by Alison Kent
Arwen nodded. “I’m with Faith on this. The past needs to stay in the past.”
Everly wanted to stab herself with her knife for saying yes to Whitey in the first place. Except this was her livelihood, and these women her friends. They should know better than to suspect whatever it was they were suspecting. “C’mon, y’all. I’m not going to do a hatchet job here. I’m a damn good writer, if I do say so myself. I know there are two sides to every story.”
“I think that’s part of the problem,” Arwen said, poking at her salad with her fork.
Faith concurred with a nod as she jabbed a French fry. “You’ve got to know there are a lot of folks out there just waiting to drag the boys through all their old crap, and leave them there to wallow.”
“Which is why I’m the best person to write the story. I’m not digging for dirt. I’m only looking for the truth.”
“Some of their truth is dirt,” Faith said.
Arwen nodded down at her salad. “She’s right.”
But before Everly could respond, Faith went on. “So if you run across it, because that’s going to happen, Ev, and you know it will, are you going to print it? The dirt?”
Everly took a moment to chew a bite of sandwich and find an answer they all three could live with, but especially Faith. An answer that wouldn’t feel like a betrayal of the friendship that had saved Everly’s life. “If it’s something of interest, yes, but only if I have the full story.”
“Even full stories can end up making the boys look bad.”
Frustration began to knot in her midsection. She wanted her friends’ support. She wanted their involvement, their input. She didn’t want what was her job to come between them. “Do y’all not have things in your past you wish weren’t there?”
“Of course, but our pasts aren’t going to print under the guise of human interest,” Faith said.
“Details from mine did,” Everly replied, which Faith knew well. “Without all the facts and beneath a much bigger microscope than the Reporter.”
“And look what happened. The speculation about those things drove you out of Austin.”
“The events drove me out. Not the speculation.” Though the questioning looks and hushed whispers from friends and coworkers hadn’t helped. Neither had the private asides from family members who felt it their duty to remind her they’d never understood what she saw in Toby and had disapproved of him from day one.
“Wait a second,” Arwen said, holding up one hand. “Events in Austin? Is this something you’d like to share? Because if not, that’s fine, but know I’m lost here.”
Everly had never spoken of what had brought her to Crow Hill to anyone besides Faith. But since she was asking them to understand her putting their men in an unwanted spotlight, and Arwen was a friend and deserved to know . . .
Looking from one woman to the other, she took a deep breath and said, “My ex was abusive. Most of it was emotional, but it was still abuse. It wasn’t until our relationship was ending that it turned physical.”
Arwen’s eyes had gone wide, but before she could speak, Faith added, “And because Everly was on network TV in Austin, her face was easily recognized when she went to the ER to be stitched up.”
“Oh, God, sweetie.” Arwen reached across the table, squeezed Everly’s wrist. “I had no idea. Did he hurt you badly?”
Her stomach churning, Everly tried to shrug off the question.
But Faith let her off the hook and answered for her. “Badly enough that she left Austin and came here.”
“I’ve always wondered why anyone would choose to live in Crow Hill, but this . . .” Arwen squeezed again before letting go. “I never imagined. I’m so, so sorry.”
Trusting her voice not to break, Everly picked a strip of bacon from her sandwich and pressed forward. “I knew what he was doing, long before he struck out. And I knew not to let him get to me. But telling myself I wouldn’t fall for his begging and crying, didn’t work. I went back.”
“Even after he hit you?” Arwen asked.
“No. Well, yes. But only once,” she said as she tore the bacon into ribbons. “The first time he used his belt. I stepped toward him as he swung it.”
Arwen looked to Faith, then back and said, “And you blamed yourself for getting in the way.”
Everly nodded. “Just that time. The next he used his fist.”
“Did you call the cops?”
“She did. And she called me,” Faith said. “I helped her pack up and move. Though I wouldn’t exactly call what we did that day packing.”
The bacon was in a pile now, so Everly started in on the bread, pinching off pieces of toasted crust. “I had several friends on the APD. Two of them came by while Faith and I grabbed what I needed. I didn’t take anything of Toby’s. Or anything we’d bought as a couple. And thank goodness we’d kept our money separate. Wardrobe, makeup, jewelry, toiletries, electronics . . . That was it. I replaced everything else. Well, almost everything else,” she added wryly. “My house doesn’t have room for a piano.”
Faith turned to Arwen. “You should’ve seen the baby grand she left.”
“I had no idea you played.”
“I haven’t for a while,” she said, feeling a hint of a smile at the thought of shopping for a small upright, then cleaning her hands on her napkin. “Anyway. That’s my story. And it’s the best ‘been there done that’ case I can make for telling that of the Dalton Gang. Unlike some news outlets, I actually know the meaning of being fair and balanced.”
Her companions quietly let that settle, Arwen finally saying, “There’s a piano at the ranch house, you know. It belonged to Tess. I’m not even sure she played. Or how long it’s been sitting there.”
Oh, good. They were moving on. “No. I didn’t know,” she said, picking up the half of her sandwich she hadn’t mangled. “But now I’m itching to get my hands on it.”
At that, a sly grin pulled at Arwen’s mouth. “The way you and Boone were looking at each other while dancing last night, I thought maybe you’d be itching to get your hands on him.”
Everly looked quickly to Faith, who was frowning, then down at the mess on her plate. If only Arwen knew . . . “I haven’t been with anyone since Austin. I’ve dated, but I’ve always come home alone. Last night though . . .”
“Did you?” Arwen asked. “Come home alone? Or did Boone come with?”
“I’m pretty sure I saw him leave with Luck Summerlin,” Faith said, still frowning, leaving Everly to wonder if his sister had a problem with her seeing Boone, or Boone seeing her, or both.
Arwen shook her head. “Luck came scurrying back inside a few minutes later.”
“I ran across the two of them in the parking lot,” Everly said. “Right about the time all her moaned yeses became squealed nos.”
“Ah, yes. That would be our Luck, so to speak.”
Everly grinned. “Boone saw me getting into my car and came over. He was pretty drunk. So I drove him home.”
“To the ranch?” Faith asked. “Or to your home?”
“Mine,” she said, still unable to get a read on the other woman. “He spent the night in my bed. I slept on the couch. And I washed his clothes and made him breakfast before he ever woke up.”
“Then he left?”
Everly nodded, then lied. “I drove him here to get his truck, and I went to work. I’m assuming he went to the ranch.”
“Does he know about the story? For the paper,” Faith said, waving her hand. “Not Austin. And thank you for not letting him behind the wheel.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, the ice she had yet to understand beginning to thaw. “And, no. You two are the only ones I’ve told about the story. I didn’t get the assignment until an hour ago.”
“But you’re going to talk to Boone.”
“It would only be two-thirds of a story if I didn’t,” she said, looking from Boone’s sister to Arwen who asked, “Who else are you going to talk to?”
“Like I said.
Families. Friends.”
“Enemies?”
“I’ll talk to whoever I need to. I want as much information as I can get.”
“Okay then. I’ll make you a list.”
“Of Dax’s enemies?”
“Of people I think you should start with. And you can take what they give you and go from there.”
She didn’t need a list. She knew how to dig for source material, where to look for buried secrets, how to unearth the past. But she also knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Thank you. I appreciate it. And if you want, I can start by talking to you.”
Arwen stuck out her tongue. “I was afraid of that.”
When she turned to Faith, she got a roll of the other woman’s eyes for her trouble. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll pencil you in. And make sure Casper does, too.”
“Excellent,” she said, rubbing her hands together with an abundance of glee, the first she’d felt since Whitey had dropped the story into her lap. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
SEVEN
EVERLY DIDN’T WORK on Saturdays, but was quite sure Boone did. Ranchers, she’d learned since leaving the city for cattle country, kept incredibly long hours. To make their living off the land, they had no choice. They didn’t sit at a desk, in an air-conditioned office, electronics the tools of their trade. They were at the mercy of Mother Nature, using brute strength and cunning to beat the bitch at her game.
All of that made getting in touch with the rancher she needed to talk to difficult. Thanks to Faith, she had the number to the house’s landline, but either he didn’t carry his cell when riding the range, or there was no service out there with the prairie dogs and rattlesnakes and cows. That left her stuck having to call the house until he answered, or leaving a message and hoping he was the one who got it instead of Casper or Dax.
Boone needed to hear about her assignment ASAP. Especially since Faith and Arwen would, by now, have told their men about it—Everlys’ fault for feeling compelled to share, an anomaly she still hadn’t worked out. It wasn’t like she’d told friends and family members of other story subjects what was coming. But this one arriving on the heels of having Boone in her bed . . .
She sighed, second-guessing yesterday. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the story to her girlfriends at all, and instead cornered all three members of the Dalton Gang at once, slamming them with a hard-hitting interrogation the way Whitey wanted—even if he hadn’t spelled it out in so many words. She’d known him four years. He didn’t have to.
Scoops. Exclusives. Bombshells. She was supposed to drop explosive questions into her interviews, giving no advance warning, then watch the shrapnel fly. It was her job to knock the three members of the Dalton Gang off balance, to bleed their secrets onto the page. Collateral damage was nothing. No details were off-limits, no matter how revealing, how hurtful.
Her arms crossed on her kitchen table, her chin braced on her stacked hands, she stared unblinking at the cordless handset of her house phone. It stood on end between the bottle of CapRock Roussanne she’d just opened and the glass of the same she’d just poured. She hated what passed for news these days: the sensationalism, the exposés, the absolute lack of respect for privacy as long as the story was served.
Even before the last straw with Toby, which had cast an unwanted limelight on her, she’d decided she was done with anything that smacked of tabloid journalism. That sort of reporting had its place: selling papers, gaining viewers, giving a public hungry for celebrity news what they wanted. But having her own life pried into had shown her what happened on the other side of the camera or pen.
She wouldn’t do that to the Dalton Gang. She wouldn’t have done it even before yesterday morning with Boone. Not to say yesterday morning wasn’t going to make keeping the story impersonal a challenge, but at least she didn’t have to worry about his feelings, or hers, since their encounter had been purely sexual, no emotions involved, no promises given, no future plans made.
Still, she did have her assignment, and spending Saturday night home alone drinking wine was not going to get it done. She’d just picked up her phone to dial again, staring at the dark display, when the screen lit up and it rang. Boone’s number, but he wouldn’t know who he was calling.
“Hello?”
She answered, then listened to him grumble and curse in the background while her voice registered. “I’ve got fourteen missed calls from your number. I was about to tear whoever’d been harassing me with hang-ups a new one.”
She cringed. Hard to blame him. “Sorry. I didn’t want to leave a message. I kept hoping I’d catch you.”
“You’ve been calling the house off and on all afternoon. Why would you expect to catch me here?”
“Because I’m an ignorant city slicker who thought you might take off early on Saturday?”
He snorted. “You might be a city slicker, but you’re not ignorant, and you’ve lived in Crow Hill long enough to know weekends mean nothing to ranchers.”
He had her there. “I should’ve left a message. I just wasn’t sure you’d get it.”
“Now that’s a legitimate cause for concern because I’m not always one to check.”
Hearing him drawl out the words legitimate cause brought a smile to her face, and she pulled her wineglass closer. “What made you check now?”
“I always look at the incoming log in case my dad’s called. He never leaves a message either.” He paused, and she heard the banging of cabinet doors, the clanging of pots and pans, cutlery. “Why do you people do that? Or not do that, I guess, is the question.”
“Usually, I do.” She ran the flat of her index finger over the base of her glass. “But like I said, I wanted to catch you and didn’t want to sweat out the wait, wondering if you’d gotten the message.” She paused, picked up her glass, took a sip. “Or if you’d call me back.”
Another snort hit her ear. Then an even louder banging sound as if he’d slammed a skillet onto the stove. “You thought after yesterday morning I wouldn’t call you back?”
Eyes closed, she remembered the scruff of his beard on her skin and shivered. “When I called, I wasn’t even thinking about yesterday.”
“I haven’t stopped thinking about yesterday.” His voice slid over her, silky and smooth and warm.
Her heart thumped hard, and then a second time, but she held back admitting how often he’d been on her mind. “I actually called because of work.”
“Work can wait. Tell me about the scarves.”
“What?” she asked, her heart tumbling and turning the word breathless.
“Tell me about the scarves.” It was a demand, not a question, and the skin at her nape tingled.
She closed her eyes, swallowed. She supposed his curiosity shouldn’t surprise her. “What about them?”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t want to know where you bought them or how much they cost.”
That had her smiling again. “And here I was all set to give you shopping advice.”
“I want to know why you made me keep my hands to myself for so long.”
An explanation that would take too much time to go into; it had been stressful enough telling her girlfriends about her ex. Telling Boone the full story would add levels no amount of wine would help relieve, and so she glossed over the truth. “I like getting what I want. The scarves make sure I will.”
“You’re talking orgasms,” he said, and when she stayed silent, added, “You could’ve just asked.”
It had happened before, a man promising to show her heaven, then making the trip alone. “Until the fund-raiser, we’d hardly spoken two words to each other. I didn’t know what you’d say.”
“I’m a guy. That should’ve been enough of a clue.”
“Some guys want things to go their way.”
“Some guys are selfish pricks, but I get it. I could’ve been one.” More banging of dishes. “Now you know I’m not. At least most of the time.”
Really. He made it so easy to smi
le. “So, the reason I called—”
“Fourteen times,” he cut in to say.
“The reason I called fourteen times was to ask if we could get together for an interview.”
“An interview?” he asked after his silence had her swallowing half the wine in her glass.
“For the paper. I’ve been assigned a human interest story on the return of the Dalton Gang to Crow Hill.”
He grunted. “Not sure the type of interest humans around here have in the Dalton Gang is fit for the Reporter to print. Not sure it’s the type the boys and I want printed.”
That sounded a lot like a rehash of Arwen’s and Faith’s argument. She gave Boone the same response she’d given them. “Whitey wants a story. Who would you rather have write it? Whitey, me, Clark Howard, or Cicely Warren? Because it’s going to be one of the four of us. And my bias is going to be a little bit different from theirs.”
“Well, that’s a given,” he said, then added a quick, “Hang a sec,” returning after the kitchen faucet came on and went off. “Dax once cut donuts in Clark’s front yard after he told him to stay away from his daughter, so he’s no fan. And Cicely’s hardly any better. She propositioned Casper when he was sixteen.”
“What?” Everly asked, nearly spilling the refill of wine she was pouring.
“He told her he’d rather take it up the ass from one of Rooster Hart’s Charolais bulls than let her get hold of his dick.”
That had her sputtering. “Cicely’s got to be twenty years older than Casper.”
“And probably just as much of a degenerate now as she was then.”
Everly was never going to be able to look at Cicely Warren with a straight face again. “And Whitey? Did one of you ruin his yard or his daughter’s reputation? Because if he came on to you, I do not want to know.”
This time it was Boone laughing, a low rumbling growl that slid into the pit of Everly’s stomach. “Not that I can recall. But Whitey will want to sell as many copies as he can, so he’d be the worst choice. He’d make what dirt he can find sound even dirtier.”