by Nicole Helm
Caleb sighed. Nothing easy. Why would he have ever thought it would be?
“What the hell does your sister have to do with me?”
“Nothing. But I need your help getting a message to her.”
How? How had he gotten mixed up in Delia Rogers’s shit again? Was this his punishment for trying to get his life on the straight and narrow? The opposite of straight and narrow showing up at every turn?
“Get a message to your sister. Anything else you’d like me to do? Pick up some tampons for you?”
She was quiet for a minute. “I wouldn’t say no to the tampons.”
“Get out of my way.” He would have muscled past her if he wasn’t quite so undressed. If he wasn’t quite so…confused. He was angry, right? That she’d ruined his sleep. She couldn’t be doing this if he agreed to Tyler’s proposal—Tyler had specifically said no ties to anyone he used to hang out with. But the thing inside his chest didn’t feel like any anger he knew.
It felt weirdly like relief.
He kept walking toward her, forcing himself to get closer and closer until she was intimidated to move. If he took another step, he would have to touch her, and if it came to that…he would not be affected in the least.
When had his lies to himself gotten so weak?
Finally she moved, pressing herself against his door, so in order to enter the room, he’d have to brush past her.
“You’re the…you’re the only one who can help me.” She said it in a rush, like saying the words wouldn’t be quite so telling or painful if she did it quickly.
He took enough steps into the room to flip on the light, but that left them standing close—both sideways in the doorway. He could feel her breath, her warmth even with the chill in the air. He could smell the earthy tang of leather—no doubt that coat she never took off.
They both winced at the light, but when his eyes adjusted he took in her disheveled appearance. Her hair was hanging out of its normal ponytail, her cheeks and nose were bright red from cold. Her lips were all but blue.
The urge to grab his blanket off his bed and wrap it around her until her teeth stopped chattering was abated only by the fact that he couldn’t possibly let her skin ever touch his bedding. Ever.
Ever.
So, it would probably be in his best interests to agree to help and get her the hell out. “How do you think I can help?”
She didn’t say anything, and it took him a minute to realize that was because she was staring at him. Not his face—no, nothing as innocent as that. Not even his bare chest.
Delia was straight up, unabashedly staring at his crotch. He fought the urge to cover himself up, but he couldn’t fight the stirring in that general area at the thought of her looking at him.
He made a move for his closet, but she not-so-innocently stood in his way.
“It’s cold. I’m putting clothes on,” he ground out, hoping he could convince her the gravel in his voice was irritation, since there wasn’t a chance in hell of convincing himself.
“You look just fine the way you are,” she said, a sultry note to her voice. “Or are you worried about…shrinkage?”
Ha! Like anything on him was shrinking right now. He looked around for something to cover himself up with, because fuck if her direct gaze didn’t feel like a touch. He could all but imagine her slim, cool hands on his ever-hardening erection, and that was not in the cards.
Last sacred thing and all that.
There was a crumpled shirt on the ground between them. Just about everything else would require getting around her, and he wasn’t getting anywhere near her. It wasn’t cowardice; it was damn well self-preservation.
She’d thank him for it. They’d both thank him for it.
He made a move to grab the shirt, but she was too quick and grabbed it first. He almost asked her what kind of game she was playing at, but the truth was, he didn’t want to know.
Knowing would lead to…knowing, and thinking, and…wanting. “Give me my shirt,” he demanded.
“Hold on.”
“Delia.”
“I’m just trying to think if I’ve ever seen you quite so undressed. Shirt off, yes. Of course. But boxers. Hmm.” She tapped her chin, eyes still trained on what little covered-up area he currently possessed—completely and utterly without shame.
There should be something wrong with that. He should be getting the upper hand here, but he simply stood and let her stare. Because it wasn’t so bad having a sexy-as-sin woman stare at him with something like interest in her eyes.
You cannot succumb. If he could withstand the need for alcohol, surely he could withstand the need for…
“Do you want me to help you or not?” he growled.
She held out the shirt, but before he could snatch it out of her hands, she dropped it. When he glared at her, she shrugged. “Oops.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t going to scramble for clothes. If she could take it, so could he. Probably. “You have one minute to tell me what you want. One minute, and then I will haul you over my shoulder and toss you out on your ass.”
“Is that a promise?”
He nodded to the clock on his nightstand, because then he didn’t have to look at her. If he looked at the red numbers of his clock, he didn’t have to think about hauling her over his shoulder or how close that would put her ass to his face. Or how easy it would then be to run a hand along the curve, easy to breathe her in and feel the press of her breasts against his back.
Damn, he was hard, and he did not have time for that. For her. “Your minute’s started.” Because he wasn’t sure he had much more than a minute’s resistance in him.
She blew out a breath. “Fine. Okay. I need your help getting a message to Rose. Somehow she’s running the Pioneer Spirit or something. I don’t have all the details, but she’s here.”
“The phone’s downstairs. Be my guest.”
Something flashed through her expression. He didn’t have a word for it, but he knew he didn’t trust it. Whatever she said next was going to teeter way too close to a lie.
“I don’t have the number.”
“I’ll look it up.”
“No. I… I can’t be the one to talk to her, okay? She can’t know I’m here.”
“You’re damn straight she can’t know you’re here.” If he did take Tyler’s ridiculous proposition, he was going to prove to the jackass just how many hoops he could go through. Which would mean getting rid of Delia before anyone knew she was here.
“But I need her to know I’m okay, and I need to know she’s okay. If…she knows anything about…things.”
“Oh, sure, things. So, you want me to call her and tell her all that. Because that isn’t suspicious at all.”
“Maybe you could, like, accidentally run into her in town. Happen to bring up that you heard I was okay? Ask her how she is…or…”
“So, I’m supposed to go to town. Accidentally run into your sister. Bring you up, and have her be none the wiser? You’re listening to yourself, right?” On the surface, it wasn’t that crazy. But the surface was always hiding something, and he couldn’t be seen anywhere near the Pioneer Spirit or someone with Rose Rogers’s reputation. If Delia’s was bad, Rose’s was lethal.
Her eyebrows drew together, and she toyed with the zipper fraying off her jacket. It was rare that she let her confusion or nerves show, but here they were. Delia didn’t know what to do, and she needed his help.
But he couldn’t risk any more helping her, because…
“I have to know,” Delia said in a quiet, unsure voice. “It’s been so long, and…” She trailed off, swallowing whatever the rest of the words were before she fixed him with a glare, dropping her hands to her sides. “You have to help me. This is your fault. You have to help me.”
“How is it my—” But he stopped abru
ptly, because he might not understand how or why, but something about the night he’d saved her from her father had separated her from her sisters.
“Man up, Caleb. Make this right.”
“And if I don’t?” Can’t? When have I ever made anything right?
“You will.”
Her certainty in him was so strange, so foreign, she almost made him want to help her. To be able to. If anyone in his world deserved help, it was Delia. Fuck, how he wished she’d go to someone else—someone who deserved to be asked.
Someone who didn’t want to run. Who didn’t want to touch her and get her naked and in his bed—or maybe who did, and could. A man who would know how to give her something. It didn’t take a genius or good person to see Delia needed something to go in her favor.
But what on earth did he have to offer that wouldn’t undermine everything he needed to do with his life in the next three months?
* * *
Delia was so tired of being close to tears. Of having to fight for kindness. But she’d be damned if she was going to stop when Rose was at the end of this particular fight.
“You will help me. You owe me.” If she said it enough, it would be true. If she said it enough, Caleb’s overactive conscience would get the better of him.
“I can’t go to Pioneer Spirit, Delia.” Each word was grave, weighted, as though he was a doctor breaking the news that someone was dead.
It almost felt as if he was, but she kept fighting, because hell—lost causes were her best fight, weren’t they? “Why can’t you? It isn’t as if you never go to town. You have to pass it to go to Felicity’s or Bozeman or—”
“It isn’t about location,” he ground out. There was a humming silence that followed. It took every last ounce of effort and determination to cut off the next demand. “I can’t be seen going into or out of a bar. I can’t have my truck parked anywhere near a bar. It’d get back to Mel, and as much as getting a message to your sister seems easy from your side of things, it’s all kinds of complicated on mine. So, unless I happen to pass her on the street, it ain’t happening.”
Delia snorted. “Right, like Mel thinks you’ve never been to a—” She stopped on a dime when she put it all together. Caleb’s straight and narrow wasn’t just not hanging out with the wrong people and not helping himself to a five-fingered discount now and again. He wasn’t drinking.
At all.
He felt like he couldn’t risk being seen at a bar for even a few seconds. Or is that just the excuse he’s going to use not to have to help me?
But Caleb looked about as happy to have shared that information as his father had looked horizontal on the ground.
“I can’t help.” Flat. Final, and if she wasn’t totally fooling herself, sorry.
She wished sorry meant shit.
“But…”
She wouldn’t allow her hope to sprout. Hope wasn’t a thing with feathers like that worthless poem she’d had to memorize freshman year—hope was the thing with razors. It cut you to pieces, over and over and over.
“Follow me.” He turned on a heel, still completely undressed except for boxers.
And now she had the backside view, and Caleb’s back, all broad and muscled, was almost enough to distract her. No bulky coat, no heavy work pants, just an expanse of skin over muscles that moved with each step. Just broad shoulders, narrow waist, and a butt she could not want to sink her fingernails into.
She couldn’t want that or him. No matter how much she did.
“Come on, now. If I’m getting up at four to feed the cows and break the ice, so are you. You’re going to need some sleep.”
She frowned. Either her exhaustion was getting the better of her, or he made no sense. “What do you mean?” She followed him back into the hall, sure he was about to usher her out the front door.
Instead, he crossed the hall and opened a door. “No sense in heading back to the cabin tonight.”
She peeked into the room, and her chest squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe. It was a bedroom: practical, a little empty, but there was a nice bed and windows. It smelled fresh and clean.
“Sleep in Mel’s old room. Have a hot breakfast in the morning. You’ll work and get a decent shower. I can’t afford to have you here for very much longer, but tonight…” He shrugged.
She wanted to question what he meant by afford, but her throat was too tight. His acts of kindness killed her, erased all the bickering, all the nasty words, because she knew that this was the heart and soul of Caleb.
“Don’t be stupid. Take the offer.”
“Why are you doing this?” She couldn’t wrap her head around all of it: the supplies, the money, letting her stay even with his attempts to give her an expiration date. Why would he ever think he needed to do more?
“You really want to know?”
The way he said it, he almost made her think she didn’t, but curiosity hadn’t killed this cat yet. It was tunnel vision that had threatened her. “Yes, I want to know.”
“I’m at the end of my very fraying rope. I don’t know how I’m going to keep this place afloat. I have Summer to take care of and a father who won’t engage with his own children. I want a drink so bad I dream about it at night. I want to disappear, but I can’t, and I am barely holding on to all that.”
Emotion welled in her throat, along with the urge to hold him. She knew that struggle so well. But if she allowed kindness and commiseration, what else might she allow? So she cocked her hip and looked at the hallway floor. “What does that have to do with me?”
“You have nothing,” he said quietly, gently, as if being gentle about it could undo the fact that it was true. “And you’re still fighting. You threaten a lot of my life, Delia, just by being you. Just by being here. But I still have more than you if I lose it all. I can’t risk it all, but I can offer this—this once.”
“Wow, no, I guess I didn’t want to hear how depressing my life is.” Especially since Caleb didn’t know the last little bit. Oh, you mean the bit that would get you kicked off of Shaw land so fast your head would spin?
She should tell him the police wanted her. It would be the right thing to do. Why was it Caleb of all people who always made her want to do the right thing? Unfortunately for the both of them, though, Steph trumped any wants or desires.
“Go on. Go to sleep. It should be warm enough in here you can take off that ridiculous jacket that couldn’t save you from a subzero temperature if it came with its own flame.”
She took a hesitant step into the room, stopping in much the same position as the one they’d been in earlier. Her back was pressed to one side of the door frame, his to the other.
She lifted her gaze to his, trying for a flippant remark and coming up empty. Possibly because it was so easy to get lost in those dark blue eyes, to feel lulled by the warmth radiating off of him.
A very much almost-naked him.
Niceness and nakedness. Those two things never went together in her world, and she was almost desperate for them to.
“Go,” Caleb said, his voice rough, his body still only a few inches from hers, warm and inviting. Though she doubted if she brought her gaze from his chest to his eyes there would be anything inviting about his expression.
Except he was still here. Right next to her. She swallowed and made eye contact. Her hand betrayed her and made contact as well, fingers curling around his hand. It was a simple squeeze, but it burned and she clung to it like a last chance. “Thank you,” she breathed.
“Don’t.”
Thank him? Touch him? She shouldn’t, she knew that, but sometimes the shouldn’ts won. She was tired of sleeping alone and feeling alone. Tired of being alone, and the only way she’d ever known to abate that feeling in her adult life was male companionship.
Caleb’s companionship would be no hardship.
Her hand slid u
p his arm, the hairs of his forearm giving way to a smooth shoulder. He visibly swallowed, and for an instant she thought he might close the distance between their bodies or their mouths, maybe both. There was one dazzling moment when this thing they’d avoided for so many years felt as though it might explode between them and somehow mean something. Something good.
She could feel it shimmering through her like sunlight, even though it was dark. The possibility of him—of them.
“Caleb.”
Somehow her voice broke the spell, and he moved away. Away from her hand, away from the room.
He stood in the hall, expression stormy. “I’m giving you a roof over your head, no strings. You don’t need to fuck me in gratitude.”
He could have slapped her—she had a feeling that would have hurt less. She would have understood that anyway. She couldn’t understand him seeing through her, and yet not.
No one ever cared to see through why she was propositioning them. She supposed it was a blessing in disguise he didn’t understand the real reason. It wasn’t for a roof or because she owed him anything.
It was simply because she was lonely, and he’d seemed truly sorry he couldn’t help. He understood so many parts of her, but he couldn’t see that she quite simply liked him.
He pointed between them. “This is the line I will not cross. I will not.” So certain and determined.
She didn’t get it. Was she that repulsive? That terrible? He wouldn’t even consider sleeping with her? Touching her? It wasn’t like she was asking for a ring. Just…a touch. “Why? It would be that awful?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because you, Delia Rogers, have been hurt the fuck enough.” With no warning, no second to react—he reached out and closed the door.
With him on the opposite side.
Delia stared at the door. She could hear his footsteps becoming quieter and quieter as he retreated down the hall.
She blinked at the burning sensation behind her eyes. In all her life, Caleb Shaw had been the only one to ever protect her. To reach out and do something for her. Even when he tried not to, even when she supposedly threatened him, he offered her a bed and a hot meal and work.