Undeniable (10 page)

And thanks, Dax, for screwing me over again.

Would’ve been nice to have the firm’s third and more levelheaded—or so she’d thought—attorney stand up for her. But Greg had done nothing except observe the exchange from his office doorway, looking all
GQ
-hot with his shoulder on the jamb and his arms in designer cotton crossed over his impressive chest, his stylish glasses framing his crystal blue eyes.

No, Greg was too busy being the protégé to toss her a life preserver or something else appropriately nautical to keep her from drowning. Drowning,
pfft
. Maybe in her own perspiration. But never in such a display of contempt.

Glancing at the traffic as she approached the corner of Main
and First, she moved to her right and ran smack into Josh Lasko as he exited Nathan’s Food and Drug, the white pharmacy bag he held ending up crushed between their bodies.

“Oh, gosh, Darcy. I’m sorry.” He was slow to set her away, holding her to keep her steady. “Are you all right?”

She was still getting over the earthy clean smell of him, the feel of him. His plaid western shirt starched to a crisp. His hand on her arm squeezing, his thigh nudging her hip. She’d never been this close to him and hadn’t realized, or expected, he’d be so solid and hard. So tall with his boots and his hat.

And he’d said
gosh.

A sweet giddy pleasure rushed over her, then disappeared when she realized how disheveled she must look.
Nice. Real nice. The icing on the cake of the day.
“My fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly paying attention myself. Just digging for my keys like there’s some big hurry in getting back to the store.”

That made her smile, calmed her racing pulse. That and his saying
gosh.
“How’re you doing, Josh? How’s your dad? I saw him the other morning at the Blackbird.” The words were out before she could kick her big mouth closed. Everyone in town knew of her altercation with Henry Lasko. “He looked like he was feeling a lot better.”

“He’s good. He’s getting stronger every day.” He showed her the bag he held. “Just picking up a refill on his meds. He mentioned that he’d seen you.”

Of course he had.
Darcy sighed.

Getting into this with Josh was only going to further spike her blood pressure, but… her bed. She’d lie in it. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I just thought it would be better if he and I talked privately rather than in the middle of the breakfast crowd.”

Josh didn’t say anything, just continued to worry the bag in his hand. “You going somewhere? Can I give you a lift?”

Bringing up a hand to shade her eyes, she looked beyond Josh and down the street before giving him a sheepish shrug. “Uh, I’m not exactly sure.”

He grinned, a slow-moving pull of his mouth as if he had all sorts of time to finish. “And you’re walking there?”

What was she going to say? That The Campbell had yelled at her and she’d run away from home? “Stupid, huh.”

“I’d never say you were stupid, Darcy. Just that it’s not a good idea for anyone to be out in this heat.” He nodded toward his truck, parked at the curb. “Why don’t you come back to the store, cool off, then we can get you to where you’re going?”

“Thanks. That sounds like a plan.” She must’ve been hotter than she’d realized because she didn’t think twice about accepting. And she let him place his palm in the small of her back to guide her to his truck that wasn’t but six steps away.

For the whole of the six-minute drive, the memory of his touch lingered, the weight of his palm, the imprint of his fingers. She propped her elbow on the door, leaned her chin into her hand, and stared out the window, pretending it wasn’t Josh behind the wheel, his legs working the brake and the clutch, his shoulders flexing to shift and to steer.

It had to be the heat, the way her pulse was racing, her skin tingling, her throat tightening around her urge to swallow, her breasts growing heavy, because this wasn’t her. Except the heat didn’t explain her recent thoughts of Josh out of his Wranglers, and
oh, God, why had she gone there?

She closed her eyes, a soft moan escaping before she could grab it back, another following when she gave into the remembered feel of his hand.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she lied. “Just fine.”

They reached the end of the short trip, and he parked at the rear of the store, telling her, “Sit right there.”

She did, watching as he walked around the cab to open her door. This time she kept a step ahead of him as he ushered her up the steps and into the office. She couldn’t have him touch her again. Not today when she was so out of sorts and… wilted.

Once inside, she stopped and took in the cramped space and thought about the big room where she worked, the wall of walnut bookshelves, the computer screen that did double duty as a TV. Top of the line equipment. Furniture requiring no assembly. Carpet so thick she spent most of her time out of her shoes.

All that, yet she couldn’t keep it together—the paperwork stacked on the floor to be filed, the tumble of books in her kneehole needing to be shelved. On Josh’s desk, there wasn’t a pencil out of place or a single sticky note on the edge of his laptop screen.

Was this Henry’s influence, Josh holding down his father’s fort while the older man recovered? Or was this who Josh was, calm and neat and caring, and she’d just never noticed the way his hands moved, so deft, so engaged?

She sat in a folding chair, twisting her fingers together, wondering when she’d last been cared for. Wondering, as well, if it would take her tripping over a file box and breaking her neck for The Campbell to notice she needed a clerk—if she still had her job after this morning, or even still wanted her job—and that with her caseload, she was too busy to serve as his.

“Sorry about the accommodations.” Josh fired up the coffeemaker on the file cabinet in the corner, poured bottled water into the reservoir and lifted two mugs and two individual pouches of ground coffee from the top drawer. “I know it’s hot for coffee,
but I like the order of it. Water, ground beans, mugs. Nothing I have to think about. It just gets done. And if you want it cold, I have ice.”

Fancy machine for a feed store. “Is this where you bring all your dates?”

“Just my lawyers,” he said without missing a beat.

Why had she said that? Dates? Seriously? “This is going to be my Waterloo as an attorney, you know.”

He turned, frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“My father and your father on one side. My brother and his boys on the other. Then there’s you and me, and I’m not sure if we’re at odds, or if we’re a team, or if we’re Switzerland.” She inhaled the coffee’s comforting aroma. “It feels like some incestuous Hatfield and McCoy standoff.”

“Or a Montague and Capulet showdown?”

Darcy’s stomach tumbled. That would only work if she and Josh were star-crossed lovers. She looked from her hands in her lap to the fit of his Wranglers… his waist, his legs, his back end. Then she took a minute and closed her eyes because the things she was thinking were going to mess up this moment out of time. And oh but she needed this moment out of time.

“I doubt when my dad hired yours to draw up the lease papers he had any idea what was in Tess’s will. No one could’ve anticipated that.” Josh switched out cups and coffee pouches, pulled milk from a small fridge, packets of sweetener from the drawer. “Should’ve seen his face when he heard the ranch was going to the Dalton Gang.”

Darcy could imagine. “Good thing he and The Campbell weren’t in the same room. Their combined blood pressure would’ve blown off the roof.”

“Did you think it was strange? Dax and the others inheriting?”

“Why? They were the closest thing the Daltons had to kids.”

He set a coffee mug in front of her, turned for his own. Then he dropped into his chair and leaned back, propping one boot on the desk’s corner, then propping the second and crossing his ankles. “Yeah, but none of the guys were around when Tess and Dave needed them most.”

His legs were so, so long. His feet in his boots so big. “I’m not sure.”

“How do you mean?”

“Maybe not in the couple’s later years, but if I recall correctly, they came close to losing the ranch before the boys began working for them.” She tore open a packet of sweetener, poured it into her mug. “The cheap teenage labor probably saved them as much heartache as hard cash, and kept them going as long as they did.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Josh said, drinking his coffee black.

So the milk and sweetener were for her? How had he known? And why was she still so warm when the air-conditioner was blowing and she hadn’t touched her drink? “I hate feeling like I have to choose a side in this war. The Campbell or my brother. I don’t get why there’s a war at all. The will was clear. The ranch belongs to the boys. It’s up to them to revisit the lease.”

“You don’t have to choose a side. Just do your job. Unless you don’t want to do your job.”

She lifted her mug, stared into it. “You make it sound so easy.”

“Life should be easy.”

Was that what it was like to not be a Campbell? To not expect the worst? To not wake up and smell biscuits and dysfunction? To not skip the biscuits completely because picking up breakfast tacos for the office left no time?
Jesus.
She couldn’t imagine what tomorrow morning would hold, at home, at work…

And whether it was Josh’s influence or her own suddenly weak will, she decided she wasn’t going to be there for whatever it was.
She needed time to work out what
she
wanted. And she couldn’t do that while at The Campbell’s beck and call.

She returned her untouched drink to the desk. “I hate to ask—”

“Ask.” Josh swung his boots to the floor, sat forward, met her gaze and held it. “Anything, Darcy. Just ask.”

And then it hit her. If life was easy, he’d made it so. Things with Josh were simple, clear, cut-and-dried. That left no room for the sort of theatrics her family thrived on. Involving him more than she already had wouldn’t be fair. “Would you mind driving me back to the office? I can’t go anywhere without my car.”

He held her gaze then gave a nod as if coming to a decision. “Can you drive a manual transmission?”

“Sure, why?”

“Why don’t you just take my truck? I can use the company truck for now.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.” To be so generous, to continue their involvement.

“You didn’t ask. I offered.”

“I know, but—”

“I’m guessing your walking has something to do with the will and the lease and the trouble it’s causing your family.”

“In a nutshell.”

“Well, the way I see it, there’s no need to see your father again until you decide what you’re going to do. And you
should
take your time. No need to rush.” He let that sink in then added, “There’s never any need to rush.”

His gaze held hers until her eyes burned, until her throat swelled, until her chest tightened. She needed to blink, but couldn’t look away, could only listen. Could only dream and imagine and wish that she wasn’t a Campbell, that he wasn’t a Lasko.

He went on, reaching across the desk for her hand and wrapping her fingers in his. “What’s the worst he can do? Fire you?
Disown you? Dax got on with his life just fine without Wallace Campbell running it.”

She hated Josh thinking she had no mind of her own. And she started to tell him she was the one running her life,
thank you very much
, but stopped because the truth struck her like a two-by-four. Yes, she’d made the decision to become an attorney, but as much as she loved the law, she’d done so because Dax hadn’t.

Because her brother leaving had turned the family upside down. Because at sixteen years old, she’d wanted to right it. Giving her father what he wanted was the only way she’d known how. And here she was, thirty-two, sweating through a gorgeous suit that had cost her a fortune by running away from the man she’d worked her whole life to please.

That right there was what it was like to be a Campbell. That right there was what she had to show for her years. She pulled her hand free and pushed to her feet, swiped at her eyes and pretended the moisture was perspiration. No, that it was sweat.

Goddamn improper sweat. “I’m sorry. I probably should’ve had you ice my coffee. I’m feeling pretty flushed.”

Josh was around the desk in seconds, lowering her into her seat as though she were a rare sort of flower. As though she, Darcy Francis Campbell, mattered even without her last name, and certainly without her degree. “Sit. Take off your jacket. I’ll get you some ice water.”

She shrugged out of the jacket, felt the silk of her blouse peel away from her armpits. Ugh. What she needed was her ice water served in a shower, or in the Olympic-sized pool at home. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not today, and probably never again.

Since she’d just decided she didn’t live there anymore.

A
S
A
RWEN BRAKED
to a stop in front of the Dalton ranch house, parking next to a truck with a magnetic sign for Lasko’s on the door, the pans in her floorboard shifted forward and threatened to spill. She bit off a sharp, “Oh, crap,” breathing easier once everything had settled.

The jostling sent the smells of barbecue sauce and smoked baby-back ribs and
borracho
beans with jalapeños to fill the cab, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Food in front of her all day long, yet she couldn’t get away from the business of her business long enough to eat.

Oh, she’d snag a strip of grilled chicken breast when walking through the kitchen, or a carrot before it found itself grated into a salad, a slice of garlic toast hot from the oven because she couldn’t resist the buttery smell. But lately she’d been more distracted than usual—a condition she blamed on Dax.

Most specifically, she blamed it on his crawling into her bed the other morning and staying after she’d told him to go. She’d fallen asleep with him wrapped around her, and she’d slept so deeply, so soundly, she’d expected him to be there when her alarm went off. Expected, and been disappointed to find herself alone.