Tucker's Crossing (11 page)

Dylan tipped his hat and left the barn, taking with him all of the progress Cody and JT had made, and leaving behind a whole new set of complications that could damn well sink the ranch. At least he’d be driving a truck again.

JT stabbed at the ground with his shovel. Cody could hear the little gears in his son’s mind churning away. But the one thing Cody knew he had in excess was patience. So he waited.

A long while.

“So, um . . . Friday’s the last day of school and that means the Summer Sweet Spectacular is coming up, and there’s this game—”

A horn honked outside the barn. JT closed his mouth, all of his courage replaced with resignation. He stuck the shovel in a pile of hay, resting it against the wall, that ready smile from a moment ago buried so deep Cody wondered if he’d ever see it again. Slinging a backpack, which was nearly as big as he was, over his shoulder, he headed toward the barn door.

“So about the game?” Cody encouraged.

“Never mind. Gotta go.”

“All right,” Cody said, but it wasn’t. He knew JT was talking about the fatherson football game. When he was a kid, he’d played in it with his dad. Still had the trophy collecting dust on his shelf. It had been the summer before his mama died. Before his dad had started drinking. There were times, even as late as high school, when Cody would pull it down and stare at it, wondering what he’d done to make his dad hate him so much.

JT hesitated at the stall door, and Cody felt hope well up. “Grandpa said you played football.”

“Sure did. High school and college.” Cody tried to appear unaffected. Did his son want to partner with him? And had his dad told JT about that game?

“And that you were quarterback.”

“Yup.”

“Me too.”

“Imagine that.” Then Cody shocked himself by adding, “Maybe this weekend we can work on some drills to help gain yardage.”

“Okay.” JT finally met his eyes. Something vulnerable flickered there. Then JT disappeared through the stall entrance, and the moment ended.

Damn Shelby for not telling him about his son, and for keeping them apart. Cody threw down his shovel and raced to catch his son.

“Hey, JT,” Cody hollered from the center of the barn. JT stopped just under the threshold and turned to face him. He’d tried keeping his distance, afraid that he’d somehow hurt JT and inevitably screw everything up. But ignoring him had accomplished the same thing. “Have a good last few days of school.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, and my favorite dessert is Ms. Luella’s peach pie.”

JT rubbed his belly. “Yeah, me too.” JT paused, tilting his head as if judging where Cody ranked on the cool-parent meter. “So, um . . . can you not tell my mom about me mucking in my school clothes? She’d freak.”

Cody gave him a rueful smile. He wasn’t big on lying, but under the circumstances he’d take what he could get. “I’ll think about it.”

Slinging her purse over her shoulder and clutching her overnight bag, Shelby made her way through the kitchen, hoping to snag one of Ms. Luella’s blueberry muffins on her way out. Instead, when she opened the pantry she got a face full of a very scared Ms. Luella, swinging a wooden spoon and clutching a warehouse-sized tin of baking powder.

“Good God, Luella!” Shelby forced herself into the space between the door and the counter, dodging the wooden spoon.

Ms. Luella clutched her heart dramatically, her chest heaving. “What on God’s green earth are you doing, child?”

“Me?” Shelby snapped, her chest doing a little huffing and puffing of its own. “I’m not the one hiding out in the pantry.” That’s when Shelby saw not one, but three tins of baking powder and a large bottle of oil. “What’s going on?”

“Getting ready to bake me some biscuits,” Ms. Luella said matter-of-factly, as if that would explain everything.

“With olive oil?”

“You’ve got a problem with that?” Then, as if she were bored with the subject of biscuits, she grabbed a tall glass, filled it with ice and sweet tea, and shoved it at Shelby. “Take this to Cody on your way out.”

“What makes you think I’m headed out to the tack room?”

“Now who said Cody was out in the tack room?”

Shelby felt her neck warm all the way up to her hairline. She was caught and she knew it.

“Not to mention you’ve been walking around like you’ve got a head full of cow chips. And whenever a woman trades in her good sense, there’s always a man involved.”

“I’m going to talk to him about Jake. Give him the agreement.”

“Well, it’s about time. Figured you’d have brought it up first off.”

“Cody was so shocked.” Shelby grimaced, thinking back to that first day in the kitchen. “And when he hasn’t been avoiding me, Jake is somehow nearby. I have no idea how he’ll react and Jake’s already had more than his share of hurt. I don’t want to add to that with bad timing.”

“The longer you put it off, the worse it’ll be.”

Shelby sighed. Seeing Cody was the last thing she wanted to do. And being rejected again by Cody wasn’t how Shelby wanted to start her double shift. But she had to talk to him, just in case he decided to pack it up and move on in the meantime.

Last night, well after their talk—attempted talk gone wrong—she’d heard him rev up his sedan and drive off to who knows where. Shelby had paced by the window, fearing she had missed her chance and praying that he’d come back. The sun had barely peeked over the hills when she’d heard the crunching of the gravel signaling his return.

That got her attention. The longer she waited, the greater the chance that he might never come back.

She needed to tackle this like her job. There was no room for emotions or fear in the ER so she’d do best to check hers at the curb with regard to Cody.

“Now you take this and get.” Ms. Luella handed her the glass and dropped a muffin—not blueberry—into Shelby’s purse.

“I wanted blueberry.”

“And I want boobs that don’t blend into my waistline. Lemon and juniper muffin, it will help with bloating.” Shelby looked down at her stomach. It was the scrubs, she told herself. “Now stop lollygagging; he’s been out there in that heat for hours. Probably fixing to spin his own cotton.”

With her hands full, she was completely defenseless against Ms. Luella’s intentions as her old friend tugged the front of Shelby’s nurse scrubs down.

“Ms. Luella!” Shelby scolded, feeling her cheeks turn the color of beets.

“What? I’ve got me a ribbon to win,” Luella chided, fluffing the back of Shelby’s ponytail and pulling her scrub pants tight across her derriere. “Plus, showing a little skin can’t hurt. The way he looks at you, sugar, he’ll be so busy gawking he won’t have time to pursue this letting-me-go nonsense.”

Shelby softened. She knew Ms. Luella was nervous about her position here at the ranch. She also knew Cody could never follow through with letting her go.

“He’s just blowing wind.”

“Easy for you to say, seeing as he doesn’t want to throw you out so much as throw you in the hay.”

Shelby ignored the comment. “Cody’s just frustrated. He knows that he can’t run and deep down he’s scared that he doesn’t really want to. But there’s no way he’ll fire you.”

“Sugar, if you grew up in the hell those boys did while a bunch of us folks just stood around doing nothing, you’d think different. He’s got a right to kick us all out.”

“You had your reasons,” Shelby said quietly.

“We all have our reasons. But when it comes to protecting kids, I don’t think there are reasons enough to stand by and do nothing.” Luella blinked hard. Gave the scrub top another not-so-gentle tug and patted Shelby on the fanny. “Now go on. I need a good two hours in the kitchen without him trying to fire me. And shake that backside a little and see if he don’t drop right to his knees and ask for you back then and there.”

Before she could clarify that she didn’t want Cody back, Ms. Luella spun around to busy herself with something Shelby was sure didn’t need busying with. But Ms. Luella didn’t turn her back fast enough, and Shelby couldn’t help but notice the moisture growing in her friend’s eyes.

According to Ms. Luella, Silas had been eaten up with guilt over a very brief affair he’d carried on toward the end of his wife’s life. He never forgave himself for the betrayal or Evie for leaving him when she took her life. His anger and guilt compounded at the same rate as his drinking, driving him from devoted dad to cruel drunk in under a year.

He’d turned the house into a living mausoleum to his late wife, and if the boys so much as moved one of Evie’s old magazines, they were punished. Usually by way of humiliation or downright scare tactics. Apparently he had tossed the boys out a time or two, locking them out of the house for days, one time over the period of a week. Winter conditions notwithstanding.

Ms. Luella had gone to the authorities over the suspected abuse. Between the lack of physical proof, the boys remaining tight-lipped, and no one else stepping forward there was nothing anyone could do. So she stayed on, trying to act as a buffer between them and Silas. But nothing had prepared her for what happened to Beau.

Outside, the heat was sweltering with a stickiness that clung to Shelby’s work scrubs and skin. She dropped her bags off at the car and made her way around the barn, wondering how a boy who had grown up in such cruelty could end up so gentle and tender. Although the moment Shelby spotted Cody, pounding a fence post into the ground, his shirt hanging over his toolbox, tender and gentle didn’t sum up the man in front of her.

His skin was golden from the sun, slick with heat, and as he raised the hammer over his head to bring it down on the wood, she watched the play of muscles on his back. During their time together, her fingers had memorized each and every inch of that body and they suddenly tingled with the need to reacquaint themselves.

Cody must have sensed her approach because by the time she realized he had stopped working, Shelby looked up to find him watching her, an amused smile on his lips.
Great.
Just what she needed, him standing there looking—well, like denim-encased sex—and her gaping openly at his half-naked state. Even worse, he knew exactly what she was thinking.

“Afternoon.” Hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, he dropped his gaze to the glass in her hands and Shelby realized she hadn’t stopped staring yet.
Get a grip!

“Ms. Luella thought you might need something to cool you off.”

“Did she now?” Cody took the glass, his fingers grazing hers in a way that could only have been purposeful. He tipped the glass to his lips, taking long, deep swallows.

Swallowing hard herself, Shelby wiped her heat-dampened hands on her scrubs and shifted her attention, and the direction of the conversation, to the fallen fence posts. One, Cody was working on. The other lay on the ground, the fence between the two a twisted mess of sharp and jagged metal. “Did that happen this morning?”

“I don’t know. Did it?”

Shelby didn’t like the tone of his voice. “You think I cut it?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. A couple of cows got out before someone noticed.”

“Are they okay?”

“Yup.” Cody took a step closer. She could smell his scent mingling with the dry soil. “We rounded them up. A few hours more and it could have been a real problem.”

Shelby risked meeting his gaze. Big mistake. His shirt was back on his body, but it didn’t make him any less attractive. If anything, the undone top buttons beckoned like an untied bow on a present Christmas morning.

“Thanks.” He set the empty glass down next to his toolbox. Silence ate up the space between them. They might as well have been in a confined room instead of in the middle of thirty thousand acres the way her body was responding.

She tried to detach herself, pretend this was just a meeting between business associates, but when he wore his jeans—hung low on his hips and long over his worn boots—it made her thighs hum. He was shedding that boardroom sheen and looking more like the small-town cowpoke she used to know.

“Honey, you keep looking at me like that and I’m bound to drag you into the tack room.”

It pissed her off that he sounded so cool. It pissed her off even more because she wanted to go in the tack room and see what he would do once they got there.

How did a person manage to become so in charge of his own destiny, so confident and in command? He was the walking opposite of her, and she admired and hated him for it all at the same time.

“We need to talk.”

“Then can we go have wild sex in the tack room?” Cody raised a brow, going for a little humor to lighten the mood.

“We need to talk about Jake and the ranch. Plus, I don’t sleep with men I don’t trust.”

“Oh, you trust me, you just don’t realize it.”

She did realize it and it unsettled her. But not as much as she imagined it was screwing with him.

“You’re right.” Shelby reached into her pocket, her finger playing over the top of the envelope she had placed there earlier. With a final breath she pulled out the document, clutching it between her fingers before finally offering it to Cody. “Here.”

“What’s that?”

“Me trusting you.”

Cody eyed the envelope before finally reaching for it. He tugged but Shelby found no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t let go.

Once Cody opened that envelope, read what Gina had outlined and Shelby had signed, the security she found in the unanswered question of would he give them a chance would be gone. But the part of her that was a mother, the responsible party in her son’s future, forced her fingers to uncurl and release the envelope.

Cody acknowledged her hesitation, then slid a strong finger under the edge and unfolded the document. After a quick glance at the first page, his eyes briefly snapped to hers and then he scanned the second page. When he reached the end of the document, he looked up at Shelby, his face giving away nothing. “You want to tell me what this is?”

No, she didn’t. Everything hinged on the next few minutes and she needed to be brave—for Jake. Glancing at her watch, she felt her heart rate increase. She’d timed it so Cody wouldn’t have much time to shoot her down. She could make the offer and then leave, giving him a couple of days to think about it. But somehow she was already late.