Outlaw Cowboy

by Nicole Helm

  “I thought you were going to help.”

  “I…”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t go.” Summer touched her hand briefly, gently. “I won’t push. You won’t push, I won’t push. I only wanted a friend. I really like Caleb, and even Mel, but…I can’t be their friend. I’m still someone they’re just trying to figure out how to fit in their lives. But it’s lonely, because…” She shook her head. “Anyway. Stay. Teach me. I’ll be good.”

  Poor, needy girl didn’t have a clue how to hide her heart. She was going to get absolutely crushed in life.

  Of course, hardening her heart to everything hadn’t exactly kept Delia unscathed, but that seemed neither here nor there.

  Delia hesitantly slid into the little table-bench thing connected to the wall. “Okay, so…whatcha got?”

  Summer talked animatedly about what she wanted to do, pointing out pictures from the book. Delia tried to convince her that she needed to start small with modest expectations, but it went in one ear and out the other.

  For a girl with obvious secrets and issues, she sure seemed to think if she could dream it, she could do it. It was disconcerting to Delia on every level. How was she going to feel when a seed didn’t come up, or a deer ate all the flowers off a plant before it could fruit? How was she going to feel if the weather didn’t cooperate or…all the millions of other things that could go disastrously wrong?

  “You can’t expect too much out of a garden. Especially the first year.” She had learned that lesson, one year when everything except zucchini had perished in a nasty drought-filled summer. She and her sisters had been punished with an all-zucchini diet, as if they’d been to blame for the lack of rain.

  She couldn’t eat zucchini to this day.

  But Summer waved her a way. “What’s the point if I don’t expect the absolute best outcome?”

  “Not being disappointed.” Delia didn’t add the duh, though she wanted to.

  “Life is disappointing,” Summer said, sounding like an old woman rather than some girl barely in her twenties. “Not hoping doesn’t change that. I hoped I’d find family—real family—almost my whole life, and look. Here I am.”

  “In a weird caravan, all but surrounded by trees separating you from the main house.”

  “A lot closer than I was a year ago. See, that’s the thing—one bad year won’t kill me. There’s always the next.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to look at it.”

  Summer beamed at her. “Have you ever escaped something kind of terrible?”

  Delia almost pointed out Summer had promised not to press, but this seemed general enough not to be a threat. “I guess.”

  “And didn’t you come out the other side thinking…well, if I can escape that, if I can get myself out of that terrible thing, I can do anything?”

  No, that wasn’t how she’d felt. Not ever. Whether it was because her sisters were still in the terrible thing, or because she didn’t have it in her to believe that purely, there had never been a sense of accomplishment. Only on to the next.

  “Anyway, you’ll help me plan and plant, and if nothing grows, you know what I’ll do?” Summer leaned forward on the table like it was some great secret.

  Delia couldn’t quite resist leaning forward, charmed by this hopeful, crazy wisp of a girl. “What?”

  “Try again.” She grinned, spreading the packets of seeds out on the table between them. “Now, what seeds should I start inside?”

  Delia shook her head and began flipping the packets over. “Let’s look at germination times.” Everything had its own time. To grow. To flourish. To die.

  Delia had no idea if that was a comforting thought or a morbid one, but somehow it made the task ahead seem a little less daunting.

  Chapter 15

  “I’ll want that area reinforced.”

  I’ll reinforce your nose with my fist. Caleb didn’t say that to Tyler though—he simply marked it down on the fucking clipboard Tyler had handed him for their inspection.

  Fucking. Clipboard. Fucking. Inspection.

  Caleb wasn’t sure he was going to survive this. He hated people telling him what to do on a good day, and while he’d started this day on a good note, it had gone sour ever since Dad’s cryptic conversation. Add to that Tyler walking around like he owned the place, and Caleb had zero patience left.

  “That should cover the necessary repairs I’ll need from you before I move my cattle in.”

  I’ll create some unnecessary repairs on your face. Instead, Caleb forced his mouth to smile. Okay, possibly it was more of a grimace. Then he merely grunted, because speaking actual words was not a great idea.

  “My lawyer will be sending you the leasing papers. You can have yours look over them, of course.”

  Right, because he could afford a fucking lawyer. “For a guy desperate to lease some land, you’ve certainly got enough cash flow to pay me top dollar and keep a lawyer at your beck and call.”

  Tyler went completely tense, which was quite a feat, since he was a man who’d always kept himself fairly contained, at least in Caleb’s estimation.

  “This isn’t a money issue,” he finally allowed. Almost any time Caleb got a clear answer out of Tyler, it was like an allowance. Like Tyler was very carefully parceling out information. Caleb had never trusted it.

  “Then what kind of issue is it?” Though Caleb was curious, it wasn’t nosiness that prompted the question. He knew it would irritate Tyler, and he couldn’t quite resist.

  Tyler’s expression was stone-faced fury, but for once Caleb didn’t think any of the negative energy waving off of Tyler had anything to do with him. “Just some land…squabbles.”

  “With who?” Caleb might not be privy to the Blue Valley gossip, being that he featured so much in it, but he knew who the Parkers’ neighbors were, and that didn’t make any sense.

  “All I need is your pasture, Caleb. And I’m making it worth your while, so don’t screw it up.”

  “Are your land squabbles going to affect me? Maybe I should be the one setting the parameters on your behavior.”

  Tyler shook his head and took a step toward his truck. “You wish, Caleb. We both know who’s got the upper hand here. Make those repairs by Tuesday, or it’s a no go.”

  Caleb never claimed to be a mature man, so he flipped Tyler off. Behind his back, anyway.

  He didn’t have time for Tyler’s problems, whatever they might be, so he turned back to the barn before Tyler had even taken his truck out of park. Caleb had his own “squabbles” to figure out—like how the hell he could make Tyler’s repairs without buying any new supplies he couldn’t afford. Like how the hell he was going to finagle an invitation to Mel and Dan’s place—something he’d been avoiding with the skill of a magician the past few months—without letting on there was a problem.

  The latter was by far the bigger challenge.

  He went through the supplies he had on hand for fencing. What already existed in the north pasture was fine in Caleb’s estimation, but he almost couldn’t blame Tyler’s cautiousness. Caleb had more than one case of cow escapes in his past. Tyler probably had zero. The Perfect Parkers probably had zero.

  Assholes.

  He loaded up the necessary supplies in the wheelbarrow. The walk would do him good. He could physically work off some of his frustration, maybe knock his brain into problem-solving mode instead of fuck-I’d-like-a-drink mode.

  Maybe he and Tyler had never gotten along, but obviously leasing land from Caleb couldn’t be his first choice. So maybe the guy had some actual problems, and that was the reason for the bad attitude. Caleb had no room to blame the guy for that.

  Okay, one problem sorted, as long as Tyler’s sour, condescending expression wasn’t directly in his face, reminding him that the company he kept was a reflection on him and his trustworthiness as a lessor. He couldn’t
promise to be that levelheaded next time Tyler came at him with a clipboard. But for now, he wouldn’t dwell on a man he didn’t give two shits about, as long as he got some cash out of the deal.

  There was a man he did care about who needed his attention instead. Dad had never been simple, even before the paralysis. Their relationship had always been threaded with what Mom had said, what Mom had used as an excuse for leaving.

  Though Caleb had been too young to understand, or purposefully not told, Mom was pregnant when she left. He’d only known her leaving was because he’d hit her in a fit of anger, and she’d said he was too much. It had been the “last straw.” If Dad didn’t do something about him, she was going to leave.

  To protect Summer? To protect herself? He didn’t know. Everything he knew was filtered through the eyes of a five-year-old. Because he and Dad had never spoken of it since. Mom had gone, and life had…gone on.

  But Caleb had always known he wasn’t good enough. It’s in you. He’d gotten to a point where he’d set out to prove just that.

  Caleb pushed the wheelbarrow with extra force. No point dwelling on this. He’d moved on. He was an adult. Whatever Dad had been weird about this morning was…well, it wasn’t like Dad was ever going to open up and tell him.

  Caleb grunted, powering the wheelbarrow up the swell of the hill to the pasture fence. In a normal world, he’d walk into the house and ask Dad what he’d meant, what he was pissed about. But whatever normal they’d managed to pretend before Dad’s accident had disappeared since.

  Going in and demanding to know what Dad meant would likely lead to shutdowns and wheel aways and…

  Like with the whole Tyler situation, Caleb had more important things to dwell on. If Dad wanted to tell him what he meant, he would. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t. Caleb had given up on getting anything he wanted out of Dad a long-ass time ago.

  Never asked for what you wanted, did you?

  He ignored that thought. Ignored the nasty clutching in his gut. Not important. Not now. He stopped at the top of the north field. He still had a ways to go before he reached the main area Tyler wanted “reinforced,” but he could just make out the tree line around Summer’s caravan.

  He wondered if Delia had gone over there, or if she would purposefully avoid it because he’d suggested it.

  Oddly enough, both scenarios made him smile. Either way, she was reacting to him. Probably stupid, but…well, Dad ignored him or vaguely disapproved from afar. Mel mostly soldiered through dealing with him when he was being an ass, and tried to be brave for him when he was trying to walk the straight and narrow. Summer tiptoed and tried to please—aside from the yelling at him over Delia.

  But Delia, for all the ways it could make him want to tear out his hair, she reacted to him, and she didn’t see a saint or a sinner. She saw the muddled man in between.

  Likely because she was her own muddled woman.

  He blew out a breath and forced himself to go back to work. He couldn’t face the muddled woman in question until he had a plan to get them to the other side of Blue Valley with no one seeing her, and no one seeing him acting weird.

  Yeah, that was a challenge. It wasn’t that they had a bunch of busybodies in town. It was just when so few people came and went, it was noticed when something was off. It was talked about, and people made up their own theories about it.

  Tyler was a by-the-book man in the best of circumstances, and based on the way he’d snapped at Caleb for asking why he needed this, this wasn’t the best of situations. Caleb couldn’t let sex make him forget to be careful.

  Sex. With Delia. He’d crossed that line so easily, readily, and enthusiastically. Somehow, someway, it was something he’d done that had gone perfectly right. Oh sure, he’d likely mess it up sometime in the future, but for one night he’d managed to be a decent man.

  He’d work his ass off to manage a few more. So, when he got to the first spot in the fence to reinforce, instead of getting straight to work, he pulled his cell out of his coat pocket and called his older sister. After a few awkward pleasantries, he offered something he’d been avoiding since she’d moved onto the old Paulle place with Dan.

  Dinner at Mel’s. With Dan. And llamas. So many fucking llamas. In a place he’d once almost killed a man.

  Some family get-together.

  * * *

  Delia was washing the dirt off her hands when the back door creaked open and Caleb stepped inside.

  It was still light out, the sun’s golden rays somehow sneaking through the grime of the window and gilding his hair gold.

  He took her damn breath away, the jerk.

  His eyes went to her hands, which was only moderately insulting. Couldn’t they linger on her chest or something? Sure, she’d never been super chesty and not eating much hadn’t helped the situation, but a girl wanted to go for lust over—

  “You went and saw Summer.”

  She scrubbed at the dirt harder, trying to ignore the little bloom of warmth in her chest at the thought that he cared or that he was pleased. “That girl is a mess.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He took his hat off and placed it on the little table by the front door.

  It was a nothing gesture, but for some reason it made her heart ache—an ache she didn’t want to give name to. Because if she named all the things she’d never had and wanted, she might find herself crushed under wanting it.

  Caleb studied her, an amused quirk to the set of his mouth. “She said something obnoxiously insightful to you, didn’t she?”

  Delia pushed off the tap and dried her hands on a who-knew-how-old towel. “So much.”

  He chuckled, and she kept drying her hands long after she needed to.

  “Little early to start planting, isn’t it?” he asked into the silence, his eyes steady on hers.

  He might not be ogling any of her finer feminine assets, but she could still feel a change in the air. A charge to it. She could feel it from the soles of her feet to the flush of her cheeks.

  How, she didn’t want to think about. There was something elemental between them. That’s temporary. A momentary flame that will die.

  She swallowed, desperate to get out of her own head. “We were measuring to see what kind of space she had and got a little carried away with a shovel.”

  He took a step toward her, fingers going to the zipper of his coat. The flush in her face spread down her neck, the breasts he’d yet to ogle feeling heavy, sensitive.

  She wanted his hands on them. Now. If this was that temporary flame, she’d damn well burn herself on it before it was gone. So she mirrored him. Took a step, brought her hands to her own jacket zipper.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m supposed to have dinner with Mel at five thirty.”

  “What time is it?” She unzipped the rest of her coat, let it fall to the floor.

  He had to clear his throat again, and she grinned. But he dutifully glanced at his watch. “Four forty-five.”

  “Plenty of time. Lose the coat.”

  “We might want to go over a game pl—” He stopped when she pulled her shirt off.

  She didn’t want a game plan. She didn’t want to go over what they were going to do or how they were going to do it. Because she was pretty sure she’d throw up or cry at the prospect of going back there. She’d dissolve in the face of trying to find a way.

  So she’d distract herself with sex. It wasn’t like they could have sex on the car ride over, so might as well do it now. Maybe she’d relax enough not to want to run screaming in the opposite direction.

  “I, uh, didn’t have a chance to get condoms.”

  She tsked, reaching behind her and undoing the clasp of her bra. “That’s really starting to be a problem.” She dropped it and took the remaining steps to him. Before he could say or do anything, like touch her face or kiss her gently, she got to her knees.

/>   She was almost positive she heard him squeak when her fingers made quick work of undoing his pants. She tugged at both the heavy work pants and the boxers beneath, until his cock sprung free.

  She didn’t bother to hide the dreamy sigh. He knew what he did to her. No use denying it at this point, not when she was desperate to taste him and drive him insane. She wanted him to experience the restless need inside of her every time he stepped into a room. She wanted him to be weak-kneed from it like she was.

  She ran a fingertip down the length of him, and then reversed the line with her tongue.

  “Delia.”

  “Shush.”

  She took the thick length of him into her mouth, relishing the heat of him. She nearly whimpered when his fingers gently curled around her scalp, pulling her away, and then pushing her down.

  It was a gentle leading, but it was enough for the desire to spread low in her belly, for her to curse him a little bit for not having obtained condoms.

  “You have no idea…” His voice was strained, and when she looked up his eyes were intent on where her mouth took him again.

  She slid her hands up his legs, enjoying the coarse hair, the hard muscle. The beautiful way he was made.

  “Delia,” he said on a hushed whisper that grazed over her like its own entity. Words weren’t supposed to be like that, weighted with meaning and feeling. Something as simple as her name wasn’t supposed to feel good, to add to the pleasure.

  It hadn’t ever been like this, and she didn’t know how to compartmentalize it. The way it made her want to give as much as she wanted to take, the way it seemed to erase the scorecard she always kept in her head of who was coming out on top, of who was owed.

  No one. There was no score, there was only him and the way he touched her and said her name. She wanted to give, and she never wanted to give.

  His body jerked, and she could feel the tenseness in his thigh muscles, could feel the groan rumble through him. She took him deep through his orgasm, wanting to relish every last bit of the power she had over him, what she’d been able to drive him to.