Undeniable (8 page)

“I come out to see Tess and Dave, but that’s about it.” Boone shrugged. “I pretty much stick close to the house. Mitchell family holidays mean a lot of home cooking and games of Scrabble with football blaring in the background.”

Casper’s turn. Dax looked over. “What about you?”

Leaning a shoulder beneath Remedy’s withers, Casper nodded. “I got kicked into next year by a couple of bulls, and both times came back here to recuperate since the old place is empty now. Didn’t get out much since I was too busy hurting.”

Frowning, Dax glanced from one man to the other. “How come I didn’t know this?”

“Because you never got in touch to ask,” Boone said, fetching the crowbar.

They had him there. He’d driven out of Crow Hill with his father bellowing behind him, his mother on the porch with a highball glass in her hand, his sister away at cheerleading camp and missing all the fun. In cutting his family out of his life, he’d somehow cut out two-thirds of the Dalton Gang as well. That had been just stump-licking dumb.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen.” He pushed his hat back on his head, mopped his brow in the bend of his elbow, resettled his hat as his words sunk deep. Then he sidestepped the subject on the table. “And it’s not like I knew where to find either one of your sorry asses anyway.”

“Well, we’re all here now,” Boone said, slamming the ball of his foot into the stubborn wheel, then a second time for good measure. “And we’ve got our own legal counsel not tied to Crow Hill. Faith’ll shit a brick if we have to get him involved, but we’re not floating without a life raft. So thick or thin, I’m staying. I’m ready for a place of my own, even if I have to share it with you two assholes.”

Casper swung into his saddle, tugging back on the reins when Remedy started thinking for himself. “Tess leasing the place says to me she wanted us to have it. She’d have sold it to Henry otherwise, taken the cash and split. Dave was gone. She didn’t have any reason to stick around. It may look like she made the easy choice, but I’m not sure that’s the case. I don’t have family to keep me here, but I’m staying. For Tess.”

That left Dax holding his third of the Dalton Gang bag. “Shit. I was hoping we could flip this bitch for a quick buck and get out of town before the mob showed up with pitchforks.”

With Casper snorting like a pig, Boone said, “We’re gonna have to pay for our sins, Dax. No way around it.”

Dax thought of Gavin Stokes. Of Henry Lasko. Of his father and Arwen’s old man. “Hell on earth?”

“It’s Crow Hill. You were expecting something else?” And then Casper gave Remedy his head, the horse’s hooves stirring up a choking cloud of dust so thick and brown Dax couldn’t see Boone or the flatbed on the other side.

F
AMILIES
. L
ORD
. W
HAT
minefields. Arwen should’ve known better than to bring up the Campbells while in the tub with Dax. With his history? What had she been thinking? Especially with the beginning of their affair so full of promise, Dax open to more than what she gathered he was used to from the women in his bed.

Their sex play had been arousing, the warm water around them relaxing. His taking her against the kitchen door had left her sex drunk and stumbling, but having him naked and hers to explore had introduced her to true intoxication.

Then came her offhand mention of his family and the earthquake shift in Dax’s mood, like a switch thrown from make-believe to real life. And real life, when she wasn’t looking and least expected it, always got in the way.

She’d been thinking about it since—his leaving the tub, dressing while half wet, saying good-bye but barely—and wondering
if he’d disappeared because of her big mouth or because she’d been too bold. Wondering, too, if it had been something else entirely to cause him to withdraw in the middle of everything, as if he had places to go, people to see.

And that’s what had bothered her most of all. She’d known from their kitchen encounter that he’d treat her well and be thorough. But even wanting him only for sex, she hadn’t expected the sex to be so… impersonal. And that contradiction made her want to kick herself. She couldn’t have it both ways.

No involvement meant just that, and expecting more couldn’t serve any good purpose. Dax Campbell was a man like any other. That’s what she had to remember. That all the hours she’d spent dreaming about him in high school would’ve been better spent acing small business accounting or finding a way to separate her father from his booze.

A loud Hellcat roar erupted in the far corner. The whoops and hollers that followed rose to the rafters. Conversations in the great room ground to a halt, and the background music dropped behind the din. The nightly ritual was crazy wild and not for the faint of heart, but it brought back her regulars and converted first-timers to fans.

It was also what Arwen loved best about the saloon. The uninhibited nature of her Kittens, the spontaneous explosion of energy in the room, the absolute willingness of the customers to play along, clapping their hands, stomping their feet—and for those who arrived during the bar-top routine, waiting to be seated until the dancing was done.

Off to her side, a man took the stool at the end of the bar. “Be right with you,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she unlocked the corner closet housing the light and sound system controls. Scanning the labels—“Cotton-Eyed Joe”? ZZ Top? Asleep at the Wheel?—she decided tonight she was in the mood
for Charlie Daniels. She queued up the song and the laser show, then locked and shut the door.

As the first fiddled notes of “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” hit the speakers, the Kittens dropped what they were doing and, in a flurry of shrieks and ponytails, hopped onto the bar. Their boots on the polished wood rattled like castanets and pounded like deep bass drums. Red, green, and blue lights swept the room, lighting rapt faces.

Watching the Kittens’ feet shuffle and fly, Arwen got back to her customer. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have what they’re having.”

She grabbed a forgotten longneck before it rolled to the floor, found both her mental and physical footing before glancing Dax’s way. Then she berated herself for letting him knock her off balance in the first place. But really, with the way he looked and the intimate things she knew, who could blame her?

His skin showed a long day spent in the sun, and his eyes appeared all the brighter because of it. He was clean—she smelled his soap when she breathed in—and his hair beneath his hat was still damp. The collar of his khaki shirt showed years of washing and fit like he couldn’t imagine ever giving it up.

He wasn’t the Dax from high school. He was a dangerous man, arrogant and hard and with needs of his own, and that got in the way of her plans. She dug an icy bottle from the stainless steel chest behind her. “You’re a sneaky bastard, you know that?”

Dax grinned, an ear-to-ear showing of big bad wolf teeth and black-sheep-don’t-give-a-damn. Both courtesy of the family issues she’d brought into the tub.

“Learned to be one early on,” he said, taking the beer she handed him. “Only way to avoid running into fathers. Strange, but they forget the fun of being teen boys the minute their daughters turn into teen girls.”

She thought of her own father keeping her close. Thought of the times he’d forgotten she was there. “And that surprises you?”

He swallowed, lowered the bottle. “I’m not a father. I can’t say.”

“Is this the same reason you learned to kiss and run?” she asked, pushing aside the picture of a pink-faced bundle of joy cradled in a cowboy’s arms. Pushing aside, too, the tickle in her tummy the picture wrought.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That was about giving up hanky-panky on company time.”

Her fault for thinking she could get him to change his mind. That she’d be worth it. And where in the hell was that coming from? Their relationship—and calling it that was already a stretch—wasn’t about his worth or hers. It was about sex. Plain and simple.

“Has that been bothering you?” he asked, his eyes reflecting the colored light show. “Me cutting out?”

Nope. Hadn’t bothered her at all. Except for the part where she was at a loss to understand the way it had played out. “Why would it? You had things to do at the ranch. Fences to ride. Shit to shovel. Whatever.”

He waited, nursed his beer, his gaze sharp and never leaving hers. Not even when one of the Kittens danced close, her long bare legs and denim shorts begging for notice. Not even when Arwen, perspiration tickling a path between her breasts, reached beneath the bar for the bottle of water she kept close.

“I had to see Darcy,” he said as she drank, dropping his gaze and flicking his thumb at his longneck’s rim. “But I did you wrong, and it’s been bothering me a lot, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

She was pretty sure he hadn’t been seeing Darcy at five a.m. which was about the time he’d left, but he’d apologized all the same, and she had no reason not to be gracious. “I’m not looking
to hog-tie you, Dax. If you don’t want to see me, or you think I’m looking for more than a good time, there’s no reason for us to be together. And there’s never any reason to run. Contrary to what my girls say, I’m really not a witch.”

He gave her a wink as he lifted his bottle but said nothing more, letting the music die down, the lights in the dining room come up, the Kittens jump from the bar and get back to their tables. Then all he said was, “This is a hell of a place. I figure you’ve got to be a little bit witchy to run an outfit this size.”

She laughed. “Don’t tell me I’ve managed to impress”—she stopped herself from saying
a Campbell
and quickly substituted—“you.”

“Are you kidding?” He nudged his hat up an inch. “Last time I was in here, it smelled like the back end of cows and hard-broken dreams.”

Broken dreams and broken hearts and broken lives. All of which she’d scoured with bleach and covered with fresh paint in colors of barn red and brick gold and green tomatoes still on the vine. Very little of the Buck Off Bar remained, and only those who knew where to look would see the past.

She saw it every day. Here and in her house. “There’s always some of that in Crow Hill, but I think we smell a little better now.”

“Smell better. Look better.” He gave a nod and another glance around. “Both the staff and the customers, not to mention the building. But mostly the owner. Big improvement there.”

That earned him a smile. “Buck Akers had seen better days before his first birthday. But I’ll take it as a compliment. Thank you.”

“So what’s with the scaled-back
Coyote Ugly
routine?” he asked, gesturing with his longneck to incorporate the great room. “No chugging booze and setting fires?”

“We’re more of a family establishment.” Though the last hour before closing had been known to get out of hand—which was
why seven nights a week, she was the one to lock up. Her investment, her livelihood. She paid with a lack of sleep. “There’s only one dance each evening, and the Kittens rotate who starts it.”

“Kittens?” he asked, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Not hellcats?”

Her gaze scanned the saloon, taking in the girls she’d hired. All were from the same small town as she was and close to her in age, but looking at them now, innocent and feisty and button-cute… Lord, she felt like a dinosaur. No, a dinosaur fossil. In fact, she couldn’t remember a day in her life she’d felt like anything but.

She’d certainly never had the luxury of feeling… kittenish. “Sorry. I’m the only hellcat here.”

“But you don’t dance?”

“Are you kidding? I’d be the one to fall and break my neck, and then who’d write the checks for my insurance?”

He nursed his beer, let that settle, turned his stool so he faced her where she stood at the end of the bar. “So what triggers it? The dancing.”

“Could be anything. A joke. A birthday celebration.” She shrugged, toyed with a coaster. His gaze was compelling, nudging at personal boundaries, searching for more than he had any business knowing about her. “A rowdy, hands-on customer needing a time-out. Someone drinking from the top shelf.”

He considered that, crossed his arms on the bar, and leaned closer still. “Tell me something.”

“Okay,” she said, her skin heating, the small of her back damp and tight, her nape tingling with unaccountable nerves.

“Why are you still here?”

“Because I’m the boss. And I have to close up at the end of the night.”

He shook his head. “I don’t mean here. I mean
here
. In Crow Hill. Why didn’t you leave?”

Seriously? Did he think everyone who ran into hard times had the luxury of walking out? When he’d split, had he even known what a hard time was? “Because this is my home. Because I had responsibilities.”

“That’s it?”

She bit down on things she shouldn’t say. Private things she told no one. “Because I had the balls to stick out the tough stuff.”

His mouth grew grim, his eyes dark and hostile. “You saying I didn’t?”

“Are we talking about you now?” And why were they having this conversation at all when she’d told herself who he’d been in the past didn’t matter?

“I had to leave,” he said, his voice flat, as if even he would no longer buy the snake oil he’d sold at eighteen. “Staying meant adios to having a life of my own. Or at least to the one I wanted.”

Poor little rich boy,
she thought, but remained silent. He’d been a hell-raiser, a heartbreaker, a self-centered ass, and she’d pined for him anyway, hated that she had. Hated him more for not knowing her feelings much less her name. And, wow. Wasn’t she the drama queen, resurrecting crap that had been over and done with years ago?

“Fine. I stayed because leaving wasn’t an option.” He could interpret that anyway he wanted.

“Your situation was… different.”

“Why? Because my father hadn’t carved out my place in the family business the day I was born?” Then she bit her tongue and looked away because the truth of things stung. She’d bought the very bar where her father had spent most of his time. And Dax knew it.

At least he was kind enough not to challenge her at some Freudian level. All he said was, “I wasn’t looking to start something. I was just curious. Figured you’d have wanted to hightail it outta here, leave the bad memories behind.”