by Alison Kent
“I hate your pantyhose.”
“So you’ve said,” she replied, and swallowed the itch of his words.
He reached over, placed his hand on her thigh, slid it higher. “You probably wouldn’t be so uptight if you ditched them. Wore stockings and garters instead.”
“You think I’m uptight?” she asked, ignoring the second part of his supposition. Trying, too, to ignore his touch and having a hell of a hard time.
“It’s probably not you as much as the job,” he said, but he left his hand where it was.
She picked it up and moved it for him. “Is this because I wouldn’t release the ranch’s money for your house?”
“It would’ve been easier than going through all this legal shit.”
“No, it would’ve been an unacceptable risk.” Right. Did she really expect him to understand why that was a bad thing? “But then I don’t think you’d know a risk if it reached up and took a bite out of your ass.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Then maybe you’re the one who needs to get a whiff of the messes you get yourself into on a regular basis. And I’m not just talking about the livestock.”
“Do I smell like cow shit?” he asked, lifting an arm to sniff his pit.
Could one be convicted for throttling a man so purposefully obtuse? “Not today.”
“But sometimes?”
Wait. He was serious? “It’s not a big deal, Casper. Boone smells the same way. I imagine Dax does, too, though I don’t get that close to him.”
“Well, hell.”
That had her smiling, his concern that he carried his livelihood with him in such a distasteful way. “Hey, it was your choice to take up ranching. You should’ve known the hazards of the job.”
“Like pantyhose and banking.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like pantyhose and banking.”
He was quiet for a minute, pensive even, checking the traffic. “I don’t know that I necessarily ever wanted to ranch. I mean, I didn’t have a lot of choice in high school. At least not if I wanted to keep hanging with the boys. But Dax and Boone were the ones who kept it up after we all left Crow Hill. I rodeoed.”
Because something in his nature, or in what passed for his nurture, drove him to be reckless, to take those risks he denied. To be arrogant and mean and dangerous…And yet being here with him now, it was hard to see any of those things.
Sure, someone passing on his left and glancing over might drop back for fear of being mowed down, the picture of which brought a private smile to her face. She supposed he might intimidate people who didn’t know him. Maybe even some who did.
The way his T-shirt fit his arms and chest left no doubt as to his strength, and with the brim of his battered hat pulled bad-guy low, his eyes hidden behind the dark aviators, and the stubble on his face speaking to his don’t-give-a-damn…She could see it.
But the rest, the things she knew, the way that stubble felt against her inner thighs, her labia, the things she saw in his eyes when he looked up at her from between her legs…
“Why rodeo?” she asked, her voice catching on the arousal that was bringing her nipples to peaks. “Did you go to the big one in Houston while living there?”
“Hell no. That cost money. We didn’t have any more then than we did after moving here.” He thought a minute, huffed, then added, “Guess Suzanne hadn’t yet discovered she’d been sitting on the rent all that time. Or maybe it took Leroy leaving for her to realize she didn’t have any marketable skills.”
Leroy. That was the first time she’d heard him speak his father’s name. “She worked as a waitress, right? Before she…Before the other?”
“Before she starting whoring?”
She gave a quick nod. It was hard to hear him talk about this part of his past. How difficult it must’ve been for him to have lived it.
She wondered how old he’d been when he’d discovered what she was doing. If he’d been twelve when they moved to Crow Hill, and his father had left soon after…At least he hadn’t been too young to know the meaning of the gossip and the disapproving looks. And at least he’d had the boys at his back by then.
“Waitresses don’t even get minimum wage. At least that’s how it was then. Tips make ’em or break ’em. And being broke was pretty much how we stayed. Seems to be the one lesson she taught me well,” he said, the accompanying snort derisive. “Why make your own money when there’ll always be someone offering a handout?”
She closed her eyes, opened them again after she’d subdued the scream clawing at her chest. “Do you think that’s what this is? That I’m offering you a handout? Because that’s not—”
“Relax, Faith. If I thought this was a handout, I wouldn’t be giving up half a day to drive us to Luling,” he said, which didn’t do much to salve her. “Don’t people do these things by fax or email or something?”
“Some things, yes. This particular thing, no. Sorry. It shouldn’t take long to go through the paperwork, and since you have no concept of the speed limit, we should be back for you to get dirty and smelly in no time.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
She laughed. “You make it so easy, you know.”
“What? To make me self-conscious?”
“Seriously? You’re not, are you?”
“I will be now.”
“Well, don’t be. It’s in your clothes. It’s not in your skin. Your skin smells like…” God, could she even put it into words? The way he smelled and how it made her think of only good things? “Like fresh air. And sunshine. And…the earth, I guess.”
“Huh. I was hoping it made you think of sex.”
Her nipples pebbled again, but her banking armor of blouse and blazer hid her reaction. “If we’re having sex, then I suppose it does.”
“What about now?”
“I told you. You smell fine.”
“Why don’t you lean over here and make sure?”
“Casper—”
“Right here,” he said, tapping the side of his neck.
“I can’t reach you,” she said, her stomach tumbling, her heart flipping, her throat tightening around the rest of her words.
He reached a hand to her hip and freed her seat belt. “Now you can.”
“And if you drive off the road and I go through the windshield?”
“Oh, Faith of little faith.”
She rolled her eyes at that, but couldn’t help the grin forming at the corners of her mouth. Shifting in her seat, she leaned toward him, her nose just above the collar of his yoked western shirt.
“You smell fine,” she said, sliding back to where she’d been sitting.
“What about right here?” he asked, and she looked over to see him popping open the top two mother-of-pearl buttons.
She stopped in the process of buckling her seat belt, thinking it was her fault the man got away with half of what he did. But that didn’t stop her from bending toward his chest, her nose in the hollow of his throat.
She breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and filled herself with him again. Horses and hay and clean sweat and Ivory soap and sex. That, most of all, because smelling him took her there, to her bed, his bed, the ranch kitchen, the restroom in the Hellcat Saloon.
Then she sat back, saying nothing until he asked, “Well?”
“Yeah. You smell like sex.”
It was the wrong thing to say, of course, because he jammed his foot on the accelerator, sending the truck screaming down the road. She was left speechless and breathless and waiting, her pulse in her throat nearly strangling her.
Left, too, with nothing else to say, and the realization that she didn’t have it in her to stop him. Not in this, not in anything he did. He would have his way. Because that’s what reckless people did. Lived in the moment, lived for the thrill. Never thinking consequences would catch up with them.
He didn’t bother with a blinker, or with slowing for the rest area’s posted speed limit, tearing into the
empty parking lot and reaching for her as he braked. Shifting into park with his left hand as he gathered her hair at her nape in his right. Pulling her to him without so much as a by-your-leave.
He kissed her then, met her halfway between the seats, and slammed his mouth against hers. He pushed hard with his lips, slanting first one way then the other, finally using his tongue to deepen the contact, groaning when she cupped his face in her palms.
He was warm, the stubble of his beard against her wrists like a match to a striking strip, setting her on fire. Her breasts, her belly, the small of her back, her feet and her knees and her shoulders. She felt him everywhere. Wanted him everywhere.
It was a needy kiss, desperate with ignited lust, wild with unexpected longing. And all she’d done was tell him he smelled like sex. Not the act, or the scents that rose from slick bodies and sheets, but her fantasy. She’d never felt the things he made her feel.
He slid his tongue the length of hers, toyed with hers, played and mated and wound up with hers. His hunger burned her. He was hot to the touch, his face near to blistering. She blindly sought out the controls on the dash and turned the a/c to high.
Casper laughed, the sound low and throaty, a vibration in her mouth. She thought he’d pull away then, but he toned the kiss down, mumbling against her as he caught at her lips and nipped her, held her with both his mouth and his hand. She held him, too, his face, his thigh, her hand squeezing, massaging, his muscles jumping into her touch.
It was when he reached for her, urged her into his crotch, wrapped her fingers around the bulge of his cock straining there, that she knew they had to stop. This couldn’t happen, she told herself, measuring him, his girth, his urgency. Not here, not now, she added, still holding him, squeezing him. Squeezing her pussy, too, moisture seeping to dampen her panties.
All of this was wrong, what they were doing, what she was feeling. He tempted her in ways she didn’t know how to resist, and she was suddenly swept to another place and time when a desire less consuming than this one had gone so wrong, ended so badly. Hurt her. Hurt others.
Had she learned nothing at all?
“We need to get back on the road,” she said as she pulled from him slowly.
“Or we could get a room,” he said, leaning toward her and rubbing his nose against the skin beneath her ear. “You smell like sugar. Or cinnamon. Something sweet.”
She brought up both of her hands and pushed against his chest, reluctant to do so because he felt so good and warm and strong and resilient. “We have to go. We have an appointment.”
He sighed, his breath warm as it feathered into her hair, but he moved back into his seat, his chest rising and falling as if he’d wrestled a runaway steer to the ground. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
“Do what?” she asked because the same words had been hanging on the tip of her tongue. “Be my partner?”
He stared out the windshield, his hands on the wheel, his pulse at his temple throbbing. “What if we decide to end things?”
“The sex?”
He nodded.
“Then we finish the house. I throw my parents their party. You and I go our separate ways except when it comes to the ranch finances.” When he remained silent, she grew nervous, her palms clammy as she crossed her arms. “Unless you don’t think we can do that.”
“What I don’t think is that I can hold onto that house knowing I didn’t pay for it.”
“Why?” She didn’t understand. She was trying, but he made things incredibly difficult. She thought they’d settled this last week.
“It’s a debt I don’t want to owe.”
Because he was trying to right past wrongs? Or because it was a debt to her? “Casper, you’re making this more complicated than it is.”
“No, Faith. I’m being realistic. We sign this agreement, we’re bound together to the tune of a half million dollars at least.” He looked over, the aviators hiding his eyes, but not the tic in his jaw, or the grim curl pulling at the sides of his mouth. “That’s a forever kind of bond.”
And Casper Jayne didn’t do forever. “We haven’t signed anything yet. Arwen’s offered the Hellcat Saloon for the party—”
He interrupted her with a snort. “Your folks? In the Hellcat Saloon?”
“Whatever. I can use the money you don’t want to owe me to rent the Crow Hill Country Club,” she said, hating the bitchy tone to her voice. Hating more that frustration had her adding, “And you can let the house on Mulberry Street fall down around your ears. Should make it easier for you to move on, bail on Boone and Dax, return to your vagabond ways.”
He said nothing, continued to stare her down, the angry flare of his nostrils making her want to rip his sunglasses away. But she didn’t. She turned in her seat to look out the passenger window and waited for him to decide, half expecting him to slam his hand against the steering wheel until it broke or he bled.
But he didn’t. He put the truck into gear, saying, “Let’s go,” as he pointed them down the road toward Luling.
She closed her eyes, let her head fall against the glass, and wondered if his instincts had been right, and everything about this partnership would turn out to be wrong. Wondered, too, why he was the one thinking straight, and she was the one who wasn’t.
SIXTEEN
EVERY WEEKEND, like most working people, Faith spent a good part of her time off cleaning. It wasn’t how she wanted to spend those precious free hours, but there was never enough time during the week to get it all done.
She would much rather have gone out to the Dalton Ranch, saddled Sunshine, if Boone wasn’t out wrangling, or Flash, if Dax was busy elsewhere, and ridden until she was exhausted, her thighs aching, her backside sore, her head full of fresh air and sunshine, career stress pounded out of her by the horse’s hooves as they galloped across the land.
Taking Casper’s horse, Remedy, was out of the question. Like his owner’s, Remedy’s personality ran to reckless, making the two of them a perfect match. And making the horse best avoided, since she doubted she’d be able to control him any better than the cowboy who saddled him daily.
She supposed it was time to buy a horse of her own. Boone had been after her to for a while, driving home the point that Sunshine, Remedy, and Flash were ranch employees and not hers to play with whenever she got the whim.
She’d driven home her foot on the toe of his boot at that, letting him know she did not show up to play on a whim. She didn’t think she’d ever had a whim in her life—unless offering Casper the money she hadn’t touched since it hit her bank balance counted.
But from Monday through Friday, she did little more than load her breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. She did the same with any dishes she used at supper if she cooked instead of eating at the Blackbird Diner or the Hellcat Saloon.
She wiped down her bathroom after showering each morning, and tossed her comforter over her sheets and called it making her bed. But that was the extent of her day-to-day housekeeping. Vacuuming, mopping, laundry, and anything heavy duty had to wait for the weekend.
Still, if she’d had a choice between a Saturday and Sunday cleaning her nine-hundred-square-foot apartment top to bottom, or excavating her way through the disgusting two hundred fifty square feet that made up just Casper’s kitchen, she would’ve opted today for the first.
Her entire place had never been as dirty as this one room. The years and the elements had a lot to do with the filth, but a whole lot of it—most of it, she was pretty sure—was what his mother couldn’t be bothered with and had left behind. And that had Faith thinking.
Had Casper grown up in these conditions? Had he been fed out of cans and boxes? Had Suzanne Jayne heated his food—the detrital evidence circumstantial but convincing—with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, a bottle of Jack in her free hand? Or had he been on his own after his father left, fending for himself the best he could?
How much of this had Boone known? Had he been here, seen this unholy mess?
Or had things not been so bad before Casper left Crow Hill, giving Boone no need to intervene? Considering how often her brother had brought Casper home to dinner, she doubted such was the case.
And that had anger boiling through her, bubbling up the edges of her rational side until it spilled over to make her crazy, and she kicked out at the dishes and garbage stinking up this pigsty.
She couldn’t help but be more than a little morose as she pictured the teenager Casper had been, the cocky heartthrob, wild and reckless and hot, living here. She hated thinking this place, historical significance or not, was what he’d called home, where he’d come after school, where he’d done his homework, where he’d eaten and watched TV. If he’d had a TV. Where he’d slept. It made his love of the Daltons and his dedication to the ranch, then and now, that much more poignant.
The ranch was where he’d learned another way of life, where he’d been fed Tess Dalton’s pies and casseroles, where he’d been shown Dave Dalton’s stern discipline, where he’d seen two people who cared more for each other than themselves, where he’d been shown the workings of a family forged not by blood but by loving bonds.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
She was sitting on the edge of the sink, too focused on pouring soap crystals into a pail of filling water to look up, though she’d heard his steps when he’d entered the room, and her pulse had leaped in her chest. “The cleaning crew will be here Monday to do the heavy lifting. Someone still has to go through the rooms and make sure there’s nothing here of value.”
“Trust me,” he said, scraping the sole of one boot against a wad of something nasty stuck to the floor. “There’s nothing here of value.”
“You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t take your word for it,” she said, shutting off the faucet. “You haven’t been here in ages. Who knows what you’ve forgotten?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything.”
Something told her that no matter the good it would do him to purge this piece of his past from his mind, he never would. She got to her feet, tossed her sponge in the bucket to soak. “Fine, but I’m going to look around anyway. And I’m going to start in here, and I need more light than the fixture is putting out. This window will come clean, or it will come out.”