Unexpected Family (14 page)

It was Sandra all over again.

For a wild moment he thought about saying nothing and walking away. Surely there had to be a bottle around this house somewhere? That’s what he would have done two weeks ago. And hell, maybe two weeks from now he’d do the same thing, but right now he was stuck.

Lucy hung her head. “I need your help, Walter,” she whispered.

It had been a very long time since he’d been needed for anything and for a moment it was uncomfortable. Resentment reared its head.

Sober and needed. Never thought he’d see the day. Again.

But then purpose shored him up, stayed his childish tongue. Once upon a time he’d been a man people could count on. A man other men pointed to and said, “Walter McKibbon can get the job done.”

He’d been proud of that. And how long had it been since he’d been proud of himself?

More days than he could count.

“It’s all right, Lucy. I can handle it.”

Her unhappiness with the situation was no vote of confidence. Obviously reluctant, she nodded. “Thank you.”

W
alter headed out to the barn and he didn’t let himself doubt. He didn’t even give himself a chance to wonder if his instinct was right or not. He’d been stuck in mud for so damn long, doubting himself, that if he gave himself a second he’d get stuck again.

Work was what was needed. Some good honest labor. He found the bucket in the tack room and filled it up with two parts water, one part vinegar. He threw in some sponges and rags. Water sloshing down his leg, he carried them over to his chair.

Back in the whitewashed tack room he pulled his saddle and bridle out from behind Jack and Mia’s gear. Mildew and mold had turned the brittle leather white. There were two other saddles behind the tack that got used more often—his ex-wife’s—and the small one he’d used with Jack when he was little.

They were white and brittle, too.

What the hell,
he thought, and tried to pull them out. He strained, dropping his cane, stumbling slightly with the awkward weight. He swore, loud enough that anyone in the barn could hear.

“Do you need help?” a voice asked, and Walter turned to find Ben.

That worked at least,
he thought.

“I would, son. Thank you.”

The nine-year-old wasn’t all that strong, but at least his ankle worked. It took them a few turns to get all the stuff but soon they had all the old gear spread out in the grass in front of his chair.

“What are you going to do?” the boy asked.

“Grab a cloth,” Walter said as he sat and pointed to the ripped T-shirts hanging over the edge of the bucket.

The boy hesitated and Walter squinted up at him, the muted end-of-day sun resting just over Ben’s head, creating a halo. Unlikely, but he wasn’t the one to judge.

Walter bent back over his work, pushing the cloth into the mixture until it saturated, and then working it over the brittle leather, trying to get rid of the mildew.

“It stinks,” Ben said.

“Vinegar.”

“What’s it do?”

“Gets rid of the mold.”

“Why is it moldy?”

“I haven’t used it in a while.”

“You’re sick, right?”

Jesus Christ, what the hell is this? Was he asking about the Parkinson’s or the drinking?

“I guess.”

“You gonna die?”

Walter paused, his heart taking a hard, heavy chug in his throat. He’d been killing himself with drink. Not taking his medicine. It was all part of his plan to ease right on out of this life.

He thought about Sandra, the bruise on her wrist, the fire in her eyes. Why did she tell him about A.J.? Him? What did she want? What could she possibly be looking to him for? A month ago he’d been a dead man walking and now…now he didn’t know what he was.

But maybe he’d earned himself a few years to figure it out.

“Everyone dies. But hopefully I’ve got some time.”

“My mom died.”

Walter nodded, not daring to look up at the boy. He was too old for this. Too uneasy in his sobriety. Too lost in his feelings for Sandra. He couldn’t add Ben’s grief to his already full plate.

Full plate? He nearly laughed at himself. There was nothing on his plate. Not one damn thing. Scaring away nurses? Ignoring Sandra? Trying every damn minute of every damn day not to drink?

He needed distraction. He glanced sideways at the boy and saw a kid so twisted with grief he didn’t know where to go.

He’d been there. Spent years in that place. Turned to a bottle to make it better.

“I’m real sorry about your mom. And your dad.”

“I barely remember him.”

Walter nodded like he understood, but he didn’t. No one could. Silence stretched and pulled so hard Walter shifted just to break the soundless scream in the air around him.

Ben collapsed cross-legged next to him and reached for a cloth. “Everyone wants to talk about my feelings.”

He said
feelings
the way Walter would say
feelings,
like it was a bad word.

“I don’t.” Walter wanted that clear.

Halfheartedly, the kid rubbed at the brass tack on Jack’s small saddle.

“You won’t get any mildew off like that. You gotta get in there.”

The kid put some elbow grease into it and Walter nodded in approval.

“But no one wants to talk about my mom.” The kid attacked the leather, his hand a blur. His face red.

He wants to cry,
Walter thought.

“What if I forget her, too?” the boy whispered.

Oh. Oh, Lord. Please let me do this right. Please.

“Your mom is a hard woman to forget.”

“Then why doesn’t anyone want to remember her?”

Because it hurts to remember.
It’s why he drank. But there was no explaining that to a nine-year-old.

“You know that creek that separates our spreads?” Walter asked, putting the T-shirt back in the bucket and squeezing it out.

“Yeah.”

“You know how it rises when it rains?”

“Mom always told us to stay away from it after the rains. She said it was dangerous.”

He laughed. “Well, I figure she would know. I had to save her and a nearly drowned calf one year. She couldn’t have been much older than you.”

“What…” The boy stopped rubbing the saddle, his hands fists in his lap. “What happened?”

“There’d been a big storm the night before. Scattered all our new calves to hell and back and she was chasing one down and they both got too close to the creek.”

“She fell in?”

He looked up at the boy. “Your mom? Hell, no, boy. Annie Stone jumped in after that calf. Got caught in a tree limb that had fallen across the water and I found her about an hour later, screaming her head off.”

A muscle twitched in the boy’s face—a smile maybe.

“Where was the calf?”

“On the side of the creek waiting for her. Two of the saddest animals I’ve ever seen.”

Again, that little muscle twitched in the corner of his mouth. And then slowly, Ben reached into the bucket and rinsed out his cloth. He bent back to his work, but calmly. The frantic emotion gone.

“Work on the white stuff on the bottom,” Walter said, passing the saddle to the boy and picking up the bridle.

“You know any more stories about my mom?”

Oh, man, so many of them were lost to the booze and the years. But there were a few pieces he still remembered.

“She had a dog—”

“Pirate. She told us a lot about Pirate.”

“Did she tell you Pirate nearly killed my dog Duchess?”

Ben’s eyes opened wide, and that smile was real, no longer a twitch, and Walter felt something warm and strange in his chest. Like the sun coming up after a long cold night. “Keep working, now,” he chastised, and the boy got back to scrubbing. “And I’ll tell you what I remember about your momma and that Pirate.”

* * *

J
EREMIAH
DROPPED
OFF
THE
BOYS
at school, like he did every morning, no matter what was going on. It was something Annie had always done and he’d worked really hard to make sure he could do it, too. The boys took the bus home in the afternoon, but he drove them, every morning, twenty minutes into town.

Today he raced back to the ranch to interview a new housekeeper. They had a little cottage out back. Hopefully he could convince someone to come and live on the land. He didn’t know how the boys would react, but he couldn’t do this alone anymore.

Halfway over the pass he dug out his cell phone and called Lucy.

“Hey, cowboy,” she answered, and blood pooled below his waist.

“Hey, yourself. I’ve got to cancel Ben coming over to your place today.”

“Why?’ she asked, quickly. “Did he say something?”

“Ben? Say something? No. He has a thing to attend after school. Could we maybe do it Monday?”

“Monday? Sure—”

There was something odd in her tone. “Is that a problem? Are you…?” He swallowed, forcing himself to address something he wanted to ignore. “I know you guys aren’t staying indefinitely. Are you…you making plans to leave?”

“No. No plans. Walter’s stopped drinking, but he insults every person who comes over to apply for the housekeeper job.”

“Well, that’s good.” He winced. “I mean, not that Walter is difficult. But that you’re staying.”

She laughed and he wondered what kind of magic this woman had to make him feel so childish.

Enough,
he thought. He was Jeremiah freaking Stone and she might not know it yet, but there was a king-size bed in their future.

“I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go out tomorrow night,” he said, getting to the real reason he called.

She laughed and he heard the jangle of jewelry against her phone. He imagined those silver feather earrings she wore. He liked them, liked how they gleamed against her skin.

“Let me check my calendar,” she joked. “Nothing, totally free.”

“I’ll pick you up at six.”

“Sounds good.”

They hung up and with his chest getting tighter with every breath he called Dr. Gilman and canceled his appointment for Saturday. It was one appointment, he told himself to ease the strange guilt that was suffocating him. And she was the one who told him to go out and have some fun. Hell, she’d probably approve.

It didn’t change the fact that it felt like he was doing something wrong.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

L
UCY
STARED
DOWN
AT
the drawing she’d made on the paper towel. A wide silver cuff with delicate cutouts of roses and pistols, and skulls.

Weird,
she thought, twisting it around. Not at all like her usual work. Usually she worked in delicate wire, pieces that looked as if they floated against a woman’s skin.

This was heavy. The pistols and skulls were dark.

“Hey,” Mia said, stepping into the bathroom behind Lucy. “My jewelry-designing sister is designing again.”

Lucy fought the urge to crumple up the towel. “A little, I guess.” She didn’t know what this meant for her. But that was the nature of her days right now. She barely knew herself.

This thing with Ben.

Lying to her family. To Jeremiah.

Fooling around outside bars. Casually dating a man she feared she didn’t feel at all casual about.

Who am I?

“That’s a cool bracelet,” Mia said, pulling the paper towel closer to her. “I would wear that.”

“Where?” Lucy laughed. “The high pastures?”

“Jack takes me out. In fact, that’s why I’m here.” Lucy met her sister’s eyes in the mirror. It could have been a snapshot from their childhood. The two of them getting ready for something in the same bathroom. Lucy fussing over her makeup and hair. Mia putting her hair in a ponytail, making fun of Lucy for all her girlie primping.

But marriage had changed Mia and primping was something she did now. Not very well, or often, but she was learning. And Lucy was delighted to be a part of the process.

“You want to borrow some clothes?”

“Did you bring a dress?”

“Just a yellow sundress.” Lucy started walking toward her room and closet of clothes. “The rest are in storage—”

“Storage?”

Lucy closed her eyes. Shit. All she needed now was her sister asking questions about the condo. “I put some stuff in storage before I came. Let’s see what I’ve got—” She bulldozed her way through any questions Mia might have had, not giving her a chance to talk.

She pulled out the yellow sundress and Mia made a face. Lucy gave it a quick glance, though.
Jeremiah would like this. With cowboy boots, Jeremiah would really like it.

“This is pretty hot,” she said, pulling out a thin white top, clingy in all the right places. “You’ve got the right chest for it, that’s for sure.”

Mia lay across Lucy’s bed, ignoring the clothes.

“Have you noticed Mom acting strange lately?” Mia asked.

“Yeah, pretty much since the moment we got here.”

“No. I mean…she hasn’t come out of her room all day today.”

“Is she sick?”

“I asked earlier and she said she was just tired.”

“She’s dealing with Walter—” She felt a little sick speaking ill of a guy who’d helped her out on Thursday, but one good deed could not erase years of mistakes.

“But she’s not. He’s not letting anyone help him. Especially her.”

Lucy paused, an animal-print chemise in her hands. “Maybe she’s depressed. Missing Dad.”

Mia shook her head. “Usually when she’s sad she wants us around. I knocked on her door tonight and she snapped at me to leave her alone.”

Lucy collapsed on the foot of her bed. “We should have left weeks ago.”

“Do you think she liked it better in the city?”

Lucy shook her head. “Honestly, no.”

“I didn’t think so. I don’t know, Lucy, I feel like it’s something else. She’s mad about something.”

“Mom? Mad?”

Mia shrugged. “Stranger things are happening around here. Walter’s still not drinking. And now you’re designing jewelry again.”

Lucy grinned at Mia. “What you need to do is have a kid. Give her some babies to hold.”

Instead of protesting Mia blushed.

“No…” Lucy gasped.

“No, I’m not. But…we’re trying.”

Lucy howled and hugged Mia. “What a ridiculous thing to call lots and lots of unprotected sex. But I’m thrilled for you.”

Mia squeezed her and then snatched the white tank top and the filmy camisole. “This should help.”

“Go get him, sis.”

Mia headed for the door and stopped. “Why…why are you all dressed up? You doing something tonight?”

“I—” Lucy stood and pulled down the hem on the thin red sweater she wore with her jet necklace. Beneath she wore her favorite black bra. She called it her Betty Boop outfit.

“Have a date.”

“With who?”

“Jeremiah—”

“Stone?”

Lucy nodded, her smile fading fast the more solemn Mia’s face got.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing…I just… You’re, like, a relationship person, Lucy. And I don’t know whatever crisis you’re having with your design and your business. But I’d hate to think of you using Jeremiah as a substitute—”

“How can you say that?” Lucy asked, but wondered if Jeremiah thought the same thing. “I’m a grown woman, Mia. I know my mind. My life.”
My heart. And my heart is slipping into familiar territory.

“Really? Because you’re not acting like it. Look, I love you both, and I don’t want to see anyone hurt.”

“We agreed it would be casual.”

“Yeah—” Mia lifted her eyebrow “—that sweater looks real…casual.” And she was out the door. Lucy turned to face the mirror over her dresser and considered the V-neck of her sweater. After a moment she pulled it down a little farther.

She’d hate Jeremiah to get the wrong idea.

* * *

J
EREMIAH
COULD
NOT
STOP
talking. He was listening to himself ramble on about restaurant choices and he honestly wanted to punch himself in the mouth.

“The Roundup has a pretty good steak if you don’t mind listening to the band they’ve got there. Or if you want down by the highway, I think there’s, like, an Applebee’s. They’ve got salads and stuff. You like vegetables. Right?”

He glanced over only to see her propped up against the passenger’s side door, laughing at him. “I do, Jeremiah. I do like vegetables.”

Was he sweating? He was. It trickled down his hairline, got caught in the band of his hat. Frustrated, embarrassed, he pushed it off his head.

“You got any better ideas?” he asked.

“Yes.” She dug into her back pocket. “I got you something.”

And she pulled out a long strip of silver.

Condoms.

A bunch of them.

“Dinner later?” he asked.

“Dinner later.”

And he pulled a U-turn and headed out toward the highway and the hotel reservation he’d already made.

Fifteen minutes later he stood at the front desk very conscious of the fact that they didn’t have any luggage.

Classy, Stone,
he told himself,
very classy.

He wondered if Lucy felt awkward as they walked down the carpeted hallway, silent and not touching. Maybe this was more of that slightly dirty stuff she wanted, something wild. Something to relieve the stress of her life.

Be grateful,
he told himself when the thought rankled.
It’s not like you have anything else to offer her.
He wasn’t even sure if he could offer her something dirty and dangerous. More like quick and sweaty.

We should have had dinner,
he thought,
this would be a whole lot easier with a couple of drinks under my belt.

“Here we go,” he said, and slipped the key in the door. The light flashed red and he did it again. No luck; he swore and tried harder.

“Calm down, cowboy,” she murmured, and took the key card out of his hand. She swiped it, the light flashed green and the door popped open under the flick of her wrist.

She slipped past him, grinning over her shoulder as she walked into the dark, slightly sterile hotel room. The red of her sweater, her eyes and smile—they glowed in the room. A beacon in the shadows.

He followed—the room could have been on fire, or filled with bees, and he would have followed. He would have followed her anywhere.

The door shut behind him and she lifted her hand to the tiny buttons at the bottom of her thin sweater. Slowly the material parted to reveal the tops of her tight jeans, the sweet curve of her tummy, her belly button, the bottom of her ribs. And then finally the sweater slipped off her shoulders, revealing her breasts, lovingly cradled by black lace.

“You going to help me out here?” she asked, her fingers dropping to the button on her jeans.

“You are doing great all by yourself.” His mouth was a dust storm.

“Maybe…I’m shy.” Her hair fell over her eye as she pretended to play the maiden.

Good Lord, she is hot.
The act, the game, all of it—she made the air sizzle, his body burn.

He pulled his T-shirt up over his head and threw it backward over his shoulder, eyes on her fingers as they toyed with the zipper of her pants. He bent over and pulled off his boots, barely noticing that his socks didn’t match.

Slowly she pushed down her pants, easing them over hips revealing black lace and satin.

“Turn around,” he said, and for a moment the game waivered. She didn’t give up control easily, he realized. She liked to choose what and how she revealed herself.

But then she turned, bending over as she pulled down her pants the rest of the way. Beautiful, sexy. She grinned at him over her shoulder and that was it. All he could stand.

He stepped up behind her. She wanted dark. Dirty. She wanted wicked.

He could give her all of that.

Slipping his hand around her waist he pulled her up tight against him. In lock step, he crossed the room to the desk and spread her hands out there.

She chuckled low and deep in her throat, pushing back against his erection. “I thought you wanted a bed.”

“We got all night.”

He shoved down his jeans with one hand while his other hand slid over the satin skin of her tummy into the lace edge of her underwear. She gasped, groaned, arched against him.

“Too fast?” he asked, and she shook her head, her black hair drifting across her shoulders.

“Hurry.”

He didn’t need another invitation and pulled the condoms she’d brought out of his back pocket. While she pushed her underwear down to her ankles, he used his teeth to rip open the condom. He fumbled slightly, panting, dying.

And then…yes…oh, yes…he was inside her. All the way.

Inside, her muscles clutched and she whimpered and he pushed as high and as hard as he could into her. She pushed back and he couldn’t have said who was
inside who.

And then…she laughed. Dark and dirty. The laugh crept over his skin like fingers.

The moment was suddenly transcendent, he was inside his skin and at the same time watching himself. Loving all of it. This moment, the two of them, made sense in a way he’d never expected. In a way he’d never had.

Sex was sex for Jeremiah, even with women that he really liked, but somehow, with Lucy, sex was different. Sex was an extension of who they were, of what brought them together. The sadness and heartache and desire all snowballed inside of him.

No,
he thought, his panic buttons screaming.
Too much. Ease off. Make a joke.

He desperately wanted to find the shallow pools he was used to, but Lucy wouldn’t let him.

She groaned and cried, pushing herself on her tiptoes so that, impossibly, he sank even deeper into her, finding a friction that lit up the night. All of him, that’s what she wanted, what she expected.

Can I do that? I’ve…I’ve never done that.

“Jeremiah.” She sighed. “Please. Stay with me?”

Enough of his own head games. Enough of his own fear. He wasn’t going to waste a second of his time with Lucy because without a doubt she would be gone soon. And he’d be right back where he started.

Alone and lonely. Probably lonelier for having had her, but that was a problem for a different day.

He slipped a hand up under hair to her neck and tipped over farther across the desk.

“Jeremiah,” she gasped slapping her hands against the wood.

He grinned in the half dark and set about being as wicked and dirty as he could.

“I’m with you. Right here with you.”

* * *

L
UCY
DOZED
SLIGHTLY
, her head buried in Jeremiah’s armpit. Their skin was stuck together with sweat and when she could move again, and decided to, it would hurt peeling herself away from him.

In more ways than one,
she thought in a rare moment of total honesty with herself. All of her excuses and pretences, her rationales and justifications, they’d abandoned her in the past few hours. Run out of her life by Jeremiah and his endless, bottomless, control.

“You won that round,” she muttered. Her body stretched and pulled, boneless. He’d been…amazing. She was no slouch in the sex department, but he… She was going to make him a love-god T-shirt.

His laughter shook her head. “I’d say it was a tie.” His fingers lazily walked up and down her spine, coercing goose bumps all over her skin, but she didn’t tell him to stop. Just like she didn’t move.

I don’t want this to end,
she thought, sighing deeper into her doze.

Suddenly, from the utter blankness of her thoughts sprang the idea for a ring. Wide, wider than most, masculine almost. Hammered gold. And another one, a thin braid. Silver? No, she recast it in gold. White gold. And wider, Celtic in flavor. Or Viking… Oh, cool.

“Wedding bands,” she murmured.

“What?” howled Jeremiah, jerking away from her.

Their skin split apart and both of them winced. “Did you say…?” He stared at her, horrified, and honestly, she couldn’t blame him. But she also couldn’t explain it, not until she sketched the ideas down before she lost them entirely.

Naked, she bounced out of bed and toward the desk. The pen was on the floor, the little notepad shoved up under the phone.

While sketching the hammered gold ring, two more ideas came to her. A wide white-gold band with a garnet in a thick circular setting. Medieval-looking.

As if it were someone else doing it she watched what appeared under her pen.