“What did you mean by for once?” She barely raised her voice. If he’d gone back to the kitchen, living room, or bedroom he wouldn’t have heard her. But sure enough, she heard a huff of laughter through the door.
Yup. Her knight in shining armor was still watching out for her from a close distance.
“I know it’s been a while, Clarabelle, but I remember you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. The words seemed strangely sweet and oddly meaningful in the quiet of her apartment with just the sounds of her light splashing between them.
“No one calls me that anymore,” she said.
There was another pause and in her mind’s eye she saw that sexy smirk. “Maybe not to your face.”
She laughed at that. He was probably right. Not much changed around here. People tended to be set in their ways. If they’d called her Clarabelle as a little girl then they were probably still calling her Clarabelle.
Most just knew better than to call her that to her face.
Not that it was a mean nickname, by any means. It could have been worse. But the nickname brought with it so many memories of hopes and dreams and a future that would never come to pass.
She’d watched a performance of The Nutcracker on PBS when she was five years old and it had been love at first sight. Since Clara was the name of the lead role and her name was so very close, she’d insisted that everyone call her Clara instead of Claire. Of course, her mother being her mother, had patted her on the head and said, “Well, okay then, Clarabelle.”
And Clarabelle had been born—a nod to Clara from The Nutcracker but with her mother’s typical flair.
“You haven’t answered my question,” she said. “What did you mean when you said ‘for once?’”
There was a brief pause before he spoke. “Do you remember that time you were put in charge of the school dance? Everyone offered to help but you did it all on your own.”
She smiled at the junior high memory. “What’s your point?”
Laughter laced his voice. “Just enjoy your bath, Clarabelle.”
She grinned up at the ceiling, a ridiculous giddiness making her smile so wide it pained her cheeks. When the water started to cool and her toes turned to prunes, she finally got herself out of the bath and into a thick terrycloth robe. She glanced at her reflection—her brown wavy hair was still pulled up in the loose bun she wore for waiting tables, her face was makeupless and the bulky robe covered her completely from head to toe.
There was nothing even remotely sexy about this getup. Yet she still found herself nervous as she opened the door to the hallway, as if she was revealing herself in some way.
She supposed it wasn’t every day some man was in her apartment making himself at home while she bathed.
He was in the kitchen by the time she’d changed into yoga pants and her favorite cozy sweater. He handed her a cup of tea. “Can I make you some food? How about soup?”
She tilted her head to the side, studying this surprisingly sweet man. When they were teenagers, he was the class rebel. Oh, he was never mean or a bully, but he’d been the one to skip classes and hang out with the rough crowd.
Who knew big, bad Cole Deckland had a nurturing side?
“I’m good, thanks.” She held up the tea. “You didn’t have to do this, any of this, but I appreciate it.” She drew a deep breath, not wanting to sound rude but hating the thought of being an imposition. “I’m sure my mom will get here soon enough. And I’m fine, I promise. You really don’t need to worry about me.”
He murmured something that sounded like he was agreeing with her as he gently steered her and her tea back to her room.
“I hope I didn’t totally ruin your plans for the night.” It suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea where he’d been heading or why. There was every chance he could have been running off to meet up with that stuck-up blonde from earlier in the day.
She found herself scowling down into her teacup, inexplicably angry at the thought. He deserved better than a fly-by-night tourist. She might not have known it earlier today but now, he’d proven himself. He’d gone above and beyond.
She lifted her head to say just that—he’d done more than enough—but her words stalled in her throat as she realized that he’d steered her to the bed and was getting her all set up. He placed a glass of water on the bedside table along with her tea and a small box of cookies he must have scared up in the back of her pantry. He shrugged when she spotted them. “Just in case you need a snack.” His self-conscious expression faded into a scowl. “You really need to go grocery shopping. That pantry isn’t fit for a college student.”
She let out a snort that was half laugh and half disbelief. “You sounded exactly like Mrs. Murphy just then.”
She watched as the pieces clicked and he clearly remembered their freshman year math teacher. He clapped a hand over his heart. “Now that’s just cruel.”
Her smirk mirrored his. “But true.” She sighed as she allowed him to maneuver her into the bed as if she was an invalid. She wasn’t sick, just tired. And maybe she’d had a bit of a scare. She found herself yawning as he pulled the covers over her. “I wish I could tell the girls about this.”
Oh shoot. Had that actually come out of her mouth?
He smiled down at her and she realized she had never felt cozier or more content in her life.
Man, she needed to take more baths.
“The girls?” His eyes held a question and even though she knew she’d regret it, she explained.
“My friends back in high school. They’d never believe that I was saved by the Cole Deckland.”
His soft chuckle made her warm all over in a way not even the tea or bath could accomplish. “The Cole Deckland, huh?”
“Mmhmm.” She nodded, a smile spreading across her face as she let herself relax into the quiet lull of his voice, and the comforter, and the warm bed. “Every girl wanted to date you, you had to have known that.” Her eyes had slid shut at some point and just now it didn’t seem crucial to try and open them to see his expression. In fact, nothing seemed terribly crucial at the moment.
“Even you?” he asked.
That low voice was kind and gruff and so enticingly warm. “Mmm,” she said. With one last yawn, she added, “I wish I could tell them that Cole Deckland was my own personal hero.”
Chapter Six
Cole scowled down at the shovel in his hands as he mucked out a stall. My own personal hero. He might as well have had that phrase tattooed on his forehead it was so ingrained in his mind. He hadn’t stopped thinking about it that whole night—and he had stayed there all night.
Like a gentleman, he’d taken the couch, getting up every now and again to make sure Claire was doing all right. He’d thought to leave when her mom came over but Ruby hadn’t arrived until the next morning.
If the older woman had been surprised to see him there, she hadn’t let on. Cheerful and outgoing as ever, she asked after his family as he’d made his way out of there, walking out of the bar and getting back on his bike in some pathetic walk of shame.
Claire had still been asleep and he hadn’t wanted to wake her. She needed her rest after a scare like that, and most likely after having come dangerously close to hypothermia.
The thought chilled him to the bone as surely as if he’d been stranded in the cold himself. What if he hadn’t come along when he had? What if he’d been too late?
He pictured her in his arms, shivering and pale. Her brilliant eyes had seemed dazed and her cheeks were a frightening shade of white. He’d seen the faint traces of blue around her lips and he’d thought his heart was going to jump right out his chest in his panic.
He still wasn’t sure he’d made the right call letting her stay in her apartment. Maybe he should have borrowed someone’s car and taken her to the clinic. It had been twenty-four hours and he hadn’t heard from her—not that he’d expected to, really, but he couldn’t help but worry.
Should he check on
her? Was that overstepping?
Had he already overstepped by sleeping over at her place uninvited?
He remembered the look on her face when she’d found him making her a cup of tea. His lips tugged up in a grin at the memory. One would have thought she’d discovered him wearing a tutu and doing a tap dance by her expression.
Was it really so hard for her to grasp that someone might want to take care of her for a change? She’d asked him what he’d meant by that and he hadn’t even known where to begin. He’d chosen a memory at random, but really he could have pointed to any number of facets in her life.
Lulu was a small town in every sense of the word. Everyone knew everyone. There were few secrets and there were some who lived for gossip. He didn’t count himself among those who thrived on rumors but some gossip was impossible to ignore.
Like the fact that little Clarabelle had made it big. Or that she’d bought her mother a house, or that she’d bought out the bar to save it from bankruptcy. Or that she’d set up a line of credit at the grocery store under her mother’s name. The list went on and on.
Clearly Claire was a caretaker. She was the responsible one, the one who everyone else leaned on.
Just like Dax.
A guilty knot had him shoveling with more force than absolutely necessary.
“Working hard there, big brother.” A familiar drawl had him pausing in his chores and glancing up. Dax leaned in the doorway as if he’d been summoned by Cole’s churning emotions. There were so many things he wished he could say to his younger brother but for the life of him, he didn’t know where to begin, or how.
I’m sorry would be a good start. His conscience pricked at him. Sorry for what, though? The list was too long to delve into now. Even if he could have worked up the courage for that kind of conversation, Alice’s quick steps coming up behind Dax had him clamping his mouth shut.
Her cute pixie features were set in a firm look, one he knew well—she’d always been a stubborn kid. She patted Dax’s arm as she moved around him to enter the barn. “Where’s James? He should be here for this?”
Cole shot Dax a questioning look but he just shrugged. He was sporting a hunting cap and chewing on a piece of hay and he looked so much like their father, Cole had to shake his head to keep from staring.
Alice moved to stand between them, leaning against a post with her arms folded. Her expression was unexpectedly serious. That was when he realized that he recognized this look, but it wasn’t the same at all. This wasn’t a little kid’s temper tantrum waiting to happen, this was a grown woman with an agenda.
James walked in then and paused next to Dax in the doorway. He looked at Cole with raised brows and Cole gave James the same shrug Dax had given him. It seemed that the three of them were all clueless as to what this little family meeting was about, though they could probably all guess.
None of them had touched the subject of the possible sale the day before. It was almost as if they’d all needed some time to process. But then, they were all Decklands, he supposed they’d all inherited that tendency to withdraw when emotions grew too strong.
The difference between him and his siblings was that he tended to run, whereas they withdrew but always came back. They stepped up. Always.
“What’s the matter with you?” Alice asked.
His head snapped up and he found his sweetheart of a little sister scowling at him, clearly annoyed that whatever was the matter with him was interfering with her meeting. He shook his head and straightened, showing that he was paying attention. “Nothing,” he said. “Go on, why did you want to talk with us?”
He watched as she took a deep breath, her gaze moving over her brothers and James. “I have an idea for how this place could make money.”
Cole’s eyes widened and he turned toward his brother but Dax’s stern expression gave nothing away. James looked as laid back as ever, his face totally unreadable.
Cole supposed he was the only one with a pulse in this room so he spoke up. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, sis. What’s the plan?”
He saw a flicker of a smile on her lips before she grew serious again. He decided then and there that he’d let Dax have too much of an influence on her. If he was going to come back into his siblings’ lives, he was going to make certain his little sister didn’t turn into a stick in the mud like Dax. She was way too spirited for that.
Her next words interrupted his train of thought.
“I think we should turn this place into a guest ranch.”
The silence was deafening. He was almost afraid to look in Dax’s direction because he was fairly certain he knew how that suggestion would go over with his traditional cowboy of a brother.
“No.” Dax’s voice was low and quiet as ever but his tone was resolute.
Cole caught Alice’s flinch before he finally turned to see Dax’s expression.
Yup. Unreadable. Dax started to turn as if that was the end of the conversation and he was going to go back to whatever task he’d been at before Alice had summoned him.
He saw Alice’s stern mask slip a bit and his heart went out to her. For a second he saw his sweet, sensitive little sister standing there and she looked crushed by the instant rejection.
“Wait.” Cole finally spoke up.
Dax paused and James raised an eyebrow at his too-loud command. He cleared his throat, nervous and irritable at being nervous. This was his home too, darn it. And Alice’s. Yes, he might not have been the best leader when he’d been here and he might have let them all down when he’d run away from this place and its responsibilities. But he was here now and he aimed to be the kind of brother they deserved. Even if that meant making Dax angry.
Straightening to his full height, he glared at his brother. “Hear her out.”
He caught Alice’s grateful look and the flicker of surprise on James’s face, there and gone so fast he almost missed it.
Dax turned slowly, meeting his gaze with an intimidating stare. Yup, just like Dad. Dax was made of the same stern stuff, but Cole knew that, just like their father, Dax had a good heart. A kind heart. And he wouldn’t intentionally hurt their sister.
No matter how angry he might be with Cole, they had that in common, at least.
So he used that. He didn’t need to challenge his brother—heck, he had no intention of doing that. Not this time. Letting some of the tension ease out of his posture, he uncrossed his arms and thrust them into his pockets. He gave Dax a small smile. “Sounds like Alice has given this some thought. We should at least hear her out, right?”
He heard Alice let out a little sigh of relief next to him as the atmosphere in the barn lightened by several noticeable notches.
Dax relented with a nod, turning his gaze back to Alice. Still serious, but no longer so grim, he said, “All right, Alice. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
Alice’s face brightened and heck if she didn’t look like their mama. He wondered if Dax saw it too or if he was too engrossed in being angry with him to see anything at all.
“Okay,” Alice said, pacing around like it was a conference room and not a dirty barn filled with horses vying for their attention. “I’ve been doing some research and I think we could make some serious money if we used this place for events.”
She spun to face Dax before he could interrupt. “I’m not saying we have to halt the ranching operation, by any means. This would just be an alternative source of income.” Her excitement started to overtake her professional demeanor and she gave Dax a look that could only be called pleading. “Think of it as diversifying our interests.”
Dax’s brows shot up and he looked at Cole over her shoulder. He knew exactly what Dax was thinking because he had the same thought. When had little Alice learned phrases like diversifying interests?
James was the only one who didn’t seem shocked, Cole noticed. But then he and Alice had always been good friends and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d taken him into her confidence.
“I k
now you can’t make a decision right away,” she continued, talking solely to Dax. Cole knew he shouldn’t be irritated, Dax had become the de facto leader of this place, but it still stung that his opinion was clearly not as highly regarded.
He shoved that to the side. Dax had been running this operation. He deserved to have more of a say in business matters. If he was going to come back for good, he had to come to terms with that or they would go right back to squabbling and bickering and no one would be happy about his return, least of all him.
So, he kept his mouth shut and watched his younger siblings as they faced off, emotions clearly running high on both sides even though they expressed it in different ways. Dax kept it all inside, but his eyes and the tightness around his mouth were a dead giveaway.
Alice clasped her hands together in front of her chest, her expression filled with every ounce of hope and desperation she was feeling. “Just promise me you’ll take a look at the research before you decide.”
Dax remained quiet and Alice bit her lip. She glanced in James’s direction for a second before turning back to Dax. “I talked to Chad up at the Hillshire ranch and it’s incredible what opening their property up to guests has done for them. If you talk to him—”
“You talked to Chad Murphy about this?” James interrupted.
Dax and Cole both turned to see him glowering at Alice and for a moment the fact that James was expressing any emotion distracted Cole from the conversation at hand.
She rolled her eyes. “Just about business. He’s gone through this process, he knows all about it.”
“Alice, their ranch is up by the ski resorts,” Dax said. “It makes sense that they’d cater to the tourists and the celebrities up there.” He didn’t continue but he didn’t have to. They all knew that Lulu was hardly a tourist destination. Tourists drove through, sure, but they didn’t stick around.
“That’s exactly what makes us special,” Alice said, her face brightening again, her eyes dancing with excitement. “All those places are famous and notoriously expensive. We would have an entirely different experience to offer. Ours would be a place totally off the radar, catering to people and companies that wanted to be off the grid. Our guests could lay low here without fear of running into paparazzi or other people from their worlds.”
Dancing Queens & Biker Kings: Sweet & Rugged in Montana Page 5