by Alison Kent
What he needed was time and space before he forgot all the reasons he’d been missing her. “I’ve got to go out to Summerlin’s for a bit before I head back to the ranch. Can you feed Clay and get him home?”
She closed her eyes again, shook her head, then grabbed the book from the floor before answering. “Yes, I can feed him and get him home, but don’t think I don’t see right through your ploy.”
His heart wasn’t in teasing her but he tried. “Ploy? Me?”
“You think if I spend time with him I’ll be more forgiving.”
No, mostly he’d been thinking he needed to get the fuck outta here. “It’s worked so far, you spending time with me.”
“Has it?” she asked, her head cocked. Then she brushed by him before he could answer, stomping out of the house, calling for Clay on her way, and leaving Casper to box up the things he’d dropped the boy by to do.
And then it hit him. Oh, the woman was sneaky. She’d left before he could on purpose. It was her way of making sure he had to clean up some of the mess his harboring a runaway had brought down. A small mess, sure, but one he had a hand in.
One of many he needed to face.
TWENTY-THREE
“I HOPE THIS WILL be okay,” Faith said as she and Clay climbed from her car. They slammed their doors and stepped one after the other from the parking lot into the Blackbird Diner. “I wasn’t sure what you might like.”
“I like food,” he said, lifting his hand to return Teri Gregor’s wave.
Faith thought of Boone as a teenager, shoveling up multiple helpings from the family-style bowls set on the table at supper. Then she realized Clay seemed totally at home, instead of self-conscious like she’d expect from a runaway. Weird.
“You know Teri?” she asked as they slid into their booth.
“Casper’s brought me food from here a few times. The burgers are totally dope. Last time I ate four chili dogs.” He reached up, shoved back the long shock of hair falling over half his face. “Think maybe I’ll have something different, though.”
“Anything you want,” she said, reaching for a laminated menu and handing one to him.
“You might want to take that back after you see how much I can eat.”
“Four chili dogs gives me an idea,” she said, and found herself smiling.
“Plus onion rings and a shake on top of that.”
“I work at the bank. If I need a loan, I’ve got connections.”
He grinned, a goofy kid grin, not the grin of a boy who’d crossed two states to find a cowboy who’d once bedded his since deceased mother. Christ, but had Casper managed to complicate his life, and now by extension hers.
She hadn’t been thinking. She should’ve gone straight to the ranch and rustled up something from what groceries the boys had instead of dining in public with a teenager the regulars would realize wasn’t local.
But since they were already here…“I saw your stuff in the house. I guess you like to read.”
He nodded. “My mom used to take me to the library a lot. And you can always find something in the trash behind bookstores.”
“Did you learn that from your mother?”
“They throw away stuff that’s worn out,” he said without answering her question.
She reached into her purse for the Nesbø title and set it on the table between them. “I don’t think they throw away stuff that’s brand new.”
He straightened, sat back in the booth, and distanced himself from her and his crime. “You better check with Casper before you call the cops.”
“I don’t answer to Casper.” And at least Clay hadn’t denied culpability. “Do you have any money?”
He nodded. “Casper gave me some. So I wouldn’t be totally broke. And for doing chores.”
“Good.” She dropped her gaze back to her menu. “We’ll stop by Kendall’s on our way to the ranch. You can pay her for the book.”
“Who’s Kendall?”
“A friend of mine. She owns the bookstore.” Without looking up, she pushed the paperback closer to him.
After a moment, he took it, then their waitress arrived for their order, her interruption perfectly timed. That done, Faith changed the subject. “How’re you liking the ranch?”
“It’s good. I haven’t got to go riding yet. Everyone’s busy, and I’ve got a lot of stuff to do at the house.” He stopped then, as if waiting for her to accuse him of other crimes.
The fact that he was mulling over this one was enough. “I know they appreciate your help. Even if you’re stuck cleaning up after them.”
He shrugged off her empathy. “Casper says he’ll take me out when they move the pairs from the Braff pasture.”
“I’ll bet Kevin’s enjoying himself.” And how many times had she thought about this boy making his trek in the company of a dog?
“Yeah, he’s all about Bing and Bob. They’re like the Three Musketeers, or whatever.”
Like Boone and Casper and Dax. Which took her back to thinking about the future, for those three boys and for this one.
“Are you going to be okay? If things don’t work out with Casper?” She had to ask. Because he had to know his time here would most likely soon end.
“You mean if I can’t stay?”
Being the bearer of bad news was never fun, but she needed to know Casper wasn’t getting Clay’s hopes up unfairly. “I know Casper wants you to. It’s meant a lot to him, having you here.”
“Think so?”
“I do. He doesn’t have anyone either. Not really. Just Dax and Boone. They were pretty much his family the years he lived here before.”
“I remember hearing him talk about them. Back when I was a kid.”
Good lord, he was still a kid, didn’t he know that? She swallowed, waited until her heart had stopped breaking, then asked, “Was that part of why you came to him?”
“I don’t know,” he said, tapping the end of his knife on the table. “Maybe. He was always funny.”
“Funny?” Or drunk?
“He made my mom laugh. She didn’t do much of that. I kinda got the feeling I was an accident, you know.” More tapping, then a frown and another admission. “That she hadn’t really wanted me around in the first place.”
She wondered if he’d told any of this to Casper. “Did you know your father?”
He shook his head, going quiet while their waitress set their plates in front of them. Once they were alone, he went on. “No. She usually had a guy around, but never for long.”
Just while the rodeo was in town. “I’m sorry.”
“It was okay. I hung out with kids from school, ate at their houses. Spent the night sometimes so I didn’t have to worry about getting to school.”
The same way Casper had hung out with the boys, had come home with Boone for dinner, had slept on the futon in the Mitchells’ den. She reached for the ketchup, squirted a pool onto her plate, watched it spread and thought of the words Casper had written, the images he’d drawn.
“Why would you have to worry about getting to school?” she asked, snapping the top of the bottle though there was little left to keep inside.
Clay reached for it, looking from her face to her plate. “We didn’t live in the district exactly. So there wasn’t a bus. And it was too far to walk. Mom would take me when she was awake in time. But I missed a lot.”
“Are you behind because of that?” And here he was missing more.
He gave an embarrassed nod. “This last year really sucked. I had to change schools because of where the foster home was. I didn’t know anyone there. And my classes were split between seventh and eighth grade.”
When, at fourteen, he should probably be in ninth. “I’m sure once you’re settled in a permanent home, you won’t have any trouble catching up.”
“Yeah. Like that’ll ever happen,” he said, adding mustard to his ketchup and stirring them to orange with the first of his four corn dogs.
She hated hearing him so defeated, but he was pr
obably right. Teenagers were rarely adopted, and he only had four more years before he’d be kicked out of the system. Four years was a very long time when there were only seven he’d be spending as a teen.
“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” As if the things she’d been asking him hadn’t been.
“I guess not,” he said with a shrug, his eyes averted, his mouth full.
Using a fork, she dredged two thick-cut fries through her ketchup. “What happened to your mother?”
He chewed, swallowed, reached for his glass of grape soda and sucked half of it up through his straw. “I don’t really know. I came home from school one day and the next morning social workers came to the trailer to get me. The cops had found her during the night.”
Christ. “Was it a car accident?”
“I’m pretty sure it was an overdose,” he said, toying with his straw, his gaze distant.
She should’ve kept her mouth shut. She shouldn’t have made him go back there. But then, she’d been doing a lot of that recently, hadn’t she? Returning people to their pasts when she couldn’t even get over hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d used drugs.”
“Most people didn’t. I don’t even know if Casper did.”
Or maybe he did. Maybe he’d turned to more than alcohol in the years he’d been away searching for who he was, trying to find his life.
“He really is a cool guy, you know.”
“I guess he is.” Though his being cool didn’t keep him from being trouble, she mused, her stomach wrapped around the knot of that truth.
“You two hooked up?” Clay asked, waving his corn dog at her before taking a bite.
Hooked up. That brought her a smile. “We’re friends. We go to dinner sometimes. I’m helping him with the house.”
“Guess that makes you a pretty good friend.”
“I’ve known him a long time.” She wasn’t sure what Casper had told the boy—if anything—about his years in the house on Mulberry Street, and she didn’t want to prick a hole in the balloon of Clay’s admiration. “He used to come home with Boone, eat dinner with us. Spend the night sometimes. But I think mostly he was on his own.”
“It’s not that hard to get used to,” Clay said, his expression older and wiser than fourteen. “Casper knowing what I’d been through, being left alone a lot and all…Coming here just made sense.”
Except the way Casper told the story, he barely remembered Clay. But he’d obviously—and unknowingly—left his mark on an eight-year-old boy who’d been desperate for attention.
“Casper’s a good man,” she said, and meant it. Not very many men would take on a boy they’d only known a few weeks and whose name they couldn’t recall without prompting.
Clay dropped his last corn dog to his plate, pushing it away after only one bite. “I guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”
“You did pretty good.” Better than her. She’d lost her appetite around the same time Clay told her he’d been an accident.
“We should probably go.” He scooted toward the edge of his seat. “So I can pay the lady for the book.”
And with those few words her whole world flipped. She was going to do anything she could to help Casper with this boy. “Sounds like a plan.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“ANY PROBLEMS SO far having Clay around?” Casper asked, jumping onto the flatbed of the ranch pickup and opening the toolbox. He tossed out a handsaw and pair of pruners.
“Nope.” Boone took the saw, turned to look at the patch of cedar seedlings that had taken hold of a big section of pasture and had to come down. “Seems like a nice kid. Polite. Respectful. Haven’t talked to him much.”
“He’s not in the way?” Casper hopped down, stretched to grab the pruners, testing the edges of the blades with his thumb. “Doing what he’s supposed to do?”
Boone nodded, reaching for the gloves tucked into his belt. “So far. And, nope, not in the way.”
The last thing Casper wanted to do was put more of a burden on his partners. Clay was old enough to fend for himself, but he’d never ranched, didn’t know the schedule or the expectations. He was still a bit like a kid in a candy store, room to roam, acres to explore, animals and their temperaments to learn. So far, he’d fit right in, but Casper knew teen boys. He’d keep an eye on him.
“He’s a hell of a cook. Gotta give him that,” Boone said, planting his saw beneath the lowest branches of the closest of the scraggly trees and bending back the trunk with his other hand.
“Yep, he is.” Casper pulled on his gloves to tackle a bunch of the thigh-high cedars. Damn trees dropped seeds that took root like wildfire, spreading across a pasture to choke out the grass. It was an ongoing matter of stewardship that kept the land productive for the long term.
Next go around he’d bring Clay to help, explain why the culling had to be done. Make the boy feel a part of things, give him a sense of belonging. Then pray he didn’t have it all ripped away down the road.
“He was pretty quiet this morning.”
“You think?” Casper asked, frowning as he moved down the line of young trees. He hadn’t noticed, which pretty much made him role model of the year.
Boone took a minute to finish sawing, chucking the downed tree toward the truck as he straightened. “He’s usually rambling on about something while he’s frying up eggs. Barely got a word outta him this morning.”
“I was half asleep and shoveling food in my face. I never did get supper last night.” Because he’d stayed at Summerlin’s longer than usual, making a few extra bucks that wouldn’t matter in the long run. He’d never have enough.
“Might be he’s worried how his being here’s going to play out,” Boone said, bending back the trunk of the next tree.
Hmm. What was going on that Casper had missed? Clay hadn’t given any indication of being worried about what might happen to him. If anything, he’d seemed relieved to be settling in. Unless something had come up with Faith last night…
Goddammit. The woman had butted in where she didn’t belong. He’d bet the ranch on it. “I’m gonna lay this one at your sister’s door.”
Boone stood and turned to face Casper. The look on his face was the one he got every time Faith’s name came up in conversation. “What the hell does Faith have to do with it?”
Most likely everything. “I had to make a trip out to Summerlin’s last night. I had Faith bring Clay home and feed him.”
“And you think she said something to upset him?”
Said something. Asked something. The woman was like a burrowing chigger when she wanted answers. “I dunno. Maybe. He was fine when I left them. Makes sense it was Faith.”
Boone blew him off with a flip of the bird and got back to work. “Makes sense you’re looking to shuck the blame.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“Between here and the house, you’re working him pretty hard.” Boone’s words jerked as he sawed. “Could be he’s just tired. Or he’s getting sick.”
“You make it sound like I’m running a sweatshop.”
“You sure as hell aren’t the one doing the sweating.”
Grumbling under his breath, Casper lopped off one treetop after another until he’d cleared the small patch he’d been working. He tossed the pruners to the ground at the back of the truck, started gathering the foliage that, left to dry rot, would make great tender in the case of a lightning strike. Not that there was much else in the pasture to burn, but the preventative measure made a perfect case for being safe rather than sorry.
He moved to the next bunch of trees, mulling over what Boone had said. He wasn’t dumping too much on Clay. Hell, at fourteen, he and his boys had been putting in fourteen-hour Saturdays on this very ranch, and that on top of school and football and hours of homework and practice each week. Running a vacuum and doing the dishes and keeping up with the laundry didn’t compare.
The cooking was Clay’s idea, and after just a couple of weeks Casper and Boone were p
lacing orders, seeing what the boy could produce, challenging his skills. Clay had come through every time, and seemed to get a kick out of surprising them. Sure as hell beat a regular diet of Boone’s hamburger steaks, and his own weak attempts at hash.
That was one big difference between him and Clay. He’d never had the initiative to make the best out of his situation. All he’d wanted to do was escape it, going back to the house on Mulberry Street only when he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Dax’s house hadn’t been on the rotation, but the two of them had spent plenty of nights at Boone’s, gobbling down Mrs. Mitchell’s pot roast and gravy and the always warm from the oven chocolate chip cookies and apple pie.
Hell, some nights after football practice, he had come out here, checked in with Tess and Dave to see what might need doing. Tess would feed him fried Spam and potatoes with milk, and Dave would walk with him out to the barn, finding something to keep him busy so he didn’t have to go home. The Daltons, like the Mitchells, knew the truth of his life in Crow Hill.
And as much as the assignment to help them out had been handed down from Boone’s parents to their son, Casper suspected now the Mitchells had been just as intent on giving him a taste of structure, responsibility, normalcy—all the things they provided their children, and Suzanne wouldn’t have known had they jumped up and bit her bony whore’s ass.
He hefted the pruners toward the next cluster of seedlings. It hit the ground and raised a cloudburst of seedpods and dirt. Behind him, Boone’s saw rasped steadily. The sweet pitchy scene of cedar tickled Casper’s nose. He scrunched up his face, sneezed, sneezed again. If Clay was feeling bad, it could be allergies, cedar, or other pollen blowing in.
Guess he was going to have to make a plan for doctor bills and meds, though he was getting ahead of himself on that. Still, if he was going to take on this boy, doing it right wasn’t going to be cheap. And, he mused, sneezing again, he couldn’t do it any other way.
“You gonna stand there all day spewing germs?”
“I was just wondering if some of this might be why Clay’s feeling bad,” he said, then added before he thought better of it, “and why Faith has money you don’t.” He glanced toward Boone just in time to duck the saw flying at his head. “Jesus Christ, Boone.”