Undeniable (7 page)

As if he’d voiced his thoughts, she turned her attention to the slit in his cock and the seam beneath, flicking her tongue over his
skin until he rose up on his toes. She was too good, and was taking too much, and he wanted to give it to her but not like this. Not like this.

He pulled out of her mouth, twirled a finger. “Hands and knees.”

She shot him a look, an arched brow, a quirk at one corner of her mouth, but did as ordered. He followed her down, palmed the flat of her back to hold her and guided his cock between her legs.

Another time he’d go slow. A time when he wasn’t feeling so unhinged. Her tub, her house, her invitation but his rules. He didn’t care how practiced her mouth, how quick her tongue. He was not letting her in.

He drove into her, holding on to her hips as he thrust. Around them, the water sloshed, splashing at his thighs and her elbows and onto the floor. Each time he hit bottom, she cried out, and he pounded harder, ramming into her, his balls slapping her ass.

Relief was all he wanted. From the worry and the exhaustion. From the crazy aching sense of being turned inside out when he had to keep his head on straight. From the emotions sprouting like weeds to make a mess of a really good thing.

Need built like a bomb in his gut, swelling, pressing, his cock a fuse and Arwen the match. Beneath him, she writhed and twisted, lighting him up.

He stared at the stars through the skylight and burst, spilling inside of her and thinking as he collapsed that he’d just borrowed himself a whole lot more trouble than he had ever caused in Crow Hill.

But at least he hadn’t let her in.

S
EVEN O’CLOCK FOUND
Dax at the counter in the Blackbird Diner, coffee in hand, corner stool swiveled toward the door, bootheels hooked over the rungs, knees spread. The breakfast rush was swinging, the smells of bacon and chorizo and eggs and hash browns competing with the aroma rising from the four pots of coffee that never saw a break.

The morning chatter clacking at the booths and the tables was as loud as the orders yelled from the kitchen and the squeak of the waitresses shoes on the floor. Black-and-white tiles. Just like those in Arwen’s kitchen—a thought he had to shove away or he’d find himself heading back to her house instead of returning to the ranch as promised.

He wasn’t exactly proud of how he’d cut out of there, saying nothing as he’d dressed and nothing but good-bye with his exit. He owed her more than that, but first he’d have to nail down what
had sent him packing, then figure out how best to apologize for packing at all.

The one thing he did know was that it had to be done—just not today. Because even though he’d dipped into his pool of sleep hours in order to spend time in her tub, he was testing the limits of his partners’ patience by staying in town to catch Darcy.

By now, Casper and Boone would’ve put in a couple hours of hard labor each. Dax had spent those same two hours in the front seat of his truck outside the Hellcat Saloon, napping while he waited for the sun to show its face. Not exactly the legal three-way split of labor, profit, and loss he’d agreed to. And definitely not a great start to the day.

He’d fucked up with Arwen. He was in the process of fucking over his boys, and fucking himself in the process. For all he knew, Darcy would as soon tell him to fuck off as be happy to see him. But he was here, and good or bad, he’d deal with what came his way.

Chest tight, he brought his mug to his mouth and blew across the surface as he scanned the customers a second time. He didn’t think he’d missed his sister, but then it had been awhile. Awhile, hell. It had been half her lifetime. He was a first-class dick. He shouldn’t have waited this long to look her up.

“Dax Campbell? Is that you?”

Hearing his name, he twisted on his stool. The woman behind the counter wore a snug black polo with the diner’s logo embroidered in red above an amazing rack. Her tits were familiar. And he knew her blond hair, was pretty sure he’d seen it spread across a truck seat at some point in the past.

She was about his age, meaning he’d have known her in school, and she had the cutest dimple curled into her right cheek—

“Well, hell.” A big fat true-as-true-gets grin spread over his face. “Teri Stokes. How ya been, girl?”

“I’ve been great.” She showed him her left hand. “And it’s Teri Gregor now.”

“Whew. That’s some rock.” He held her fingers, let out a whistle, very glad he’d kept his appreciation of her assets to himself. “Mr. Gregor knows how to take care of his woman.”

“He most certainly does,” she said, withdrawing her hand and topping off Dax’s mug from the carafe she held.

Her smile had Dax thinking of Arwen. Taking care of her. Putting a look like that on her face. A ring like that on her finger. A ring on any woman’s finger. Nope. Not going there. Not letting any woman in.

He added a heaping spoonful of sugar to the coffee and stirred. “So where’s the lucky bastard? I’d love to say hello to the guy.”

“At the moment?” Shrugging, she returned the pot to the row of burners behind her. “I’m not really sure. Shane was somewhere in the Middle East last time we talked.”

The Middle East? “Shane a military man?”

“A Navy SEAL. Best of the best.”

And that would explain why Teri didn’t know where he was. Dax sipped, set his mug on the counter to cool. “You running the joint now?”

“I am.” She stacked her hands behind her and leaned against the wall, her gaze taking in the customers, the servers, what the pass-through window allowed her to see of the short order cooks at the grill. “Dad still shows up every morning, but mostly to shoot the breeze with the same bunch who’ve been trying to kill it for years.”

That sounded like the Gavin Stokes who Dax remembered. Knowing everything about everyone. Having an opinion about most. Never forgetting a face… or a crime.

Tugging down the brim of his hat, he glanced at the clock
above the door. Maybe he had it wrong and he’d have to hook up with Darcy someplace else. Someplace where he wouldn’t feel like a wanted poster.

“What’re you doing here, Dax?”

“For one thing, my best to lay low,” he said, turning back to Teri and his coffee.

“Probably not a bad idea. Though I can’t think of a worst place to avoid the gossip mill. And the hat?” She shook her head, calling him out. “Not much of a disguise.”

He grinned because she was right. “Actually, I was hoping to catch my sister. Thought she might have breakfast duty seeing as how I hear she’s the firm’s most junior employee.”

Teri huffed. “Not to mention she’s the only female.”

Yeah. That. “You’re acquainted with my father then.”

“Is there anyone in Crow Hill who isn’t?”

“Dunno, but I’ll bet more than a few wish they weren’t.” He gave a toast with his mug, brought it to his mouth. The door behind him opened to let in a blast of summer-morning furnace. And damn if he didn’t find himself missing the Montana cold.

“Dax?”

At the sound of Darcy’s voice, he choked, coughing and swallowing as he swiveled and jumped from his stool. He’d barely opened his arms before she was in them, a burst of energy hugging him, her fingers digging troughs in his shoulders and nearly tearing his shirt, her honey-brown hair catching in the stubble of his beard.

“Why do you smell like… oranges?” she asked before stepping away and looking up, her big green eyes, shaped so much like his, misty and strangely sad.

He started to ask what was wrong, but didn’t get a chance because that was when she slapped him.

“Ow, Darcy.” He rubbed at his jaw. “What the hell?”

“That’s for not telling me you were back. I had to hear it at lunch yesterday from a friend.”

“I’ve been meaning—”

She raised a hand and sliced him off. “You don’t write letters. You don’t make calls, send emails. You leave without saying good-bye. You show up without saying hello.”

His sister. Arguing her case in the court of hurt and outrage. “Hello.”

She punched his arm, then punched him a second time. “Not funny.”

He really didn’t need her to beat him up. He did a damn good job of that on his own, and Boone and Casper made sure to cover any spots he missed. “You hit me again, I’m going to start taking it personally.”

“Oh, Dax,” she said, her voice breaking, her frame, already petite, seeming suddenly smaller, swallowed up by a white blouse and navy blue power suit as out of place in Crow Hill as snow. “You are such an ass, letting sixteen years go by.”

“I love you, too, Darcy,” he said, because she was right and denying it would only make him more of an ass. Besides, his chest didn’t have room for the extra pain.

Cradling his face in her palm, she rubbed a thumb over his cheekbone. “You know you look like crap. I expected older, but not… crap.”

“Hard life out there for a single man,” he said with a wink.

Her grin had the circles beneath her eyes going dark blue. “And you are still full of shit.”

He didn’t even bother to duck her next punch. There was a lot of hurt here needing getting over. What was one more bruise? “Let’s get out of here. Do our catching up without an audience.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said, nodding. “But let me grab breakfast for the office first.”

He bristled. “I’m not going to the office.”

“You don’t have to,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll drop off the food and we can go to the house.”

“I’m not going to the house.”

“Jesus, Dax. I get that you don’t want to see the parents. Sixteen years, remember? No one’s there.”

“Just so we’re clear—”

“Campbell!”

For fuck’s sake. What now?
Dax turned, saw Henry Lasko waving him down, the burly man’s face a shade of red that couldn’t be healthy.

“I want a word.”

And people in hell want ice water.
Henry Lasko, Gavin Stokes. Only two reasons of many that Dax had to stick to the ranch if he was going to make Crow Hill home—though how he was going to fit Arwen into that plan he couldn’t say.

“Let’s go,” he said, taking hold of Darcy’s arm.

She shook him off, tugged on the hem of her suit jacket, lifted her chin. “It’s okay, Dax. He’s talking to me.”

M
UCH AS HE’D
done twenty-four hours earlier, Dax slid to a stop in the ranch yard, his tires raising a cloud of dust, chewing up and spitting out gravel, as he drifted on the hard-packed earth. He was late, again. He’d broken a promise, again. But he was pretty damn sure the news he was bringing with him would get him off with time served.

Seeing Boone at the barn fighting lug nuts on the flatbed, he headed over, frowning at the sight of the right rear tire shredded into a mess of rubber coleslaw. One more chunk of change out of their shallow pockets. Yay. “What the hell happened?”

“Diego. He hit what looked like a piece of old surveying equipment in the Braff pasture.”

Huh. “Too bad we never got around to replacing the spare.”

But Boone didn’t respond, just kept straining against the crowbar, and before Dax could say more, Casper walked out of
the barn, leading the bay named Remedy no one else had figured out how to handle. All Casper had to do was give the horse a look.

Much like the look he was giving Dax now. “Thought you said something about seeing Arwen on your own time.”

“I did. I’ve been with Darcy.” Dax looked from Casper’s tilting bullshit meter to the back of Boone’s head. “We, gentlemen, may well be in for more grief than a serious lack of rain.”

That was enough to get Boone’s attention. He tossed the crowbar toward the toolbox, where it clattered and bounced, and straightened, stretching his arms overhead and cracking his vertebrae. “How so?”

“Seems Tess was in talks with Henry Lasko about leasing him the ranch. She passed on before anything was finalized, but it was all in the works. Henry had hired an attorney to draw up the papers.”

“Let me guess.” Catching Remedy off guard, Casper cinched his saddle tighter. The horse swung his head around, but thought better of taking a bite of Casper’s arm. “Campbell and Associates.”

Dax didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. As often as the two butted heads, his father had been Henry Lasko’s attorney—as well as his friend—for years, and Boone and Casper both knew it.

Rolling his head on his shoulders, Boone squinted against the sweat dripping into his eyes. “Guess it was pretty hard on Tess, trying to keep the place going without Dave.”

“Leasing meant she could stay in the house.” Dax shortcut the details Darcy’d given him during their breakfast reunion in the cab of his truck. And damn if she hadn’t been a spitfire, letting Henry know the diner was not the place to talk business. “Selling didn’t leave her much in the way of options. She’d have had to leave the ranch and most likely town.”

“It doesn’t matter what had been in the works. If the lease
papers weren’t signed, the will trumps. I’m not a lawyer and I know that,” Casper said, stroking Remedy’s neck.

Boone leaned against the edge of the flatbed. “That doesn’t mean Lasko can’t make our lives hell, like cutting off what credit we have left at the feed store. His family’s been in Crow Hill since the beginning. They’ve got a lot of weight to throw around.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have to catch it,” Dax said. The thought of not sticking around had been marinating since his visit to the diner.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Boone asked.

It was Darcy who’d got him thinking about it. Making a go of the ranch was already going to bust their collective ass. Having a lawyer all up in it would only make things worse—especially with that lawyer being his old man. He, for one, would’ve been fine never setting foot in Texas again. As long as he could’ve seen his boys from time to time.

He answered Boone’s question with his own. “If you hadn’t gotten the call about the inheritance, would you have ever come back to Crow Hill?”

“I’ve been back, jackass. I make the trip from New Mexico every year at Christmas to see my folks.”

Huh. “You see anyone else? Tess and Dave? Josh Lasko? Teri Stokes? Who, by the way, is still hot as hell. And married.”