Undeniable (24 page)

That’s how close they’d become. She knew he carried a heavy weight. He knew she offered a safe place to put it. But still they danced, coaxing and circling and making the other work for it instead of stepping into trust.

Scary place, trust. Open and rife with vulnerability and no way out.

“Dax?”

“Can I get another beer?”

She thought about leaving him there to draw it herself. Then she thought better and called the request to Luck, keeping her eye on him as she did. “Tell me about Darcy.”

Shaking his head, he turned his empty mug in a circle on the table. “She’s pretty much a mess. Came by earlier. Slapped the shit outta me.”

“What?” Arwen’s pulse jumped. “Why?”

“For not going to the hospital.”

“Wait. You still haven’t been to the hospital?”

Luck arrived with the beer then, setting it down and walking away while Arwen’s blood pressure rose. She’d raced to him. The minute she’d heard Wallace Campbell had been struck down, she’d raced to him.

She’d driven into the pasture where he was working cattle. She’d driven away with him beside her, stopped when he’d told her to, let him fuck her against the side of the truck when the physical release was the only way he knew to grieve. Or at least she’d thought he’d been grieving.

She’d seen him double over as she’d left him there. Watched him until her own tears forced her to concentrate on the ruts that served as a road. He’d come to her later, he’d apologized, they’d spent as much time talking as having sex. About his father, about hers, about his mother—things with their families neither had ever told anyone else.

And he still hadn’t gone to the hospital?

Her own mug was waiting and she lifted it, his gaze snagging hers before she got it to her mouth.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“Oh,” she said. “I seriously doubt that.”

“You’re thinking I’m a dick.”

She drank, saying nothing. His admission was totally unsatisfying. She wanted to be the one calling him names. “Good for Darcy. Slapping you.”

He worked his jaw as if it were still sore. “Spilled spaghetti meat everywhere. Bing and Bob enjoyed it.”

He wasn’t going to get to her. He wasn’t. She didn’t feel sorry for him. She didn’t ache for him. He was not going to turn her life upside down. “So when are you going to go see him?”

“Change that to an
if
and maybe I can give you an answer.”

“When, Dax?”

“Hey, boss?”

At Luck’s interruption, Arwen turned. “What’s up?”

The younger woman stood at the end of the bar, and gestured over her shoulder where Callie and Amy both waited. “We’re done here. You need anyone to hang around?”

“Y’all go on.” Dax drawled out the words before Arwen had a chance to respond. “She’s safe with me.”

Luck didn’t move. Neither did Callie or Amy. Arwen couldn’t help but smile. “I’m fine. Be sure and lock the back door.”

She turned back to Dax, held his gaze as the girls left, listened to their chatter fade down the hall, to the door slamming, the locks clicking into place.

He lifted his mug in a toast. “All locked in and no place to go.”

“I have a place. Right next door. I plan to go there as soon as I’m done here,” she said, her hand on her laptop and the night’s unfinished work. “And since we’ve already had this conversation, I don’t know why you stopped by.”

“I wanted a couple of beers. I wanted to see you.”

“Even knowing what I was going to say?” Unless he’d needed to hear her say it again. Needed another dose of convincing because the first hadn’t stuck. “Just go. Get it over with. Do it for Darcy.”

“If I go, she’s the only reason. And you.”

“Oh, Dax,” she said, sitting back. Why had she ever thought she’d be able to get him out of her system, even for as much as a day?

He reached across the table for her hand, ran his thumb over her knuckles for a long quiet moment. The saloon creaked and popped around them, settling in for the night. They were the only noises until he spoke.

“I never stopped thinking about them, you know. The family.
After I left. I thought about Mom. Thought a lot about Darcy, wondered if she hated me for leaving her to deal with the mess. Mostly I thought about him. Did he wish he’d done things differently? Did he care that I was gone—”

“Of course he cared—”

“No,” he said, his head down and only his gaze coming up. “He didn’t care. He never cared. He doesn’t have it in him to care. I’d say I can’t fault him for it. It’s just who he is. But I do. Because who in the hell doesn’t care about their own kids?”

She knew he wasn’t that naive, that he was simply looking at his life through lenses colored with his past. Just as she looked at hers through the ones she’d painted with the crayons she’d used to pass time in the bar. “Parents who’ve been hurt, who’re so lost in their own misery they don’t have any caring to give.”

She wasn’t looking at him, was focused on their joined hands, but she felt his gaze searching, studying, lingering, and learning, seeing her maybe for the first time. Or at least in a way he hadn’t before, a way she hadn’t wanted him to. Arwen, the girl he’d gone to school with, invisible, wallpaper. Alone.

“Your father.”

She shrugged. “Like you said. It’s just who he is. Who he was.”

“He kept you with him.”

“He kept me in a bar, Dax. A bar. He didn’t even know I was there half the time. Buck checked on me, made sure I had food, that I wasn’t too hot or too cold. That I had shoes. Shoes.” She closed her eyes and cleared her throat of the hurt before looking at him again. “You want to compare caring, what parent doesn’t put shoes on their own kid?”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice low, angry, lost. “I didn’t know. I mean, I knew it wasn’t good because of my mother, but I didn’t know. About the shoes.”

She blew off his sympathy. She didn’t need sympathy. “It was
a long time ago. I got over it. And I’ve got a fucking closet full of shoes.”

“Plus the booth from the Buck Off Bar in your kitchen.”

She glared, and he laughed. She pulled her hands from his, which only served to make him laugh harder and make her glare until she couldn’t glare anymore.

“You know I’m right. You’re not over it anymore than I am. Our fathers were, our fathers
are
drunks. We may not have been abused or abandoned, but we sure as hell weren’t brought up believing in Santa Claus and Disneyland.”

Santa Claus. Lord. Had she ever for a minute believed? Nostalgia—the good parts, not the bitterness, the sadness, the hate and regrets—drew her mouth into a soft smile. “I hung my stocking on Buck’s fireplace.”

“The one in the bar?”

She nodded. “We didn’t have one in our house and Buck wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on Christmas morning.”

Dax picked up his hat, tipped it. “Hell of a guy, Buck Akers.”

They fell silent after that, finishing off their beers, fingers touching, playing, teasing without words but connecting them in ways Arwen had never connected with another soul. It thrilled her and frightened her and left her wishing she could see even six months down the road. Was she wasting her time here? Was she risking too much?

Would he eventually leave?

She sat back, moved her hands to her lap then crossed her arms over her chest. “So, you’re going to go see your father?”

“Are you going to go see yours?”

She needed to. “If I can arrange to get off.”

“I can get you off now.”

Jesus. “You know what I mean. Time off. Not… that other thing.”

“Tell me you’ve never had it better.”

“The sex?”

He gave a single nod, his gaze hooded, his pupils enlarged, his pulse pounding like hoofbeats in the hollow of his throat.

She swallowed, her chest tight as she thought of his hands, his mouth, the length and thickness of his cock, the way it tasted, the heat of his balls against her face. “Never.”

“But we’re not going to have it tonight, are we?”

She shook her head, thankful he’d been the one to say it. “I’ve got work to do. And you…”

“I know. I’ll go. And… I’ll go.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” he said. Then he stood, came around to her side of the booth, and planted one hand on the table, one on the banquette above her head. Looming over her, he dropped his gaze to her chest, to her lap, raised it to her mouth then to her eyes.

She breathed him in, the sun and the soap and the sweat that always lingered. And she waited, wetting her lips, but she waited in vain because he was gone, walking toward the door she would need to lock behind him. But she couldn’t move to do it.

She could only watch his long rolling stride carry him across the great room, and know he was taking way too much of her with him.

T
HE ECHO OF
Dax’s boots as he strode down the Coleman Medical Center hallway brought him more than a few curious glances and a couple of annoyed frowns. He figured folks thought him determined, worried, and in a hurry, when he wasn’t anything more than pissed off. He didn’t want to be here. His coming here wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

But here he was, and there was the door to his father’s room just ahead, and with the audience he’d picked up along the way, there was no backing out of this promise he’d made to Arwen. He needed to stop doing that. Agreeing to things she asked of him when she obviously had an agenda and all he had was a hard dick.

The words
pussy
and
whipped
circled in his mind, and he pushed his hat lower on his head, squeezing them into submission. Getting this one-sided visit over with and getting back to the ranch and the work waiting there couldn’t happen fast enough.

What was the protocol for visiting a coma patient anyway?

He had nothing to say to his old man, and even if his father had had one of his canned lectures ready, delivering it without some sort of mind-meld would be an issue. Sticking his head in the door and waving the flag should fulfill his familial duty and get Arwen and Darcy both off his back.

Except people were whispering. They knew who he was, that he had finally left the ranch to show his face in public. The gossip mill would be churning. Dalton Gang stories from the past brought out and examined in a new light. Holing up until shift change might be the way to go. Or it would be, except he was here, and turning around now would mean more curious glances, more annoyed frowns.

He pushed into the room, his hate for his father rising in a mad choking, strangling rush of sixteen years worth of unspoken words. The door whooshed closed behind him, trapping him, imprisoning him, and he walked to the bed, his steps quieter now that he’d run out of hall stomping room. He crossed his arms over his chest, balanced on the balls then the heels of his feet, and stared down.

If not for the tubes and wires taped and draped over the old man’s body, Wallace Campbell would’ve looked pretty much the way he had for most of Dax’s life. His jowls were saggier, sure, his hair thinner, his forehead sporting more lines. His cheeks were pale rather than ruddy with drink. His nose, too, though it was as bulbous as ever and mapped with new veins.

Dax waited for whatever feeling was supposed to take him over at seeing his father so helpless, and seeing him for the first time in years. But nothing happened. Not a blip. No regrets, no sadness. No wishing he could go back in time and make different choices. He knew who his old man was, what he was. Knew the life he’d lived had brought him to this. Knew if he died, few would mourn his loss.

Oh, many would make noise, lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth, but that wasn’t the same, was it? He wondered if Darcy would be the only one to shed tears of true sadness. He couldn’t imagine his mother crying without an audience to see the show. Always,
always
, she’d been about the show, who was watching, who could she impress. She’d time her sobs accordingly.

Fucked up family, the Campbells.

“Strange seeing him so quiet.”

At the voice behind him, Dax turned, expecting to see Dr. Kirkland, but seeing someone he didn’t know instead. The man leaning into the corner behind him was younger than Dax by a couple of years, and dressed like no one in Crow Hill ever dressed—tailored suit pants, a crisp white shirt that had to have cost a fortune, as had the tasseled loafers and the neatly knotted silk tie thrown over his shoulder, as if he didn’t want it dragging in his stew.

“And you are?”

“Greg Barrett.” He pushed away from the wall, a fluid motion, and came forward, offering his hand. “I work with Wallace.”

“Right. The son I should’ve been,” Dax said, shaking hands with his old man’s protégé because he wasn’t completely without manners.

“Yeah. About that.” Greg moved to stand at the foot of the bed, crossing his arms in a mirror of Dax’s earlier posture.

“Don’t worry.” Dax went on the offensive. He didn’t want to hear a lot of jibber jabber about rightful positions in the family business. Quite frankly, he didn’t give a shit about what happened to the firm except where it concerned Darcy. “I’m too old and worn out to start law school.”

Greg gave a snort that had Dax frowning. “He’s not dead yet.”

Might as well be
. Though Dax kept that thought to himself.
“He’s been dead to me for years. You have a problem handling the workload, take it up with Darcy.”

“He fired Darcy.”

Ah, the final cut. He wondered if his sister had planned to tell him. “Guess that leaves you to run the show.”

“That,” Greg said, the word hanging as he counted beats—one, two—finally adding, “And the fact that he’s my father, too.”

The air in the room stilled until the only sounds were those of the machines monitoring what life still flowed in Wallace Campbell’s veins. Dax’s ears rang with the beeps, the chirps, the incessant mosquito-like buzz, and he knew all that noise had him hearing things wrong.

He raised his gaze from the man tethered to the bed to the man standing at the foot of it. He studied Greg’s face, not liking what he saw. His eyes, though Greg’s were bluer. Darker hair, but hair meant nothing. Neither did the height the two men shared. The build. The wide hands and long fingers. He shared the same with Casper and Boone.