Devil's Way Out

by Nika Dixon

  She giggled at the lewd thought and closed her eyes. The cold air overpowered the heat in her clammy skin. She shivered but couldn’t convince her weary limbs to move. She was still lying on the bed with her legs parted and her arms flopped to the sides, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t care. She let her mind drift into the memory, making sure she had every incredible second of it locked down. No matter what the future brought, she would always have this moment in time to call on.

  “Hey, sleepy head…” The mattress shifted as he returned to her. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  She let out a sharp squeal when a cold, wet cloth slipped between her legs.

  He quickly apologized. “Sorry. There’s no hot water.”

  Lifting her head, she caught sight of the light red stain on the cloth as he gently cleaned her. The sight of her own blood left her burning with embarrassment. After everything he’d given her, done for her, he didn’t need to be cleaning up her mess.

  “I can do it,” she said, reaching out to take the small towel from his fingers.

  “It’s done.” He rose from the bed. “Get under the covers.”

  As soon as he left the room, she scurried under the blankets. The cold sheets wrapped her in their icy grip. She could hear him in the main room and wondered if he was going to come back. What was the protocol? Alan never kept his ladies overnight. He always sent them home. But she was in this bed, so would Marshall sleep in the bunk room? Maybe she should sleep in the bunk room. He was too big for those little beds. She pushed the covers aside and started to get out of bed, but he appeared in the doorway and she froze, one foot on the floor.

  He gave her a wry grimace. “You thought I was leaving again, didn’t you?”

  She yanked the covers up over her naked body. “No?”

  He snorted. “Uh-huh.” He switched off the lantern and flipped the blankets off her. “Shove over.”

  She quickly scrambled to the far side. The springs creaked as he sat down. Before she could put her head on the pillow, he hooked his arm around her side and yanked her back across the bed. He flopped onto his back, tucked her into his side, then covered them both with the blankets.

  With his arm wrapped tightly around her waist, there was no question in her mind she was there for the night.

  Another first.

  Having a man in her bed.

  And not just any man, but an incredibly sexy, naked man who’d just made love to her.

  She laid her hand on his chest, the calm, steady beat of his heart pulsing beneath her palm. Her mind swirled with images of the two of them making love on a soft blanket in a field of daises beneath the warm summer sun.

  She closed her eyes and let the dreams come.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Water splashed across Marshall’s boots as the horses clomped through the shallow creek bed.

  He caught himself whistling and sucked it back with a bite. Despite the number of arguments he’d had with himself over the course of the morning, he was doing a piss-poor job of keeping his emotions in check. No big mystery why he was in such a good mood. The lady riding beside him was 110 percent at fault.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t had sex before. Hell, he’d even had nights where he’d performed multiple times. So, why did making love to Emma twice during the night and once more as the sun rose over the mountains make him feel like he’d just won a blue ribbon?

  He glanced sideways at his companion. She sat stiffly in the saddle, her fingers gripping Daisy’s reins with a white-knuckled stranglehold. He wished to hell he could take her fears away. He should take her back to the cabin. Take her back to bed and keep her there, where she would be safe in his arms.

  But their time on the mountain was done. Danny had messaged him early. The FBI man had called to say that Styles was in custody. Danny hadn’t been willing to go into details, but Marshall knew the story wasn’t over. Alexander had more men than Victor Styles, and if Victor had come this close to tracking her down, there was a good chance more goons were coming for her. Marshall needed to get home to help his brother prepare and not be hiding in the hills, no matter how tempted he was to stay.

  Drift raced across the field in front of them, chasing after a rabbit. When they reached the tree line, Marshall pulled Castor to a stop, as he did each time he passed this spot. Here the meadow flowed into an open field, which rolled down toward the ranch house. The rooftops of the red barns were visible in the distance, shining like twin beacons behind the tops of the hills.

  The unobstructed view of his family land always left him with a sense of completeness, but this time the emotion was layered with trepidation. Returning home was going to drop him back into where he’d been, when a very big piece of him wanted to stay right where he was.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Emma said softly.

  It was beautiful. More so today. Not because of the land, but because of the woman beside him.

  “I don’t know how you could ever want to leave,” she murmured.

  “I don’t,” he replied, urging Castor to continue their trek.

  She kept Daisy moving beside him. “You did, once.”

  It had been the worst mistake of his life. “Learned that lesson the hard way.”

  “You were gone for almost a year?”

  “Yep.”

  “Lucy said you hated the city.”

  “Lucy talks too much.”

  As soon as the words were out, he wanted to take them back.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Nah, I shouldn’t have snapped.” He waited for her to continue, but she returned to her rein-strangling, squirming silence.

  As they rode onward, her nervous energy was starting to affect Daisy. The older horse was one of the calmest rides on the ranch, which was why she was perfect for Lucy. But even Daisy had her limits. Emma’s inability to remain still in the saddle was taking its toll on the usually mellow horse. The upset state of her rider was translating into added tail swishes and an uneven, fidgeting gait.

  He angled Castor closer to the other horse and leaned over to give Daisy a firm pat on the neck. Daisy snorted and bobbed her head. He glanced up at Emma, but instead of smiling as she usually did whenever Daisy “talked,” as she had grown fond of saying, she was chewing on her bottom lip and staring off into the distance. He doubted she’d even noticed him moving closer.

  She squirmed once more and tried to adjust herself into a different position on the saddle, but only succeeded in sending mixed signals to Daisy, who wasn’t sure what command she was being given. The horse shuffle-stepped and swished her tail in a rapid set of sweeps across her hindquarters.

  Marshall touched Emma’s thigh. She jumped at the contact, which sent the horse skittering sideways. Emma lurched forward to grab the saddle horn, sending Daisy into another fit of dancing.

  “Whoa, girl. Easy now.” He pulled Daisy’s reins out of Emma’s clenched grip and stopped both horses. He put his hand on Emma’s, adding a squeeze to draw her attention to him. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Of course. I’m fine.”

  Her words came out so quickly he knew they were lies.

  “You know Victor’s gone, right? He’s not waiting for you. The FBI has him. I wouldn’t be taking you back there if it wasn’t 100 percent safe.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you jumping around like a frog in a frying pan?”

  She blinked. “A what?”

  He mimicked her movements, exaggerating how she’d been lurching about in the saddle since they’d left the homestead. “A frog in a frying pan,” he repeated.

  In the span of a mere second, her entire face and neck flushed so deeply she looked as though she’d spent the day roping horses in the middle of July without a hat on. She opened her mouth, clamped it shut, swallowed, and before he could question how her face could possibly get any redder, the flush deepened.

  She cleared her throat. “Sitting like this is…um, ki
nd of…uncomfortable right now. Not that I’m complaining. I mean, I am, but only because you asked, and—yeah.”

  Sitting like this? Sitting like how? He studied her position. Then his brain finally clicked into gear and translated what she was actually saying.

  Just shoot him now.

  Jesus. He was an ass. A self-centered, class-A ass. All proud of himself for being such a caveman, it had never even crossed his mind she would be feeling sore this morning.

  And now she was having to bounce in a saddle down a mountain trail.

  It was his turn to have his cheeks burn. “Damn it, Em. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  She bit the inside of her cheek and shrugged. “I didn’t want you to think I was complaining. Because I’m not. Well, okay, I am, I guess, but not about that, just about—” She nibbled her bottom lip. “Sorry.”

  “Want to walk for a bit?”

  She bobbed her head up and down in clear relief. “Yes, please.”

  He hopped off Castor and reached for her, lifting her from the saddle. Keeping his hands on her waist, he took advantage of her upturned face and kissed her.

  “What was that for?” she asked with a smile.

  “No reason.”

  With the horses’ reins in one hand, and Emma’s hand in his other, he steered them down the hillside. She became completely lost in their surroundings, spending more time looking at everything but where she was walking, leaving him to have to pay twice as much attention to their feet to keep her from tripping.

  He didn’t mind, at all.

  She didn’t speak, which suited him just fine. Michelle would have found it necessary to fill the peaceful silence with chatter and needless conversation. She probably would have complained—no, she definitely would have complained about the fact they didn’t have a truck to drive her back to the farm. She might have commented on the beauty of the scenery but immediately followed it up with how much she wished for a Starbucks over the next hill.

  He’d thought it was cute the way she always found a way to reference her big-city lifestyle. He’d never been past Pikes Falls, so her tales of the giant skyscrapers and the never-ending nightlife drew him to the excitement he knew he’d never get in a town that closed up when the sun went down. He’d only known her for six weeks when he’d announced his desire to see the world to his dad and brother, packed a bag, and followed the beautiful blonde across the country.

  “Michelle was from Philadelphia,” he blurted out, not sure why he suddenly wanted to let a woman he barely knew in on a secret he hadn’t even told his family. “I met her at the rodeo in Pikes Falls.”

  “A rodeo? Like where people ride bulls and rope cows and stuff?”

  He snorted. Among the hundreds of different events at a rodeo. “Yes. Something like that.”

  “She came all the way across the country to go to a rodeo?”

  He laughed. “No. She worked for one of those shopping chains, and they were opening a new store in Billings. One of the ladies she worked with was a local, so she hog-tied a bunch of them into coming out to the rodeo.”

  And what a sight they’d been, too. Five ladies dressed like they were off to dinner at some highbrow restaurant, tiptoeing through the muck and mud of the fairgrounds in their fancy heels. Danny and Sam had been happy with helping the gals cross the mud to the parking lot, one on each arm, but Marshall had had eyes only for Michelle. He’d picked her up and carried her straight to her vehicle. She’d thanked him with a hell of a kiss and her phone number.

  He’d called her the very next day.

  For six weeks, they’d spent every free moment together. Then her contract was up, and she was headed back to her life in the city. Despite his father’s misgivings—hell, maybe because of them—Marshall had packed his bags and followed her.

  “I didn’t hate it at first,” he admitted. “While she was at work, I played tourist. Museums and galleries. The zoo. All the fancy buildings. I think I crisscrossed the entire city by the end of the first month.”

  On weekends they’d gone out together. He’d take her back to places he found interesting, or they’d find things to do he hadn’t crossed off his list yet. She’d been a perfect tour guide, excited and animated while she took him to the places she loved. He couldn’t always see the attraction, but she’d been so in love with showing him around, he’d talked himself into liking them, too.

  But their springtime romance in the city didn’t last. With the stifling heat of summer came his first flickers of homesickness. Feelings he could have overridden if he’d had her full attention, but she was no longer interested in doing things with just him. Their trips began to include a friend from work, or the couple from across the hall. Then they’d expanded into larger groups until everything was a party. Parties with work people. Parties with friends. Dinner out with friends. Dance bars. Then back to her apartment—their apartment—where the music and conversation would carry on until the wee hours of the morning.

  Michelle had been a gracious hostess. Everyone at her parties were well fed, and the alcohol flowed freely. Monday mornings always included someone crashed on the couch. She never complained and made sure breakfast was dished up before sending the straggler on their way.

  He might have minded, if her friends weren’t so good to her. They constantly sang her praises and never let him forget how lucky he was that out of an entire city of available men, she’d chosen him. And he’d eaten it right up.

  He’d considered looking for work, something to keep himself busy, but playing cleanup to her festivities was a full-time job in itself. By autumn, the parties had blurred into each other in an unending parade. It was always the same people. The same music. The same conversation. The same drunk throwing up in the bathroom. The same couple fighting.

  And the same idiot passed out in the living room.

  Jones.

  “The one from the picture,” Emma said.

  “Yeah. Jones was her dealer. The parties. The friends. That’s all they were to her. A link to the drugs. They told her what she wanted to hear, and she kept the pills flowing for them. She always told me it was just for fun. She could stop any time she wanted. But when I called her on it, she couldn’t do it. So I got rid of Jones. She could have the parties, but not if he was there.”

  “I’m going to guess it didn’t last?”

  “It worked for a couple of weeks, until I discovered Jones was sending his stuff in with someone else. I begged her to go to rehab. She had me convinced I was being overprotective, and damn if I didn’t start to question it myself.”

  “Were you?”

  He shrugged. “She had a good job. A great job. She made good money. It wasn’t like she was on the street or anything. When I tried to kill the parties, she would accuse me of trying to change her and go out with her friends, anyway. Without me.”

  By Christmas he was spending nights alone in their apartment, staring out at the blinding lights of the city that never slept, worrying and waiting for her to return. She would laugh and apologize, and he would be so relieved she was okay that he would forgive her. He let her go back to hosting the parties in their apartment where he could keep an eye on her and police her friends.

  A task at which he’d failed, with deadly consequences.

  “She overdosed in the bathtub. Some cocktail Jones had provided. They said her heart stopped before she drowned, but—”

  It was the one thing he couldn’t get over. The thing he hadn’t been able to bring himself to discuss with his father, his brother, or anyone.

  To the land around him, he confessed, “I couldn’t save her.”

  He waited for Emma to voice the words he expected—platitudes relieving him of responsibility, how he couldn’t have been expected to save her, that what happened wasn’t his fault, and how Michelle’s death had been her own doing.

  But Emma didn’t say any of those things.

  “So, you came home to the ranch,” she whispered.

  He had. Tuc
ked his tail between his legs and scurried back like a bastard dog.

  Emma slipped her fingers from his. The loss of her contact dug deep.

  She placed her hand on his shoulder and drew her fingers down his arm in a comforting slide. She turned around, standing with her back to his front, close enough that if he leaned forward, he could bump against her.

  He remained behind her, watching, waiting.

  After a long moment, she let out a soft sigh. She leaned back, propping herself against him. “I really wish I’d had a place like this to come to after my mom died.”

  Her words of longing soaked his self-pity like a shocking blast of cold water. He was so drawn into his own misery, he’d forgotten who he was talking to.

  She lifted her hand, tracing her fingers across the horizon in imaginary strokes. “It’s so peaceful here. So wonderfully quiet. And the sky is so big! A million shades of blue. I could only ever see it in pieces before. Little slivers between buildings. But out here it goes on forever. There’s so much color and life. I think if you could send the world to a place like this, you could heal just about anyone.”

  After a pause, she rotated around to face him. The blue of the clear sky above brightened her eyes, bringing out the specks of gold in the depths of the green. Nothing would ever match the color. He knew it as sure as he knew his own name.

  The wonder in her gaze slowly shifted to sadness, and she slipped her arms around his waist and lay her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry she isn’t here to share it with you.”

  He tried to answer. To thank Emma for the nice sentiment like he was supposed to. To give the standard reply when someone offered condolences. But he couldn’t get the words out. After all Emma had been through, and all she was facing, she was trying to comfort him.

  His world tilted.

  Yes, he was sad for the loss of such a vibrant life for such a stupid reason, but the pain that had been burning in his heart was no longer there to fuel him.

  He’d released Michelle’s memory, and he hadn’t even known it.

  But it wasn’t the land that had healed his soul. It was the pretty gal with a world of wonder in her emerald eyes.