The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3)

by Gilley, Lauren

  Emmie lurched to her feet. “Coming!” she called to Donna. “I should get back to work,” she told Walsh, not willing to meet his gaze again. “I have a lot to do.” She made a vague, lame gesture that went nowhere and explained nothing.

  I want you and it scares me was the truth.

  “Me too,” he said. “See you later.”

  And she hoped she did.

  ~*~

  Later was after he knew all the horses were put away for the evening and Fred and Becca had driven off the property. He’d spent the day on his laptop, a makeshift desk of card table and kitchen chair making his back and neck sore, digging up dirt on the Richards. He’d gone back and forth on the phone with Ratchet, and after hours, he had a headache and a vaguely sick feeling in his gut.

  Just went to show that money didn’t buy love, class, good behavior, or loyalty.

  But it paid off a lot of speeding tickets and sure got Brett Richards out of house arrest a few times.

  It was a relief to get away from it, get out of the house.

  The farm, draped all in gold this time of evening, rang with the soft silence of a day’s ending. Quiet rustlings of horses in stalls, wind in branches, birds calling to one another. But the human noise had melted away as the sun faded, and it was his favorite sort of countrified stillness that he walked through, down the driveway, into the front doors of the barn. He breathed deep the smell of hay, dust, and freshly oiled leather. His blood pressure dropped, and his muscles unclenched. Just what he needed.

  And then he spotted Emmie. She sat on a stepstool outside her horse’s stall, the monstrous black gelding using his lips to daintily play with her ponytail. She didn’t seem to notice, staring blankly into space, face etched with unhappiness, her cellphone in one hand.

  “I’d offer a penny for your thoughts,” he said, and she jerked, head lifting so she faced him. “But I think they’d cost more than that.”

  It tugged at his gut when she did nothing but turn baleful, exhausted eyes to him. He knew her well enough now to know she hated looking vulnerable. And well enough to feel a strong, uncharacteristic anger on her behalf. Whoever had turned her gloomy, he wanted to throttle.

  “What’s the matter, love?”

  Love. That British term of endearment, like sweetheart or baby or doll, or all the other meaningless words men used to trap women. It wasn’t a trap when he used it with her. It was a word for her. It was something about her quiet, respectable fierceness taking hold of him.

  She dampened her lips – God, he wanted her tongue on him – and blinked once, but held his gaze. “My dad. At Bell Bar again.”

  Without knowing what he meant by it, he reached out a hand to her. “Come on, baby. We’ll go get him.”

  ~*~

  Walsh spotted RJ and Briscoe sharing a pitcher at one of the usual Lean Dogs’ high top tables the second they walked into Bell Bar. He made eye contact, sent them a silent signal with his eyes: hold back, but be ready if I need you. He let his hand float at the small of Emmie’s back as they moved through the tables toward the bar, where her father was in the slow process of falling off his stool.

  Emmie took a deep breath, her spine digging into his palm, feeling fragile and strong at the same time. “Dad,” she said, stepping forward, separating them. “Dad, it’s time to go.”

  The man looked slowly over at his daughter, head wobbling on his neck. “I didn’t call you!” he said, too loudly.

  “No, Jeff did. Come on. It’s time to get you home.” She laid a hand on his arm and he jerked it away, almost toppling from his stool in the process.

  “I don’t have to go anywhere if I don’t want to, and I sure ain’t going home to that bitch.”

  Emmie sighed. “Maryann’s back, I take it.”

  “I hate her.”

  “Dad–”

  Walsh stepped up to the bar on the man’s other side and leaned in close, so he could keep his voice low. “Mr. Johansen, let’s make this easier on your girl, yeah? Let’s just walk out of here like gentlemen so we don’t get her upset.”

  On the other side of her father, Emmie sent him a tight-lipped, mortified glance.

  Johansen seemed to consider it a moment, then said, “Fuck her,” and buried his nose in his tumbler of gin.

  Emmie’s eyes sparked bright with unshed tears and she bit down hard on her lower lip. “Dad.” Her voice was shaky, uncharacteristic.

  Alright, enough of this. Walsh stepped back and motioned to his brothers.

  “Friend of yours?” RJ asked when he and Briscoe reached them.

  “Not after this,” Walsh said. “On three.”

  The others nodded.

  “One, two, three.”

  They took Johansen under the arms and hauled him back off his stool.

  “Oh shit,” Emmie breathed.

  “Hey!” Johansen shouted, kicking like an angry toddler. “You can’t do that. Fuckers! Let go o’ me!”

  “Sorry, mate,” Walsh said to the bartender, and captured Johansen’s feet, holding them together up off the ground so he couldn’t kick people’s drinks off their tables as they hustled him bodily from the bar.

  They turned him loose when they reached the sidewalk, and he collapsed in a cursing, incoherent heap, too piss-drunk to find his footing.

  “Who’s this charming individual?” Briscoe asked, chuckling as they stared down at the fuming, grumbling shape sprawled at their feet.

  “My dad,” Emmie spoke up in a pained voice. When Walsh glanced at her, he saw that her eyes were dry, but no less haunted. “I’m Emmie, by the way,” she continued. “I’m the barn manager.”

  Briscoe shook her hand and said, “Very nice to meet you, darlin’,” because he was an outlaw and a gentleman.

  RJ leaned over the poor girl’s writhing father and reached for her offered hard. “Hi.” He gave her his favorite shit-eating grin. “For the record, if Walsh hasn’t told you how hot you are, he’s a dumbass.”

  Her eyes flew wide. “Um…”

  “Fuck,” Walsh breathed.

  “Um,” Emmie said again, and it wasn’t shock, but aggression tightening her expression. Indignation. She took a deep breath. “Guess I’m gonna have to take that as a compliment.”

  RJ’s grin got wider, if that was possible. “You should.”

  “Have a little respect for the lady,” Walsh told him.

  “I apologize on his behalf,” Briscoe told Emmie. “He got dropped on his head as a baby, and now the only head that works is the one in his pants.”

  Emmie hesitated…and then she laughed. A fast, unexpected laugh, like she was glad for the chance to find something funny as her father congealed on the ground.

  “So, you guys are in the club?” she asked, folding her arms, pointedly not looking at her father.

  “RJ and Briscoe,” Walsh said of them, suddenly wanting her away from all this. He didn’t like the way Briscoe kept shooting him those you sly dog glances. “And after they help me hustle your old man into the truck, they’re gonna go back in and have another pitcher on me.”

  RJ grinned. “Yeah. Wouldn’t wanna interrupt anything.”

  Walsh sent him a quelling glance that was listened to, for once.

  Ten minutes later, Johansen was snoring in the deep backseat of the truck, and Emmie steered with a mechanical sort of awareness, pulled deep inside herself, frowning.

  “I can drive,” Walsh offered as she turned off the main strip and headed into the warren of neighborhoods that ringed the city. “If you’re tired.”

  She ignored him. “Look, it was real nice of you to come along with me. Really, it was, because I couldn’t have dragged him out by myself. But when we get there, you don’t have to come in. My stepmother’s probably here so…yeah. You can wait in the truck.”

  Because women who weren’t club sluts, groupies and strippers didn’t want to be seen with the likes of him.

  “Alright,” he said tightly, and pushed his head back against the seat, resolved to wa
it.

  She pulled into the cracked driveway of a split-level house choked by overgrown shrubs. In the dark, the white stucco siding glared sickly beneath the glow of the streetlamp. In Walsh’s experience, drunks weren’t big on home and landscape maintenance, and Johansen seemed no exception.

  Dim lights were on in the upper windows, and there was a bumper sticker-plastered Camry in the driveway.

  Emmie took a deep, shaky breath as she killed the engine. She stared at the house with something resembling fear.

  “You sure about me waiting?” Walsh asked.

  There was a pause before she nodded. “Yeah.”

  It made him itch to sit still, hands clenched tight on his thighs as insubstantial little Emmie wrestled her half-asleep father from the backseat and let him lean on her as they limped up to the door. There was a long moment of fumbling with keys and then the door opened, light swallowing them up and then sealing off.

  Walsh opened his truck door and sat sideways on the seat, digging a smoke out of his pocket. He’d taken his first drag when he heard the yelling start up inside. Harsh, angry yelling that carried through the walls and windows. He couldn’t make out words, but he didn’t need to.

  He flicked the cig into the weeds and was at the front door in three jogging strides. He walked into a foyer with steps leading to the upper and lower levels of the house, and waded through the fetid stink of garbage in bad need of taking out.

  The screaming came from above, so up he went, and when he hit the living room/kitchen combo there, the words became distinct.

  “…your goddamn father, Emmaline! It’s not my job to keep him sober! Christ, girl, can’t you do a damn thing?”

  Johansen had puddled again, this time on a rug in front of the kitchen sink, out cold. Standing over him was a woman built like an old-fashioned icebox with artificially black hair and one of the uglier scowls he’d seen in his lifetime. She was the one screaming, brandishing an empty gin bottle to emphasize her points. A lit cigarette perched beside her on the linoleum countertop, smoke curling up from its tip.

  Emmie stood with her feet braced apart, hands knotted together in front of her stomach, spine brittle enough to break as the words crashed over her.

  “Maryann,” she said in a low, firm voice. Not shouting. Totally in control. But Walsh could see the tremor in her throat. “I do my best, but when I take his keys away, he walks, and when I take his wallet away, he bums money, and I have a job. I can’t babysit him all the time.”

  “What, like I’m supposed to?!” Maryann screamed. “I ain’t the reason he drowns hisself! He tricked me, ‘s what he did! Tricked me into thinking he’s worth a shit, and he ain’t nothin’ but a goddamn drunk!”

  Walsh’s hands were curled into fists before he realized it. He didn’t fight much, and he’d never in his life hit a woman – but his brain didn’t seem to be aware of that at the moment.

  “And where have you been this week?” Emmie asked quietly. “What have you been doing?”

  Maryann’s face screwed into even uglier angles. “Fuck you, little bitch,” she snapped.

  “No, fuck you,” Walsh said, stepping into their bubble. Both women glanced at him in shock, just now noticing his presence, but it was Maryann he turned his coldest stare on. “Actually, go fuck yourself, ‘cause any man with eyes in his head’d be hard-pressed to fuck you.”

  “You – who – what–” she sputtered, drawing herself up to her deep-freeze tallest.

  “Em.” Walsh reached blindly behind him and felt Emmie’s small, rough hand slide into his grip. Calluses, from riding and mucking stalls, and working like a man. He closed his fingers tight around hers and headed for the door.

  “You bitch!” Maryann shouted at their backs.

  Walsh maneuvered Emmie in front of him, so he was a shield between her and her stepmother, so he could keep his hands on her shoulders as they walked back out to the truck.

  She was shaking, and when he held out a wordless hand for the keys, she gave them to him.

  ~*~

  “Can you pull over?” she asked when they drew up on Leroy’s Gas ‘n’ Grocery, and Walsh turned into the Dartmoor-preferred convenience store.

  Emmie hadn’t said anything, and he hadn’t pushed her. She was silent in a solid, tough-bitch way he admired. But he ached for her too, because when he stole glimpses at her eyes, he saw the awful hurt stacked up behind the pretty blue irises.

  She dug around in her purse, came out with her wallet, and popped the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  She didn’t want company, and so he nodded, watching her with an uneasy, possessive lurch in his gut as she went into the store and moved through the aisles. She wasn’t long, up at the counter a moment later, handing her purchases to the dead-eyed teenager behind the register. The glass was old and yellowing, and so he couldn’t tell what the little box was, but he recognized the big bottle of gin she set up on the counter.

  Her gaze was downcast, shoulders slumped as she walked out and came back. When she was in her seat, and the door was shut, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she reached into the paper bag, drew out the little box and set it on the console between them.

  “I didn’t know what kind you’d want,” she said, tapping it with a fingernail.

  They were condoms.

  ~*~

  There was no speaking until they pulled into Briar Hall, headlights catching tree trunks and fence boards as they bypassed the barn and headed up the hill to the house.

  “Wait,” Emmie said, sitting upright. “I was thinking my place.”

  “I’ve got vodka,” he explained. “I don’t drink gin, pet.”

  She sat back. “Oh.”

  The condoms were back in the bag with the gin, and she hugged the crumped paper sack to her chest as they walked up the sidewalk, through the humid dark to the front door. He’d left lights on, and the foyer was bright, made them both blink. Their footsteps rebounded hollowly across the hardwood; all the furniture was gone now, and it was like a museum, cold and full of echoes.

  Emmie halted in the center of the cavernous living room, the one that had been packed with overstuffed couches and chairs mere hours ago. She snorted. “At least I have a bed.”

  “I have a mattress.”

  “Ah, romantic.”

  She was utterly dead, dark circles smudged beneath her eyes, all the life drained out of her.

  “Didn’t think you were after romance, love,” he said quietly, turning so he stood directly before her.

  She wouldn’t look at him, just kept hugging the bag. “No,” she said, and it was an obvious lie. “Nothing about gin and condoms says ‘romance.’”

  “No,” he agreed.

  Her eyes finally came to him, and they were devastated.

  That was his undoing. He liked women, enjoyed their bodies, the feel and taste of them – but nothing about sex made his chest tight, had him feeling like crumpled up paper inside. Realness, genuine human emotion – that broke him open every time. In the club there were women who were nothing but a collection of holes. And then there was Maggie, and Ava, Holly, Mina, Nell, Bonita, and Jackie. There were the women who were people.

  And right now, there was Emmaline Johansen, and he’d be damned if she gave him her body to ease the sting of heartache.

  He’d be damned if he acted like his father.

  He stepped in close, reached to lay a hand against her face.

  She startled, just a little, but then her eyes fixed to his mouth and went soft. She thought he was going to kiss her. Wanted it.

  “Not yet, lovey,” he said, stroking the soft swell of her cheekbone with his thumb. She shivered like she liked the cool touch of his ring against her skin. “Not yet.”

  Fourteen

  She wanted to feel stupid, because technically, he’d rejected her. It didn’t feel like a rejection though. There was such heat in him – she’d felt it in the gentle stroke of his fingers on her face. This was just them press
ing pause. This was sitting in a numb fog and letting someone else be the industrious, responsible, in-charge one for a change.

  She sat on the granite-topped island in the kitchen, because there wasn’t a table, watching as Walsh pulled things from the fridge and slowly built up something that almost resembled a meal.

  “Mr. Walsh,” she said, smiling, taking a deep sip of gin from the bottle, “are you a jockey and a chef?”

  “Former jockey, remember?” he said, tossing the crumbled breakfast sausage into the skillet. “I got too big.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows and she decided she loved what a few shots of vodka did to his charm.

  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a big jockey. Look at Red Pollard. They put his ass in a movie.”

  He tilted his head in concession and dumped the roasted red peppers in next.

  Drinking made her talkative. “So where’d you learn to cook?”

  “My grannie.” He tossed in pepper and reached for the wooden spoon. “After she realized there’d be no granddaughters, she slapped my arse into an apron and dragged me into the kitchen.”

  She grinned and let her lips linger against the sticky mouth of the bottle, wondering what it would feel like to kiss him. “She was a good cook?”

  “As good a cook as any Englishwoman can be, I expect. If that means anything.” He shot her another grin that killed her. He had dimples; oh God, the dimples when he really smiled.

  “So what’s this gourmet concoction?”

  “Eggs and such.” He cracked the first one in and it hit the meat and peppers with a hiss.

  “So like a cowboy omelet.”

  “If you wanna call it that.”

  Emmie took another sip of gin while he worked and felt the liquor swirl lazily down into her stomach, sending her head on a slow trip.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that before,” she blurted, before she could catch herself. “My stepmother–”

  “Is a fucking bitch? Yeah, I picked up on that,” he said dryly.

  She smiled, warmed more by his support than by the booze. “She gambles,” she said. “She was at Harrah’s all this time she wasn’t at home, and then she comes home, and expects Dad to be sober.”