by Alison Kent
All he needed now was for the front side to be as outstanding as the back. She straightened, wrapped one arm around the bag, and turned. Her dark jeans rode low on her hips and bunched around her boot vamps. The shoulder-hugging sleeves of her T-shirt showed off some mighty fine guns. But it was the way the same shirt lay flat against her belly and scooped low on her C-cup chest that made his mouth water.
He blew out the breath straining his lungs to bursting, not exactly proud of the groan that came out on its tail.
Hallelujah, and come to Papa.
Josh chuckled. “You know who that is, don’t you?”
Dax lifted his gaze to her face. Dark wavy hair, shoulder length, shining like strong coffee in the sun. A wide mouth with sweet peachy lips, and big bright eyes. Green, he’d bet. To go with the freckles on her nose.
And no. If he’d seen this woman before, the two of them would be acquainted in the most intimate of ways. “Not a freakin’ clue.”
“Then let me be the one to fill you in on some of the better things that have happened since you’ve been gone.” Josh slapped Dax on the shoulder before walking away. “That, my man, is Arwen Poole.”
NATURALLY THE ONE day Arwen decided to make the feed store run, it was Bubba Taylor and his goon squad who’d placed the order. If she’d thought to check the ticket before her spur of the moment decision, she would’ve gone after Dax another time.
The problem with working the Wild Wild West were the predators that hovered at watering holes. And Arwen hated feeling like prey.
A quick scan of the parking lot failed to turn up a truck door sporting a D hooked over a T that was the Dalton Ranch brand. What she did see—and sense crawling all over her—were a half dozen pair of shifty eyes, Bubba Taylor’s being the beadiest.
She hefted the bag higher, holding it directly in front of her as she climbed the wooden steps to the porch. Both creaked beneath her weight, but neither was as loud as the hinges groaning when Bubba pushed open the screen door.
“Hey, Arwen.” He winked, taking up space she needed to get by. He kept his hand on the wooden frame, the torn-away sleeves of his plaid shirt revealing a thick tuft of hair and his disregard of deodorant. “Long time no see. Thought Amy might be delivering today.”
Arwen shoved the bag into his hands, causing him to step back and out of her way. Only then did she take another breath. “Sorry, Bubba. You’re stuck with me.”
“I don’t mind.” He looked her up and down, settling his gaze in her cleavage, and then he actually licked his lips. “As long as you don’t mind getting what’s coming to you.”
Because, of course, that’s why she was here. To be sexually harassed by Bubba Taylor. “Money, Bubba. Cash. Preferably before you eat.”
Bubba sneered. “Ah, well. If that’s all you want, then lemme pass the hat for donations.”
Rolling her eyes with a muttered, “Lord save me,” Arwen headed for the register, fresh air, and the safety of Josh Lasko. He was leaning into his forearms where they were crossed on the counter, and he smiled as she got close.
“How’re things, Josh? Your daddy doing okay?”
“He’s getting there. Doc’s put him on enough meds to choke a bull. Cut him back to one rib eye a month.”
A cowman facing a beef-restricted diet was not a pretty thing. Arwen sympathized. “Sorry to hear that. We’ve got a mean veggie burger on the menu if he wants to stop in and give it a try.”
But Josh wasn’t having it. “I’m afraid he’s made his last trip to the saloon. At least for a while. Dad’s not a heathen like Bubba Taylor, but he’s still got an eye for the gals, and that ticker of his might not stand the strain of your Kittens.”
She laughed at Josh’s sidestepping effort not to call his father a dirty old man. “Tell you what. Next time he’s in town, let me know and I’ll bring a veggie burger over.” When Josh briefly eyed the fit of her shirt, she added, “I’ll even find something less heart-stopping to wear.”
“Well, it’s not that I really want to see that happen, but for his sake, I appreciate it.” His face coloring, he looked quickly away, nodding over her shoulder. “Looks like Bubba’s collected enough to pay you, though I hope you weren’t counting on anything like a tip.”
“It’s Bubba Taylor,” she said, resigned to this trip being more hassle than mission accomplished. “I’m not even counting on getting out of here with my virtue intact.”
“I’m happy to help you run that gauntlet.”
The voice came from the shadows. It was a voice Arwen knew well, though it was seasoned now, deeper and richer, as if hung up to age. She tried to swallow, found her throat had swelled. Tried to breathe, found her lungs fighting her heart for the room.
Was he leaner? Rougher? Hard-edged and worth all the years she’d waited?
He’d never been soft, but his body had matured, his build less a cocky teen learning the fit of things and more the cowboy he was now. His was a long, rangy strength defined by lean hips and a purposeful swagger, by a narrow waist and wide shoulders and the sharp relief of tendons and veins. He needed every bit of the weight he carried, and she wondered if he’d outgrown his love of excess.
But then she met his gaze, and she was taken back to eighteen when she’d lusted after the things he’d made her feel as much as she’d lusted after him. And, oh, oh, but the lust was grand, her pulse ticking wildly, her skin tingling, her sex anticipating and growing damp. There were so many things she wanted him to do.
Beneath his hat, his hair was shaggy, a darker blond than she remembered, and as careless as was the scruff of whiskers he hadn’t bothered to shave. His jaw was square, bold, his mouth wide and wicked as he smiled. His eyes were the intense blue of high summer skies, and hot. Texas sun hot.
“Dax.” It was all she could say. Her mouth was bone dry.
“Arwen.” His voice rolled over her, the one word, her name.
She didn’t know if she’d ever heard him say it. She didn’t know if getting him out of her system was going to be as easy as she’d thought. She did know if she let him walk her to her truck, she wouldn’t be driving away alone.
Sounded like a hell of a plan. “I’d better get Bubba’s money before he finds something else to spend it on.”
Dax came closer. He didn’t speak. He just smiled, his dimples cutting crescents in the stubble covering his cheeks. He didn’t ask when he took hold of her upper arm and turned her toward the door, or say anything as Bubba silently paid her.
On the way out, he moved his hand to the small of her back. He kept it there as they crossed the porch and walked down the steps. Once in the parking lot, they turned toward the long row of pickups along the side of the store, and that’s when his hand drifted lower, his thumb inching under the hem of her shirt, his fingers slipping beneath the waistband of her jeans.
She glanced up, wondered if his eyes would give away what he was thinking, if hers would tell him that he was why she was here. This was what she wanted, but he didn’t have to know that, and she didn’t have to make it so easy on either of them. Yet she didn’t dislodge his hand. And she didn’t pretend his presumption put her off.
All she did was cut her gaze over his shoulder toward the window, asking as she looked back, “Are you invading my personal space for the benefit of Bubba and his boys, or for your own?”
He paid no attention to their audience, his gaze holding hers, a rope pulling tight, choking. “You left out the third option.”
He’d lassoed her. If not for the onlookers fogging up the store’s window, she would’ve stripped to her skin then and there. But he didn’t have to know that either. “Which is?”
“I’m doing it for you.”
“That so.”
He nodded, his gaze sliding from her eyes to her mouth before moving lower, lingering along her scooped neckline as if he had all the time in the world. As if he would take all the time in the world. She couldn’t wait to find out if he would, but he didn’t have to know that most
of all.
He reached for his hat brim, pulled it low. “I figure… sixteen years? It’s about time.”
Oh, who was she kidding? He knew. He knew everything. And he’d known it all along. That left her with only one thing to say.
“My truck or yours?”
TWO
DARCY CAMPBELL YANKED off her sunglasses that were little help against the white hot June sky and blinked to adjust to the interior of the Hellcat Saloon. She scanned the room, breathing deeply of flame-seared beef and fresh-baked bread and the fire-roasted chiles that went into Arwen Poole’s famous salsa.
Finding her favorite corner table empty, she didn’t wait for the hostess but headed that way, the heels of her navy pumps striking the glossy concrete in a rhythmic and angry click. She dropped into the chair that put her back to the wall and tossed her satchel into the seat at her right.
Screw it being noon. She needed a pitcher of margaritas. Extra salt, double tequila. Unfortunately, Campbell propriety—and Mrs. Kyle’s three o’clock deposition—determined the only liquid she’d be imbibing at lunch was iced tea. And that with artificial sweetener—another bit of Campbell propriety.
Not that she was bitter.
Much.
Getting out of the Campbell and Associates law office for lunch should’ve helped her mood, but didn’t. She was eating alone while the firm’s two men dined on grass-fed Angus and drank Prairie Rotie from the family’s favorite hill country vintner. Because only potential associates dined with The Campbell at the Crow Hill Country Club.
And Darcy, a daughter, a girl, a disappointment, would never make partner. Especially with Greg Barrett and his penis working the same partner-track hours and now landing the Trinity Springs Oil account for the firm.
“Hey, sweetie.” Luck Summerlin set a tumbler full of ice and Darcy’s lunchtime drink on a Hellcat logo coaster. “I heard the news. How’re you doing?”
Wow. Crow Hill was small, but Greg had only announced the Trinity Springs news this morning. She reached for a packet of sweetener, tore it open, and poured. “Who told you?”
Luck propped a knee in the empty chair on Darcy’s left, her long legs bare between her boots and her denim shorts, and shrugged. “The Kittens were all over it earlier. Lots of ribald chatter.”
The chatter part Darcy got. But ribald? Greg? “Then their imagination’s way better than mine. Ribald’s not exactly the word I’d use.”
Luck looked aghast. “Considering he’s your brother, I hope not.”
Her brother? “Wait.” She stopped stirring her tea, glanced up. “Who are you talking about?”
“Dax? The only brother you have? Unless you’re keeping family secrets about an even badder bad sheep.” Luck narrowed her eyes, braced her hip against the chair back. “Who are you talking about?”
Darcy waved off answering, the acid in the pit of her stomach simmering. “Why are you talking about Dax?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“He’s here.”
“Here where?”
“Jeez, Darcy. Here. In town. Well, at the Dalton Ranch, anyhow. Boone and Casper, too.”
She knew about the others, but not her brother. The Dalton Gang. Together again. Their inheritance made it inevitable, but still… She really needed to stop working under a rock and pay attention. And then it hit her. Dax. He was back. After all these years, he was back. And she felt… nothing more than a simmer of emotion.
And then a scalding rush of resentment sent her temperature soaring.
Probably not the reaction Campbell propriety called for. “Dax is here? Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure. And you didn’t have a clue, did you?”
When Darcy shook her head, Luck let out whooping, hollering Hellcat roar, and across the dining room, the Kittens working the lunch shift responded in kind. Customers joined in, slamming bootheels on the floor, banging beer bottles on the bar, drumming hands on any surface until the racket rattled the walls.
It was a Hellcat Saloon tradition Darcy’s headache could’ve done without. Flipping the bird at propriety, she braced her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. First Greg. Now Dax. The son her father had never had and wanted, and the one he’d had and disowned. She might as well get a rope.
Chair legs scraped across the floor as Luck pulled out the one she’d been leaning on and sat. “Seriously? He hasn’t let y’all know?”
Darcy left her pity party and reached for her tea, thinking she should be anxious to see him, curious how deep her anger at his abandonment ran. “He hasn’t let me know. I can’t speak for Mom, and The Campbell wouldn’t tell me if he had. I knew about the will so I assumed he’d show his ass sooner or later.”
“Lotta girls out there hoping to see it.”
“Ew. Luck. He’s my brother.”
“Then you’ll just have to trust me. Dax does wicked things to a pair of jeans.”
“Can we change the subject? Please?” Though at Luck’s words, the image of Josh Lasko wearing Wranglers came to mind. As did the image of Josh Lasko wearing nothing at all.
Funny about chemistry and attraction. She’d never pictured Greg in anything but the suits he wore to the office each day—Italian, designer, Manhattan appropriate. She still hadn’t figured out what he was doing in Crow Hill, though she knew The Campbell’s reputation had tempted many a young lad.
But Josh Lasko… He was kind and strong, silent and shy, and wholesome in ways that made her want to ignore their twain never meeting disparity. Not that her spending her days in her family’s law office while he spent his in his family’s feed store meant anything to her. Her parents on the other hand…
“How ’bout we change the subject to lunch?” Luck pulled her pad and a pen from her apron. “Do you know what you want to eat?”
“Grilled chicken salad. Fat-free ranch on the side.” She thought of returning to the office without having dined on grass-fed Angus or drinking Prairie Rotie. “Garlic toast. With extra garlic.”
“Got an afternoon appointment with a vampire?”
Ugh. Mrs. Kyle’s deposition. “Just the salad, I guess. The garlic would’ve been of more use warding off the morning’s bad news.”
“What happened this morning?”
“Nothing.” Darcy sighed. “Greg.”
“Daddy’s little protégé still looking to become partner?”
“Something like that.”
“You know…” Luck tapped the end of her pen to her chin, head cocked, ponytail swinging. “The best way to get your mind off your troubles with one man is to get into trouble with another.”
Josh Lasko again. In his Wranglers. Out of his Wranglers. In her bed. Darcy squeezed the muscles of her sex until the tingles there had her aching.
Luck went on. “Or, considering how hot Greg is, you could keep it all in house, if you know what I mean.”
She knew, but no. She was not going to dip her nib in the company ink. Or… whatever. “Really? You think he’s hot?”
Eyes rolling, Luck returned her pad and pen to her apron. “I swear, Darcy. It’s like you live in a cave. He’s tall and he’s built and he’s all kinds of rich. Not to mention being totally GQ.”
“Then what was all that about Dax and his jeans?”
“Jeans are every day, every man, and everywhere. Greg Barrett is an exotic. And a yummy one at that.” Luck popped up to turn in Darcy’s order, leaving her with a quick wink.
Leaving her wondering, too, if Greg was so yummy, why she’d never seen it. Why it was Josh Lasko, not the exotic, who tumbled through her fantasies. And how soon her brother’s return was going to turn her pretty nice life upside down.
Because it would.
THREE
IN THE END, Dax took his truck and Arwen hers. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the idea of her sitting up against him, his arm around her shoulders, his fingers in her hair. Finding a back road, an empty barn, pulling into a pasture to wa
rm up for the main event.
But since a truck bed quickie wouldn’t be enough to hold him, and since he hated the idea of rousing her after exhausting her to drive him back for his wheels, and since he’d have to rouse her because he had a hell of a long second half of the work day ahead, two trucks it was.
Then there was the fact that they were driving into town, not out of it, and that left them with few off-the-beaten path places to get naked and party. It also meant that when they got to where they were going he’d be ready to blow.
Arwen Poole. Who’d’ve guessed it?
The girl who’d been raised in the back of a bar had turned into an amazing example of Mother Nature’s best work. He remembered her from school, but that was more about her name and her widowed father than her appearance sticking with him all this time.
He’d listened for years to his mother bemoan the sorry conditions the girl lived in. Because instead of devoting her time to her family, Patricia Campbell had served on all sorts of boards of all manner of charities sworn to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.
But the courts had never deemed Hoyt Poole an unfit parent. And Wallace Campbell had finally put his foot down. No more talk of the Pooles. If his wife was so gung-ho to be charitable, she could damn well begin her charity at home and get him another drink.
Dax had never understood why his father guzzling Glenlivet from the La-Z-Boy in his library was any different than Hoyt Poole downing Bud at the Buck Off Bar. Both men were drunks, making Dax and Arwen adult children of alcoholics.
And wouldn’t Oprah have a field day with that?
He shook off the memories and trailed Arwen through town, past the First National Bank, Nathan’s Food and Drug, the Municipal Plaza. The long squat building housed the city manager, the water district, the volunteer fire department, and the county sheriff’s substation—just as it always had.