by Alison Kent
"Might as well have been what he said." Spencer pulled his hands from his pockets, tugged his ball cap low on his forehead, then crossed his arms. "I know it's what he means."
"Oh, Spencer, honey. Your dad likes Candy just fine." A wife lying about her husband was another thing. "He just doesn't want you distracted from football and school. You know that."
"Yeah, well, I'm already distracted." He leaned back against the kitchen counter, antsy and restless, moving to hook the heels of his palms over the faux marble edge. "It looks like something bad may've happened to Jase. Dad was questioning Liberty about what she saw."
Jeanne's stomach clenched. She didn't know either of Spencer's friends personally—few kids from Earnestine stepped outside to make friends—but she was a mother and she knew about heartache. Knew more than many mothers ever would. "Oh, no, Spencer. I'm so sorry."
And then it hit her. Liberty had to be the same girl, the runaway, Yancey suspected Neva of harboring. If he was questioning her, if he had, indeed, located her at the Barn, the implications for Neva ... "You found this out from your father?"
"Yeah, uh, sorta." He shrugged, rubbed a hand over his ryes. "Liberty's been working for Neva and Candy, doing stuff in the showroom and packing shipments, things like that."
Working for Neva. Wouldn't that mean the girl wasn't a runaway? "And she knew something about what happened to this Jase?"
"I guess she was with him when he disappeared. It sounds bad. I don't know what it was." He rolled his shoulders. "She was pretty upset, and Dad told me and Candy to shut up and get out of the way. I didn't hear what Liberty told him."
"Is that why you're angry with your father?" Jeanne smoothed her hand over the vinyl tablecloth, finding a tear in the fabric. "Spencer, that's part of his job. And I really doubt he told anyone to shut up."
Spencer finally looked over, his expression challenging, his green eyes cold. "He told Candy to shut her mouth. And then he nearly ran me off the road."
"What?" She clenched her hand into a fist, ripping the fabric further.
"Not only that," he went on, his chin coming up, "he Jerked me out of my truck and got all up in my face to make sure I knew that she's nothing."
Jeanne felt the sting of tears behind her eyes. This was not the Yancey she knew and loved. Imposing his will as a father was one thing. But he was not a violent man, and nothing their son said would ever change her mind.
"Anyway, me and the guys were talking on the way back from Jase's dad's place." Spencer paused, hedged, bounced one heel nervously. "He's got that huge ranch to run, and it's calving season in a couple of months. With Jase gone, we thought Mr. Bremmer could use some help—"
"Oh, no." Jeanne surged to her feet, fueled by a rush of dread. "You're not quitting school before you've even started. You're not staying home another year. You have a scholarship, Spencer. Do you know what that means?"
"It means I'm good at playing football." He waited, as if making sure he had her attention. "But I'd really like for once to be good as a person."
Her chest hitched. "You are a good person."
"Candy won't talk to me about anything important, tells me she doesn't want to ruin my future. Dad doesn't want me to date Candy, tells me he doesn't want me to ruin my future." He gestured wildly with one hand. "Now you don't want me to help Mr. Bremmer because you don't want me to ruin my future."
"Spencer, sweetie—"
"Maybe being here now is more important than my future. Have any of you thought about that?" He was pacing now, the width of the small country kitchen and back. "I'm never going to play pro ball. I know that. And I also know without the scholarship I won't be going to a school like Tech. At least not this year. But there are always other years, Mom. There are always other years."
He looked-up as Yancey's car lights cut across the kitchen window, then turned and gave her a look that came too close to telling her his decision was made before he bounded up the stairs to his room.
She waited several seconds without breathing, listening to Spencer's footsteps. They matched the hard pounding beat of her own breaking heart. What was she going to do? Allow her son to be a man and make his own decisions? Destroy his life the way she'd destroyed her own? Acting rashly in the heat of the moment, never thinking of the long road ahead?
Behind her, Yancey slammed the door hard enough to crack the lower corner of the insert glass where it had always been loose. "Shit." He pointed toward the door. "That's coming out of Spencer's pocket."
Jeanne lifted her chin, prepared to play peacemaker when she wished for once she could simply drop this weight on her husband's shoulders. She was so tired of this friction. She so wanted to be absolved of the need to erase it. "Don't be silly. It's been loose forever, and that was an accident."
He jerked out his chair from beneath the table and dropped into it, knees spread, elbows on his uniformed thighs, and stared at the floor. "How the hell we managed to raise a boy who doesn't know the meaning of obedience or respect or responsibility is beyond me."
"He most certainly understands all of those. And you know it." She returned to her own chair, sat facing her husband. "You also know that you butted heads with your own father more than a few times in your life."
Yancey looked up, lifted one brow. "Hopefully when Spencer is my age, he'll have the same twenty-twenty hindsight I do and admit that I was right."
"About Candy?"
"About everything."
Jeanne couldn't help but smile. "So all these years later, you're finally going to admit Clive Munroe wasn't out of his mind to keep you from moving to Nashville to sing for your supper?"
Snorting, Yancey rolled his eyes. "I would've figured that out on my own."
"Just like Spencer will eventually figure out where his relationship with Candy fits."
"We don't have time for him to be jacking around with that girl." He brought his fist down on the table. "You know as well as I do he's not thinking with the right head."
Jeanne refused to speak about sex and her son. "Actually, Candy may not be the problem with his thinking."
"Whaddaya mean?"
"It's about your missing Jase Bremmer. Spencer and his buddies are seriously thinking about postponing school for a year to work the Bremmer ranch for the boy's father."
Yancey's nostrils flared. "Oh no he's not."
She nodded. "Oh yes he is. He wants to be more than a good football player. He wants to be a good person."
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
Jeanne reached for her husband's hands, so large, so cal-lused, his nails always so jagged, and stroked her thumbs over his palms, keeping her gaze cast down as she spoke. "Is this our fault, Yancey? By moving here? Is it my fault for running away?"
He immediately softened. "Oh, honey, no." He leaned forward in his chair, wrapped her in his arms and pulled her almost into his lap. "Why would you say something like that? Why would you think something like that?"
"Because we might have given him a better life if we'd stayed in Dallas," she said, burying her face in the comforting crook of his neck.
"There's not a thing wrong with the life we've given that boy. We've been the best parents we could be." Yancey paused, stiffened. "Unless I haven't been the father he deserved."
This time, Jeanne was the one to pull away. She took Yancey's face in her hands and cradled his cheeks. "You've been a perfect father. Spencer couldn't have been brought up to be the man he is by anyone else. And don't you ever tell yourself anything different."
There was no way Neva was going to be able to fall asleep. Absolutely no way. She didn't know what he wanted, didn't know why he was here. She didn't know what she'd been thinking inviting him to stay.
It didn't matter that she still had his gun tucked safely away with hers. A gun wouldn't protect her. Not when what she was feeling was more about exposure, of her feelings, of her past, of the present, which had turned into the biggest mess she'd ever been in in her life.
Whe
n she claimed not to harbor girls from Earnestine these days, she was telling the truth. When she denied knowing what had become of the ones who had gone missing, the truth she told was more painful. She should've known. She should've been able to follow them, to map their journey from the moment they left her care until they reached the end of their journey.
She feared the leak in her network was going to put her out of business. And that Mick Savin was a part of that. That he was law enforcement, looking for evidence in order to charge her with harboring runaway minors on multiple occasions, resulting in multiple counts and multiple convictions. She didn't consider herself a martyr by any means, and she had no desire to become one by going to prison.
Rolling out from between her sheets, she tiptoed to her bedroom door. Her room was above the guest room, and the last thing she wanted to do was wake her guest. In the past, a warm bath had often cured her insomnia.
Tonight she had a feeling she was going to have to add a mug of hot chocolate milk and a handful of whatever drowsiness-inducing, over-the-counter meds she could find in the house. And even then she doubted any sleep she managed would be worth the effort of closing her eyes.
Since Liberty Mitchell had shown up at the Barn a week ago, Neva hadn't been sleeping much at all. She'd been waiting for the other shoe to fall, for the girl's real story to unfold. Looking at herself now in the oval mirror hanging above the bathroom's pedestal sink, she knew a bath wasn't going to get her anywhere but wet. There was too much going on in her eyes and the dark circles beneath.
In her white tank top, white gym socks, and baggy gray sleeping shorts, she padded her whisper-soft way downstairs and into the kitchen, only pausing at the first floor hallway long enough to listen for sounds coming from the guest room. She heard none, which made a whole lot of sense when she turned the corner and found Mick bent over in front of the refrigerator's open door.
Oh, my, but the man had a fantastic ass, leaning over the way he was, his back stretched in such a way that defined every one of his muscles not covered by white medical tape. She crossed her arms, propped a shoulder on the doorjamb. "Patsy's not going to like knowing her potatoes don't stick."
She gave him credit. He didn't jump. He straightened slowly, a hand to his bare but bandaged middle and turned. "I was looking for juice or a soda. Though a sandwich did cross my mind. I've got this metabolism thing going on."
"Uh-huh." She couldn't see his face. He stood in the dark, backlit by the light from inside of the fridge. But she could see that he had on shorts that, when she flipped on the overhead light, were almost a match to hers.
He seemed to realize it at about the same time, glancing from the pair she wore down at his own. Then he met her gaze with a grin.
"Don't even say it," she said, pushing away from the doorway and into the room.
"Hey, I like a woman who shares my taste in things," he said, and she simply repeated, "Uh-huh," because until she got a better handle on her hormonal bearings, she wasn't sure what else to say.
Men weren't supposed to be beautiful the way this one was, standing in her kitchen in nothing but shorts that covered his, uh, attributes but did nothing to conceal them. He might as well have been naked, and for the first time in many, many moons, the idea of being alone with a naked man had her sizzling with an awareness that went deeper than her skin.
She'd undressed him halfway at Ed's clinic, but his bare body then, laid out flat on his back, was nothing compared to his bare body now. Yes, the black-and-blue bruises were all still there, the bandages in the way, but knowing to expect them allowed her to overlook them.
To see past them to his lean waist and tightly cut abs, to his biceps and pecs that bulged so nicely, to the line of his shoulders, a broad testament to the fact that he was a man twice her size, one she couldn't believe that she wanted to get her hands on—especially when she thought back to the way she'd frozen at his touch.
But it was more than that: a fear that she would forget the threat of who he might be in favor of how easily he had stepped up when she'd needed someone on her side. And so she waved him toward the table and told him, "Go. Sit."
It took her less than five minutes to make him a sandwich, to pour them both a glass of milk, cut them both a slice of sour cream coffee cake, and to join him.
"I hate being unable to sleep," she said, once she'd set-tled into the chair across from the one he'd chosen at the kitchen's square table.
"I can still hit the road. I don't want my being here to keep you awake." He wrapped his big hands around the sandwich and bit in.
"It's not you," she said, amending her statement when he raised a disbelieving brow while he chewed. "Okay. It's not only you."
He swallowed, took a drink of milk. "Honesty is always the best policy."
"So says the mule deer hunter," she quipped, and he laughed. The sound was a rich echo of pleasure, one she en-joyed too much. She didn't need to associate good times with this man she still didn't know and still didn't trust completely.
"Why can't you sleep? Besides the distraction of me?" He palmed the sandwich again, distracting her further. "It's not like you didn't have enough going on today to exhaust an iron man."
"I don't know about that." She rolled her aching shoulders. "Though I've got to think swimming a couple of miles would be a close match to hauling you into the bed of my truck. Metabolism or not, you are no lightweight."
"I've been meaning to ask about that."
"About what?"
"Where you got those muscles."
She sputtered her milk. "Please. Don't make me laugh. If I had muscles, I wouldn't be aching like I've been hauling freight one-handed."
He hissed back a breath. "That bad, huh?"
"It's nothing like what you're suffering, but yeah. I'm not in the world's best shape."
"Guess that depends on the judge." He paused, added, "I'd say your shape's a pretty damn good one."
"As long as this isn't leading back to that horse-size thing, I'll take that as a compliment."
"I meant it as one. Not many women could've managed that feat." He'd been talking about the shape of her muscles not, as she'd thought, her tits and her ass.
Didn't she want to crawl under the table and hide? "Well, it's not like I hefted you over my shoulder or anything. It was just your basic cable and pulley engineering."
"Clever. And effective. And deserving of a proper thanks."
The cake in her mouth seemed suddenly dry and tasteless as her nerves began to stir. "You thanked me. You brought me chocolate."
He reached for his napkin, wiped his mouth. "Which you didn't eat."
"Yet." She took a drink of milk. "I will."
"Besides, it was a single-serving size. It only covers one thank-you."
"Is that how it works?" She was nervous. Why was she nervous?
He nodded. "I still owe you for the use of the guest room. And now for the food. And I never did thank you for taking in the dog."
"Look. You don't need to repay me for every little thing. And I certainly don't need any more chocolate."
"What about sleep?"
"Sure, but unless you've got a pill—"
"I've got something better."
"I'm not sleeping with you."
He laughed, a sharp desperate sound. "What I was going to offer isn't that good."
No. She wasn't going there. Not even mentally. She narrowed her gaze. "What then? Hypnosis? Bad sitcom reruns? Shakespeare?"
Another laugh, and more of that blossoming warmth in her belly. Why hadn't she at least put on her bathrobe or a bra? "Just sit still. And trust me."
Right. Trust the man who'd told her he was here for the mule deer. "I'll sit still, but that's all. And only until you give me reason to move."
He got up, dragged his chair around and positioned it behind hers. "I'm not going to give you reason to do anything but fall asleep."
Something she wouldn't be doing until she got to bed behind her locked door. "Just to
clue you in, I'm not the type to fall asleep just anywhere. Not on a plane, never in a moving car. I even have trouble in hotel rooms."
"That's gotta be hell on your love life," he said, sitting and settling his palms on her shoulders, his thumbs at the base of her neck.
"I was talking about falling asleep. Not... other things." And dear Lord, but his thumbs felt good, rubbing pressure circles against her nape right where she most needed to be rubbed.
"I've slept in planes, trains, and automobiles," he said, and she smiled. "I've also slept in a Turkish mosque, a Russian freighter, on the ground in the Australian Outback, and underground in a Tuscan winery."
"A Turkish mosque?"
"Yeah. Don't mention that to anyone. I probably shouldn't have been there."
Funny man. Amazing hands. She was halfway asleep already. "In Turkey? Or in the mosque?"
He hesitated a moment then seemed to chuckle under his breath. "Both, now that you mention it."
Her head lolled forward as he massaged the tendons at the base of her skull. She closed her eyes. "If that's putting too much stress on your shoulder—"
"No worries, mate," he said, and she groaned.
"You don't have an accent. Did you pick up the vernacular while sleeping under the outback moon?"
"Actually, it was on the Russian freighter. I spent a bit of time there chained in the cargo hold with two blokes from Melbourne."
"What?" She tried to turn; he wouldn't let her, but held her head still while he worked his knuckles and fingertips along the slope to her shoulders. "Chained? You mean like a prisoner?"
"You could say. But being chained didn't make me the enemy."
The gun. The knife. "I guess these were your pre-engineer-ing days?"
"About thirty of them, yeah."
"What were you hunting then? Sables? Minks? KGB informants?"
"Bad guys," he said, and left it at that.
She wasn't about to drop it that easily, no matter the fabulous magic of his hands. She shifted to the side, tucking one leg beneath her, and turned in the padded red seat. His gaze, when she met it, was indecipherable, though he did lift a brow.
He'd curled his hands around the padded top of her aluminum frame and red Naugahyde diner-style chair. She placed one of her hands atop his and shook her head slowly, thinking, wondering. "Who are you, Mick Savin? And don't give me that mule deer bullshit."