Drifter's Darling (Culpepper Cowboys Book 12)

by Merry Farmer

  “Okay,” she said.

  Evan blinked at her. “Okay? As in okay, you’ll run away with me.”

  When he put it like that, a zip of excitement shot through Elvie. “Yeah. Let’s run away.” She pivoted to head for the door, still holding one of his hands. “I have a few more appointments today, but after they’re—”

  “We have to go right now.”

  Evan’s statement stopped her in her tracks. She froze, then spun to face him. “What, right now, right now?”

  “Yep.”

  Elvie’s mouth dropped open. “But it’s the middle of the day. Those appointments.”

  “Your brother is a vet too, right? Could he see those pets?”

  “Umm…”

  It was crazy. The whole thing smacked of desperation and making bad decisions. It also sounded just a little fun. Who didn’t dream of ditching their day job and running away with a super-hot hunk for the afternoon. Although Evan had a look about him that said he thought he was running away for much longer. That was enough motivation for Elvie to drop everything and go with him. Evan had been running for three months from something that he wasn’t ready to face or tell her about yet. Maybe the problem was that he couldn’t face it alone. Maybe if she went with him, she could be just that support he needed to deal with whatever fate was throwing at him.

  “Okay, I’ll ask Doc to stick around,” she said, mind made up. She headed for the door, opened it, and stepped into the hall.

  Doc was standing three feet from the door, arms still crossed. “You two have your little talk?”

  She ignored his obvious disapproval. “Hey, I need you to stick around and take the rest of my appointments today.”

  “What?” Doc’s brow flew up. He glared at Evan as he stepped into the hall behind Elvie. Definitely the protective brother look.

  “I need to help Evan with something.” She looked for the quickest, simplest explanation she could find.

  “What thing?” Doc wasn’t going to let it go.

  Elvie twisted to check on Evan over her shoulder. The last thing she wanted was the man she loved and her brother at odds with each other. There had to be a way to smooth things out.

  “Do you have your truck with you?” She asked Evan.

  “It’s right outside,” he said.

  Elvie nodded. “Why don’t you go start it up, and I’ll deal with the towering twin here.”

  Understanding lit in Evan’s eyes. “Okay.”

  He started down the hall, but paused a few steps away. With a deliberate look, he turned back and marched up to Elvie. With Doc standing right there, he cupped her face and planted a long, possessive kiss on her lips. It was delicious enough to make Elvie forget why she was standing there for a minute. Every nerve ending in her body stood up and said, “Hello!”

  A second later, Evan broke away and continued down the hall, sparing one brief glance for Doc.

  Elvie caught her breath and said, “Is that another one of those male dominance things that I don’t understand?”

  “Yes,” Doc answered through a clenched jaw.

  “Was it a good one or a bad one?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He stared at Evan’s back as he crossed out through the glass doors of the clinic and into the parking lot. Then he whipped back to Elvie. “If he hurts you in any way or causes you to be hurt…”

  “He won’t,” she insisted, taking a step toward him. “That’s why I wanted to have two seconds alone with you.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  Elvie went on with, “I think he just needs someone to talk him through something, so he can get some clarity.”

  “That better be all it is.”

  She ignored that fierceness too. “So I’m going to take him somewhere where he’ll feel safe. I’ll get the full story out of him.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “That’s what I need your help with.”

  “My help?”

  She sucked in a breath, glanced toward the front of the clinic and to the window where Evan had just started up his truck, then met Doc’s eyes. “I’m going to take him up to Sly’s ski resort in Laramie.”

  Doc frowned. A second later, his expression softened. “You know every inch of that place like that back of your hand.”

  “And so do you, and so do Sly and Arch. You know I’ll be safe there.”

  “And we’ll know exactly where you are.”

  Thank God he got it. “Can you contact Sly for me and have him call ahead? Let them know we’re coming and that I’ll need one of the cabins.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Elvie burst into a smile, then lifted onto her toes to kiss her brother’s cheek. “I’ll be back soon.” She started down the hall.

  “If you aren’t, I’m sending the state police after you.”

  “Ha, ha,” she called over her shoulder as she reached the door.

  Part of her was glad he was looking out for her nonetheless, even though she didn’t think Evan was capable of harming a flea, let alone her. No, this was all set to be a grand adventure.

  She skipped over to Evan’s truck, opened the passenger side door, and jumped in. “Right. We’re off!”

  “Thanks for coming with me, Elvie.” Evan smiled. “You have no idea what this means to me.”

  “No problem. Now, if we could just swing by my house so I can pack a bag…”

  Evan shook his head as he backed out of the parking space. “There isn’t time. And besides, how do you know that lawyer won’t be there?”

  Okay, that was a good point. In fact, it was a point that was underscored when her phone buzzed yet again. With an irritated moan, she pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  “How about lunch and a diamond necklace, then?” Andy had texted.

  Of all the nerve. She typed back, “Absolutely not!”

  Evan eyed her phone sideways, but didn’t ask who the message was from. That only raised his esteem in her eyes. Evan trusted her. He wasn’t going to push her into anything—except maybe running away with him, though at the moment that sounded like a far better idea than staying within fifty miles of Andy. Evan was a hundred times the man Andy was.

  “So what am I going to do about clothes?” she asked. “And, uh, girls need things too.”

  Evan’s lips twitched with something between a smile and words that he was having a hard time speaking. “We can stop on the way and pick up whatever you want.”

  “But I only have my cell phone with me. I forgot to grab my purse on the way out.”

  Evan put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the road. For a man at the beginning of an escape, he sure did drive cautiously. “Trust me, I’ve got plenty of money. I can buy whatever you need.”

  Elvie was tempted to laugh. Of course he had money, although for a man running away from a highly-publicized will, he sure was bold to admit it. That convinced her that he didn’t really want to keep running from the mess anyhow. It also convinced her that he needed her.

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s have ourselves an adventure, shall we?”

  6

  Approximately ninety seconds after pulling out of the parking lot of Elvie’s veterinary clinic, Evan had second thoughts. About everything. Only a fool ran away from his problems the way he’d been running for months now. It’d taken Elvie to help him see that. There was nothing like loving someone to help you see clearly.

  He opened his mouth to admit to being an idiot and to suggest they go back, but Elvie beat him to the punch by saying, “Head east once you get out to the highway.”

  Evan snapped his mouth shut, his eyebrows flying up. “Okay.” She seemed awfully happy to give that order. “Where are we going?”

  “To Laramie, or at least just on the other side of Laramie, in the mountains.” She practically bounced on her seat, looking ready for adventure.

  Who was he to deny her a little adventure?

  “What’s in the mountains of Laramie?” He followed the mai
n Culpepper road until it met the highway, then turned east as directed.

  “Ski lodges, mostly,” Elvie answered with a shrug. “They should just be opening up for the winter.”

  “But there’s no snow,” Evan pointed out, nodding to the stark ranchland around them.

  “There probably is up in the mountains,” she explained. “And if there isn’t, all of those lodges have snow-making machines for the trails.” She paused, then glanced to him with a smile that made her seem young and vibrant. “Have you ever been skiing?”

  Evan shook his head. “I can’t say I have. When I tell people I grew up in Colorado, they assume I grew up around mountains. But our farm is in the southeast, before the Rockies. It’s flat as a pancake down there. Good farmland, though, if we can keep it irrigated.”

  He stopped his rambling with a chuckle and shook his head. The last thing Elvie needed right now was for him to go off on a dry, boring discussion about farming on the Plains. But when he peeked at her, still trying to keep his eyes on the road as he merged onto the highway and drove with more purpose, she was grinning as though they had their feet kicked up on a porch, sipping lemonade.

  “I don’t know much about farming,” she admitted. “Dad was a rancher, just like practically everyone else around here. My brothers learned ranching a bit, but they all had other ambitions.”

  “Your brother Doc is also a vet, your brother Sly is a business guy, and…what does your other brother—Arch, right? What does he do?”

  “He’s an architect. He helped design Culpepper Confectionary Creations, although it was Allen Jennings who was the on-site contractor when they built it.”

  Yep, here they were running away from something Evan really shouldn’t have been running from in the first place, and it was more like they were chatting over coffee than anything else. His life had taken a decidedly odd turn since Aunt Kissie went to her great reward.

  They continued to chat, but thoughts of his great-aunt dampened his spirits. Aunt Kissie had always been such a free spirit. Evan had no idea how she’d come down from the clouds long enough to form a business in the first place. Not that she formed it, really. Wax lips had been around since the nineteenth century—as she’d told him in one of her many lectures on the topic—but the recipe had stayed proprietary, passed from one now-defunct candy company to another. How she’d ended up with it was beyond him.

  It wasn’t until Elvie’s phone buzzed that Evan realized they’d both gone quiet. She took one look at her phone, growled, then tossed it on the dashboard.

  “What?” Evan asked.

  “Nothing,” she grumbled.

  The phone buzzed again, which caused it to slip off the dash and drop to the floor. Elvie leaned over to get it. Evan wondered if he should pull over so she could take care of whatever business she had.

  Her phone buzzed a third time, and she hissed in frustration. “I wish he would just give it a rest.”

  Every protective, possessive instinct Evan had came raging to the fore. “Is that your ex?”

  She sent him a guilty sideways look. “Yes. I’m sorry. I swear there’s absolutely nothing left between the two of us.”

  Somehow, Evan managed a weak laugh. “I’m not at all worried about that.”

  He wasn’t. What worried him was all the ways that lawyer could wreck his life if he caught him.

  That thought brought a sigh with it. If he was being honest, he was tired of running. Really tired. The drifter’s life wasn’t for him. One sideways glance at Elvie, tapping away on her phone as she sent her ex a reply, was enough to confirm that. He liked having friends—like the Culpepper family. He liked feeling as though there were roots under his feet. The last few months of drifting had helped him see a huge part of the West, but he’d reached his limit. He didn’t need anything more than the gorgeous, smart, inventive woman sitting on the seat next to him.

  “If he doesn’t take the hint after this, I can’t be responsible for what I might do to him,” Elvie said, setting her phone firmly on the seat between them. “I have half a mind to send all three of my brothers after him.”

  Evan laughed. “I’d like to see that.” He would, mostly because it would be exactly the show of family support that he wanted to be a part of.

  Elvie’s phone buzzed yet again, but this time she ignored it. “So,” she said, a little louder and more high-pitched than she needed to. “Since you made me run away from home without any clothes or deodorant or even a hairbrush, I propose we stop somewhere to pick something up.”

  The way she said it was a major hint that she was having a good time, in spite of how crazy things were.

  “We should have gone the other way,” Evan said. “There’s one of those big box stores in Haskell. Actually, there’s a lot of new things in Haskell. Did you see that huge complex they built on what used to be Paradise Ranch? What in creation are they going to do with that?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Elvie brightened. “Howard Haskell IV has started a private space flight company.”

  “A what?”

  “He says NASA isn’t working fast enough on space travel, so he’s hired a bunch of engineers and mathematicians and astrophysicists to design vehicles that can travel through space.”

  Evan sent her a wry, sideways look. “He’s building space ships?”

  Elvie laughed. “Sort of. There are a couple of other companies out there who do the same thing. There’s a lot of interest in private space flight, not to mention the fact that NASA and organizations from other governments now rely on those private companies to send supplies up to the International Space Station and things like that.” She suddenly shook her head. “How did you get me off the subject like that?”

  He shrugged, wishing he could watch her face as she explained things to him instead of having to watch the road. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “Well, what I was going to say was that there are other stores where we can pick things up. Rawlins has a lot of shops. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  Wyoming was big—gigantic—so it took more than an hour of driving through next to nothing before they reached Rawlins. As soon as they did, Elvie directed him off the highway and through a few side streets to a cluster of shops that might have passed as a mall, if you didn’t expect too much. The parking lot was less than half full, so they were able to get a spot near the door. The best part of the whole expedition was that Evan took Elvie’s hand as they walked through the sliding, front doors, just like a real couple. They were a real couple, he was sure of it.

  He was even more sure of it when he ended up holding the shopping basket as she picked out toiletries and steered him toward the women’s clothing section.

  “I won’t get too many things,” she assured him. “I never was a huge clothes person anyhow.”

  “Get whatever you want.” He shrugged. “I’ll pay for it.”

  She stopped in the middle of looking through a display of jeans and turned to him, hand on her hip. “You know for a drifter who’s trying to escape an inheritance, you sure are free with your money.”

  He blushed. Deeply. “Yeah, well…” That was the one thing about the situation that he couldn’t even explain to himself. He’d always had just enough financially. Knowing that Aunt Kissie had left him a whole lot more took a weird sort of weight off his shoulders.

  “You know what I think?” Elvie went on, tossing a pair of dark jeans into the basket he carried.

  “I always want to know what you think,” he flirted.

  She rewarded him with a heated grin. Wherever they were going, they couldn’t get there fast enough. He couldn’t wait to get his arms back around her and his lips up against hers and more.

  “I think this whole will thing is a sham.”

  His carnal thoughts froze, and he blinked at her. “A sham?”

  “Mmm hmm.” She moved on to picking out a few long-sleeve shirts. “I don’t think there’s a will at all.”

  “There is.” Was she teasi
ng him?

  She glanced over her shoulder at him in a way that made his pants tight. “I think there’s something much more nefarious going on.”

  “Like what?”

  She tossed two shirts into the basket, then moved on to the underwear section. “I think a man who is so free with his money has to be hiding other secrets. And I think that Andy must not be the only person who’s hunting you down.”

  “He’s not?” If this was a game, Evan kind of liked it. He didn’t think he had all that much imagination, but Elvie had so much that some of it stuck to him.

  “Nope. Andy isn’t that scary. He’s definitely not enough to keep someone on the run.”

  “Well, it’s not really him that worries me,” Evan started, intending to say that the kissy lips were far more terrifying.

  But she beat him to the punch once again. She grabbed a pack of Korpanty panties from the display behind her, then whirled around, standing very close to him. So close he could smell her fresh, honest scent.

  “I think the cops are after you, Evan Lipinski.”

  “What?” He wanted to drop the shopping basket right there and kiss her senseless over such a silly idea.

  She made the feeling worse by leaning closer and whispering. “I think you’re a thief. I think you’re a sneaky, clever, man-of-many-faces thief. A criminal mastermind. A first-class con man.”

  She inched even closer, slipping her arms around him even as he held the basket and sliding her hands into his back pockets. That made him jump and press instinctively closer to her, turning all sorts of bulgy.

  “Girls like a sly little devil,” she went on, lifting to her toes to bring her mouth closer to his.

  “You do?” His voice cracked.

  Forget the basket or the shopping, or the fact that they were in a public place and she had the wrong end of the stick. All he wanted to do right then was—

  Her phone buzzed.

  As if she’d been stung by a bee, Elvie backed up with an unladylike swear. She yanked her phone out of her back pocket, but only to turn it off. One way or another, the playful, sexy mood that had swirled up between them fizzled.