Undeniable (27 page)

She hadn’t yet gone by the office to see how Greg was faring, but that was on the morning’s agenda. Campbell and Associates had been at the center of her life for as long as she could remember. She couldn’t bear to think of the firm struggling, or going under simply because The Campbell wasn’t there to throw his weight around.

But first she needed to sleep, at least for a few hours, and a glass of milk seemed just the thing. Wearing yoga pants and a tank top for pajamas, she slid from between the sheets and crossed her fingers she could get to the kitchen and back without waking Josh.

She could tell a lamp was burning in the living area, but it wasn’t until she came around the dividing wall that she saw Josh wasn’t asleep at all but using the lamp to read. He was sitting in the recliner, his socked feet crossed on the coffee table. He wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a faded orange T-shirt with a chipped white UT longhorn logo on the front.

When she stopped, he raised his eyes from the page to her, but didn’t speak or move. He was like that in everything, so watchful, so discerning, observant, still. She hated disturbing the peace he’d found, but it was too late to back out of the room unseen. And so
she came closer, gesturing over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get some milk.”

“There’s a new gallon. Help yourself.”

“Do you want anything?”

He inclined his head toward the lamp table beside him and the highball glass with nothing left but ice. “I’m set.”

She circled the sofa, leaned her elbows on the back. “I may not be around tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to go into the office in the morning,” she said, not sure why telling him of her plans caused the butterflies in her stomach to jolt.

“That so?” Simple. No judgment.

She judged herself instead. “I guess it sounds crazy, huh?”

“Since you were fired, yeah. A bit.”

“I just want to make sure Greg’s doing okay.” And why did she feel this need to explain herself to Josh? This was her life, her business. Not his—though she was the one making it so.

He turned down the corner of the page he was reading, closed the book, and moved it from his lap to the table. Then he asked her, “Why?”

“He’s had the firm’s entire caseload dumped on him,” she said, circling the couch and curling into the far corner. “That’s a hell of a lot of work.”

“He gets paid to handle it, doesn’t he?”

More than she ever did, no doubt. “I suppose, but—”

“Darcy, you’re going to have to let it go.”

“Let what go?” Was he talking about the firm? And was he kidding?

“You walked out. I’m not even talking about you being fired. You walked out.”

“I know that.”

And then, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, he asked, “Why would you go back?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because nothing about why you walked has changed.”

That stopped her cold. She wanted to argue that he couldn’t know that because she didn’t know that. She hadn’t visited the office since her firing, or even been back to the mansion on the hill. For all she knew, The Campbell, until stopped in his tracks by his illness, had been waiting to toast her return to the fold with open arms and a bottle of Glenlivet.

Except that would never happen. Any of it. Even if The Campbell recovered. And the knowledge gave credence to Josh’s words. “It’s not going to change, is it? If I hadn’t walked then, I would’ve walked later.”

Josh moved his feet to the floor and sat forward. “This isn’t about you, Darcy. This is on your father and his views, his opinions.”

“He doesn’t have a very high one of me,” she said with a snort.

“I don’t think he has an opinion of anyone but himself. His needs and his wants are the only things that matter to him. He’s a narcissist. Trying to make him happy won’t do anything but make you miserable.”

“So far that’s exactly how it’s been.”

“Then do for yourself, whatever you want to do. Take the time to figure it out. You’ve got it.”

She plucked at the fringe edging the throw she’d pulled over her lap. “Growing up, I wanted more than anything to be a social worker. I saw how involved my mother was in helping children who didn’t have any of the advantages Dax and I did. But now I wonder if any of that was real either. If I wasn’t trying to please her the same way I tried to please The Campbell by becoming a lawyer.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked at her, and she felt embarrassingly exposed. “I’m sorry. I’m usually not this pathetic.”

“You’re not pathetic at all, sweetheart. You’re human and you’re hurt.”

She looked up, unable to stop the overwhelming sadness from welling in her eyes. She gave a small laugh, not wanting the emotion to ruin the rest of the night. “So what’s it like to grow up in a normal family?”

His mouth twisted, and he shook his head. “What makes you think any family is normal?”

He made it easy to smile. “I guess you’re right. We deal with what we have.”

“Or we make our own.”

“Our own families?”

He got up then, came to where she was sitting, cocking one leg beneath him and facing her. “Sure. Folks re-create what they’ve known because it’s the best support system they’ve ever had. Or they dump what they have and replace it with what they know works.”

“You’re talking about relationships.” She heard what she’d said and heat rushed her skin. God, could she have made this any more awkward? “I don’t mean us, or you and Jane, I mean… like Dax turning to Boone and Casper instead of coming home.”

He braced an elbow on the sofa’s back, reached for a lock of her hair. “Friendship makes the best basis for a relationship of any kind.”

Now he
was
talking about them. She was certain of it. And since she was already embarrassed and the lights were low and he’d told her to figure out what she wanted from life…

“Why did you tell me that you wanted to see me?”

His hand stroking her hair stopped, started again. “Because I do.”

“But why me? We hardly knew each other before… this. We never talked. I only saw you at the office with your dad.”

“That’s your version of things, and that’s okay.”

Her version? “I don’t get it.”

“We’ve both lived in Crow Hill all our lives.”

“Okay…”

“When you were in kindergarten. I was in third grade. Our classes had the same hour for recess. One day on the playground, you were upside down, hanging by your knees on the monkey bars—”

“And I fell!” God, she hadn’t thought about that day in ages. “Flat on my back. I had the wind knocked out of me and scraped the crap out of my bottom.”

“I don’t know about your bottom, but I do know you were wearing a red plaid skirt and white panties, and I ran as fast as I could to the nurse’s office.” He was looking at her hair now, wrapping the strand he held around his finger.

“I can’t believe you know what I was wearing. Or that you ran for the nurse.”

He gave a nod, lost in the memory, a smile softening the corners of his mouth. “Principal Cayman tried to grab me as I came through the door but I twisted away. Then I dodged Coach Cuellar and Miss Lark.”

“Really?” she asked, her heart hammering. Why was he telling her this? Why had he even remembered?

“Yep,” he said, his smile going wide. “All three of them were on my heels when I slammed into Nurse Beeman. She’d heard the racket and was coming out into the hall. I just kept saying your name and pointing out the doors. By that time, one of the recess monitors had made it inside. They paid attention to her. I got two days of detention.”

Oh, my God! “Because of me?”

“Because I didn’t know what else to do. You weren’t breathing. I was scared out of my shorts.” He pulled his gaze from her hair, moved his focus to her face. His mouth grew harder, a tight line holding in things she was certain he wasn’t ready to say. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

She reached up, pressed her thumb to his lips. “I was scared, too. And I can’t believe you did that for me. That you were there.”

He kissed her thumb, moved her hand to his chest and held it over his heart. “I’ve been here all this time.”

But he hadn’t been. “You married Jane.”

“You were in law school. I didn’t think you’d come back. And I thought I could find with her what I wanted to make with you.”

If she’d known… “But she left you. She cheated on you.”

“I wasn’t the husband I should’ve been.”

“Oh, Josh,” she said, and then she climbed up to straddle his lap, taking his face in her hands as he settled her on his hips. She knew he would tell her the time wasn’t right to take their relationship forward, even though his body beneath her was saying otherwise, but he had to know what his caring meant to her. “I wish I’d known… all of it. Everything. Our lives could’ve been so much different.”

“We’re only here because of what we’ve been through. The choices we’ve made. Those had to happen to make this, you and me, now, worth something.”

She understood what he was saying, but it didn’t make the truth settle any easier. “I don’t know whether that makes me happy or sad.”

“Be happy, Darcy. Don’t ever, ever be sad.” And then he cupped the back of her head in one of his very large hands and brought her mouth to his, coaxing her lips to part and using his tongue to love her.

A
RWEN WAS GOING
over the month’s payables coming up on their net thirty date, when a knock sounded on her open door. Pencil in hand, she looked up from her desk in the saloon’s small office and waved Luck Summerlin inside.

Hesitating, Luck shook her head, gestured over her shoulder with one thumb. “Someone needs you outside. In the parking lot.”

Oh, yay. An interruption. Her favorite thing. “Does this someone have a name?”

“Well, yeah, but I was just asked to come get you.”

“You were asked to come get me by someone who doesn’t want me to know their name.” Arwen wasn’t stupid and this smelled so much like a trap she expected to see bear.

Luck rolled her eyes and motioned for Arwen to come. “I’m sworn to secrecy and I’m a terrible liar, so…”

“Fine,” she said, though she was never going to get any work done at this rate. She was having enough trouble keeping her head
in the game and off Dax Campbell. His mouth and his hands and the look in his eyes when he’d called her on her plan to get him out of her system.

Why in the world had she told him that? He’d be pulling it out and using it against her for the rest of his time in town.

She headed down the hall, out the back door, and across the patio per Luck’s pointed instructions, kind of hoping this
was
a trap and not a delivery from some pain in the ass vendor screwing up her day. She’d skipped breakfast and was ready for lunch—not for aggravation.

The gate in the saloon’s back privacy fence stood open, and just outside she saw the front bumper of a big black truck. A truck that looked an awful lot like Dax’s. But it was the middle of the day, and while Dax might’ve shirked his duties a time or two after returning to Crow Hill, he was now a company man.

And yet, there he was, coming around the cab to meet her, his jeans pressed, his boots clean save for the dirt he’d kicked up in the parking lot, his blue plaid shirt looking sun-dried fresh. Even his battered straw hat appeared to have had some life slapped back into it, and it sat back, not forward, on his head.

Behind her, the gate closed and the lock clicked, but before she could turn and have Luck let her back in, Dax had taken hold of her hand.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as he dragged her behind him to the truck’s driver’s side door. “What’s going on?”

“I’m picking you up.”

“Why? It’s the middle of the day. I have work.
You
have work.”

“It’s lunchtime,” he said, winking down at her, his dimples flashing. “We’re going on a lunch date.”

“A lunch date? Are you kidding?”

“Nope,” he said, and when she made no move, he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her into the truck. Then he climbed up
behind her, forcing her into the center because a big box sat in the passenger seat.

“I’m pretty sure this is kidnapping,” she said as his hand found its way between her legs where she straddled the gear stick.

He shifted and put the truck in motion. “Only if you call Ned and report me.”

She wondered if, in true Dalton Gang fashion, he had Sheriff Orleans in his pocket by now. He certainly had a lawyer on his side. Or he did if he and his sister were speaking again.

She countered with her only ammunition. “If this is a date, then you owe me sex.”

“I’m well aware of that,” he said, draping his arm along the back of the seat after reaching fourth gear.

Hmm. No teasing her about working him out of her system. No double entendres. Nothing but his fingers tickling her shoulder and toying with the curled end of her ponytail. Nothing but his thigh against hers, moving as he accelerated or slowed. Nothing but the smell of… fried chicken?

She looked to her right, lifted a flap on the box. “You picked up lunch from the Blackbird?”

He gave a nod and another smile, his dimples like sickles in his cheeks. “Fried chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, homemade rolls, and iced tea.”

Arwen’s stomach rumbled as she inhaled deeply. “God, I am
starving
.”

“Good, because there’s enough food for four, and we’re only two.”

She had to stop herself from digging in now, but if she was going to have to wait long… “Where are we going?”

“I thought I’d show you one of my favorite spots on the ranch.”

“Is this going to take more than the hour you and I as working people get for lunch?” A stupid question since the drive out and
back would take that long. And why was he suddenly wanting to show her the ranch?

“I hope so. If you want sex for dessert, that is. Besides,” he told her, moving his arm from behind her to downshift for an upcoming turn, “we’re self-employed.”

“That just means our bosses are more demanding than most.”

“Ah, but they’re also more forgiving, more understanding, and downright flexible about things like lunch.”