The Connaghers Series Boxed Set

by Joely Sue Burkhart

  Pouring the beaten eggs into the skillet, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “On what?”

  There was that cocky grin she loved so much. “On whether it’s good coffee or bad. Good, I can drink black. Or I can doctor it up and make it as good as dessert. I’m fine with either. Bad coffee, I have to load up with all the cream and sugar I can stir in, and let me tell you, the precinct goes through a ton of sugar and creamer packets. This coffee has a nice bite to it.”

  “It’s got chicory in it. I buy it from Cafe Du Monde. There’s creamer in the door of the fridge if you need to cut the bitterness a bit.”

  “Nah, this is fine. Great.”

  “Do you cook much?”

  “Not really. Never had the teaching.”

  Stirring the eggs, she waited a moment, hoping the silence would encourage him to keep talking. She wanted to crack open that hard soldier/cop exterior and find something delicate and tasty on the inside.

  “I was too busy in sports and helping with chores on the ranch to do much in the kitchen. Alli was always the one to help Mom.”

  “How many siblings do you have?”

  “Three sisters, all older: Jessica, Allison, and Rachel. Dad always joked they’d had to keep trying until they had a boy, but Jess was better on a horse than I ever was.”

  Mal split out the eggs, sprinkled with cheese, and grabbed the plate of biscuits to take over to the breakfast nook. Colby didn’t need her request to grab the two plates and bring them for her. What surprised her was that he then took her cup and his, filling both back up with coffee. She sat down, even more pleased when he glanced at her to see if she had anything else to add. “Just a splash of half and half.”

  He set her cup down but hesitated before sitting. “Should I put some pants on first?”

  She chuckled, arching a brow at him. “I like the scenery, unless you’re uncomfortable.”

  “Are you kidding?” He sat down and stared at the plate, practically drooling, but he didn’t pick up his fork until she did. “I’ve eaten an MRE at the bottom of a foxhole, sitting in a foot of rain and mud in forty degree temps. This is not uncomfortable.”

  She cracked open a biscuit and slathered on some orange marmalade. “I didn’t think Afghanistan got that cold.”

  He tucked into the eggs like he hadn’t eaten in days, without any challenges from her like he’d needed that first night. It actually made her throat tighten enough that she had to swallow the bite twice to make sure she didn’t choke. Usually her Mistress games were just that: games. Fun. Entertainment. She didn’t often actually get to help somebody. Let alone someone like Colby. She let her gaze wander across his pecs, reading the stories written into his skin.

  “It does at night, but we didn’t have many foxholes there. That was actually boot camp in San Diego.”

  She didn’t prompt him, hoping instead that he’d keep talking after a few bites. Her patience was rewarded when he reached for his third biscuit.

  “It was mostly dust and heat and miserable sun. During the day, you’d cut off your right arm for a bit of shade. When we had breaks, it was nothing to lie under the vehicles, both for shade and protection. I thought Texas was hot, but it wasn’t anything close. At least here, we have plants that have adapted to long summers and even droughts, but there, it’s just all rock and sand and dust, blowing, so dry and grim. They’ve been bombed for decades, first the Russians and then us, hunting for the elusive terrorist cells. So there’s barely anything left but rubble.”

  He’d already given her a lot to think about. The youngest with three sisters. That would explain his politeness and absolute horror at the thought of hurting her. He’d grown up on a ranch too, so he was probably used to doing chores, handling animals. Unless he’d joined the military to escape that life. “I can see you as a cowboy.”

  Actually, now that she’d said it, the image of him in cowboy boots and a big hat made her nipples tighten. His slow Texan drawl, all yes, ma’am, no ma’am, with nothing on but a hat and boots…

  “I never really took to farm life.” He looked away a moment, his jaw clenching. A bit of old guilt and shame. If his father had been excited to have a boy after three girls, and then his only son hadn’t been much of a rancher, maybe his dad had made him feel like shit for it. “I wasn’t good at it.”

  “Sugar, I can’t imagine anything physical and outdoorsy that you wouldn’t be good at.”

  He laughed but it was harsh and tight with suppressed rage and angst. “Tell that to Dad. He made it very clear that I was nothing but a disappointment.”

  Fighting down those old feelings of childhood failures, Colby pushed his plate away and picked up his coffee cup. He took a few calming sips. He’d left the ranch behind a long time ago, along with a dissatisfied father. Funny how those old arguments and feelings never actually went away. Mal, damn her, didn’t say anything, but watched his every move as diligently as he’d watch a drug dealer on the street approaching a bunch of school kids. Though her eyes gleamed with a soft, golden light that he’d never give to a criminal.

  She wanted those old stories of hurt and anger. She was a Mistress. She dealt in pain.

  She didn’t ask, so he didn’t feel obliged to share those ugly stories of his past. But she waited, and watched, and he couldn’t seem to wire his jaws shut.

  “Maybe it’s not like this anywhere else, but here in Texas, there’s a sort of hierarchy that fathers expect from their sons. First, the land and the work it needs. Second, Friday night football. Third, church and God, although some people claim it should be higher in the list, most people I know always knock it down at least a few notches. Most people have family in there somewhere, and eventually country. I’ve known a few guys who’d put their truck at the top of the list.”

  Mal nodded and settled back in her chair with her cup, quietly sipping. “That’s a pretty good list.”

  “It wasn’t my list.” Even now, his voice sharpened, defiant and hurt that nobody cared more about him than a bunch of cow shit and dust. Adult Colby knew that wasn’t true, but the kid buried deep inside him still hurt. “Even as a kid, I failed the most basic tasks Dad expected of me.”

  He had to pause a moment to keep the old rage contained. He took another sip and almost choked because his throat was too tight and raw to swallow.

  “It was the same for me. I think it’s the same for all kids. I think we all have a moment where we fail to meet our parents’ expectations and suddenly realize that we’re different, unique, and can’t ever follow some parental guidebook.”

  “What was it for you?” He didn’t expect her to answer, but something deep inside of him craved a bit of her soul. Something she hadn’t told anyone else, before he cut open his old wounds for her.

  A sad smile twisted her lips and she turned to look out the window. “Mama gave up on me in the kitchen at an early age. I can only do the most basic recipes. Meanwhile, she’s baking twelve pies for church and opening her own restaurant. She needed my help, but I couldn’t keep up. I made more mistakes, that made more work for her. Eventually she hired someone to help her and replaced me entirely.”

  Gave up. Yeah, that’s exactly what Dad did to me too.

  “Plus she never liked my taste in men.” Mal glanced over at him, a teasing lilt in her voice that didn’t match the sadness in her eyes. “Though I got that taste from her.”

  He could feel her gaze gliding over his chest like hot embers smoking into his skin. “Ex-soldiers with tats?”

  “White men,” Mal clarified. “My daddy was white.”

  “Oh. I guess I never really thought about it.” Which was true. When he looked at Mal, he saw a beautiful woman with a kind of power that drew him like a moth to a flame. Even if he ended up crispy, he couldn’t stay away. Didn’t want to stay away.

  She laughed. “Which is totally a white man thing to say. I’m sure the man who fathered me probably thought the very same thing, right before he went back to his high-class family and blonde g
irlfriend. I only met him once. He wasn’t ever part of my life and refused to acknowledge me publicly as his daughter. That’s fine. His payoff funded Mama’s first restaurant and that’s all we ever needed after that.”

  It was too early for him to start thinking long-term. Two nights, and one of them sleeping only, sure didn’t count for much. But the thought that her mother might frown on him from the get-go put him on high alert. “I wouldn’t ever do that to you. Or anyone, for that matter.”

  “I know.” She smiled and reached over to pat his thigh. “I wouldn’t let you.”

  The firm stroke of her fingers took away some of the sting to his ego. His brain wanted to object that he’d do what he damn well pleased, but she’d already shown him another way. A way that had his dick tied up in a leash that only she could guide.

  “Surely your daddy wasn’t worse than mine. At least yours stayed around.”

  He saw what she’d done there, but with her hand on his thigh, he couldn’t find it in himself to complain. Even if he flopped around a bit like a catfish on a line. She’d baited and hooked him good. “I let him down, not the other way around. Over and over.” A dam rose up in his throat, old walls he’d built a long time ago to protect himself. She didn’t push for details, but gently kneaded his quadriceps, a silent encouragement with infinite patience. Old memories swirled in those flood waters, a tidal wave slowly building pressure behind the dam in his mind. He tried to hold on, to push those words back, but knowing that Mal wanted them made it impossible to deny her.

  The dam crumbled to dust in his mind and he let out a long, heavy sigh. “The most important thing on a cattle ranch is the herd. You have to protect the herd at all cost. Especially the calves. If the calves die, that’s future profits dying, especially if it’s a heifer that could have had a dozen babies herself. Losses are part of the game, but we survived by minimizing those losses as much as possible.

  “One of my earliest memories is riding a horse. Dad started us early and expected a full day’s work from all of us. We didn’t ride around in a ring for kicks and giggles, or go off to shows. We got up at dawn and rode out to the pastures. Checking fence, counting head, doctoring, in rain, drought, or even snow. Whatever it took. The herd came first.”

  “How old were you when you started riding out like that?”

  “I’m not really sure. Five or so. I started out riding with Dad, and then by eight or nine I had my own route to take every day.”

  “On a full-sized horse?”

  “We didn’t keep Shetland ponies, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ve been on a horse once as an adult and I was terrified. A lot of it for me was the lack of control. Even with a tight grip on the reins, there really wasn’t anything I could do to stop that beast if it decided to run off or buck or simply stop and graze. And it was big. I didn’t like being that far off the ground with so little…”

  “Control,” he finished, repeating the word for her. Yeah, he could see Mal having a problem with situations like that. “Let me guess—you have a manual transmission in your car too.”

  She tipped her chin up. “Wouldn’t have it any other way. You don’t get to be the Mistress of Dallas by letting anything—man or machine or animal—fall to chance.”

  “I wasn’t scared of falling off, or even riding. In the beginning, I loved being out on the range with Dad. We had some of the best talks on those rides.” If he closed his eyes, he could still hear the creak of the saddles and smell the hot sweat of his horse.

  “So what changed?”

  He took another drink of coffee, but the liquid didn’t want to slide down his throat, so he didn’t risk another. “Late one day, we came across a cow that’d fallen down in a ditch and couldn’t get up. It wasn’t that deep, but her head was downhill and she just couldn’t get herself up. She died, but managed to give birth to her calf first. The little heifer was still wet, so she hadn’t been born for long. Of course it was getting pretty late and we were still a good hour ride from home. Dad meant for us to take over the ranch for him, so he was real good about talking things through and explaining his reasons for everything. We could have carried that calf home and bottle fed it, but time was of the essence. She needed to be warm and safe and fed, and a hard bumpy ride might be enough to push her into shock and death. Plus we didn’t have a lot of time on the ranch to bottle feed a calf. We already did chores from dark in the morning until after dark at night and never had a shortage of things that needed doing.

  “On the other hand, we’d just passed a smaller herd and found a yearling heifer with a stillborn calf. If we could get her to adopt the orphan, it’d be the best world for both of them.”

  “Seems reasonable,” Mal said. “What happened?”

  “He left me to guard the new baby and rode off to go rope and haul up that mama. He figured he’d be an hour finding her and dragging her back up to us. It ended up taking him three, because the cows had moved off further than he’d planned.”

  “So it was dark.”

  Colby nodded. “Very dark. Moonless night, I remember that. I had my horse for company but nothing else. Dad always had a shotgun in case we ran into any trouble, but he didn’t think to leave it with me. I probably wouldn’t have used it anyway.”

  “You didn’t know how to shoot it?”

  “Oh, I did. If we weren’t riding and working, we were learning how to shoot and fish and hunt.” Her brow wrinkled as she tried to figure out what had gone so terribly wrong with his story. “I fell asleep.” His fingers ached, and he made himself let go of the coffee cup before he busted it. “We’d been up since four and worked all day. I sat down for fifteen minutes and I was out like a light. I didn’t wake up until I heard hoof beats as Dad rode back to me, but it was too late.”

  Mal squeezed his thigh gently. “What happened?”

  “A coyote, maybe more than one. It’d dragged that baby off and tore her apart not even twenty feet away and I’d slept through it all. Maybe she didn’t put up much of a fight being a newborn calf, but I still to this day can’t believe I didn’t hear a thing. Not a bleat, a yip, a fight as they cleaned up the scraps. Nothing.” All these years later, he still felt a shudder ripple across his shoulders. The sinking pit of shame in his belly. The horror. “Dad didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. The look on his face was enough.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Six. Didn’t matter, though. I knew my job and I didn’t do it.”

  “What could a child have done against a pack of coyotes? You’re lucky you weren’t hurt. You didn’t even have a gun.”

  “Coyotes don’t mess with people much. I’d have to be injured and sick myself before even a pack of them would be tempted to come after me. If I’d stayed awake, I could have chased them off with a few rocks. I could have seen what was going on and brought my horse back up so shield us. She’d wondered off to graze and I hadn’t noticed that, either. I’m lucky she didn’t take off for the hills, because then I’d have had to ride all the way home behind Dad on top of everything else.”

  Mal leaned closer, sharing the heat of her body against him. He closed his eyes, breathing in her scent, her presence. She didn’t have to say anything to make him feel better.

  “It wasn’t ever the same after that,” he whispered. “Dad never could forget that I’d disappointed him, and I never could forget that I’d fallen asleep on the job. I’ve carried that with me all these years, but especially into my tours in Afghanistan. Even when it wasn’t my turn to stand watch, I often stayed awake, unable to sleep, terrified to sleep. Someone might die on my watch if I did. Someone did die. Henderson. Not on my watch, but right beside me. A land mine. Knocked my entire squad flat, but only he died. Somehow I always thought it should have been me, not him. Maybe I’d unconsciously pushed him off track, pushed him into harm’s way, made him walk into the mine that had my name on it, not his.”

  “Is that why you haven’t been sleeping or eating much since you got home?”
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  “Maybe. Partly.”

  She kissed his shoulder, a simple brush of her lips that made his knees quiver enough that he was thankful he was sitting down. “You know that if you’re home sleeping in your bed that it’s not your fault if Elias gets shot.”

  “It is if I’m supposed to be there for my partner and I’m not.”

  “You’re human, Colby, not a super hero with infinite powers. You have to sleep. You have to eat. You have to take care of yourself. Or you’re no good to anyone, least of all on such a dangerous job.”

  “My head knows that, but…” He shook his head, as if he could get rid of the thoughts by rattling them loose. “I’d never forgive myself if something happened to Elias on my watch.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be a cop.”

  He jerked with surprise and would have leaped to his feet without the warm press of her body against his.

  “Hear me out. If you can’t accept the risk that either you or your partner might be injured or, God forbid, killed in the line of duty, through no fault of your own, then you shouldn’t be a cop. You shouldn’t have that risk hanging over your head day in and day out. It’ll kill you in the end.”

  “Better me than him.”

  Her voice sharpened. “So you have a death wish, now?”

  “No. But he’s my partner. He’s got a girlfriend. A life.”

  “And what do you have?”

  “Nothing!” The rage in his voice shook him. Wide eyed, he stared at her, shocked by the depth of his emotion and despair. His jealousy. All without even noticing it.

  “You’ve been punishing yourself all this time. Not eating. Not sleeping. Not fucking. Holding yourself to impossible standards, making yourself responsible for everything and everyone, with no hope of upholding those steep expectations forever. You can’t do it any longer.”