Rebel Cowboy (27 page)

He wanted to laugh, because while he hadn’t exactly expected her to spit in his face, such a straight answer was beyond him at the moment.

Sorry and I love you?
Strangely, as much as he had wanted to hear her say it before, now that she was, it wasn’t enough.

Mel tried to read his expression, but she didn’t know what she saw. She didn’t know anything. She felt like some other person, and he seemed like some other person, and she didn’t know what to
do
. Not beyond what she’d already said.

He didn’t look at her, just stared out his windshield—at nothing but concrete and expensive cars. “You’re sorry. And you love me.”

She blew out a breath. She hadn’t let herself imagine he would say
go to hell
, because she never would have been able to get on that plane, call a million people she didn’t know, and navigate getting here. But she could see a million ways and reasons he would do that now.

Except she was here, and she had to keep trying. “Yes.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase
too little, too late
?”

“Have you ever heard the phrase
better late than never
?” The quip was so unlike her, so like
him
, she surprised even herself, and was rewarded when his lips curled a fraction and he expelled a breath she was going to call a laugh. “It’s never too late to fix a mistake. It might be too late for you to forgive me, but…”

“But what, Mel? Because if I remember correctly, you looked me straight in the eye and told me you didn’t believe in me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. For as much as it hurt him, the reminder was a painful thing for her as well. Without the panic supporting that decision, she could feel the ugliness of it. A gross betrayal of trust to lie like that. “I was scared.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” he muttered.

All the pretty speeches she’d memorized in the airport, on the airplane, in the cab, jumbled in her head. She didn’t know how to be honest and open with snarky, angry Dan.

Then maybe you should have been open and honest when he was being all sweet and…loving.

Right. So it was her turn to be sweet and loving in the face of anger and hurt. Something akin to penance. She deserved this. She needed to find the courage to face it. So she pushed a hand to her stomach, took a deep breath, and just spoke whatever truths she could find.

“You don’t belong here.”

“You have a strange habit of following me around telling me I don’t belong where I am. It’s getting on my nerves, honey.”

Honey.
She would not cry at that. She’d hold on to it, though, deep in her heart, and always remember his reason for using that endearment. “I actually mean it this time. Because I’m not scared. Well, I am scared that you’re going to tell me I really did mess this up irreparably, but I’m not scared of the truth. Or not scared of it enough to pretend it isn’t there.”

“Mel.”

“You look perfect in that suit,” she blurted. He opened his mouth to cut her off again, but she wouldn’t let him. “But no matter how perfect you look, no matter how charmingly you smiled at all those idiots asking you those stupid questions when anyone can see you’re telling the truth, you don’t…it’s not you. I’ve seen the way you light up with an idea, the way you smile after a hard day’s work, how much you bizarrely enjoy those demon creatures. That ranch is a part of your soul, and it’s where you belong.”

“
I
know all that. Why are you telling me? If you thought I was leaving for good, you’re an—”

“Buck told me you were coming back Wednesday. I’m saying all this because I want you to see how much of a lie it was when I said I don’t believe in you. That saying you wouldn’t stay was just reflexive panic because you staying threatened me. And I wouldn’t have felt that panic if I actually believed you wouldn’t stick. As much as my weird stuff is about, you know, people leaving and people not caring, it’s possibly a little deeper than that.”

“Possibly.”

She was trying to be good and give him his space, wait for him to make the first move, but she found she couldn’t keep going if she didn’t touch him, even if it was just the scratchy sleeve of his suit. “I have gotten through rough things by pushing through, always moving forward and doing what had to be done. If I ever stopped to think, or reflect, or God forbid feel, I couldn’t do that, you know? And then, we told Dad about Summer, and he knew. He knew about her the whole time, and he had his reasons and whatever, but then he walked away. He shut us all out and down, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to shut the good stuff out too because the bad stuff threatens my…ability to get through it.”

“It took you this long to figure that out?”

“I’m an incredibly slow learner, if you haven’t noticed.”

“So you don’t want to be your father, shutting everyone out. That doesn’t mean you love me, Mel.”

Possibly it was the wrong move, but she had to do something, so she slid her hand up his arm, to his neck, fingers brushing the skin above his stiff collar. “You’re right. It doesn’t mean that, but I do. Dan, I
do
love you, and there is nothing easy about that for me. But you are funny and strong and…you put yourself out there. I love you, I…respect you. I know this doesn’t change what I did.” She let her fingers glide along the smooth length of his jaw.

She wasn’t giving up, but who knew how many opportunities she’d get to touch him if he didn’t forgive her.

She swallowed. “I think you had to learn something when you came here, and you did. Well, I had to learn something about…love and life, and I’m sorry it took hurting you to see it. I hope you can forgive me, but even if you say you can’t right now, I’m not giving up on you. Because you love me and I love you, and I won’t give up on that when I’m finally realizing how important it is.”

She swallowed again, and then stopped trying so hard to stem the tide of tears. Because this was about showing her emotions, not being afraid of them, of feeling. She took his chin between her fingers and forced him to look at her.

When his eyes finally met hers, some of that hard tension in his jaw loosened. “Tears are not fair,” he said gruffly.

“Nothing is
fair
.”

He stared at her for a long time, silent, muscles tense. “You’d really keep trying if I said I can’t forgive you and you broke my heart irreparably?”

She swallowed at the slice of pain. “It isn’t irreparable if we both want to repair it.”

He finally moved—just a slight shift, curling his hand into a fist and then uncurling it, his gaze moving past her. There was a moment she was sure he’d say no, tell her to get out of his car. A band tightened in her chest, somehow choking her breathing but making the tears fall harder.

“Besides, I need you to teach me how…how to change. I taught you how to ranch. You owe me.”

His eyes flicked to hers and finally he touched her, thumb wiping tears off of one cheek. “You
are
part of the reason I changed. Your strength. And then you were the thing that made losing my shit seem worth it. Being an emotional wreck who couldn’t hack it seemed worth it if it got me you.”

Oh, damn him, making her cry harder. “No! That is not right. You can’t out-sweet-talk me. It’s not fair. I’m apologizing. I should win the sweet talk.”

He took her hand, brushed his mouth across her knuckles. “It can be a lifelong contest.”

Her breathing hitched, instead of with tears with a sharp intake of breath. “What exactly does that mean?”

He looked down at her hand in his, thoughtfully, then turned it over, pressing a finger to each of the calluses on her palm. “Are you really ready to put all the hard work you put in here”—he brushed a fingertip across a broken piece of skin—“into us?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” It was a much scarier prospect than actual physical labor she could control, but it also offered a better reward. A reward that didn’t disappear if her ability to work did. She would have him. What more could she want?

“You make a compelling argument, I suppose. I think I can forgive you.” Before she could throw her arms around his neck and just hold on, he held a hand between them. “On three very important conditions.”

She nodded, probably too eagerly, but she didn’t care. “Anything.” And she meant it. She would do anything, and that made anything seem possible.

* * *

Dan had no idea what to do with her apologies and declarations of love. He didn’t know what to do with her anythings, or if forgiving her was selling himself short. He didn’t have a clue if any of this was right, but he’d gotten through the past few weeks doing what felt like the right thing to do.

And that would always be her.

“Anything?” he replied, still holding on to her hand with one of his own and holding her off with the other. “What if I said I wanted the llamas to live inside with us?”

She was leaning over the console, leaning into him. Like she really would do anything. Hell, she even smiled. “I’d take you to a psychiatrist. Lovingly.”

He barked out a laugh. The past week felt like some bizarre movie. Had this all really happened to him? Up, down, and up again. But she was sitting there saying she loved him. In Chicago. In a dress. She was telling him she wanted to work hard on them, and wouldn’t it be the stupidest thing if he let one mistake be the thing that kept them apart forever?

“Okay, really, three conditions. First, you come live with me. Permanently, unpacked bag and everything.”

She bit her lip. “I’d have to make some arrangements with Caleb, but I do want to do that.”

“Good. Second, sometime around Christmas, you come to Florida with me to visit my grandparents.”

The crying that had finally stopped didn’t start again, but her eyes got all watery. She nodded, hand in his, squeezing.

“Third…” He trailed off. Went quiet.

She let out an impatient breath after he was silent for a while. “You’re killing me here,” she muttered.

“I can’t think of anything,” he admitted. “But three seemed like such a good number.”

“Dan!”

“Okay, serious third condition.” He moved so he could have both of her hands in his, so he could look her straight in the eye. If that’s how it had ended, that would be how it began again. “When you’re afraid or panicked, when you’re sad or hurt or ecstatic or …whatever, instead of, oh, I don’t know ripping my heart out and stomping on it, or either of us running away, we could go with the easy route. ‘I’m scared.’ etc.”

Her throat moved, but she nodded again. “I will work on that. And just so you know, I didn’t relish ripping your heart out, but I was busy ripping out mine, so I may have failed to notice. Maybe we both agree to keep our hearts firmly in place.”

“Sure.” He brought her hands to his mouth, kissing both. “Except mine belongs to you.”

She wrinkled her nose, but there were tears falling over her lashes again. “Gross.”

“It can’t be that gross—you’re crying again.”

“I want to go home!” she said with a sniff. “With you.” She leaned forward, pressing her mouth to his, briefly. Far too briefly. “Let’s go
home
.”

Nothing could have sounded better. Well, maybe one thing, but they’d have plenty of opportunity to do that at home too.

“Sharpe.”

When he growled, she laughed.

“I just wanted you to know that I fully expect you to be able to use that name on me at some point.” She said it so archly, like a challenge.

“That name on y— Oh, no, no, no.
You
are not proposing to
me
. I will be the one proposing when we are ready.”

“Of course,” she said, all wide-eyed innocence. “Who said anything about proposing?”

He took her face between his hands. “You are a giant pain in my ass, and I love you with everything I have.”

She grinned. “Yes. You do.” She took a deep breath, the grin softening into something sweeter. “And I love you with all I am.”

The kiss was close enough to coming home; he didn’t even care that they probably wouldn’t be back to Blue Valley before tomorrow. She was here. She was his. And that was more than enough to get them through.

Order Nicole Helm's next book
in the Big Sky Cowboys series

Outlaw Cowboy

On sale May 2016

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Read on for an excerpt from the next book in Nicole Helm’s Big Sky Cowboys series:

Outlaw Cowboy

Caleb Shaw stared at the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. It sat, innocently enough, on the table next to his snoring father.

In his mind’s eye, he unscrewed the black plastic cap and poured himself a double. And then another. The scorching heat of the amber liquid would dull away all the sharp edges inside of him.

Next to the bottle was that damn scrapbook Dad paraded out whenever he was drunk and sad. It was happening with increasing regularity. Caleb never wanted anything to do with the scrapbook. In fact, for an uncountable amount of time, he thought about tossing the damn thing in the fire.

In fact, he wanted both items gone. Banished forever. Hell, at this point in his life, he’d as soon use the alcohol to amp the blaze than drink it.

Liar.

Fair enough. His mouth was watering, and the edgy, simmering anger threatened to spill over. No amount of good seemed a match for it. And there had been good the past few months.

But it seemed like with him, bad always lurked in the shadows.

What would be the harm in one drink? His older sister would never know he’d broken his promise. She didn’t live here anymore. She’d left him with all of this for love.

“Caleb?”

Summer’s hesitant voice was enough for him to close his eyes. Christ, Summer. She was a blessing and some kind of curse, this younger sister he’d only found out about last year. Somehow she was managing to fill some of the holes Mel’s marriage and move had left in his life.

But, damn, he missed Mel. Sure, it wasn’t as if he never saw her. She was only across the valley on her husband’s strange little llama ranch, but he’d never felt responsible for Mel, and rarely felt like he needed to soothe her. Summer was in constant need of both.

It’s in you.

The voice that had haunted him growing up—the voice he thought he’d erased—had returned with Summer’s appearance and Dad’s confession. Honestly, it had resurfaced before that, when Mel had trusted him to be in charge when it was the last damn thing she should have done. No one should ever trust him. Hadn’t he proven that by now?

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Summer continued, her voice wavering.

Summer was constantly sorry. Sorry to be a burden or distraction. Sorry she didn’t know everything. If she wasn’t sorry, she was delighted: by the horses, by the mountains, by family.

She cooked and kept the house clean, for him and the father she’d only just met—the father who admitted she was his, but refused to have any interaction with her. Though, to be fair, Dad didn’t interact with much of anybody. Not since he’d been paralyzed six years ago.

It’s in you.

Mom’s voice. Mom’s accusation.
The evil. It’s in you.

“I’d go away. It’s just…”

“Just what?” Caleb snapped, immediately wincing. Losing his temper with Summer was like losing his temper with a puppy. Puppies and Summer Shaw could not take harsh words. They cowered.

It was hardly her fault she reminded him of…that.

“I think someone’s in the cabin.”

He let out a breath. No Jack for him. Which was good. He hadn’t had any in nine months. Nine long, sober months living with that boiling anger, a constant presence he had to fight back. But he hadn’t broken his promise, so at least there wasn’t new guilt to mix in with the old anger. “Someone?”

“I went back to my caravan for lunch—”

“You can eat here, you know.” Something about the way she acted like a maid in a house that was very much owed to her always rubbed him the wrong way. She wouldn’t take Mel’s old room and she wouldn’t eat lunch at the main house. She’d only eat dinner with him if she’d cooked it. She slept in a little caravan she’d arrived in last year, parked at the edge of the property.

She was a
Shaw
, and she acted like an employee inside these four walls.

He hated it, and he had no one to tell. Mel was gone, a new focus in her life. Dad was…gone in his own way. And Summer cowered against his temper.

So he kept the anger inside. He tried to freeze it out, muscle it away, but it lingered, in him.
Always.

“I…” Summer’s mouth curved into a smile. She looked so much like Mel, like his fuzzy memories of Mom. “I kind of like being by myself every once in a while. I wasn’t allowed to be alone much before…I left.”

His estranged mother had disappeared when he was five, pregnant with Summer. Then twenty-some years later, Summer had left Mom to come here and find the rest of her family. And shocked the hell out of them with her appearance, since none of the other Shaws had known about her existence.

Except Dad.

Dad had sacrificed Summer to keep Mel, and all because of him.
It’s in you.

“Are you all right?” Summer asked in a hushed whisper. She reached out to squeeze his arm. She was always so…touchy. Touchy. Smiley. Sorry. She gave him a headache, a guilt he didn’t understand, which melded with the anger he figured must be in his blood.
Bad, bad blood.

He stepped away from her. “Why do you think someone’s in the cabin?”

“There was a light inside last night. Real quick, but I know I saw it. And I thought I saw someone in the yard this morning. The snow around the place is all weird. It could be an animal, or just how it’s melting I guess, but—”

Caleb strode past her—out of the living room, through the kitchen, and into the mudroom. He plucked the keys to the gun safe from under a tub of rock salt and shoved it into the lock as Summer caught up with him.

Summer released a shocked exhale. “Oh. I don’t think you’ll need that. I’m pretty sure it’s a woman.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You think women can’t be dangerous?”

“Well, of course they can. I am very well aware they can be, but…”

He grabbed the shotgun and locked the safe again. “Show me,” he instructed.

Summer blinked at him as she worried her hands together. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Someone is prowling around that old cabin, only a few hundred yards from where you currently
sleep
, and you shouldn’t have said anything?”

Summer grabbed her coat from the hook and pulled it around her. “I don’t think she’s—”

“She’s—if it’s a she—trespassing, and needs to be scared off.”

“A gun seems harsh.”

“What, you think this is Goldilocks and she’s lost and looking for some warm porridge?”

Summer stuck her hands in her coat pockets, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth pressed into a line. He supposed this was Summer angry. It was like a spring shower compared to the raging thunderstorm of the other Shaws’ tempers. Slow and quiet, not one flash of lightning or boom of thunder.

Summer was silent, with none of her normal chatter—nervous or otherwise—as they got in his truck and drove through the slushy spring snow to the other side of the Shaw property where the old cabin was.

The cabin looked the same as it had since Grandpa died fifteen-some years ago. The Shaw men had never lived to a ripe old age, and had never been any good at housekeeping. The windows were dusty, everything slumped and old. The rough-hewn logs supposedly chopped down by some ancestor were weathered by age and harsh winters.

But there was a definite disturbance to the snowpack around the cabin, and while any number of wild animals could be walking around the area, infesting the cabin, wild animals didn’t typically attempt to cover their tracks.

And they certainly couldn’t open doors. The sagging lump of snow on the left-hand side of the door was unmistakable.

Someone was in there, and that someone didn’t want anyone to know.

“Go to the caravan,” Caleb ordered, hopping out of the truck. He left the safety on the gun. He doubted whoever was hiding wanted trouble, but he’d been involved in a little too much trouble back in the day to entirely rule it out.

Summer was shadowing him, decidedly not going to the caravan. “You can’t go in there alone.”

“Why not? I’m a man with a gun.”

“You’re the one who said she could be dangerous!”

“I repeat, I am a man with a gun.” He strode toward the cabin door, but Summer kept following him. He was sure he could yell and she’d stay put, but that seemed like an overreaction. This was probably as simple as someone looking for a warm place to stay.

He tried to peer in the window surreptitiously, but both the grime and the tattered curtains blocked any view of the interior.

“I’m going to ease my way in. You stay outside. Got it?”

She clutched her hands together in front of her, eyes wide and worried, but she nodded. He had to resist rolling his eyes. Lord knew he’d faced a lot more potentially dire situations than some random person in this long vacated cabin.

It’s in you
.

Every once in a while that was all right, wasn’t it? Every once in a while, he got it in his fool head to save somebody, and the not-so-nice pieces of himself came in handy.

Of course, his help rarely really solved anything.

Focus.

He eased the door open, his finger on the gun’s safety, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light inside. He noticed a long, denim-clad leg dangling over the back of the couch.

A flash of sunlight hit the bottom metal of a boot, and he saw an inscription on the sole
.

He lowered his finger away from the safety. He knew that boot and its inscription:
fuck off
in flowing script. He considered keeping the gun up, because Lord knew this woman was dangerous. “Damn it, Delia.”

“Hello, handsome,” she drawled, not moving off the musty old couch so he could see the rest of her. “Took you a little longer than I expected.”

* * *

Delia’s heart hammered in her chest. It was a lie. She hadn’t been expecting Caleb at all. She thought she’d been so careful.

Despite the thunderstorm of fear and nerves inside her, she remained still, except for her foot, tapping absently in the air. She had been bred to weather every unexpected confrontation with a mask of calm and poise.

Besides, she’d known this
could
happen. It wasn’t ideal, but she had a backup plan. She wouldn’t be trespassing if she didn’t have a backup plan. She wouldn’t be Delia Rogers if she didn’t have a backup plan.

“Who is she?” a voice whispered.

A female voice.

That had Delia moving. A
woman
could put a wrench in her backup plan. She pushed into a sitting position, scooping her hair out of her eyes.

Oh, Caleb.
Handsome boys who turned into handsome men simply weren’t fair. His hair was still golden and wavy, whiskers glinting almost red in the sun. His shoulders were broader, but his hips were still narrow. Even under the heavy winter coat, she could tell he packed a lot of strength in that lean frame. Adulthood and bad choices had given his face character. The sharp swoop to his square jaw was covered in appealing stubble, his nose was slightly crooked, and she remembered the day that slash had been put in his eyebrow.

He still had a mouth made for sin and muscles made for work. Too bad she knew the history underneath.

And she would use it if it came to that. Use all those feelings she’d denied herself since…well,
since
.

The silence hung between them, glittering with ghosts and secrets, and Caleb made no bones about scowling his distaste.

She’d heard it through the grapevine: Caleb Shaw had gone straight. She hadn’t thought much of it at first. The people in their old ne’er-do-well clan ended up one of three ways: getting their act together, dead in a ditch, or where she very well might be headed if she couldn’t figure her way out of this mess.

Jail.

Panic welled up in her chest, making it hard to pretend, but panic had been a constant companion since she could remember, so it didn’t show. It was her little secret.

“Who’s she?” Delia jutted her chin toward the brunette standing halfway behind Caleb, like he was protecting her.

Something uncomfortable twisted in Delia’s stomach, but she wouldn’t let it lodge there. If Caleb had a woman, that might complicate things, but it certainly wouldn’t stand in her way. She wasn’t going to jail for what Eddie had done, and she’d use whatever and whoever she had in her arsenal to make sure of it. That’s what had kept her from being dead in a ditch for twenty-some years.

That and Caleb’s fists one particularly unpleasant night, but that had also caused half of the trouble she was in right now, so it seemed to even itself out.

“She’s none of your business,” Caleb replied, standing even more in front of the woman.

Delia wanted to sneer. She looked more girl than woman. In fact, she looked like…

Delia couldn’t put her finger on it, but it didn’t matter. As far as Delia was concerned, the
girl
was a speed bump, and speed bumps were meant to be flown over.

Caleb turned his head to the girl, still keeping her out of Delia’s gaze, as though just glancing at Delia would be trouble. His voice was low, nothing more than a rumbled whisper, though Delia could make out the words
go home
. Good. Send the little girl away so they could have an adult conversation.

Now Delia had to figure out what to say. She hadn’t expected to have to use the backup plan so quickly, but it was there, fuzzy formed in her brain. Luckily she was used to thinking on the fly.

After a few hushed exchanges, the
girl
finally exited the cabin and Delia was left with Caleb. Alone. She forced her mouth to curl in a languid smile, the kind meant to allure, entice,
remind
.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded in a gravelly voice. That was new. She remembered the barely banked anger in his eyes, but not that steely note to his voice.

“How long’s it been, honey? Four years?”

“Not long enough,
sweets
.”

He’d never liked pet names, which was why she’d always used them with him. He’d respond sarcastically, but when a woman lived with a dearth of pet names, she didn’t care how the men around her said them.