A Cowboy to Keep

by Karen Rock

  He was a far cry from Kevin.

  If anything proved how much she’d grown, her feelings for Jack were irrefutable evidence. At first, she’d worried her old habits of falling for a bad boy had returned. Now she understood that she’d seen past his hard outer shell to the good, solid man underneath.

  “What are your siblings’ names?”

  “James, Jared, Justin, Jewel...”

  When the rise and fall of his chest against her back stopped, she angled around to peer up at him. He looked stern, yet incredibly, incredibly sad, his features as hard as the rocks that surrounded them.

  “You’d mentioned four brothers and a sister.”

  “Jesse.” His whisper came in her left ear; his breath smelled like crushed mint. The fire popped in the quiet, a shower of sparks in the dim, then near silence apart from the steady percussion of rain.

  He cleared his throat. “I have—had—a younger brother named Jesse. He died.”

  She touched his arm. “I’m so sorry. Was it long ago?”

  “Two years.”

  A previous conversation returned to her. “That’s when you became a bounty hunter.”

  “Can I?” he asked, reaching for the rubber band on her braid. She nodded. He slid it off, the whole time holding her eyes. He undid her heavy, wet braid slowly.

  “Did it have something to do with Jesse?” she asked.

  The sensitive skin at the nape of her neck tingled at his touch. “Yes.”

  He’d freed her hair now and spread it across her back, smoothing it with repetitive motions. Her eyes drifted shut and her blood became a warm golden flow through her arteries.

  “What was the connection? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” She added that last part in a rush, hoping she wasn’t pushing him, but, oh—how she wanted to know this man.

  His hands stilled on her hair. “I do.” The surprise in his voice caught her off guard. “I want to tell you, though you won’t like me at the end of it.” The break in his voice cracked her heart, too. Who was she to urge him to open up while keeping her own past a secret?

  “Doubtful.”

  Jack fell silent and they listened to the fire hiss and crackle. The rain continued to pummel the earth. The horses nickered to each other. Otherwise, all was quiet.

  “Jessie was a cute kid.”

  “What was the age difference?”

  He laid his cheek on top of her head. “Nine years. I’m the oldest, so it was my job to look out for my siblings after my dad passed.”

  She could almost feel the grief pulsing inside him. “So you were responsible for Jesse.”

  She felt his nod and scooted sideways to turn and look at him. The heat of the fire now roared up her arm.

  “He had his share of troubles. A sports injury got him hooked on painkillers. After the refills ended, he turned to heroin.”

  “That’s hard to quit.”

  “He tried. Many times. My mother would always get her hopes up when he’d go to rehab, then cry and cry when he’d fall into his old habits.”

  “What about you? How did you feel?”

  He stared at the fire for a moment, then looked up at her, the muscles in his jaw working. “Angry. Not at first. But after years of it, I got tired of seeing Mom put through so much pain. She didn’t deserve that.”

  “No. But it’s what mothers do. I mean, they worry about us.” She thought of her own deceased parent.

  After the bank heist, she’d been relieved that her mother wasn’t around to see how low she’d fallen. Now she wondered if her mother would have been more accepting and supportive, and if her father and sister wouldn’t have felt ashamed of her. Perhaps her wish to keep them safe from Kevin had been an excuse to run from her problems rather than face them.

  “He’d been out of rehab for a couple weeks when he went missing. My mother wanted me to find him and bring him home.”

  “Did your other siblings go with you?”

  “No. Just me. I was supposed to protect him.” His voice dropped and he was silent for a moment, stone-faced.

  Finally, he continued, “I found him at a pool hall. He asked for my help and I told him I wouldn’t give it if it had to do with drugs. When he got up and left, I knew I was right.”

  “You must have been disappointed.”

  “I was furious. He was going to break Mom’s heart again. And Jesse...we’d gotten him enrolled in college. He’d always wanted to be a smoke jumper—you know—those forest firefighters, but it looked like he wanted drugs more.”

  “Did you guys fight?”

  “I got into it with some lowlifes I saw him with behind the pool hall. Since he’d asked me for money, I knew he was looking to buy drugs. I got jumped when I tried stopping the deal. One of them had a switchblade.”

  He pointed to his scar and she reached up to trace it, her fingers exploring the ridges and valleys that marked him as a man who defended his family, who stood for what was right and good... Everything she did not.

  “That’s a horrible cut.”

  He caught her hand and brought it briefly to his mouth, pressing a kiss on her fingertips. “I deserve it for leaving my brother with them.”

  “He didn’t go with you?”

  “He told me to get out of there, but I could have refused to go to the hospital without him...made him with come with me.”

  He stopped for a moment, his voice thick. He brushed his thumb slowly across her cheek. His touch was so tender, it startled her. No one had ever touched her like this before, looked at her the way he was looking at her right now, deep into her.

  “I called him a jerk. Told him to fend for himself. Said he was a waste of my time. A waste, period, and not to bother coming home. I was in pain. Shock, too, maybe. But it’s no excuse for me not keeping my temper.”

  He shook his head as if he shook away tears, and a heavy weight settled in her heart. She brushed the slight damp from the corners of his eyes and he gathered her close, his heart thudding against hers.

  “Is that the night Jesse died?”

  “Yes.”

  She nestled closer. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I need to,” he said, the words seeming ripped from a dark place. “I was supposed to protect him, but instead, I went to the ER and got stitched up. I left him, and in the morning the police told us he’d been shot and killed on a back road. His killers got away.”

  It took her a minute to register what he’d said, to understand the depth of his pain, his guilt—justified in his mind but not in hers. “That’s horrible. I’m sorry, Jack. But that wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yes. It was. I was supposed to keep him safe.” She could hear the heartache in his voice.

  “He chose his path.” Just like she’d chosen hers, spoke the voice that’d been pestering her, louder and louder and louder, since Jack’s arrival.

  “I was his big brother. All his life he looked up to me, and I left him to face those guys. To die...alone.” He dropped his head into his hands and his shoulders bunched.

  “Is that why you left the ranch?”

  He nodded. “Everywhere I looked reminded me of Jesse, of how I’d let him down. I took off right after the funeral.”

  She studied the belt buckle tattoo on his forearm, her heart swelling with the burdens he carried. “That’s Jesse’s.”

  “So I’ll never forget. Not that I ever will.”

  “Did they ever catch the guys?”

  A hard look flashed in his eyes. If she didn’t know him as well as she did, she’d have been petrified. Or maybe, knowing him as well as she did, whoever he was thinking of should be petrified.

  “Not yet. Since it was dark and they wore hoodies, I didn’t get a good enough look to visually identify them. Th
ey stayed in a nearby motel and one of the names on the register, Everett Ridland, was an alias used by a bond jumper.”

  “Is that why you became a bounty hunter? To find them?”

  “I did it to make up for what I’d done.”

  “You want forgiveness.” Oh, how she understood that...and the need to distance yourself from your wrongs. She and Jack weren’t so different, except that he was fighting to make things right while she simply hid.

  She wanted to confide in Jack. Needed to.

  “I want retribution,” he said. “My brother deserved better. I won’t stop until I catch his murderers.”

  “And you won’t go home,” she added, thinking of her own self-imposed exile from Texas.

  “Not until I’ve gotten justice for Jesse.”

  “Do you think the people that killed the Denver couple killed Jesse?”

  He stared at the fire like he’d seen a ghost, then shook his head. “It’s possible. A 9mm gun was used in both. Smiley’s ma says she drove him and a guy named Everett up here. Oh, and one of the guys behind the pool hall was smoking Camel Filters cigarettes.”

  “The same ones as in Tanya’s apartment!” A cold chill settled between her shoulders, pressing like a blade. Kevin smoked them, too...but he had nothing to do with this... “Smiley could be involved with Jesse’s killer, which means Tanya’s in major danger.”

  “She might be. I’m going to double my watch on her house when we get back.”

  Something inside her lurched at his protective tone. “Then she’ll be safe.”

  “How can you trust that after hearing my story?”

  “Because I do.”

  The words settled in the air between them. “You’re nuts,” he said, looking at her, his dark eyes both shiny and sad.

  “Probably. But I’m also right. And Dakota was, too. You’re a good man, Jack.”

  It touched her deeply that he’d opened up to her this way. He was brave. Yes, he’d made mistakes, wasn’t perfect, but who was? He acted like he didn’t need anyone, but she saw clearly that he did, and she wanted to be that person. Very much.

  Only...how could that be possible when she kept such a big secret? One this law-abiding man would frown on? Here he’d opened up to her, shared his darkest secrets, and she still hadn’t told him about her ex. Guilt and regret rose in her throat, cowardice and bile following.

  “I wish that were true.” The need for forgiveness in his voice sent a shudder right through her because she felt that way, too.

  She touched his scar again and his eyes closed.

  “It is.” All her feelings for him—hot and beautiful in her heart—dissolved on her tongue, strange, new and inexpressible.

  He twined his fingers in hers, his thumb circling the center of her palm, slowly, and Dani disintegrated.

  “Jack,” she said, voice tight.

  He opened his eyes and peered at her strangely, then his eyes widened and sparked, as though he read in her eyes what was in her head, her heart, before he quickly glanced away.

  Before she could think about it, she rose a little on her knees, reached for the back of his head and kissed him. He hesitated for just a moment, then shifted forward and kissed her back with a low groan that fired her blood.

  His hands came up, firm around her waist, and he gathered her close against him so that she felt the rapid rise and fall of his chest, breathed in the musk of his skin. Mouth slanting against his, she lost herself in this moment. The scent and taste and feel of him. It was like tiny fireworks going off all over her, bits of her she’d thought dead reigniting.

  He chased the world away. Evaporated time. Past, present, future—gone, so that none of it mattered, nothing should matter, but them, holding each other this way. For once, the muffled ringing that’d filled her ears since she left Oklahoma muted and she was free, adrift, awash with emotion that made her eyes tear and her heart swell.

  He picked her up off the cold dirt and she fitted herself to him, his bulk and strength, the heat from his skin seeping through her shirt. Searing her. Setting her on fire. She kissed his face, his ears, his scar, especially his scar, her fingers in his soft dark hair. When he rained kisses down her neck, the world began to spin and she clutched his shoulders, sensation after sensation washing through her, nearly knocking her off her feet.

  And then he pulled back, his eyes on her, his expression a silent question she couldn’t answer. Instead, she reached up and kissed his scar, wanting him to know that it made him beautiful to her. How much he meant to her. How every atom of her wanted to be here with him.

  He angled his head and kissed her once more, slowly and tenderly.

  Their shallow breaths filled the space and they stared at each other, chests rising and falling, his brown eyes black in the dim light.

  “Dani, I—I can’t promise you anything. I’ve got to find those guys and I’m no good to anyone until I do... I might not be, even then.”

  “It’s okay. We were caught up in the storm. The moment.” She went for an off-hand tone, missed completely. When she whirled away, he turned her back gently, his tender expression making her ache.

  “If there was anyone I would get involved with...”

  She placed a finger on his lips, then managed to stay quiet for a dozen heartbeats as she struggled to say, finally, “I get it. I’m not interested in a serious relationship, either.”

  Liar.

  “Let’s forget this ever happened,” she added.

  He shook his head slowly. “Impossible,” he said, then pulled on his partly dried shirt, doused the fire and guided her outside, where the rain had slacked off.

  Dani eyed Jack’s swaying back as he rode ahead, checking the path for obstacles or lurking strangers.

  She did get it. She was the last person he should be involved with... Another wanted person, just like his brother’s killers. Worse, a criminal and a coward. She could never be with Jack, have anything permanent because she kept this big secret.

  She didn’t deserve him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  JACK RUBBED BLEARY eyes the next night and clicked on another composite sketch. A white male, aged twenty-five to thirty-five, with a shaved head, brown eyes and a wide moustache that knit into his muttonchops, stared back at him.

  Jack was dead tired after a long day leading the Clark family, searching the southeast corner of his property grid for Smiley and working with Milly. The Spark Canyon caves were still inaccessible after the storm. Dani’s office chair creaked as he leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head, studying the wanted man on her monitor.

  Who are you?

  Where are you hiding?

  What else have you done?

  He held up a picture he’d snapped of Sam and compared it to the drawing. Right age. Face shape. But the nose was off, and the eyes, too. Nope. Not this one, either. He needed a hit, bad.

  Sam’s alibi for both this afternoon and the horse incident weren’t corroborated. Smiley’s friend was up to something, and it was frustrating not to have proof or a clear-cut connection between the two men. Jack’s property searches had thus far been fruitless or hampered by rain-swollen waterways. He needed a break in this case.

  Absently snacking on some mini pretzels, he pressed the mouse, and the screen shuffled to another image.

  A smiling Dani in the framed family picture on her desk caught his eye, instead, as it had done since he’d been burning midnight oil working on her computer the last few evenings. In this photo, she held a young boy in her arms and leaned her head on her father’s shoulder, their laughing, hazel eyes a match. A sister—Claire, he recalled—pressed a kiss to Dani’s cheek and the loving depiction pressed on his heart and reminded him of his own goofy family pictures.

  He and his siblings would have tried
the patience of a saint, his mother had always scolded. Whenever she’d attempted to corral her children into a group shot, she’d had her hands full with their so-called tomfoolery. To the six of them, it’d been just flat-out fun to get her riled. Her former lectures came back to him, how she’d chided them to stop messing around, stay still, quit laughing, smile like gentlemen and a lady, not act like the scalawags they all were...

  And what kind of boys and girl was she raising, anyway?

  He felt his lips twitch up, recalling how Jesse had been the worst, technically the baby of the family since he was born minutes after Justin, his twin. He’d always wanted the spotlight and had hammed it up everywhere, in pictures, at family events, at church...

  A memory of Jesse’s vocal performances every Sunday widened Jack’s smile. He remembered how Jesse had always sung hymns the loudest, often holding a final note until the silent congregation turned to stare and the minister cleared his throat.

  He’d never worried about getting the words right and some of his “creative” lyric substitutions had reduced Jack and his brothers to helpless laughter. They’d had to gallop down the aisle as soon as the service was over or risk a swat from their mother, who would follow them, her expression thunderous, Jesse’s mischievous.

  Jesse’s shrill tenor belted in his ear.

  That saved a wrench, like me...

  Yes. That’d been Jesse. So sincere that you were never quite sure how much of it was him foolin’, until you looked into his twinkling eyes.

  Jack waited for the inevitable crush to his windpipe that accompanied any memory of his brother, but instead felt, along with the familiar deep sadness and regret, a fondness, too. It was a comfort to think of his family in a way he rarely allowed.

  Was this Dani’s influence?

  Since confessing to Dani, he’d felt a seismic shift, as if the sutures that held him together had begun to part, leaving him more open, light entering the dark corners of him. He was still as intent as ever on bringing down his brother’s killer, but now he wanted something else, too.

  He cared about Dani. Trusted her. It was undeniable.