Unbreakable (18 page)

“Kittens?”

“It’s what she calls the girls who work there.” He opened the tailgate, motioned for Kevin to jump into the bed. Clay tossed his backpack in, too. “They wait tables and do bar top dances.”

“I’ve seen that. In movies.” Clay climbed into the cab, waiting until Casper had done the same before adding, “Someone pours booze on the bar and lights it and the girls dance in the fire.”

“Arwen’s place is more G-rated.” Or it was until he’d followed Faith into the ladies’ room and turned it triple-X. Yeah, he was some kind of cock-driven class act, putting Faith in that position when she had so much to lose.

Enough. He’d beaten himself up about it until he couldn’t see straight. And she’d told him last night to forget about it. That wouldn’t happen, but he would put it away. “Just so you know, I’m going to talk to a lawyer.”

“About me?”

Casper nodded, pulling off Mulberry Street onto Main. “I’m taking a big risk here by not turning you in. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” was all the boy said.

“Okay. Just so we’re clear.”

“What’ll the lawyer do?”

“I won’t know until I talk to him, though I’m pretty sure he’ll need to let New Mexico know you’re safe.”

“But not where I am? Because you know they’ll send someone to get me.”

“I don’t know,” Casper said, draping his wrist over the steering wheel. “If someone comes to get you, I’ll fight to get you into a better situation, but I don’t have any rights here. I don’t have any leverage to make that happen. The law’s not going to be on my side. The law may not give a shit.”

Arms crossed, Clay slumped in his seat and turned to stare out the passenger window. “I screwed up.”

“Yeah, you did,” Casper said, realizing it took a lot for the boy to admit his mistake. Realizing he admired him all the more because of it.

They fell silent for the rest of the drive, heading out of town on the county highway, then down the long private road into the ranch. He watched as Clay shifted in his seat, sitting straighter, sitting forward. He tried to contain his excitement, fighting a grin, flipping back his hair to prove he was still cool, still unmovable. Not a little kid thrilled by the idea of being a cowboy.

Unwanted emotion rose in Casper’s throat, jammed there like a feisty calf caught in a chute. This was stupid. Sure the kid was happy. He wasn’t piled in a too-small room with others he didn’t even know. And he wasn’t living in a shithole, digging food from Dumpsters, scraping dried soap from the bottom of detergent boxes to wash his clothes.

But it seemed like more than that. Like hope. Like for all he’d screwed up, it wasn’t the end of the world. And for all the heartache he’d known, there was something out there to reach for, a promise that things would get better. They were the same thoughts that had run through Casper’s mind the first time he’d visited the ranch.

Dax had been driving, Casper beside him, Boone hunched between the two captain’s chairs from the extended cab’s second row of seats. All of them had better things to do, but Boone’s parents were friends with Tess and Dave and told the elderly couple they’d send the threesome to lend a hand.

What they’d told the threesome was entirely different. The boys would work for the Daltons, give the pair their best, and not backtalk. They would not lie, cheat, or steal. They would not raise so much as an ounce of hell. They would not take one step out of line.

If Dax or Casper expected to ever be allowed into the Mitchell home again, or if Boone expected to ever be allowed out, they would do right by the Daltons for as long as the Mitchells saw fit.

It hadn’t taken but a week for Casper and the boys to decide ranching wasn’t a bad gig. It fit their rowdy ways yet reined them in by giving them structure. They’d worked their asses off, learning what it meant to be a steward of the land, burning a pasture to encourage new growth, watching a newborn calf slide into the world and wobble to its feet. Repairing pens, culling cedars, shoveling horseshit out of stalls and cleaning tack.

“You’re going to have to earn your keep,” Casper broke the silence to say.

“That’s fine.”

“Mostly at the house. There’s just the two of us living there now, like I said, but the schedule we’ve been keeping all summer,
we haven’t had much time to clean since moving in. Dax’s sister, Darcy, did some. But the house could use a good scrubbing.”

Clay snorted. “You want me to do housework.”

“Yep. That won’t be all, but it’ll fall on you.”

“Whatever,” the boy said, then after a pause asked, “Can I cook?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. What about the house and the construction?”

Now that Faith and her mystery money had entered the picture, Casper figured even he would be in the way. “We’ll need to go through the contents the next few days before the crews start, but that should be it.”

“Will I get to ride a horse?”

That brought a smile to Casper’s face. He looked over. “Do you know how?”

Clay shook his head.

“We can probably fit that in. Boone can show you how to care for the tack. Saddles and such. And you can probably take over seeing the dogs are fed and watered.”

“You just have two? Three, with Kevin?”

“Once in a while a stray will show up, but Bing and Bob are the main thing.”

“What about cats?”

“The Daltons, the couple who used to own the place, they had a tom who kept varmints out of the feed in the barn. Not sure what happened to him. If any come around, you can see to them, too.”

Clay sat straighter then. “Is that it?”

The house was two stories, painted white but faded, the shutters on the windows once a dark pine green. The structure squatted on the left of the main ranch yard. The barn, big and brown and sprawling, as well as the corral and the new holding
pen was to the right, along with the chutes used for sorting and working the cattle.

Nodding, Casper tried to see the place through young eyes, hopeful eyes. Eyes that had taken in too much garbage and hurt. That had found escape in words printed on the page. That had watched out for predators, for guns, badges, and spinning cherry-tops, for places to hole up safely to sleep.

The boy had said he’d seen worse than what he’d found in the house on Mulberry Street. And suddenly feeling like he might be sick, Casper knew that he had. That he’d shared the chilling fear Casper had known, the crawling hunger, the pain of heat and cold.

As the fence line fell away and the yard opened up in front of them, as Bing and Bob scampered to meet his truck and Boone climbed down from the cab of the flatbed, as Dax walked out of the barn leading Flash, the fringe of his chaps swinging, it took all the strength Casper had not to weep.

“T
ELL ME AGAIN
why we’re doing this legal crap in Luling instead of using Darcy or Greg.”

Though Faith had wanted to drive, Casper had insisted, which meant his eyes were on the road and he wasn’t able to see the exasperated expression she was finding herself forced to perfect just for him.

Pain-in-the-ass cowboy. “For the eight millionth time, it’s about privacy.”

“Yeah, yeah, but lawyers can’t talk about confidential client stuff, so what’s the deal?”

They’d been over and over this the last week since she’d set up today’s appointment. He was being purposefully obtuse, and that meant he wanted something. His habit was to goad her when he did. “The deal is, I don’t want Darcy or Greg even knowing about this partnership. I don’t want anyone in Crow Hill knowing. Not now. Not yet.”

“Might as well add
not ever
,” Casper said, and since he had,
she didn’t have to. When she remained silent, he let it drop with a heavy, frustrated sigh, asking instead, “So who’s the shark in Luling?”

She closed her eyes, dropped her head against the truck’s padded seat back, deciding she was insane. The sex was one thing, but no anniversary party could possibly be worth having to put up with this man. “A friend from UT.”

“Someone who won’t blab?”

Good lord. “She won’t blab.”

“Someone who doesn’t know me so won’t question the state of your mental health?”

“That was a consideration.”

“Someone who knows about your money?”

It took a lot of willpower not to reach over and slug him. “I’m not talking about this with you.”

“So you’ve said.”

“And yet you keep pushing.”

He paused for a moment, either letting what she’d said settle, or thinking up more ways to aggravate her. He came up with a good one. “I was thinking of putting a full disclosure clause into our agreement. If I have to tell you everything I spend your money on, you have to tell me where you got it.”

“Then you can just turn this truck around,” she said, her hands balled into fists in her lap. “Because you’ll be signing that contract on your own.”

“Prickly little thing, aren’t you?”

About this, yes. She was. “Besides, I’ll know what you’re spending my money on since I’ll be signing the checks. If we were going to make such a deal, I’d rather know about where you lived before moving into that house in Crow Hill.”

He shrugged, a motion that said nothing, revealed nothing, much like the blank look he kept on his face any time she pressed
about his past, which kinda made them even. She imagined his eyes might show something more, but they were hidden behind a pair of aviator shades that surprised her with how much attitude they added to his face.

“Best I can recall, we lived in Houston until I was about seven,” he said, glancing into his rear-view mirror then back at the long, flat highway. “I went to kindergarten and first grade there. Second, too, I’m pretty sure. Third grade is when I remember new teachers and a different building, really small, and not knowing anybody.”

“Still in Texas?”

“Yeah, we moved a lot after that, but we never left the state.” He punched the accelerator, zoomed around a truck pulling a livestock trailer. Faith waved away the smell of cow shit, and Casper snorted. “I need to get you on a horse. Let you get a whiff of what I deal with every day.”

She’d been to the ranch often enough to have an idea. “Thanks, but no.”

He laughed, a deep burst of unexpected emotion that had her curling her toes. She couldn’t remember ever hearing him let go with that sort of honesty. Not outside of sex, anyway, but even then he held a lot of himself in check, as if afraid she might look at him too closely. As if afraid anyone would.

He sounded happy. Relaxed. She hadn’t realized until this moment that most of the time he was stretched to the end of a tether, the tension ready to snap, or to whip him back and wind him up. He’d been like that years ago, too, bouncing, on edge, only letting his hair down when he had a longneck in his hand. And that couldn’t be good, needing that sort of crutch to get by before even reaching adulthood.

“What?” he finally asked. “No compassion for the working conditions faced by a struggling cowboy?”

She scoffed at that. “We all have our burdens. Mine are pantyhose.”

“I hate your pantyhose.”

“So you’ve said,” she replied, and swallowed the itch of his words.

He reached over, placed his hand on her thigh, slid it higher. “You probably wouldn’t be so uptight if you ditched them. Wore stockings and garters instead.”

“You think I’m uptight?” she asked, ignoring the second part of his supposition. Trying, too, to ignore his touch and having a hell of a hard time.

“It’s probably not you as much as the job,” he said, but he left his hand where it was.

She picked it up and moved it for him. “Is this because I wouldn’t release the ranch’s money for your house?”

“It would’ve been easier than going through all this legal shit.”

“No, it would’ve been an unacceptable risk.” Right. Did she really expect him to understand why that was a bad thing? “But then I don’t think you’d know a risk if it reached up and took a bite out of your ass.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Then maybe you’re the one who needs to get a whiff of the messes you get yourself into on a regular basis. And I’m not just talking about the livestock.”

“Do I smell like cow shit?” he asked, lifting an arm to sniff his pit.

Could one be convicted for throttling a man so purposefully obtuse? “Not today.”

“But sometimes?”

Wait. He was serious? “It’s not a big deal, Casper. Boone
smells the same way. I imagine Dax does, too, though I don’t get that close to him.”

“Well, hell.”

That had her smiling, his concern that he carried his livelihood with him in such a distasteful way. “Hey, it was your choice to take up ranching. You should’ve known the hazards of the job.”

“Like pantyhose and banking.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Like pantyhose and banking.”

He was quiet for a minute, pensive even, checking the traffic. “I don’t know that I necessarily ever wanted to ranch. I mean, I didn’t have a lot of choice in high school. At least not if I wanted to keep hanging with the boys. But Dax and Boone were the ones who kept it up after we all left Crow Hill. I rodeoed.”

Because something in his nature, or in what passed for his nurture, drove him to be reckless, to take those risks he denied. To be arrogant and mean and dangerous…And yet being here with him now, it was hard to see any of those things.

Sure, someone passing on his left and glancing over might drop back for fear of being mowed down, the picture of which brought a private smile to her face. She supposed he might intimidate people who didn’t know him. Maybe even some who did.

The way his T-shirt fit his arms and chest left no doubt as to his strength, and with the brim of his battered hat pulled bad-guy low, his eyes hidden behind the dark aviators, and the stubble on his face speaking to his don’t-give-a-damn…She could see it.

But the rest, the things she knew, the way that stubble felt against her inner thighs, her labia, the things she saw in his eyes when he looked up at her from between her legs…

“Why rodeo?” she asked, her voice catching on the arousal that was bringing her nipples to peaks. “Did you go to the big one in Houston while living there?”