Unforgettable (The Dalton Gang #3) (5 page)

FIVE

A
T A KNOCK
on her office door later that morning, Everly looked up to see her boss, Whitey Simmons, editor in chief of the
Crow Hill Reporter
. Whitey was also editor of the sports section and the business section.

Everly covered human interest and local happenings. Clark Howard took care of classifieds and advertising, while Cicely Warren worked part-time to handle the occasional letter to the editor or opinion piece, and the obits. And that was it. The entire
Reporter
staff.

Whitey walked farther into Everly’s office, which did have a door but was barely large enough for her desk, her chair, and the long visitors’ bench beneath the window that faced the newsroom. That was where Clark and Cicely shared opposite sides of a cubicle. Since her first day here, Everly had thought the space would be better served by gutting her office and Whitey’s and giving them cubicles as well.

But her boss would never go for it. He liked the illusion of power that having a door gave him, when all he did behind it when closed was nap. “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it in this morning, Grant.”

Everly had been wondering the same thing. She leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, felt the pull of long-unused muscles and skin scraped raw by Boone Mitchell’s beard. “Late night with the fund-raiser. But I’ve got my notes and I’ll have the story on your desk before lunch.”

“You got a final tally on the cabbage raised?”

Cabbage. Lordy.
“No, but I’ve got checking with Kendall on my schedule. She’ll have an estimate at least.”

Whitey gave her a nod. “Once you’re done with that, I’ve got a new assignment for you.”

Good. She needed something to get her mind off the fact that Boone Mitchell had washed his own dishes before he’d come back to her bedroom and taken off his clothes. That he’d put away the syrup. Put away the butter. Rinsed out the coffeepot and dumped the grounds. What man did all of that?

Or had she just always known the wrong men? “What’s up?”

“A human interest piece. I’m thinking three issues at least. Big spread. Lots of photos.”

What in Crow Hill could be worth that many column inches? “What’s the topic?”

“The Dalton Gang.”

Gulp.
This couldn’t be good for her newfound sex life. “The Dalton Gang? Why?”

Whitey propped a hip on the corner of her desk. That forced him to turn at an awkward angle to see her. “Everyone’s been talking about their return to Crow Hill, but it’s been what? Four months now? Five? And there’s been nary a hint of scandal from the past popping up the way folks figured would happen.”

Intrigued in spite of her apprehension, she asked, “And you think something should have popped up by now?”

But Whitey was off in his own world. “Dax Campbell shacks up with Arwen Poole and finds out he has a half brother—”

“That’s hardly scandalous—”

“Casper Jayne owns a piece of Crow Hill history free and clear, and is adopting a teenage kid—”

“That’s not scandalous either—”

“And Boone Mitchell’s coming up clean as a whistle when everyone knows he got in more trouble than the others back in the day.”

She hadn’t known that.
She
hadn’t known that at all. She knew what it felt like to hold him in her mouth, to straddle him, to ride him to an orgasm she would never forget. She knew she was in trouble because of that.
So
much trouble because of that.

But she hadn’t known he’d left trouble of another sort in his wake. Looked like she needed to go digging in the
Reporter
’s archives. “You’re talking about their personal lives. Those things aren’t anyone else’s business.”

“They’re everyone’s business. That’s what news is.”

He was right, but still she heard herself arguing. “That’s gossip. That’s speculation. That’s—”

“It’s what people want of their celebrities. Look at TMZ.”

So the Dalton Gang were celebrities? And Whitey wanted them exposed? “They’re ranchers—”

“They’re rancher celebrities then. However you slice it, Crow Hill wants to know all about where the three have been, what they’ve been doing, what it’s been like to come back to a town that sent them running. And”—Whitey held up a finger— “what they were running from.”

That wasn’t exactly the story Everly had heard from parties close to the three about their departure. But if that’s what everyone in town was thinking, and saying, such a feature might not be a bad idea. She could dispel the rumors and tell the truth, though she doubted that’s what Whitey had in mind.

Problem was, how impartial a story could she write with the things she now knew about Boone?—not that any of those particular facts would make it into a profile, but her bias was there, and might show, and she didn’t want anyone knowing what she’d done. If anything, her time with Toby had taught her to keep her private life private.

“Well, Grant? You think you can get me something on Crow Hill’s three bad boys? Say, we start with Dax Campbell. Talk to his sister . . . She married that Lasko kid, right? And to his old man, if you can get into the mansion on the hill where he’s been holed up since his heart attack. Maybe you can find out what happened to his mother since no one else seems to be able to.”

Everly put down her foot. “I’ll do the human interest story. But I won’t do it from the Jerry-Springer-dysfunctional-family angle. And it makes much more sense to start with Boone Mitchell. He was the last to leave, the first to come back. His family’s still here, all of them respectable members of the community. Readers will more readily identify with him than with the other two.”

Whitey’s heavy brow came down as he thought. “You’re saying give them what they know, draw them in, make them comfortable, then introduce the more exotic.”

“I wouldn’t call Dax or Casper ‘exotic.’ But yes. Serials work best with cliffhangers, and escalating drama, to bring readers back for more.” Plus, she wanted to find out about Boone’s hell-raising past now, not later, after she’d profiled the other two.

“I like the way you think, Grant.” Her boss waved the fat pen he held between two fingers and chewed on in lieu of a cigar. “I knew putting you on the payroll was the right thing to do.”

As if he’d had any other applicants willing to take what he called pay. He’d been lucky to get her, and he knew it. And he hadn’t asked questions, which for Whitey was hard to believe.

She waved him on as he left her office, and promised to get back to him in a day or two with thoughts on an approach for the Dalton Gang piece. In the meantime, the fund-raiser story was waiting, and the keys clicked as her fingers flew.

Even their masks couldn’t hide the identities of the generous library patrons determined to make up for the county’s recent funding cuts brought on by the region’s economic blight.

Not that getting back to the fund-raiser story could keep her mind off her morning with Boone. Every time she shifted in her chair, she felt a part of him somewhere, and since he’d let her have her way with her scarves and watched without complaint, she’d let him have his when his eyes had asked for seconds.

Thanks to arrangements made by library board member Kendall Sheppard, owner of Sheppard’s Books, ticket holders were treated to authentic Western swing music played by local resident Mac Banyon’s band, the L’Amours.

He’d rolled her over after untying his ankles, covering her body with his, spreading her legs, sliding his hard cock deep. It hadn’t taken him five minutes to recover. She didn’t think he’d even gone soft. And though she’d had absolutely no reason to be fearful, she’d been unable to help the nerves that had come over her, waiting for him to get rough.

With the dining room of Arwen Poole’s Hellcat Saloon cleared of its tables, attendees, dressed in costumes befitting the Old West theme, enjoyed an evening of good food and plentiful drinks, their boots scooting in lively Texas two-steps across the floor.

Boone Mitchell was a big man, tall and broad and brick solid. Where Dax and Casper were both lean, their sculpted muscles tight, their builds rangy, Boone had the shoulders of a mountain man, the arms, too, as if he spent his days swinging an ax to fell trees. Or excavating slabs of granite. A picture due as much to his stony silence as the size of his arms and his hands.

As of this writing, donations totaling $5445 have been made. Those wishing to contribute can contact Shelly Taylor at the First National Bank: [email protected].

And oh, his hands. His fingers. When he’d used his knee to spread her thighs, then pushed two fingers inside . . . She swore it was like being filled with a cock. Except not Boone’s cock. Because his was sized in direct proportion to the rest of his body. And size did matter. No matter the assurances to men that it didn’t, all women knew that to be the truth. And speaking of women . . .

She finished the first draft of the story, sending a quick email to Whitey that she had to run out but would have the final version to him no later than two. It wasn’t like the
Reporter’s
deadlines didn’t have plenty of wiggle room. The problem was the wiggling she was doing in her chair. She needed something, or someone, to help get her mind off Boone.

And she had the perfect two someones in mind.

*   *   *

“N
ICE PARTY LAST
night,” Dax said, riding up and sidestepping Flash to a stop beside Boone as he and Casper climbed down from the cab of the flatbed. The three had finished the morning’s most pressing chores and were ready for lunch.

Suffering a half-booze, half-sex hangover, Boone and his bad mood didn’t have the patience for Dax and his good one. Especially since Boone had lunch duty this week, meaning the other two would get in some siesta time while he panfried stew meat for sandwiches. “What you remember of it, you mean.”

“What’s not to remember?” Dax and his horse backed up to give Boone the room he was motioning for. If he couldn’t get to the house to cook, no one would be having lunch. “Beer. More beer. Boobs. More boobs.”

“Better have been Arwen’s boobs you were looking at,” Casper said. “Not Faith’s.”

Dax spun around, Flash’s hooves stirring the dirt of the ranch yard into a choking dust. “Of course I was looking at Arwen. But you saying you didn’t get a look at Kendall Sheppard in that feathery saloon-gal getup with her skirt rucked up around her garters? Or Lizzie Nathan decked out in that nearly see-through lace thing like she’d come straight from a brothel?”

“Can’t say I did,” Casper said. “The sheriff kept me on a tight leash last night. And kept my drink tickets in her cleavage. If there were boobs there other than hers, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Enough.”
Calf nuts on a cracker.
Talking about tits was going to have Boone turning around and heading back to town and dragging Everly out of her office to bed. Or at least to the cab of his truck. Where he’d drag her out of that long, lacy top she’d worn to work and suck on her nipples until she screamed.

Damn but the woman could scream. “We need to be thinking about making it to the end of the year without going completely broke. Not talking about tits. Especially when one of the pairs belongs to my sister.”

Dax leaned against his saddle horn while the other two set about unloading the truck. “Looking at tits is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine of being broke go down.”

“What, are you Mary fucking Poppins now?” Boone grumbled, pulling on his gloves.

“Better than being Oscar the Grouch, or whoever you are.” Dax slid from Flash’s back and led the horse toward the barn.

Casper followed, his hands full of the tools he and Boone had been using to restring a downed section of fence. Boone reached for what was left of the spool of barbed wire, and brought up the rear. He tossed the load beneath the shelves of tools and other hardware that sat just inside the door, then pulled his hat from his head and dried his forehead in the crook of his elbow.

He looked from Dax, where the other man was pulling the saddle from Flash’s back, to Casper, who was loading a new spool of staples into the fencing gun. He couldn’t believe he was asking this, but it was on his mind and would bug him until he got it off. “What do either of you know about Everly Grant?”

“Arwen’s friend? The reporter?” When Boone nodded, Dax shrugged. “Not much, really. Seems nice. Knows how to dance. But that’s it for me.”

“Faith went to school with her at UT,” Casper said. “Surprised you didn’t know that.”

“I did know that,” Boone said.

Casper looked over as if Boone was wasting his time. “Then why not ask Faith what she knows?”

“Thought I’d ask you two
boobs
first.”

This time the other man’s look was withering. “She was a newsreader in Austin. On one of the major networks. Came to work on the
Crow Hill Reporter
about four years ago.”

“I know all of that, too.”

“Sounds like a hell of a downward career move to me,” Dax said.