Outlaw Cowboy Read online

  Don’t do it. Don’t do it. But the voice in her head was already being drowned out by the need to do something. She placed the mug on the ground and began to head toward the figure. She stuck close to the line of pine trees someone must have planted decades ago.

  When she reached the end of the trees, she could make out a man on the ground. She immediately stepped forward, completely forgetting about being on the run from the police, but she stopped abruptly when she noticed the wheelchair.

  Oh hell, this had to be Caleb’s father.

  She glanced around, trying to discern where Summer’s place was. She’d pointed in the dark, but all Delia saw was mountains and trees. Some fence posts. Nothing that could be a house.

  The tone of the grunts and movements started to take on a note of panic, pain. Crap. Crap. Crap. She could not leave a wheelchair-bound man sideways and swearing.

  Even if he was Caleb’s father. Though Caleb would certainly offer no thank-yous for her showing her face when she was supposed to be keeping out of sight.

  She took another step forward and then stopped. What if he turned her in? What if he told Caleb she’d been out and about? What if—

  He moaned again, and she didn’t have a choice. She had to finish walking toward him. She wasn’t a martyr, but her heart and soul weren’t completely black either. Helping him was the only option her conscience would allow.

  “How can I help?” she asked, kneeling next to him.

  He grunted as he glared at her. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I…I’m a delivery person.”

  His eyes swept down her outfit. An outfit that clearly did not read United States Postal Service, and Lord knew pizza didn’t get delivered this far.

  “I hit a rut,” he said, each word a reluctant grunt. “Right my chair for me.” It was a surly order, not one note of pleading or relief in his gravelly voice.

  She blew out a breath. She just had to right his chair, then she could disappear. Maybe he’d never even mention it to Caleb. Maybe this could be a blip of Good Samaritan behavior that got hidden forever.

  Ha. Ha. As if that ever happened.

  But she helped disentangle him. “Are you hurt?”

  “Fuck if I know,” he grumbled, rubbing his elbow. “Doesn’t matter. Just right the damn chair.”

  She got the wheelchair back into an upright position, but she had no idea how she was going to get him into it. He was a solid man, and though she made a habit of touching strangers to exert some kind of power, some kind of control, she didn’t particularly want to touch Caleb’s father.

  It seemed one step too close to touching Caleb himself.

  “Where were you trying to go?” she asked gently. Maybe there would be someone waiting for him somewhere that she could go get.

  “Nowhere,” he snapped, and despite the surliness, there was a tone of guilt and secrecy in that one word.

  He’d been going somewhere, and he didn’t want anyone to know. That little morsel of information might help her out if he got any clue as to who she was.

  She surveyed him and the chair again, but he was already pulling himself toward the chair, a strangely mesmerizing sight—a man moving his body with simply the strength of his arms.

  “Hold the chair steady, girl. I ain’t Superman here.”

  She scurried to follow instructions.

  His breath was ragged, his arms shaking, and tiny beads of sweat were popping out on his temples as he lurched himself up and into the wheelchair. She’d never know where the strength came for him to do that.

  He slumped in the seat, breathing heavily for a long beat before he wearily pulled each leg onto the foot platform.

  Delia didn’t know what to say or what to do, so she could only stand behind his wheelchair, still grasping the handles to keep it steady.

  “Well, are you going to wheel me back to the house or what?”

  She inhaled sharply. She shouldn’t. Self-preservation told her the thing to do was leave him here for someone who actually had an ounce of interest in his welfare. But…she couldn’t. Self-preservation didn’t run to hurting other people. She wouldn’t let her father shape her like that.

  But that didn’t mean she had to be Suzy Nicey Nice. She was not Summer, with the sweetness all but emanating from her I know what it’s like to be on your owns.

  Delia moved in front of him in an attempt to make sure he was situated right enough she could push him back to the main house. Crap, crap, crap.

  He scowled. “Well?” he demanded.

  “Typically people say please and thank you.” She had never been very good with demanding people.

  “Typical don’t live here,” he muttered, staring off into the distance.

  Wasn’t that the truth? She was about to move back behind the chair so she could get him going—push him to the house and leave so she could go back to the peace and safety of the cabin, but his sharp eyes flicked to her face.

  “I know you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She wasn’t sure she believed it. Oh, he thought he might recognize her, but the open speculation in his expression wasn’t knowledge so much as suspicion. It was enough to get her moving. If she was pushing him toward the house, he couldn’t study her face well enough to figure it all out.

  Would the people of Blue Valley know about everything that had gone down? She’d been living with Eddie over in Bartlett, and while the gossip mill didn’t seem to run between towns, they were certainly patrolled by the same group of county deputies.

  Shit on a stick.

  Well, in for a penny, she supposed. She pushed—and pushed and pushed—Caleb’s father across the slushy ground. It took all the strength she had, but if he could pull himself into the chair, she could certainly muscle him back to the house.

  She got him to the gravel of the drive that led to a detached garage. The Shaw house was impressive, if a little worse for wear. Still, she could see that it had once been something of a beauty. The rough-hewn wood had seen better days, but the upstairs porch and wraparound porch on the lower level were like a dream compared to where she came from.

  As there was a much newer-looking ramp leading up the wraparound porch, Delia stopped pushing. She didn’t have much more in her anyway. Her arms were shaking and the food rationing wasn’t helping. She’d only had a granola bar for breakfast and it was nearly one o’clock. She needed to get back to the cabin and see what she could do with a little container of Easy Mac.

  “This is where my good deed ends,” she announced, feeling weird leaving him here, but unable to do much else. She pulled her shaking arms to her chest and tried to cross them casually.

  He considered her over his shoulder, with sharp blue eyes identical to Caleb’s, aside from the mass of wrinkles stretching out from the corners.

  “Come inside, girl.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I wasn’t asking.”

  “You’d probably get further if you did. And added a please. And a thanks for saving you. As it is, I think I’ll…”

  “You look like you could use a hot meal.”

  She swallowed against the lump in her throat. Apparently it was obvious she’d been barely scraping by with enough food to move. She could also see where Caleb got his reluctant but innate kindness from.

  “I could use a hot meal, and I can’t reach shit in that kitchen. So, come inside and make me something.”

  “Do you demand all strangers cook you a meal? That’s really damn weird.”

  “I told you. I know who you are.”

  “Yeah? Somehow I don’t believe it.”

  “One of the Rogers girls. One that used to hang ’round my boy.”

  The way he said “my boy” with a kind of fatherly ownership made her throat close up again. What would it be like to belong to someone? Not to be owned by them, terrifie
d of them, desperate to escape them. Just belong.

  She could not go inside.

  “I have to go.”

  “Guess I’ll have to let Caleb know you stopped by then,” he said so casually she almost agreed with him.

  “Guess I’ll have to let him know you were halfway across the yard and fell in a rut. Going who knows where.”

  They regarded each other in silence for a long, stretching minute before Mr. Shaw’s eyes drifted beyond her. Where he’d been looking before. She imagined it was his destination, but she certainly hadn’t seen anything special he could be heading for.

  “Come inside, girl.” He didn’t say “please” or “thank you,” but there was a gentleness to his tone that hadn’t been there before, and against every survival instinct in her head telling her to turn and run, she followed that gentle note like a moth to a flame.

  Chapter 5

  Caleb pulled his truck into the gravel drive. Mel and Dan would show up in a few minutes, and he wanted to make sure he checked on Dad and did a quick run-through of the house before they got here.

  Of course Mel and Dan would decide on an impromptu drop by on a Friday, meaning Summer spent the entire day in town, stocking shelves at Felicity’s and then doing some music thing at the Pioneer Spirit in the evenings.

  Meaning the house looked like…well, like it hadn’t been cleaned since yesterday afternoon. Which could be a lot worse than it was, but he didn’t want Mel clucking over anything. He didn’t want to put that frown of worry on her face she usually left the house with.

  Having to convince her to give him a few months more of running things had done that already today.

  Luckily Mel had said it’d be a quick visit. Holy matrimony and all that bullshit had really gotten a bug up Mel’s ass about getting through to Dad.

  He pushed out a breath, trying to expel all the moodiness with it. He needed to hurry. He paused briefly at the muddy wheelchair mark on the ramp. Dad never left the house alone. Maybe Summer hadn’t gone into town this morning. Not that Dad ever went outside with Summer either.

  Maybe they’d made a breakthrough. Wouldn’t that be a salve to the shit morning he’d had? Mel wouldn’t even notice the mess if Summer and Dad were talking.

  He paused in the entry. There were voices, and it wasn’t the TV Dad liked to blare. Holy shit. It was really happening.

  But any bubble of hope was immediately quashed by the low rumble of sexy laughter—definitively not Summer. He knew that sound, and he was so utterly confused and baffled that he couldn’t even be pissed.

  At least until he stepped into the kitchen to find his father and Delia laughing over something they were both eating.

  His father, who Caleb couldn’t remember even smiling for years, was laughing with Delia.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.

  Delia stilled, but she didn’t turn. He couldn’t see her face to see if her smile died the way his father’s did, but that only made the anger slice deeper.

  How could he…how could she…just, how?

  He heard the rumble of a truck engine. Mel and Dan were here. He did not have time to explain Delia to Mel, and he did not have the wherewithal to somehow explain Delia away. Not when he had so much to prove.

  “Get upstairs,” he demanded.

  She finally turned, all languid ease—a mask, but he didn’t care right now. She’d invaded his house, broken her own rule of staying unseen, and she was making his father smile.

  “Excuse me?”

  He grabbed her arm, propelled by anger, and was only slightly jarred by how too-thin it was when his fingers wrapped around and met his thumb. Still, the anger shoved away the jarred feeling, and he tugged her toward the stairs that led to the second floor.

  “Let go of me, Caleb,” she said, her voice so low, so dangerous, he would do good to listen.

  He wasn’t in the mood to do any good. He gave her a jerk instead so she bumped against his chest. Any impressions, any electricity zinging over his skin, only flamed his anger higher.

  “I will not be explaining you to the people who are about to walk in that door. Get upstairs. Don’t make a noise, and don’t even think about leaving until I tell you it’s all right.”

  The doorknob jangled, and it surprised Caleb to realize he was still holding on to Delia. In fact, she had to wrench herself from his grasp to do as he’d asked.

  What the living hell was wrong with him? All this putting himself back together since Mel left, and Delia was erasing it. Shaking all the pieces loose. But he didn’t have time to dwell on it. “Second door on the right. Touch nothing. Do nothing.” He had no idea why he was saying it—it was probably like giving her an engraved invitation to touch everything. She’d probably burn them to the ground, and it’d be hard to blame her.

  The door swung open just as Delia muttered something that sounded like, “payback is a bitch,” and disappeared around the corner.

  Caleb had to steady himself on the rail.

  “Get it cleaned up?” Mel asked cheerfully.

  He had to force himself to breathe, to unclench, to calm the thundering beat of his heart and the sparking, fiery anger bouncing around in his gut. “Not what I was doing.” Hey, it wasn’t a lie.

  “How’s Dad?” Mel toed off her boots, then gave Dan a look until he rolled his eyes and did the same. It shamed Caleb into taking off his boots, even though that was a Mel rule he’d always hated.

  Why couldn’t he destroy that selfishness that lived inside of him? Why did it have to be so heavy? So him?

  “Haven’t found him yet,” Caleb managed, though his voice was scratchy, and that earned him twin looks of speculation from Mel and Dan.

  He straightened, forced his lips to curve, and then coughed a few times. Maybe he’d convince them he was coming down with a cold, not some sort of trying-to-stay-on-the-straight-and-narrow crisis.

  He did his best to forget Delia existed, let alone existed on the floor above them. They walked through the kitchen, Dad having wheeled away somewhere. They found him in the living room after trading minutes of fake pleasantries.

  Mel’s smile was painful to look at as she sat down. Some mix of sad and hopeful and hurting. Why did she keep doing this to herself? Why couldn’t she give up on the old bastard? He didn’t want them.

  Well, maybe it was different for Mel, since at one point Dad had wanted her. Caleb didn’t know what that felt like.

  Mel and Dan tried to talk to Dad, but Dad sat in the corner and grunted occasionally. His gaze almost never left Caleb.

  It was not an easy gaze, or something that was usual. It was strange enough, he was sure Mel noticed. But they went on as normal. For twenty-some minutes, Mel and Dan made excruciatingly stifled conversation, and Dad refused to give an inch.

  He’d been laughing with Delia. Caleb’s fingers curled around his knee. He gripped it as hard as he could without drawing attention to it, met Dad’s gaze as best he could without demanding to know what the hell he’d been laughing at.

  It was a painful exercise of futility on a normal day, sitting through any attempts at reaching Dad. Today, Caleb knew he had been reached, and the perpetrator was hiding upstairs doing who knew what in his room. It was like filling his insides with sandpaper and flame, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

  He wanted to yell. He wanted to pound something to dust. He wanted to drink. Instead, he sat clutching his knee and trying to find some way to breathe, until finally, finally Mel and Dan got up to leave.

  Caleb would have preferred to have left it at that, but it had become habit to walk them out.

  They all—barring Dad of course—went to the mudroom and began to pull on their boots.

  “Why don’t you go start the truck?” Mel said way too brightly to her husband as he pulled on his jacket.

  “Why don’t you c
ome up with a better excuse, honey?” Dan muttered before dropping a kiss on Mel’s temple and then exiting the house.

  Mel turned to Caleb, any false brightness completely gone. She reached out and touched his arm, worry all over her face. He’d been on the end of that look so many times, and it never got any easier.

  He’d never found a way to make it go away completely. Never found a way to be the kind of man who wouldn’t cause trouble and worry and pain everywhere he went.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?” Because he sure as hell had learned how to pretend, if nothing else.

  “You both seemed tense.” She squeezed his forearm. “You’d tell me if something was going on? That was the deal, right? We tell each other what’s going on, when we need help? You prom—”

  “It’s nothing. I swear.” Her face fell, so he clutched her arm the same way she was clutching him. “Mel, I swear to you. There is nothing wrong.” Nothing that pertained to Mel or Shaw, exactly. So, it wasn’t a lie. “I was giving Dad a hard time about Summer. Maybe he’s feeling some guilt. I don’t know. But it isn’t anything you can swoop in and fix.”

  Mel blew out a breath, ruffling her hair. She was always so quick to take on the responsibilities of this family. Was it because she knew he couldn’t handle it? Or just innate Mel-ness?

  He wanted to believe it was the latter, but somehow he always wound up thinking it was the first.

  “Maybe we should try for a dinner again. With Dad and Summer and—”

  “I’ll run it by Summer. Now, don’t you have llamas to herd or whatever?”

  Her smile—so much easier these days—lit up her whole face. “I can’t wait for the day some woman with bizarre animals changes your whole life.”

  “Ha! Pretty sure I’m allergic to llamas.”

  “Squirrels then. Maybe a raccoon?”

  “A wolf would be more my style.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You wish. Call if you need anything. If anything changes. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he drawled, the teasing managing to relax the iron tenseness inside of him the minutest degree.