Unbreakable (13 page)

Boone shook his head. “So you already agreed to it?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want him running into someone else with a ready answer while I waited to check in with y’all.”

“What sort of work you talking about?”

This was where it got tricky. He looked over at Boone. “Breaking horses.”

“You shittin’ me?”

“Doesn’t he have a man doing that already?” Dax asked, coming out of the ground with more dirt for Boone to get rid of. “What was his name? Banning or something?”

“Royce sent him over to work for Nina, so the spot’s open.” Casper took a moment to fill a tin cup with water from the Igloo lashed to the back of the flatbed. “We talked about me filling in for a while.”

“What do you know about breaking horses?”

“More than you, I reckon.”

Dax stacked his hands on the digger’s handle, took a stand. “I dunno. I put my butt on the back of a few wild ones while in Montana.”

“And if I recall correctly,” Boone said to Casper, “your butt couldn’t stick eight seconds half the time.”

“How do you know what my butt was or was not doing? You were off working in New Mexico or wherever.”

“And you think that means I couldn’t keep up with you and the PBR? Seems you didn’t do too badly one year in Albuquerque.”

The year he’d met Angie and Clay. “Were you there?”

“Not at the rodeo, no. Had planned to come, but we had a nasty brucellosis outbreak and it was all hands on deck.”

“Huh. Wonder how many times the three of us crossed paths over the years.”

Boone cocked his head Dax’s direction. “You and Dax did the nomad thing. I stuck to New Mexico, so any time you came through, we would’ve been in spittin’ distance.”

“Wish I’d known,” Casper said, meaning it. He’d hid it, even from himself, but he’d really missed his boys. “I would’ve looked you up.” He turned to Dax. “I hit Montana on the way to Calgary, but that was years ago. Doubt you’d settled in Bozeman yet.”

“I never really settled in Bozeman.” Dax reached for the cup. Casper passed it over. “It was just the last stop before getting the news about Tess and Dave.” He stared into the water, frowning as he swirled it. “I’d already been thinking about heading south of the border. I hated the cold.”

“And here I thought you were a Scotsman to the bone.”

“Speaking of bones,” Dax said, giving Casper the eye. “You got a woman who needs courting? Is that what the extra money’s for?”

Casper’s first response was to dig at Boone about his sister, the way he’d done dozens of times. But since having her in his bed, he couldn’t go there. Mostly out of respect for Faith, but he also didn’t think he could pull it off. “I need it for the house.”

“I dunno,” Boone said. “I heard his headboard bouncing off the wall the other night. Not sure I’d call what was going on in there courting.”

“You didn’t hear shit. You were snoring loud enough to wake Bing.” Who snored loud enough to wake Bob. Who snored loud enough to wake all of Crow Hill.

“By the time you snuck her out, maybe. I couldn’t get to sleep until the two of you stopped shaking the house.”

“Fess up, partner,” Dax said, tossing him the empty cup. “Who was it?”

“My dick, my business,” he said, catching it and returning it to the Igloo. “About the house. There’s something else.”

“That where you’re keeping her?”

“Godammit. I’m not keeping anyone anywhere.” He stopped then and laughed because he was doing just that. “Except I am.”

Neither of the other men said anything, with Dax lifting a brow, Boone kicking at the sharpshooter’s blade.

Casper mopped his forehead with his sleeve before settling his hat back in place. This was his cross to bear, but he had to come clean. He couldn’t do anything to hurt the partnership. That was the bottom line in all things.

And that included Faith. “There’s this kid there helping me clean up. And he needs a place to stay that’s not a pit. I was thinking of bringing him out here. His dog, too.”

“That’s going to need a lot more explanation, dude,” Dax said.

Then Boone said, “Yeah. A kid and a dog who need a place to stay doesn’t sound exactly kosher.”

Casper looked from one man to the other. He needed them to know this wasn’t a joke. “His mom died. He doesn’t have any other family. He came looking for me.”

“Shit.” Dax forced the digger back into the hole. “He yours?”

“I can say with one hundred percent certainty he is not. I met his mother in Albuquerque six years ago.”

“Met his mother? Or fucked his mother?” Boone asked, while Dax came at him with, “The same Albuquerque we were just talking about?”

“Both,” he said to Boone, and gave Dax a nod.

In return, Dax gave him a whistle. “Let me get this straight. You were doing this kid’s mother when you were in town for a
rodeo. His old lady dies, and he comes looking for you? Must’ve made one hell of an impression.”

“It’s a mystery to me. If I wasn’t at the arena or in her bed, I was drunk. I barely remember him. Hell, I barely remember her,” he said, the admission carrying both shame and regret.

Dax nodded. “You ask him about it? Why you won the daddy figure lottery?”

“Not really. All he said was that he didn’t have anyplace else to go.”

“No family?”

“I guess not.”

“And foster care?”

“He gave it a try.”

“I’m pretty sure if he’s under eighteen, he doesn’t have a say. He goes. He stays. End of discussion.”

“Well, he went. And he didn’t stay. And now it seems I’m the one who’s stuck setting things right.”

“You going to see a lawyer?” Boone asked, finally weighing in.

Yeah. Since he had so much disposable income…“I figure a lawyer’s better than going to the law. For now. Until I know exactly what’s what.”

Boone glanced toward Dax. “Darcy, maybe?”

“No,” Dax said. “Leave Darcy out of it. Get Greg to look into it. He won’t feel the need to get personally involved.”

And because Darcy was a friend of the Dalton Gang, she would, even if it went against whatever code was meant to keep her impartial. Casper nodded. “What about him staying out here? The boy. Clay.”

Dax looked from Casper to Boone and shrugged. Boone looked back to Casper. “Faith was just saying we needed a maid. He could take on the job, help as he could with other chores. But
it’s on your head. Anything happens. This can’t blow back on the ranch.”

“It won’t,” he said, taking the tool from Dax and slamming it into the ground, praying as he did that he could keep that promise. And that he wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

W
HILE
F
AITH SAT
at the bar in the Hellcat Saloon, looking at the menu and nursing a vanilla beer, the lunchtime conversation from earlier in the week came back to haunt her, steering her away from a double order of fries and toward something more adventurous. Though what she was hoping to prove, and who she thought she’d be proving it to, wasn’t exactly clear.

Yes, she believed in being organized and efficient. And hadn’t she proved in the ranch house kitchen and Casper’s bed—not to mention the Rainsong Cafe parking lot,
for chrissake
—that the last thing she was was boring?

She just needed to take baby steps from the safe end of the pool to the dangerous one instead of launching her entire body into the deep end. The way she’d done in the past.

The way she was doing now.

“Good plan,” she muttered to herself. “But bad planning.”

Baby steps meant seeing someone safe. Like Dr. Mercer Pope. Or Greg Barrett, Esquire. Even Mal Breckenridge. Or Cameron Neal, DVM. Not sleeping with the Dalton Gang member most likely to ruin her reputation for good.

But that was exactly what she’d done since she’d been old enough to date, wasn’t it? Choose the worst possible men. Never learning her lesson. Thinking a bad boy could give her whatever it was that seemed to be missing in her life.

All that after growing up with the best example of a good man a girl could hope for, a coach, a husband, a father who talked and played and disciplined, who took his kids’ joys and sorrows to heart.

And then there’d been Boone. Boone and his hell-raising ways had gotten the most of their parents’ attention. But really? Had she been that ridiculously self-centered? That envious of Boone?

Had she looked for love in all the wrong places because the enormous amount showered down on her at home hadn’t been as much as that poured onto her brother? Lord, if she’d been that shallow, she deserved the hell she’d gone through in college. But she alone. Not her family.

Still, that disaster was done with, leaving her with no explanation for what she was doing with Casper now…

“Mind if I join you?”

Faith glanced over to see Kendall Sheppard holding the back of the neighboring stool, her straight blonde hair swept away from her face with a band. “Kendall, sure. Please, sit. It’s good to see you.”

“You, too.” Kendall moved fluidly into the seat, her long dancer’s body—kept in shape these days by climbing the rolling ladders attached to her bookstore’s shelves—making it look effortless. “I didn’t want to cut in if you’re waiting for a date.”

“I’m waiting for dinner. Or I will be as soon as I make up my mind what to order.” Faith tapped the menu in front of her. “And I’m taking it with me. Which means my only hot plans for the night are with my food.” She gave the other woman a grin. “And maybe Timothy Olyphant.”

“Ooh, good choice,” Kendall said, reaching for a menu from those tucked between bottles of Tabasco and Louisiana hot sauce. “Mine are with my food, and another three or four hours of work. I’m afraid if I streamed Timothy in the background, I’d never get anything done.”

“He is a distracting man, isn’t he? Just enough bad boy mixed in with the good.”

“And those long,
long
legs. Watching him walk…” Kendall let the rest of the sentence trail, sighing at the same time as Faith.

Then Faith cleared her throat and got back to being thirty-one years old. “Sorry about the late hours.”

“Thanks. There are lots of perks to being an entrepreneur, but sometimes I’d take a cozy nine-to-five over betting my future on ordering the right number of the right titles, and having them in stock when customers actually have the disposable income to spend.”

Faith heard what Kendall was saying, but her mind was stuck on the word
cozy
. Is that what her job was? As safe as the finance degree that had never offered a moment of challenge? As predictable as her weekly double orders of fries?

Thing was, she’d gone to college not knowing what she wanted to do with her life. She wasn’t even sure she knew now. It wasn’t as if she’d been born to coach like her father, or like her mother, had a need to counsel struggling teens. A calling was too ethereal, impractical. Faith prided herself on being neither, and banking fit.

Still, the word
cozy
kinda stung. “Nine-to-five’s not all it’s cracked up to be. In my case, the perks come strangled in suits and pantyhose.”

Kendall laughed. “Can I tell you a secret? I don’t remember ever owning a pair of pantyhose. Unless tights count.”

“I think I hate you now.”

“And when I’m elbow deep tonight processing returns, I’ll be hating you, your comfy bed,
and
your night with Timothy Olyphant.”

“I guess that makes us even,” Faith said, laughing, then looking up as Ned Orleans came to a stop between them. “Hey, Sheriff. Are you picking up dinner, too?”

Out of uniform for the evening, he patted a beefy hand against his big belly and laughed. “I’m here with the missus. We just topped off two plates of fried catfish with a big bowl of banana pudding. I didn’t want to interrupt, but I saw Kendall here and figured it a good time to ask her if she’d had anymore trouble from her thief.”

Faith glanced over, frowned. “You have a thief?”

“I know, right?” She shook her head. “Someone’s been snatching books off my shelves.”

“Well, that sucks.”

Kendall’s gaze traveled from Faith to the sheriff before she looked back to her menu. “I get that it’s tough on everyone with the library’s funding being pulled, and the school having nothing for the kids to check out except old Louis L’Amours, but this is my livelihood. I can’t afford to keep taking these hits.”

“I think those L’Amours were there when I was in school,” Faith said.

“I’m pretty sure they were there when I was, too,” Ned added.

“I wouldn’t doubt it. And I’m happy to give away any of the trade-ins too worn to put on the shelf. But the Nesbø title was a special order, and now I have to order it again.” She turned to the sheriff. “To answer your question, no, I haven’t noticed anything else missing, but you might ask Arwen. She mentioned her trash being disturbed by something other than dogs or coyotes.”

“How would she know it wasn’t animals?” Faith asked, looking up as the third woman joined them.

“Because dogs and coyotes don’t twist tops off soda bottles,” Arwen said, swiping a rag across the bar. “And last time I looked, they didn’t leave size twelve sneaker prints in ketchup.”

“Sounds to me like someone’s hungry.” Faith lifted her beer, realizing again how even their small town hadn’t escaped the economy’s hit.

“That’s why I haven’t said anything about it to Ned.” Arwen nodded at the sheriff. “Until now.”

Ned frowned, bobbed his head. “I’ll make sure the night patrol knows to keep an eye on your place.”

“As long as whoever it is keeps his foraging to the Dumpster, it’s not a big deal. Once he, or she, breaks into the kitchen, I will press charges. But right now, I’m more concerned about someone in Crow Hill being that much in need and stealing instead of asking for help.”

Faith thought back to her conversation with the Harts. “These days, there could be more than a few people on that list.”

“I know,” Arwen said. “I hate it. Especially since Dax and the boys aren’t that far from having their names added.”

“At least they’ve got family here,” Kendall offered.

“All but Casper,” Arwen said, her gaze meeting Faith’s and a look passing between them that had heat rising beneath Faith’s skin.