Oklahoma Moonshine (The McIntyre Men #1)

by Maggie Shayne

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was angry. Really angry. He got up and paced the room. This couldn’t be happening. My God, she wasn’t just a petty con, she was a major criminal. And there was no way this wouldn’t come out, no way she wouldn’t end up in prison.

  God, he didn’t want her to end up behind bars.

  He got an idea, and said, “What if I—?”

  “No.” She stood up, too. “You’re not loaning me the money to pay them all back. I have to do this myself.”

  He stared into her eyes, saw her resolve there, believed she meant what she said. But hell, she’d stolen a half million dollars. “But Kiley, how?”

  “I’ll figure it out. But in the meantime, I’ve got a bigger problem to deal with. That flyer,” she said, with a look at it lying on the counter. “It’s got entire paragraphs lifted from the dog park scam my sister and I ran before we split up. Some of the graphics are even the same. She just changed it enough to apply to a reservoir instead of a dog park. My father and my sister are about to rob our friends and neighbors and your family. Last time I saw one of those Big Falls’ Big Future signs, the red in the thermometer was up to three-hundred and fifty thousand.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. We have to stop them. Maybe it’s time to call Jimmy.”

  “I have to stop them. Not we. And I’m not bringing the police into this.”

  “Jimmy’s family.”

  She shook her head. “My father knows about my chihuahua scam, Rob. He’ll turn me in if he finds out I’m trying to do anything to stop him.”

  He walked up to her, took her by the shoulders. “Listen to me, okay? This is a pivotal moment for us. Are you getting that?”

  She lowered her head. “Pivotal. Like it’s not already over? Like you’re going to want anything to do with me after this? You, the guy who vowed not to tell a lie if you could help it? You’re still going to want anything to do with me now that you know what I’ve done?”

  He held her eyes for a long moment, then lowered his head.

  “That’s why I couldn’t tell you, Rob. I knew—”

  “No you didn’t. You can’t possibly know what’s going on in my head, so don’t think you do. The only thing I’m sure about is that we can’t let your father and your sister scam this entire town and get away with it.”

  “I don’t plan to.”

  “He’s screwing with my family, Kiley. So you’ve got two choices here.”

  “Oh, hell,” she said, turning away and pushing a hand through her hair.

  “You either let me help you stop him, or I call Jimmy and turn them in.”

  “You do, and I go down with them.”

  “You don’t make this right, you probably deserve to.” He sighed heavily. “But I’ll give you a head start to get out of town.” He picked up the flyer, looked at it, shook his head in disgust and threw it on the counter. “That’s the best offer you’re gonna get from me. Take it or leave it.”

  She felt like screaming. Fighting. Crumbling on the floor and crying. “That’s no choice at all, Rob. I guess I’ll take it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  * * *

  Somehow, he managed not to go off like a bomb, or curl into a corner like a boiled shrimp. Somehow, he managed to hold the broken pieces of himself into a semblance of the man he was for the next several hours. They stayed up late, talking and listening. But only about her father and sister. Not about them. Not about the bomb she’d just dropped on the fragile seedling of whatever had been growing between them. Not about anything important.

  Just about little things, like saving the town.

  “Keep your focus on the goal,” he said, for about the tenth time. She kept sliding off onto side roads, like keeping her family out of jail. Then she’d gone through six permutations of an escape plan for them, and swilled a bottle of Algernon West with each one. He had to keep pulling her back on point. “Remember the goal? The goal is to get the town’s money back.”

  “Right. And the trick is….” She tipped the longneck to her lips, then frowned and tipped it upside down, shaking it a little. Nothing came out.

  “Go on, tell me. The trick is what?”

  Her round blue eyes met his. “The trick is to make Dad think it was his idea to give it to us.”

  “Why would he want to give it to us?” he asked.

  “Lots of reasons. Maybe I need a kidney,” she said with a smile. And he knew that she knew that would never work. “Or maybe we have something he wants.”

  “You mean, the ranch?” he asked. His stomach twisted a little. He didn’t want to risk the ranch. It was right then he realized how much this place meant to him. Already. “He wants it back?”

  “No.” She set the empty on the table, then leaned back on the sofa and put her bare feet up there beside it. “We have to make him want it. And there’s only one thing my father wants. Money. So we make him want to buy back part of the ranch.”

  “Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of it?” he asked.

  She nodded once. “We can let on that we fought. You found out the truth about my past and you want no more to do with me.” Her voice got thick, and she stopped, swallowed, and said, “Is there anymore beer?”

  “We make him think one of us might be willing to sell our half bad enough to take a loss.”

  She nodded. “I’m not anywhere drunk enough.”

  “I need you to not get any drunker, though. We need to figure this out.” He sat around the corner of the modular sofa from her, his feet up beside hers on the coffee table. “Kiley?”

  “What?”

  “How can we make your father want to buy into the ranch?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’d have to find gold in the river or strike oil or something.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, maybe there’s a diamond mine out back or— Hey, we don’t really need to strike oil or find gold. We just need him to believe we did.”

  She sat up on the sofa and picked up one of her empties, tipped it up to look inside, and reached for another. “We can’t jus’ tell’m. It’d be transparent.”

  “Maybe we could help him find out by accident?”

  “He has to find out by snooping. He’s a turble snoop. Turrble. Rhymes with gerbil. Who knew?” She leaned her head back on the sofa, closed her eyes.

  “Okay. Okay, I think I’ve got an idea. What if we—”

  The sound of a wildebeest choking on a grizzly bear, interrupted his thought. Kiley’s snore was so loud it startled her awake, and she sat up, blinking like she didn’t know where she was. Then her eyes landed on him, and she relaxed, smiled.

  She was a cute drunk.

  He looked over at her, and thought he was kind of in over his head. “I wish I understood you.”

  “No point trying, Robby. There’s a whole lot about me no one’s ever gonna understand.” Her words were sloshing into each other.

  “How do you know unless you give someone a chance to try?”

  She stared up at him for a long time, frowning so hard it made him grin. “I gave you a chance to try. How’s it goin’ so far?”

  God, he had fallen hard for her. Harder than he knew. It wouldn’t hurt this bad otherwise.

  He held out his hands. “Help you to bed?”

  “You coming with me?” She pointed at him in six-gun position, clicked her tongue twice, and tried to wink. It seemed to be more things than she could manage at once, and the wink looked more like her face had melted on one side.

  “Just wouldn’t be honorable, ma’am. He fake-tipped a nonexistent hat.

  “You’re a true cowboy, aren’t you, Robby McIntyre?”

  “I try to be.” He scooped her right up off the sofa. She locked her arms around his neck, pulling herself up so she could nuzzle his throat as he carried her up the stairs. It tickled when she spoke against his neck. “I really like you.”

  “I like you, too.” His voice was raspy as whiskers on si
lk. God, she got to him.

  She leaned up and kissed his chin. “I like your family, too.”

  He’d made it to the top of the stairs, and turned to head down the hall to her bedroom. The whole time a voice inside his head was yelling, This is not a good idea! He turned the knob and opened the door, saw her unmade bed, and clothes scattered around the floor. “Not a neat thing, are you?”

  “I like it messy.” Then she laughed very deeply and softly. “I don’t even know what that means, but it sounded sexy. Didn’t it?” She threaded her fingers up over his nape and into his hair, pulling his head down and lifting her own up.

  She brushed his lips with hers.

  Robby’s soul caught fire, and he almost lost it. In the nick of time, he dropped her onto the bed out of sheer desperation, and the breath huffed out of her when she landed.

  She looked up at him, eyes as round and wounded as a whipped pup’s. “I don’t think I can take it if you hate me.”

  “Hasn’t been a man born who could hate you, Kiley Kellogg.”

  He went back through the door and closed it behind him. And then he wiped the sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve, and headed for the shower

  Chapter Fourteen

  * * *

  The gentle tap on Kiley’s bedroom door made her feel as if her head had been tossed into a dryer set to tumble. With a bucketful of rocks. Sharp rocks. She said, “Knock again and die,” but the sound that emerged was a muffled “Nogundee.”

  The door opened, the familiar squeak of the hinge like nails on a chalkboard, and the soft step of sock-feet, like the approach of Godzilla.

  Then the smell of something ambrosial filled her nostrils, soothing the steady thud in her head just a little.

  She opened one eye. Male forearms, in rolled-back sleeves, big strong hands, one of them holding a plate with a giant, still-steaming, blueberry-oozing muffin. Butter melted from the top and spilled down the sides like the tears of her guardian angel. The other hand, just as tanned and sexy, held the elixir of the gods in a stoneware mug, steaming even more than the muffin was.

  “You’re not really human, are you?” she whispered, and it hurt her ears.

  He handed her the coffee first, like he could read her need for it.

  She scootched up higher onto her pillows, cupped the mug in her palms and brought it to her lips, sipping. Her brain cells opened like flowers in the morning sun. “Nirvana,” she whispered.

  She sipped again, and then opened her eyes enough to locate that muffin. Her stomach was queasy, but carbs might absorb the ick. She set the plate on her thighs, broke off a small piece and ate it, chewing slowly, savoring every taste.

  “God, that’s good.” She broke off another piece. “Thanks. I don’t deserve you.”

  He sat on the edge of her bed. “Kiley, listen. I don’t play games. I don’t hide anything. I’m straight-up honest. What you see is what I am. Nothing to puzzle out or uncover. You get that, right?”

  She ate her second piece of muffin, then smacked her thumb and forefinger. “Are you about to ruin this incredible moment with serious talk?” she asked. “You are, aren’t you?”

  “‘Fraid so.”

  “Wait.” Holding up a forefinger, she ate another piece of the muffin, a bigger piece this time. Then she sipped the coffee, then sipped it again. One final sip and she leaned back against the headboard and nodded. “Okay, go ahead. No, wait.” She grabbed another bite of the muffin, then said, “Mmkay.” She washed it down with more coffee, then looked at him expectantly.

  He didn’t say anything.

  She said, “I kind of thought we could talk about the…you know, the us stuff…after we send my family packing. Cause, if it doesn’t work, the rest is kind of gonna be decided for us. I’ll either be in Mexico or in jail.”

  He took a deep breath, tried to count to ten and only got to four. “Are you a part of your family’s con?”

  She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you a part of it? Is this, all this,” he waved an open palm in a half circle. “Is all of it part of some bigger game? Are you just—”

  “Jeeze, Rob.” She slid right out the other side of the bed, and put her bare feet on the floor. She’d pulled her blanket with her, but realized she didn’t need it. She was still fully clothed. “I thought you trusted me. I thought you said you’d give me the benefit of the doubt. I thought—”

  “I want to trust you, dammit. But you’ve been lying to me since you came here.”

  She marched across the room and faced him. “I haven’t told you one thing that wasn’t true since the day you asked me not to lie.”

  “But you haven’t told the truth either. Still.”

  “About what?” she asked in a squeaky voice.

  “God only knows. I feel like there must be a hundred things. But we could start with the ring.” She frowned. “Your grandmother’s ring? The one that went into the drain when I hit you with my truck?”

  She closed her eyes. “I kind of…forgot about that.”

  “You forgot?”

  “It didn’t work. I didn’t get you to give me any money. You bought half the ranch instead. Believe me, that was not my plan.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It was a lie. And things started up between us and you still didn’t tell me.”

  She blinked at him. “I…I’m sorry.” He lowered his head, and she closed the distance between them, put her hands on his shoulders. “No, I mean it. I’m sorry. Rob, I’m trying. I am. I’m afraid I’m just not very good at this.”

  He hadn’t responded. Not in any way. Dejected, she dropped her hands to her sides. “Maybe I’m trying to be something I’m not.”

  “What, honest?”

  “You really know how to ruin a great breakfast, you know that?” She sent a regretful look at the muffin, sitting on its plate atop her blanket on the bed. The coffee was still clutched in her hand. You couldn’t have pried it away with a crowbar. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

  “Kiley, don’t. Don’t brush me off this way. We need to talk about this.”

  “No we don’t. You’ve got to decide whether or not you can accept me for who I am. Not who I’m trying my ass off to become, but who I am, right now, right here.”

  “How the hell can I do that when you won’t show me who you are?”

  “I am showing you,” she said. “I know it took me too long, but I’m showing you now. I opened up to you last night. And you backed away, just like I knew you would. Face it, Rob. You’re too good for the likes of a Kellogg girl.”

  He put his hands on her outer arms and stared down into her face. “Then why am I falling in love with one?”

  “Falling in love…?” The muffin and the coffee chose that moment to launch their escape attempt. She clapped a hand over her mouth, ducked beneath his right arm and ran for the bathroom.

  * * *

  Kiley leaned against the gate post at the end of the driveway. Tonight, she and Rob were having that dinner with her dad and Kendra, which they’d put off for two more nights. The dinner wasn’t happening at the ranch, but rather at The Long Branch. She was more nervous than she’d ever been in her life. Her father was better than her. Her sister was phenomenal. And Kiley was the screw up, the one who hadn’t inherited the family gift. And she was going to try to outcon the two best cons she knew.

  She was terrified.

  So she pushed it from her mind, because this morning was special.

  Two posts stood tall on either side of the driveway, with a big sign suspended in between. The sign was a rectangle, but it had a fancy border burned into its face. And inside that border, deep gouges in the wood formed a western sort of font that spelled out HOLIDAY RANCH.

  Rob’s whole family had gone in on it, had it custom made as a ranch-warming gift, as they’d put it.

  Rob stood across the driveway from her, leaning on the opposite post, watching the empty road as intently as she was. He was wearing a Stetson. He hardly ever wa
sn’t these days.

  They hadn’t talked any more about their relationship. She didn’t know if he regretted what he’d said to her or not. Or if he’d meant it in the past tense. He hadn’t touched her again, hadn’t kissed her. She was aching with longing.

  The Stetson looked good on him. She kind of loved it on him.

  “I think I’m as excited as you are,” she said, just to say something that was honest.

  “This is a dream come true for me,’’ he said, dragging his eyes off the horizon to look her way.

  She didn’t think he could stop himself from smiling if he tried. For a second she glimpsed the little boy he must’ve been once, and her heart did some odd kind of flip-flop in her chest. She just wished his eyes weren’t shadowed by the weight of the mess she’d brought crashing into his life. The poor guy.

  “I’m glad I get to be a part of this,” she said. “Whatever else happens.”

  His face turned serious. “I’m glad about that, too.”

  The rumble of a semi-truck reached her ears, and she swung her head around. “Here they come!” She just barely restrained herself from bouncing up and down and clapping her hands like a little girl when the ice cream truck stops near her house.

  Rob stood up straighter and pushed the hat back on his head. Then he shot across to her side of the driveway.

  The truck rolled through, clearing their sign with two feet to spare, she noted with relief. They ran along beside the blue livestock trailer, trying to get glimpses through its portholes.

  Big brown eyes with thick paintbrush lashes here, a pink, twitching nostril there. A flash of shaking mane.

  The truck swung around past the corral, kicking up a dust cloud, and then began backing up to its gate. Rob ran ahead to open it.

  A minute later the driver got out, went around to the back, opened the trailer door and vanished inside. Kiley was almost holding her breath when the first young mare, cream colored with a paler mane and tail, came light-stepping her way out of the trailer and into the paddock. She was followed by another, her coat deep red-brown, and then another. Kiley kept thinking that every horse that came out was the prettiest, until the next one emerged.