Allister, J. Rose - Displaced Cowboys [Lone Wolves of Shay Falls 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (17 page)

Before setting foot in the hall, she turned. “Try to stay away from the middle of the flooring in the hall and on the stairs, or else the floor will creak. Mom’s a light sleeper.”

Nash tugged his hat back on and shook his head. “You’re twenty-one and have to sneak around your own house like this? You act like you’re sixteen.”

“My
parents’
house, and I might as well be sixteen as far as they’re concerned.”

“I can just go back down the drainpipe and wait out front.”

“And risk making a racket that wakes someone? Forget it.”

“You didn’t hear me come in.”

“I had headphones on. Now shut up so we can go help Connor.”

They crept out into the hallway, Terra instinctively tiptoeing along the edge. The closer they drew to the door at the end, the shallower her breaths became, which emphasized the sound of Nash breathing behind her all the more. She edged around a polished wood console, and at the end she stopped and waited for Nash. He was right. It was weird to be sneaking around like a teenager again. She hadn’t done this since before the accident.

Nash was lighter on his feet than he looked for a muscle-bound cowboy. He crossed the hallway without problem, and he brushed against her when he got to the banister. She ignored a hot tingle at the contact and kept shooting furtive glances at her parent’s bedroom. The door was still shut.

They stuck to the wall on the way downstairs, making it without a peep. She might not have been as nimble as she was once, but she hadn’t totally lost her touch. At the bottom step, she held up a hand. Soft noises and flickering lights were coming from the adjoining den. Shit. Her father was still awake.

She peered around the edge of the doorway and saw him in his favorite recliner, watching some infomercial extolling the wonders of a microwave pasta cooker. Or was he watching? His head was tilted slightly.

Terra turned around and tiptoed up to Nash’s ear. “Wait here,” she told him in a faint whisper. The hair on her arms prickled when his head turned and she felt his breath on her cheek.

She wandered into the darkened den, trying to appear as though she’d come casually downstairs for a drink of water. The giant flat screen TV blathered on about magical Tupperware while she rounded the leather couch. One peek and she relaxed. Her father was dead asleep with the remote in his hand.

She returned to Nash and led him past the den, toward the kitchen. The built-in liquor cabinet sat between the two rooms. Terra pulled open the glass doors and stared, trying to figure out which bottle was whiskey. The labels were hard to make out in the dim lighting. Nash pointed right away to a black-and-white label. Figured the guy knew his booze.

She reached up and accidentally clanked it against a neighboring bottle while she pulled it out. She froze, cursing silently, but when there was no sign she’d been heard, she shut the cabinet and carried the bottle of Jack Daniel’s into the kitchen.

There was a little more illumination in there, by way of under-cabinet lights in maple cabinetry that still came as a surprise. The folks had redone the entire kitchen while she’d been in the hospital. A major plumbing leak had trashed the space, supposedly. Terra figured that was just an excuse to get them absorbed in something other than watching their only child’s bleak fate unfold day after day. In any case, one nice touch was that the back door no longer squeaked, which came in handy as they snuck outside.

Crickets chirped loudly in the yard, where the smells of night air and her mother’s meticulous gardening found Terra’s nostrils.

“He’s around front?” she asked.

Nash gave a solemn nod. “I’ll show you.”

He went straight for the nearby side gate, and she tailed him out past the garage and past the front door. Connor wasn’t sitting against the large elm in the front yard, like she’d somehow pictured. Beyond that, large box-trimmed bushes flanked the house and along the fence, blocking the backyard from view. Nash pushed his body between the bushes, and with a frown, Terra did the same.

“Connor!”

She didn’t quite manage to keep her voice down to a whisper at the sight of the cowboy on the ground, wedged between the bushes and fence. His eyes were tinged with heavy gold beneath brows furrowed in pain. Ragged, troubled breaths came from his dirt-streaked face, and the leg that was stuck out straight in front of him was bleeding freely through a hole in the thigh of pale, faded denims.

“Jesus, what happened?” she asked, ignoring the scratches on her arms from the craggy bush while she knelt in front of him.

“It’s nothin’,” he said, his voice coming through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, so
nothin’
that you’re hiding in obvious agony. The huntress did this?”

“Not sure how she followed us down here,” Nash said. “But she caught up to us just before sundown.”

“She followed all of us,” Terra said. “I had a run-in with her at the park today.”

Connor jerked upright, but then winced. “Did she hurt you?”

“Not really. She had a silver knife she got a bit pokey with. She thought I was a werewolf because she saw me at your motel room.”

Nash, who was standing behind her still holding the supplies against his stomach, leaned down and grabbed her by the arm. “Does she know you’re our mate?”

“Shit,” Connor said. “Does she?”

Her head whipped back and forth between them. “Hell,
I
don’t even know that.” She twisted to Nash. “And what do you mean, ‘our’ mate?”

“We shouldn’t be here,” Connor said to Nash. “If she already knows about Terra, she could show up here even if we covered our trail like we thought.”

“She won’t come here unless she tracked you,” Terra said. “She actually apologized to me when she found out I wasn’t what she thought. I convinced her you were just a hitchhiker I picked up, and that we found Nash by accident. That it was all a mistake I got away from as soon as possible.”

His eyes glittered. “Maybe it was a mistake.”

Heat jabbed at her midsection. “Yeah? Why’d you come here, then? So you could bleed all over my front yard?”

“We were already headed your way when she found us,” Nash said. “We didn’t come down here plannin’ on you havin’ to help fix up Connor.”

Her heart sputtered at that. “Good, because playing nursemaid to a werewolf hasn’t exactly worked out for me.”

Nash’s jolt gave her a brief flare of satisfaction, but when her bad knee began throbbing from her kneeling position, she held a hand out to him. “Help me up, will you?”

His hand was warm and strong as he pulled her to her feet, bringing her almost against him. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine.” Their eyes met for a brief moment, but she pulled away and turned to Connor. “Let’s get you out of the bushes so we can deal with that leg. Can you stand?”

“I half dragged him the last mile or two,” Nash said. “Silver ain’t a wolf’s best friend.”

“I can make it,” Connor said. Still, two attempts to get up on his own netted him little more than a pained look and string of curse words.

“Who is that woman, anyway?” Terra asked. “Why is she hunting werewolves?”

“Long story,” Connor said. “Suffice to say she’s got a vendetta on our kind.” He bit his lip while he struggled again to get to his feet.

“Come on, cowboy.” Nash handed Terra back the towel-wrapped supplies. He couldn’t push past without forcing her into the bushes, though, so she backed out of the way and let him in to haul Connor to his feet.

Two wide-shouldered men weren’t exactly silent brushing against shrubbery, and Terra prayed no one would hear. After a quick peek around the neighborhood, she gestured them out of hiding and past the garage, back to the side gate. On the other side, she paused to grab the key to the rear garage door from under the mat.

The garage held two cars, a workbench, a deep freeze, and a collection of lawn and garden care implements that Nash had to navigate while helping Connor. “Sorry there’s not a lot of room in here,” Terra said. “But at least Dad insulated the walls last year. It’ll be quieter to work here than trying to sneak you into the house.”

Her car was unlocked, and she opened the rear door for Connor to slide in. With his long legs, he wound up sliding along the bench seat sideways, leaning his back heavily against the far door and raking a hand through his mussed hair.

She let out a sigh as she took in his sorry state. “Where’s your hat?”

“Lost it in the woods.” Terra leaned in to hand over the bottle of Jack, which he took and unscrewed the cap. “Lost my job, lost my hat. Some cowboy, ain’t I?”

“Actually, throw a dog gettin’ shot into that song and you’re a textbook cowboy,” Nash said. With a glance at Connor’s leg, he added, “Then again, guess you got that angle covered, too.”

Connor’s eyed narrowed. “You know, you were a lot funnier when I used to work for you.”

“That’s on account of you were bein’ paid to laugh at my jokes.”

“There’s not much room in here for us,” Terra said to Nash. “Let me shove the seats up.”

Nash helped her adjust the front seats and tilt them forward so they could climb in the back of her sedan.

“The light ain’t the greatest,” Nash said, peering up at the car’s interior lamp. “Don’t suppose you got a shop light around that workbench?”

“I think Dad does, actually. But I’m not sure where.”

Nash ducked out of the car to dig up more lighting while Connor took a swig from the whiskey bottle. She watched his Adam’s apple bob with two deep swallows before he pulled the bottle from his lips and licked them off. “Thanks for comin’ out to help me. You didn’t have to.”

“Not like a gal can sleep, what with cowboys climbing through her window and sticking their fat paws over her mouth.” Connor’s scowl deepened at that. “Besides,” she added quickly, “I couldn’t just leave you bleeding out there.

A faint crash came from the workbench area, and Terra unfolded herself from the back of her car to glower across the roof. Nash had found a work light and was pulling an orange extension cord from a pile of her Dad’s miscellaneous junk.

“Do you mind?” Terra snapped in as loud a whisper as she dared. “I said it was quieter out here, not soundproof.”

“Sorry.” He plugged in the cord and harsh light flooded from the metal-hooded lamp. “Let there be light.”

She ignored his self-satisfied smile and moved over when he rounded the back of her car, holding the lamp. Connor lifted the bottle to block the glare from his eyes. “Jesus, is that a shop light or a lighthouse beacon?”

“Take another drink and you won’t care,” Nash said, and he turned to her. “How are we gonna do this?”

“I volunteer you,” Terra said. “I skipped bullet-digging class in my First Aid training. I could hold the light for you.”

“No need. It’s got a clamp on it that’ll hold it to the roof.”

She eyed Connor from head to toe, her eyes landing on the still-wet thigh. “Help me get his pants off, I suppose.”

Connor’s eyes darted to hers. “Of all the times I’ve imagined you sayin’ that, I never dreamed I’d be in quite this fix.”

She climbed in beside him and stared at his embossed belt buckle. “A wolf buckle?”

“You got a better totem animal in mind?” Connor reached down and unhooked the belt and his jeans. “Those ain’t exactly bunny slippers you’re wearin. Got a thing for wolves?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t notice.” She swallowed as his fly gapped open. “Please tell me you’re wearing underwear.”

“Some of us do,” he said, a hint of humor underlying the thick tone.