding, no fear, and could get plenty of ranch work all over the Dakotas and Montana. I learned how to ride. I didn’t have a lot of expenses. Food. A few incidentals. I had a single duffel bag of stuff to my name. I made do.”

“How’d you end up in Washington?”

“Decided to get a clean start after my parole was up and I was free to travel. I needed to go somewhere no one knew my old man’s name or mine. I needed to get out of the rodeo circuit and all that went with it. I started in Montana, traveled to Idaho, and eventually ran across an ad Jack placed in the local paper for ranch hands.”

He drank liberally from the lemonade and set the bottle back down. “So you see, Kate, though you’re enjoying your vacation here, this is my life. This isn’t a joke or a lark to me, it’s all I’ve ever had. I am an ex-con without even a high school education. This is the end of the road for me, and the thing is, it’s the best dang road I’ve ever been on. While you are on vacation, I must be a novelty to you. I believe if we met up in Seattle, you’d have little or no interest in me. You don’t want to sit down and have a stimulatin’ conversation with me. You see me as a big hunk of muscles that you can liberally enjoy. And while, years ago, that would have pleased me too and been enough, I don’t want to be like that anymore.”