Forever Wild: A Camden Ranch Novel

by Jillian Neal

  Keeping a steady speed, he tried to think of a way to coax her into telling him about the shower. She stared out the windshield of his truck, but didn’t seem to be seeing much of anything.

  “Ernie’s stupid secretary got Mel this weird urn thing with Greek sex on it,” blurted out a moment later.

  “What?!” Luke fought not to double over laughing.

  “Yeah, you should have seen the look on Mel’s face when she opened it. It has some Greek god and goddess going at it.”

  “Bet your mama loved that.”

  “You know Mama. Somebody from Ernie’s office gave it to her so it’s the best shit ever.”

  “Is Greek sex different from the kind we have?”

  Indie giggled. “I doubt it’s changed all that much.”

  “Well, maybe they can keep condoms or sex toys in it or something,” Luke offered just to hear Indie laugh again. The sound always soothed his soul.

  He turned off on an old dirt road about fifteen minutes outside the city limits of Pleasant Glen and a smile finally spread the width of Indie’s beautiful face.

  “There’s my smile. Wish you’d tell me what else made my baby ornery enough to run away from the party.”

  “Did you know there’s some kind of feud thing going on between your parents and Ernie and Carolyn?”

  That question brought Luke up short. He knew all about the ongoing argument, a lesson in stupidity at its finest, but had no idea how that had come up at the bridal shower. He’d never lie to her, so he went on with the explanation.

  “Yeah, Ernie somehow got the idea in his fat head that my daddy wants to be the mayor of Pleasant Glen, which may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, since my dad is all cowboy all the time. Dad can’t figure out where he got the idea and gave up trying to convince him it wasn’t true.

  “Couple years ago, Mom and Dad were trying to get Brock to move back up here. For some reason, Ernie was trying to buy up more land in the Glen back then. Got no idea why, since he don’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, and wouldn’t know what to do with prairie land if it wrote him a manual. Anyway, Dad went to a town hall meetin’ and called the mayor out on some shady dealings with the state over inheritance tax on ranch land. Town rallied around Dad, of course, seein’ as how Ernie was trying to rake in cash by double taxing land that was handed down from one family member to the next.

  “Ernie’s asinine comeback was that Dad was only telling everyone about it because he wanted to be mayor. Dad swore up and down he had no intention of being mayor, but ever since then, Ernie’s had it in for all of the Camdens. I kinda wonder if there’s more to it that Dad ain’t telling me, but you know everything I’ve been told. Not that it matters. No one cares but Ernie. Natalie goaded it on, though. Girl never has backed down from a fight and never will. Said maybe she’d run for mayor, and Lord Almighty if that didn’t tie Ernie up in knots. Been givin’ us hell ever since.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “Sugar, when would I have told you? You ain’t been here. And I want you every second of every day, so the few times you’ve shown up at my door it hadn’t really occurred to me to keep you from stripping so we could talk about ranch land tax codes.”

  “Well, we could’ve talked about it afterwards.”

  Shaking his head, Luke slowed the truck as it climbed over the mounds of dirt and tree roots, headed towards the creek. “I oughta truss you up in my bed and then start talking taxes and see just how much you like it. By the time I got you untied, you’d have me scalped bald.”

  Giving him a dramatic eye roll, she sighed her concession. “All right, fine, different question. How about why does this stupid town keep electing his sorry ass?”

  “No one else wants the job. It’s a town full of farms and ranches, sugar. You know that. The rest of us are up to our ears in either corn or cattle, and we ain’t got neither time nor interest to up and run the city. He’s run unopposed every single time for the last twenty-five years. He doesn’t do jack shit, which is exactly how most cowboys prefer for the government to be, so why fix it if it ain’t broke has always been the logic.”

  His explanation seemed to surprise her. Surely, she hadn’t really believed that the town of Pleasant Glen just overlooked the fact that their mayor was a lying, cheating, greedy son of a bitch, and continued to elect him anyway. If there’d been any other choice, Ernie Perkins would’ve landed flat on his ass years ago.

  It took him the better part of the next hour to reach the far side of King’s Creek, a small watering hole off of the North Platte that couldn’t be reached unless you have a four-wheel drive truck or walk on four legs. Shallow enough to stay warm if there was sun, but deep enough to swim, kids from the Glen had been sneaking up there for decades to get away from town, school, their parents, or anyone that might be looking for them. An old rope still hung from a low hanging branch off a massive Cottonwood for the purposes of swinging out into the water on a hot summer day. The fire pit scarred with years’ worth of ashes was right where Luke had left it the last time he’d been the one to build a fire there.

  “This looks oddly familiar,” Indie chuckled as she took in their surroundings.

  “Thought about taking you to field out behind the football stadium, but that wouldn’t get us this.” He held up his cell phone displaying the, “No Signal” warning.

  “Perfect.” She opened her door and leapt out.

  “Not perfect,” Luke disagreed as he lowered the tailgate and spread two of the quilts he’d brought across the bed of the truck.

  “Why?” Indie turned from her trek to the edge of the water.

  Settling on his side on the makeshift pallet he’d created, he patted the vacant space beside his body. “You ain’t up here beside me, and you still haven’t told me everything that happened at Mel’s party thing.”

  With that grin that he swore could light a thousand distant suns, she crawled up beside him and aligned her body with his own. “Better?”

  “Much.” Brushing a tender kiss across her perfect lips, pink and plump and anxious for his love, he swept her hair behind her shoulders and secured a section over her ear. “Other than the talking that still needs to happen.”

  He pulled away to stare at the reflection of the water and rumpled prairie lands in her pine green eyes. The scars he’d never quite been able to erase were always hidden there just behind the glassy imagery. It crushed him, hurt him like no physical fist or bullet ever could. It killed him that he couldn’t erase her pain from existence. “You’re so damn beautiful, Indie. God … you just … take my breath away, baby.”

  Heat pooled in her cheeks, and she rolled her eyes. “Tucker clearly overheard my aunts this morning before he left and called you to tattle on them.”

  “That has nothing to do with what you do to me, laying here with me, having you all to myself, staring into your eyes … wanting you … needing you. Wishing I could make you forget everything but you and me. Put your hands on me, sugar. Just for a second because we’re gonna be out here for hours, but I want you to feel the effect you always have on me.”

  He watched her slender neck contract with a harsh swallow as she skated her hand down his chest and abs and encountered the rock hard bulge tenting the fly of his Wranglers. His grunt of pleasure sounded against the soft ripple of the water lapping at the grassy shoreline and the soft caw of gulls flying overhead.

  “That’s all you, darlin’. You make me ache,” he breathed over her lips before he mated their mouths and dipped his tongue to hers in a seductive dance of hunger. She melted into him, letting him ease just a little of what she’d endured. Her hand continued to explore his fierce erection. If she kept going he was going to embarrass himself. Helpless to resist her touch, he rocked his hips against her palm, drawing a moan from her mouth.

  “Just because you think I’m pretty doesn’t mean I do.” She pulled away a full minute later with the words that would always infuriate him.

  C
ocking his jaw to the side and trying to rid himself of his now painful boner, he huffed, “Other than turning you over my knee, which I ain’t in the mood to do right now, I don’t guess there’s anything I can do about you being damned and determined to be wrong.”

  “Luke, I know what you’re trying to do, okay? I know you love me. I love you, too, but none of that changes the fact that my mother is a ginormous bitch, or the fact that my aunts can’t stand me, or any of the other shit that came from the aftermath of Ernie and Carolyn’s affair. You can’t kiss it and make it better … as much as I wish you could.”

  “I know that, Indie. I know I can’t take away all of the hell your family puts you through. It kills me, okay? It infuriates me that you believe all of their crap and all of the lies they tell, because hurting you makes them feel powerful and helps them believe their own web of shit they spin to make themselves look better to people that couldn’t care less. I love you. You are the amazing, brilliant, beautiful woman that I have always loved and will always love, no matter what you decide to do in two weeks. But if I can bring you out here and kiss you and hold you and just numb the pain a little, that’s what I want to do. I want to try. I always want to try to kiss it and make it better. Is that so wrong?”

  “No.” She shook her head and blinked back the tears his words had welled in her eyes.

  “Then come here to me and hush.” He leaned in again and tried desperately to burn away the memories of her morning with the heat of his desperate need for her.

  He took his time with each kiss, memorizing the sweetness of her lips and her breath. He lingered with each caress of his hands. If he could just keep her right there, in his arms, tucked up in his truck bed, away from everyone else that was set to do her harm, life would be perfect.

  Though he tried to drown himself in her, his mind ran a steady line between contention and fury. How dare her mother and her aunts make Indie feel like she was less than? Jealousy was one answer. Carolyn Jenkins was good for nothing more than planning a party and making the world outside her home think she was perfect. She was nothing more than a façade herself. She cared nothing about what happened inside her home or inside her daughters’ heads. All that had ever mattered was the exterior. What people saw was infinitely more important than the way she made people feel.

  When Tucker had called that morning, he’d asked if Luke would drive out to Wyoming with him to look at a run-down ranch. He’d hinted that maybe Luke could get Indie to stay if they started ranching together in another state. That idea felt like he was running away, and that wasn’t something Luke had ever done. He couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure he was capable. There was far too much riding on his shoulders. More importantly, how dare Carolyn Jenkins push her children far enough to make them run?

  Shaking his head as Indie nuzzled against his chest, he refused to commit to anything even in his mind. There had to be a way to stay on his family’s land and have Indie. Maybe it was high time he had a talk with Carolyn and Ernie.

  “Earth to Luke?” Indie lifted her head. “Where’d you go?”

  “Sorry, baby. Just fretting over your day. You ask me something?” He guided her body between his thighs and reclined her back against his chest as they watched a turtle sun herself on a warm boulder on the other side of the creek. Reaching into the cooler behind his head, Luke retrieved two Dr. Peppers and handed one to Indie.

  “Yeah, I asked you what you were thinking about,” she chuckled.

  “How badly I want you to stay, and what I might could do to make sure that happens.”

  “Would you stop? Please. I told you I’d really consider it. Just shut up about it. Every freaking person in my life wants me to do something differently than the way I did it. I get it. I’m a screw up.”

  “Dammit, Indie, that ain’t at all what I said. I’m sorry I keep bringing it up. When I want something, I go after it with everything I am. That’s who I am. I’ve never wanted anything the way I want you. You know that. I’ve always been this way. I’ll shut up about it. I swear I’m not trying to pressure you again.” He mentally lambasted himself for repeating the mistakes he’d made in college.

  She stared up at him quizzically long enough to make him anxious. “Don’t you ever wonder what’s outside the Glen? I mean, don’t you want to see something besides ranch land on occasion? Don’t you ever want to vacation beyond the drive to Cheyenne for Frontier Days or Yellowstone? There’s a whole big world out there, ya know.”

  Shocked at those questions, he considered for a long moment. “Yeah, I know. I guess the honest answer to all of that is there are a lot of things I’d love to see or do, but I’m really only interested in doing them with you.” Certain he’d already broken the decree about not discussing her staying, he sank his teeth in his tongue preventing any more confessions, but she knew him far too well.

  “Keep going.”

  Terrified of saying something that might push her further away, he calculated his words carefully. “Tell me what you want to do and see so much.”

  “I don’t know. I just …. There’s just a lot of places outside of Pleasant Glen, Nebraska. Don’t you ever want to see the great clichés? You know, the Eiffel Tower at night, the Cali coast, Hawaii, the Statue of Liberty, the whole rest of the world, stuff like that.”

  Shifting so he could stare into her eyes, he went on with what he was certain she would call a chicken shit response. “You’re about to call me a pussy.”

  “I am not. Talk to me like we used to. You used to tell me everything. You want me to stay so bad, then talk.”

  Drawing a shaky breath, he gently traced her cheekbone with his thumb. “I’d love to see the entire world with you, sugar. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. I don’t always have to be on the ranch. I got a lot of family that’d pick up my slack if you want to go places like that sometimes. And I get that you want to see the world. It’s just to me, when I hold you, I feel like I never need anything else because I’m already holding the entire world in my arms.”

  “Wow.” Her chin trembled and tears pricked her eyes. She dammed them back with the fierce clench of her jaw. Luke continued to softly traced the soft angles of her face trying to ease its strain. “I’m such a bitch.”

  “What?” Of all the things he thought she might say, that wasn’t one of them.

  “I don’t deserve for anyone to love me like that. I really don’t. All I ever think of is myself. I keep wishing Camden Ranch sat in any other state, or even any other county. I’m sorry.”

  “Your family is completely nuts, Indie. No one blames you for not wanting to be around them, most certainly not me. Believe me, if I could leave the Glen, I’d follow you anywhere.”

  “Luke, that’s insane.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Me too. You’re not giving up your family’s land, and money, and generations of really hard work for me. Plus, the entire town — hell most of the state — depends on you. I’d make a terrible rancher’s wife anyway. I’m a mechanic. I always want to be a mechanic. It’s the only thing I’m any good at. That’s why this will only work for two weeks.”

  “It’s absolutely not the only thing you’re good at, and you don’t have to stop wrenching cars for me. Where’d you even come up with that notion? I’d never want you to quit doing what you love.”

  “This town does not need another mechanic, and even if Dad and I somehow made that work, the ranch is a long way from town and even further from the shop, and that’s when there’s not two feet of snow on the ground.”

  “I’d make it work. I’d figure something out. Just please know I’d never want you to quit your job for me.”

  She worried her lip with her teeth for a moment. “Know what I was thinking about last night after I left your house?”

  “I’m hoping it was something along the lines of if I weren’t so damn stubborn, I’d still be curled up nice, and warm, and safe, and most importantly nekkid in Luke’s arms, making him the happiest man in
Lincoln county.”

  Her laughter was infectious, and the sexy smirk she was sporting sent a flash fire of longing to his groin.

  “That is not what I was thinking.”

  “Should’a been.”

  Reaching over his waist, she pinched his ass again.

  “Dammit, woman, you ever think about anything but grabbing a’holt of my sexy ass? I’ll let you see it anytime you want. You don’t have to pinch me.”

  “Would you shut up?”

  “If your tongue is in my mouth.”

  “Luke Camden .…”

  “Fine, pull down them jeans I’ll put something even sweeter in my mouth.”

  “The next time I give you a blow job I could bite you.”

  Cringing involuntarily, he huffed, “Fine, tell me what you were thinking about and don’t say shit like that. Geez.”

  Giggling and looking entirely too proud or herself, she went on, “I was thinking about when you first asked me out that afternoon in World History.”

  Chuckling, Luke recalled the scene, down to the boots he was wearing that day. “I’d been trying to ask you out for weeks. Kept chickening out, afraid you’d say no. I overheard at lunch that Simpson was showing some film that took up the whole class, so I figured that was as good a chance as I was gonna get. Called myself a pussy repeatedly and told myself to either to man up or go cry in the truck alone.”

  “I almost did say no.”

  Another round of shock and a hearty dose of rejection worked through his musculature. “Why? We were already really good friends.”

  “Oh, I definitely wanted to be your girlfriend. I just knew I wasn’t the kind of girl the new quarterback of the football team asked out. But you always looked in my eyes instead of at my tits, and you seemed so afraid I wasn’t going to say yes so I took a chance. I was sure you were going to break my heart. I had nightmares for weeks about you joking with Tuck, and Cal Hodgson, and your brothers about me thinking you were serious, that you’d really want to date someone like me.”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t I want to date someone as smart and beautiful and feisty as hell as you, Indie? I swear I fell in love with you the first day of school when you were cursing that lock on your locker loud and proud, not caring at all who heard you.”