Undeniable (37 page)

Summers and winters. Both had been hell. “Just give me the external damage. What am I looking at?”

The other man glanced at the house again—the wraparound front porch and badly canted columns, the Victorian gables over windows made of cardboard instead of glass, the oaks spreading from either side to meet in the middle, branches laced as if praying for the house to be put out of its misery—before turning to Casper with a shrug. “You could raze the whole thing and come out ahead.”

Easiest solution, but it wasn’t going to happen. “I know it needs a new roof—”

“A new roof’s the least of it.” Frustrated, the inspector made an encompassing gesture that took in the house and the tree and the entire half acre that resembled a landfill more than a yard. “Your fascia board’s rotted through most of the way around. Eaves and gables both. Same with the soffit. Kid hits a baseball against the house, the vents are gonna fall plumb out. Your gutters are hanging on by a thread, and you don’t have a single attached
downspout. Both of the chimney masonry caps, the support beams on all the porches, the grade of your lot…”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s a piece of shit. I got it.”

A shrug, and, “This house is not where I’d be pouring my investment money. Like I said, razing’s your best bet.”

And, again, that wasn’t going to happen. As long as Casper got his hands on the money, the risk of making over the house was his. What he did with it after that… He nodded toward the tablet the inspector held. “Can you print out a report on that thing? Give me a list or whatever?”

“I’ve got a printer in the truck, sure,” the man said, making his way to where he’d parked his mobile office behind Casper’s big black dualie.

“What about a fax machine?”

“Yep. I can send it wherever you want it to go.” He opened the passenger door, glanced over as Casper approached. “I can send the bill, too. All I need is a name and a number.”

For the first time since the letter from his old lady had arrived, Casper felt the hard tug of a smile. What he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall of the office when this particular paperwork arrived.

“Send it over to the First National Bank.”

“Attention of?”

His smiled tugged harder, and grew just a little bit mean. “Faith Mitchell.”

O
NE MORE THING
. That was all Faith Mitchell needed to go wrong. One more thing and she wouldn’t have any trouble telling the higher-ups to take this job and shove it. She got that the bank was not a charity, that good business didn’t allow for extending a
loan indefinitely, or offering additional credit to account holders already unable to pay what they owed.

But after the chewing out she’d just received for daring,
daring
, to suggest the bank give the Harts another month before foreclosing on property that had been in the family over a hundred years, she was beginning to think it took a special kind of heartlessness to turn one’s back on the honest-to-God need created by the nation’s depressed economy and the state’s ongoing drought.

The Harts were good people, struggling to make their living off the land the same way Henry Lasko, Nina Summerlin, and so many others were doing. The same way Tess and Dave Dalton had done for years, before passing on and leaving their ranch to Crow Hill’s notorious Dalton Gang.

As teens instructed to give the elderly couple a hand, the three had earned the Daltons’ love and trust while raising hell with the rest of the town. As grown men who’d returned to work the spread they’d inherited from Tess and Dave, the three were now fighting to get ahead like all of the area’s ranchers.

Since Faith’s brother, Boone, was one of the trio, she got to see his side of the picture as well as where the money men were coming from. That probably had a lot to do with the sympathy she felt for the Harts. Yes, they’d put up their land as collateral, but no one could’ve seen the drought coming—and staying—or anticipated the depth of the economy’s downward spiral.

Turning one’s back on the sort of ridiculous request outlined in the fax she’d received earlier was a different thing entirely. Casper Jayne knew exactly how tight the ranch’s finances were. His own were no better, and he wanted to pour tens of thousands into a house that would be better served by going up in smoke? Please.

Her position as loan officer aside, the risks involved in his
request were innumerable. The wiring in the house would have to be brought up to code before he could even think about powering the tools to do the job. Unless he
wanted
to start a fire as a way to get out from under this newest burden.

Hmm. The camel, the straw. Did he even have a homeowner’s policy? If he did, and if she approved just enough—

“Faith?”

“Not now, Meg,” Faith said, dismissing the tempting thought of arson and waving one hand toward her assistant while reaching for the phone with the other. Might as well give the Harts the bad news.

But Meg insisted. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“Okay. I’ll be done here in—”

“How ’bout you’re done now,” said Casper Jayne, pushing past Meg before she could stop him.

Not that anyone had ever been able to stop him.

Abandoning the phone, Faith sat back and laced her hands in her lap to keep from jumping up and choking him. One more thing. Hadn’t the thought just gone through her mind? And he qualified in ways nothing else did, all long and tight and wiry, with thighs he’d used for years to grip the backs of bulls. Thick thighs. Purposeful thighs. Thighs she wanted to ride and had her close to moaning.

Her reaction was just stupid. She’d known him since he was sixteen and she was fourteen and he’d become best friends with her brother Boone and Dax Campbell, the group’s hell-raising third. Playing his big brother role to the hilt, Boone had made sure she and Casper seldom crossed paths, and Casper hadn’t pressed the point.

So what if she’d been brokenhearted? She’d been a girl, and that had been forever ago. She should be immune to him now.

For some reason, she wasn’t. For some reason, as soon as he’d
returned to Crow Hill, her teenage crush had become a very adult fascination. And the way he wore his jeans didn’t help.

But he was crazy reckless, a lesson in insane abandon, wild and out of control. She didn’t need that in her life now any more than she had in the past. If nothing else, that much was a given.

He was standing, staring. Waiting. Taking up too much room in her office, breathing too much of her air. And God help her if she wasn’t undressing him, peeling those jeans away, wrapping her legs around those thighs, grinding against him.

Could this day possibly go any further downhill? “What are you doing here?”

He walked closer, taking slow steps, lazy steps, his hips at her eye level and causing her so very much grief.
Please, please go away.

But he and his thighs and his championship belt buckle stopped in front of her desk to tease her. “I came to see you.”

“If it’s about the fax, you’re wasting your time and mine.”

“I wanted to explain things in person before you had a chance to say no.”

“No.”

“C’mon, Faith—”

“No,” she said again, watching his nostrils flare, his bright hazel eyes flash. Watching the tic pop in his strong square jaw. A bead of sweat crawled over his Adam’s apple to the hollow of his throat.

She swallowed hard, but she held his gaze. She knew him, and she would not be tempted. She would not.
She would
not.

“You enjoy this, don’t you?” he asked, planting his hands on her desk blotter, leaning forward, bringing with him the scent of horses and hay. “Making it hard on a man.”

She took a deep breath and a long pause, then said, “No, I don’t. But you know as well as I do that you don’t have the money
for the extreme makeover that house will need before you can even think about putting it on the market.”

He frowned, hovered a couple more seconds, then straightened, crossed his arms, and raised one slashed brow. “Who said I’m going to put it on the market?”

“You’re going to live there? And still work the ranch?” She gave him a
whatever
shrug, because he needed to know he didn’t bother her at all. “What else would you do with it?”

“Dax lives in town with Arwen, and he still works the ranch.”

“Dax lives in Arwen’s house. He didn’t rob Peter to pay Paul for a place to stay.”

“It’s my money. I’ll be using it for me. No Peter. No Paul.”

“It’s the ranch’s money first, and only a third of that is yours. And not even that, really, because of the debt y’all are dealing with.”

“I added my rodeo winnings to the coffers, remember?”

She did, but he’d obviously forgotten the rest. “And you signed paperwork turning it over to the partnership. It’s not yours anymore.”

“Not any of it?”

She thought of old dowries and entailed estates. “Not enough for what you need.”

He paced the width of her office, his thighs, his jeans, his stride, and the roll of his hips bringing the word
yes
to the tip of her tongue. Bringing a sheen of sweat to her chest and her nape. Bringing one hand to her blouse’s collar where she pulled the two sides close. This ridiculous—God, what was it? Lust? Longing?—had to stop.

Across the room, he curled his fingers over the windowsill and parked his backside against it, his eyes downcast as if a solution lay woven into the carpet’s pattern. “What about the oil money?”

She tried to contain her sigh. “You want a loan against your mineral rights when you don’t even know what’s down there?”

“The well’s due to spud next month. Sooner if the rig can get there. Everyone’s saying the prospect looks good.”

“Until the well’s producing,
good
doesn’t mean anything.”

“Well, fuck me.”

She didn’t get it. Why in the world would he want to put money into a second losing proposition? Why didn’t he sell the lot and the house
as is
and be done with it? She didn’t get it, but she wasn’t going to ask because asking meant personal involvement, and even though her brother was a partner in the ranch, she had to separate her business from her personal life.

That’s what he needed to understand. She wasn’t singling him out or punishing him. As much as this was about his request, it wasn’t. “Casper. If I approved this expenditure, I’d lose my job.”

He brought up both hands, scrubbed them down his face, looking as exhausted as he was resigned. “Guess I’ll have to get one that pays then.”

Or he could start acting like he had some sense and let this go. “A job? Doing what? You already work dawn to dusk.”

“That leaves me about ten hours,” he said, walking back to her desk. He stopped between the two visitor chairs, gripped the back of both with strong, capable hands… hands with short clean nails, golden hair trailing along the edges from his wrists. “That should be enough.”

“To do what?” she asked, imagining the thick slide of his fingers and squirming in her seat. “And when are you going to sleep?”

“I don’t sleep much as it is.” He rocked against the chairs, back and forth. “I hear Royce Summerlin’s looking for someone to break a few horses.”

“You. Breaking horses.” She gave a scoffing laugh because he was too close, the seams of his jeans worn and nearly white and messing with her head.

“Why not?” he asked, his hat brim casting a shadow across his eyes.

She sat forward and picked up a pen, looking at the Hart’s paperwork on her desk instead of giving Casper any more of her time. She had work to do, and he was bothering her. Making her itch. Making her damp. Making her heart race and her blood run hot.

Making her foolhardy. “Because you’re a bull rider.”

“I’ve ridden a lot more than bulls.” He pushed up to stand straight. “And I’ve broken more than a few of my rides.”

She brushed him off without looking up. “Don’t be sex-talking me. It’s not going to get you anywhere. The answer’s still no.”

He came closer, until his thighs in her peripheral vision were the only thing she could see. “Sex talk? Really?”

Heat bloomed beneath her white blouse and blue blazer. What in the world was wrong with her? It was his fault. All of it. She wasn’t herself when he was around. She wasn’t anyone she recognized. She was imprudent, allowing in thoughts she had no business thinking, saying things that came with trouble attached.

“Sorry,” she said, returning her pen to her desk and meeting his gaze. “It’s just… I know you. Everything out of your mouth is a double entendre, and that’s only when you’re not being outright provocative or crass.”

“Crass? Are you kidding me?” He narrowed his eyes. The corner of his mouth lifted dangerously.

Her laugh was more nervous than she liked. She knew she didn’t have him wrong. “More like you’re kidding yourself.”

“You, Faith Mitchell, have wounded me.”

“And you, Casper Jayne, are a scoundrel and you know it.”

He took a minute to respond, as if first running his life through the filter of her words. He looked confused, and suddenly not quite sure of where they stood, or where to go next. “Is that why you wouldn’t have anything to do with me in high school?”

Now who was kidding whom? “
You
didn’t want anything to do with
me
. I got that message loud and clear.”

“Oh no, sugar.” His voice was deep, hungry, his gaze sharp and to the point. “The message you got was your brother’s.”

“Whatever,” she said, because this conversation was one step away from precarious, and she could
so
easily fall.

“And anyway, you know the gang’s got a hands-off policy about sisters.”

That sounded as much like a coward’s way out as a challenge. She couldn’t stop herself. “You’ll climb on the back of a two-thousand-pound bull, but you won’t stand up to Boone?”

A vein throbbed in his temple. Heat rolled off his body to wrap her up, tangling her in his scent and the strength of his thighs. “You want me to stand up to Boone? Is that what you’re saying here, Faith? Because all I need is a sign and I’ll make it happen.”

She’d been giving him signs for years. He needed to figure this out for himself. And she needed to figure out if this was really what she wanted—and why his company had her flirting with a trip off the path of straight and narrow and onto the road less traveled where so many things could go wrong.