by Karen Rock
Her mind swerved in unexpected directions. She wondered, briefly, what it would feel like if he were to kiss her. She made a small, involuntary sound at the thought.
His lids lowered and he leaned his head into hers. When their lips were almost touching, he cupped the side of her face, the caress achingly tender, and slid his fingers into her hair.
He angled her face upward and brushed his mouth against hers, softly at first, then he lifted her chin and deepened his kiss so that her body trembled. She kissed him back—tentatively and then with a fierce passion, her hand stealing up his neck, her eyes closing. She could feel his heart drum through his shirt, the rush of his breath mingling with hers, the strength of his body as he drew her closer still until she clung to him, her head spinning.
His lips traveled along her jaw and she dug her fingers into his shoulders, needing his strength because her muscles were suddenly limp. Never in her life had a kiss—or a man—affected her this way.
Jack’s hands dropped to her waist and tightened there. In the still air, their breathing was the only sound. Blood throbbed in her veins, pulsed at the base of her throat. She buried her face in his neck and inhaled the clean male scent of his skin. It reminded her of a forest after a storm, strong and pure and good.
Yet he’d denied Dakota’s claim that he was a good man. And the sadness she glimpsed in the corners of his eyes suggested there was more to Jack than an ex-rancher turned tough guy bounty hunter. One she might never get to know.
“You take care of yourself,” he said softly into her hair. Then he pulled back.
Her heart beat erratically as she watched him stride away. She touched her lips, remembering the firm pressure of his. When she’d looked into his sorrowful eyes, a door in her heart had blown open. And when they’d kissed, she’d seen that on the other side of that door was the sky.
The more time she spent with him, the harder it became to hold in her secrets. He made her want to be open and vulnerable. To earn his appreciation honestly, as the person she was, not who he imagined her to be: someone with a spotless past.
Was there a chance he would understand, accept her, care for her, just the way she was?
If he found her picture in his composite sketchbook database, or her warrant, the choice to reveal all would be taken from her.
And so might the man who’d captured her heart.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN DANI STEPPED inside the hay barn the next morning, a shadow moved and she jumped.
“Hey Dani-girl. It’s been a long time.”
Dani’s senses scrambled. White noise raged in her ears. With every heartbeat came a sharp longing to run, but where could she go that her ex wouldn’t follow? He must have tracked her thousands of miles from home and it wasn’t likely he’d leave empty-handed.
“Kevin.” She took in the familiar bulk of his muscular frame, his messy dark hair, the stubble on his square jaw, a nose like a knife and assessing blue eyes, just as sharp. A smirk twisted his full mouth—like he knew a joke you weren’t in on. She let out a long breath. It felt as though she hadn’t fully exhaled since she’d last seen him. In fact, she hadn’t breathed easy at all since then.
“What do you want?” she demanded, but her body seemed to have detached itself from her voice, and her words floated from her mouth, faint and faraway. His familiar aroma—coffee, a slight tinge of tobacco and leather—rose around her. It transported her to the lowest point in her life.
“That’s all you’ve got to say after all this time?” One side of his mouth hitched and his eyes swept to her toes then lifted, the familiar drag of his gaze making her skin crawl.
Calm yourself. Concentrate on filling your lungs, draining them. Filling them again and again and again.
But the roar remained, the buzzing of a thousand bees, very close. She sidestepped to get a view of the open door behind him, but he moved with her, blocking the sun, escape. “We said all we needed to each other in Oklahoma,” she forced out. What if Jack saw him here? Asked questions?
Disappointment weighed on his features, turned them down. The right pocket of his jacket bulged with something. A gun? “Now, I wasn’t expecting the red carpet. Although I damn well should have gotten it. Didn’t I keep your correct name and your date of birth out of it when I got arrested? You got a clean record because of me. This job...”
She nodded mutely and her gaze darted around the barn, looking for something to defend herself with. The sharpest thing she spied was a black cat’s claws as it sat in a patch of sunlight, lifting first one paw, then another, to clean itself. From outside came the faint rumble of a passing truck. I could scream, she thought wildly, trying to hear her own thoughts over the rush of blood in her ears.
He stepped closer and she smelled cigarettes on his breath. “You never did thank me for that.”
She let his words hit her full-on. Took them right on the chin. “I never asked you to keep quiet about me.”
He angled his head and his eyebrows, rose. “But you benefited from it. Nice place.” He pushed the door shut behind him and leaned against it, his relaxed posture somehow more threatening. “You’ve come a long way since our bank-robbing days. Guess that means I made an honest woman of you.”
His deep chuckle startled a couple of roosting barn swallows. With a flurry of wings, they swooped, circled and glided before settling on another rafter.
“Honest? You made me a criminal,” she blurted, outrage torching her fear, licking in her veins suddenly. “If I’d known you were going to rob a bank, I wouldn’t have driven you.”
Silence, broken only by the distant cooing of nesting birds in the loft, descended.
Kevin lowered his face and studied his black boots. They shuffled on the sawdust-covered floor. “I regret involving you,” he said at last. “We were a regular Bonnie and Clyde, but that part of my life’s over.”
“What?” She gaped at him. “We were never Bonnie and Clyde.” At his sudden squint, she fumbled. “Not anything big. Not like that.”
“No. Not like that. Look, I came all this way. Please just hear me out and then I’ll go. Promise.” He crossed a finger over his heart in a gesture that took her back to their old days together and softened her a touch.
“Fifteen minutes. That’s all you’ve got. Follow me.” She led him farther inside the barn to her small office.
He leaned against a file cabinet. She dropped into her desk chair, her knees weak. The hum of her oscillating fan filled the cramped space and the blades stirred the thick air. It lifted her bangs off her forehead.
When Kevin made to take a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, she shook her head at him. Even if it wasn’t a fire hazard and a big no-no in a stable, she would have stopped him. The strong scent of his cigarettes had always made her slightly light-headed and she needed all of her faculties right now.
Why, of all times, had he shown up now?
He dropped his hands and spread them wide. “I’m a changed man, Dani. I had a lot of time to think while I was locked up. I never want to go back in there again. Not ever.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could ward off the oncoming headache beating at her temples.
“Did you skip out on your parole?”
“No.” His boots clunked on the particleboard floor as he paced. A hollow sound. “Got out over a month and a half ago and been searching for you ever since. Once I traced you here, I petitioned to have my parole transferred to Colorado.”
“Traced me? How?” She met his small eyes and dropped her gaze to the half-full coffee mug left over from last night. The faint whiff of stale brew didn’t fortify her. Not a bit.
She’d never imagined he could locate her a world away from the English riding circuit, all the way to another state—another world, it’d seem
ed like when she’d first moved here. With their relationship based more on thrills than heart-to-heart conversations, she’d never mentioned anything specific about her family...where they lived in Texas, what they did...
“Facebook.”
“I don’t have a Facebook account.”
“But your family’s bull ranch does.” He stood in front of her desk and lifted a horseshoe paperweight, turned it over in his hands. Her mouth fell open. “I popped your name into Google and, low and behold, there was a tagged picture of you with the location set here, at Mountain Sky Dude Ranch.”
A punch to the stomach couldn’t have knocked the air out of her faster. Of all things. Facebook pictures. Her family’s business page, part of the new push they’d made to modernize. Claire, her sister, must have put up the photo. It’d never dawned on her, when she’d emailed it, that Claire would use it publicly.
Her head felt like it’d float right off her shoulders and the springs in her chair squeaked as she tilted backward, unsteady.
What a comedy of errors. One that wasn’t funny at all. Changed or not, she had to send Kevin on his way, fast. It would all come out, especially with Jack digging for anything suspicious he could find on guests and staff alike.
Suddenly it was more than a guilty conscience threatening to reveal her long-held secret. The very real danger of past wrongs coming home to roost stood across from her.
Kevin could jeopardize everything: her job, her friendships and this blooming thing—whatever it was—between her and Jack.
She licked dry lips. “So are you saying you need money? I don’t have much on hand, but I can see if...”
Kevin’s thin mouth pursed. “I didn’t come here looking for handouts. Like I said, I’ve changed.” He peered at her for a long moment then blew out a breath. “But maybe I just need to prove it to you.”
“What—” She cleared her throat. “What do you want?”
The muscles in his forearms corded as he gripped the edge of her desk and leaned close. Lowered his voice. “What I want is a job.”
Dani’s foot stopped swinging. Her breath quickened. “I can’t give you a job!”
He let go of her desk and straightened. He wasn’t a tall man, but he filled the room with a kind of on-edge energy.
He fiddled with the ribbon on one of her jumping bows tacked in a collage on the wall opposite her desk. A tiny smile tucked itself into the corners of his mouth, almost hidden, not quite. He slanted his gaze at her.
“I remember when you won this.”
“Kevin, that was another life.”
He let go of the ribbon, grabbed the chair opposite her desk and whirled it around to straddle it. “Well. Help me to start a new one, like you did. I did my time. Kept my promise. Now you keep yours.”
“But I didn’t promise...” How had she missed his manipulative side? She’d been vulnerable when they met—freshly grieving the loss of her horse, her dreams of winning enough competitions to fund college over—but her judgment of character couldn’t have been that off, could it? She hadn’t wanted to think too hard then, either. She had no one to blame but herself.
How she wished Jack was here.
How fortunate that he wasn’t...
Kevin’s eyes darkened. “You didn’t turn yourself in, either, so you took advantage of the vow I gave. I could have shortened my sentence if I’d shared your correct name.” He rubbed the dark stubble on his jaw and stared at a spot over her shoulder. “The way I see it, you owe me, even if you don’t want to help out an old friend.”
“I think driving the getaway car was all the help you deserve.” She moved restlessly and toppled her coffee mug, spilling cold liquid over her cluttered desk. “Now look at what you made me do!” She yanked some napkins from a drawer and began blotting.
“You never asked if I would drive for you,” she said, without looking up, swiping furiously at the brown puddle, brushing away Kevin’s help. “Didn’t give me any warning. That was unfair and low.”
She stood and dropped the wet napkins in the trash, fingers shaking, and frowned at him. The toughness drained from his face. Once again he was the handsome horse handler who’d had a special way of calming even the most spooked jumpers.
“It’s Amy,” he blurted. “You remember my little sister?”
Dani nodded, recalling the weekly letters he’d sent home to the girl, along with cute gifts Dani’d helped him pick out at every tour stop. Amy must be sixteen by now...
“Go on.”
“My ma died and made me Amy’s guardian. I can’t go back to my old ways now and need honest work. But it ain’t easy getting hired with a felony on your record. When I saw you were working here, I thought you’d help me get a job.”
Surprised, she dropped back to her chair. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said slowly, reconciling the bank robber with the caring brother turned guardian who stood before her, wringing his hands.
Which was the real Kevin?
Could he be both?
“Look. Maybe I don’t deserve your help after putting you on the spot to begin with.” His voice broke. “I was a self-centered son-of-a-gun and a young fool. I—I apologize for that.”
Her neck ached like she’d gotten whiplash. Fear, anger, and now sympathy fired through her. Kevin had never meant anyone harm. Hadn’t done anything terrible before the bank heist. Maybe that’d been a one-time thing and he was truly sorry. She sure had regrets and had given herself a second chance. Wasn’t it uncharitable to deny him one?
Her antagonism crumbled. She let out a huge breath. “I appreciate hearing that.” His head lifted and the dimples on either side of his mouth popped. Something in his eager expression reminded her of Beau and Belle when they spotted saddled horses. “But I’ve already hired everyone for the season. There aren’t any more vacancies and I have no reason to request more staffing from the owners.”
His face fell and he seemed to deflate. He shook back the swoosh of hair that fell in front of his eyes. “A condition of my parole transfer is having employment or Amy and I have to go back.”
There. A simple way to get rid of him, but somehow her heart wouldn’t let her cut him off so coldly, to kick a man down on his luck, or put his sister in harm’s way.
She wondered if she’d regret it, but she said, “A friend of mine owns a bar in Shawnee. The Rusty Roof. His bouncer quit on him. I could give him a call. He served time himself and made over his life. He’d probably be understanding.”
He lunged across the desk and captured her hands. Squeezed. The dents in his cheeks reappeared. “That’s my girl.”
“I can’t guarantee anything,” she protested. Her stomach churned.
He hooked his thumbs in his jeans’ belt loops and leaned back on his heels, the move so familiar it melted the time they’d been apart clean away. “If you set up an interview, I’ll get the job.” His even white teeth flashed, his expression earnest.
“Do you and Amy have a place to stay?” She nearly kicked herself for asking. She was not getting involved in his life again.
His lashes fell to his high cheekbones and he shifted on his feet. “Me and Amy are in a hotel in Shawnee, but we could rent somewhere. I got money.”
“Money?” Her blood ran cold. Had he ripped off another bank? “How much? I thought you were paroled just six weeks ago.” Her chair rolled slightly, back and forth, as her feet pressed against the floor.
Kevin chewed on his full bottom lip as he pulled one of her state magnets from the side of her file cabinet. “My ma left us a small sum. So. You got an address for this place?” He turned Texas over in his hand and the familiar shape arrowed through her heart. “I’ll hitch a ride back and stop in today.”
After scribbling the information down, she handed him the sticky note.
“Much appreciate
d.” He pressed the Texas magnet flat against the side of her cabinet and his eyes burned into hers. “If you’d like to look me up, I’ll leave my address at the bar. Otherwise, I won’t trouble you again. Sure was good seeing you, Dani.”
He peered around her office and his mouth curved. “It looks like you done good, just like I thought you would when I didn’t share your name. Take care now.”
“You, too. Give Amy my best.”
She stared at the empty door frame long after he disappeared.
Had she done well?
She paced outside and stood on a small hill that overlooked the pasture, her eyes drifting to the milling herd.
Suddenly, she envied Kevin just as she did Smiley. He’d served his time and could move on, free of the guilt that weighed on her heart every day. Better still, he’d rescued his sister. Had he even rescued Dani with his decision to withhold her correct name and birth date? Maybe he’d been motivated not to make her pay for the mistake he’d made.
“Who’s that?”
She jumped at Jori Lynn’s voice beside her and followed her finger pointing to Kevin.
“Actually,” Dani mused, watching her ex stride through the front gate, “I’m not entirely sure anymore.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“YOU’RE UP, JACK.”
He studied the tight harness that looped around his legs and back, and cinched over his stomach, then up at a cable that looked too thin to carry a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound guy. It attached to a line that stretched over the tops of hundred-feet tall pines.
Zip-lining.
Why would anyone voluntarily do this?
But with word coming in that Smiley hadn’t reported to the sheriff, and Tanya sharing the news that he’d disappeared on her last night when she’d gone on a convenience store run, he needed to stay here and continue his hunt.