Broken Road (6 page)

   “I will never do that to a ch
ild. You know what kind of backg
round I came from before I met Royal, then you. You are one of the few people who knows everything about me. I will not be like my parents. Lilla deserves a mother and a father, even if I don’t like the brute. I’ll fill in until Wylde comes back. I just need time to think.”

   “How long? A few days, a week?”

   Devil sighed. “I just need time to think. Tell all the guys to take a month off and by then I’ll
k
now everything I need to know. Paid leave for them of course. You too, I know you’ve been eyeing the band’s drummer.”

   Celia blushed. “No such thing!”

   “I need a month to do whatever it is I want to do. We only have one show left in the tour and it was supposed to be in a surprise location. What’s more surprising then Montana? We could have it in the big city near here. It would be prefect for me.”

   Celia reached out to ruffle Devil’s hair. “I guess after all the hell you’ve been put through you deserve happiness. It’s funny how your name matches you so well. Take the time ya need. I’ll take care of everything tell then. She’s a real cutie.”

   “Thanks Cee, I didn’t know what to do without you.”

   She gave me an unimpressed looked and smiled softly. “You do so much for others and have not a care for yourself. You’re worth more then you think. Find someone to see you better then you see yourself.” She glanced over Devil’s shoulder. “Maybe he can help you.”

   Devil looked over her shoulder and smiled as she saw a scowl cross Mr. Canter’s face. She turned back to her friend.

   “No way in hell,” she said with a grin.

   Cee laughed and kissed her cheek, handed over a duffle bag and left as Mr. Canter came to a stop next to Devil.

    “Take care of her, ya hear? Other wise she will give you hell. There is a reason her name is Devil,” Cee said as she breezed by and hoped in her little rented sports car.

   She whipped out of the parking lot before Winthrop could open his mouth in greeting. It would appear that one came from money unlike her friend. He looked at the friend in question and she smiled up at him.

   “Should we get out of here? You must hate town.”

   She went over to the truck and hopped in before he could ask what had happened. It appeared that her and her friend had talked about something she wouldn’t talk to him about.

   He shrugged that off and hopped into the truck and buckled up. It was a short trip back to the ranch and he grabbed her arm before she could escape back into the ranch house.

   “What happened between you two?”

    “Nothing, um, why don’t I go inside and make lunch? I’m sure you have work to do and Lilla needs a nap.” Devil pulled away before he could see her blush and rushed into the house.

   Great, just freaking great that her friend had ruined how she looked at Lilla’s father. Now she could look at him with out thinking she was turning into a pervert.

   Winthrop watched her go with a scowl and decided that she was hiding something he would want to know. He had a feeling it had to do with him.

   He adjusted himself and he walked towards the barn to help the guys with some work before lunch. The kid really got him worked up in ways he had never been worked up with her shy glances at him and her laughter haunted him every moment she wasn’t close by.

   “I should be in jail,” he muttered to himself before he saw his men and set to work.

Soon both Devil and Lilla were settled into the ranch house and to avoid Mr. Canter Devil had taken up any job she could do. She did laundry, the cooking, playing with Lilla and bringing ice tea to the ranch hands when it was too hot.

   Three days passed before she finally ran into Mr. Canter. Well ‘run into’ wasn’t how Devil would have put it. He had to have planned it for when she woke up at five to check on Lilla he came out of his room at the same time and knocked heads. That’s how she also found out that he had switched to the room across the hall from her’s.

   Winthrop grabbed her by the shoulders to steady her, but the warmth of her skin was a shock against his cold palms and his hands tightened in an unforgiving grip.

   “Ouch,” Devil said pointedly.

   Devil waited for his hands to loosen their grip yet they only tightened. She looked up into his face and saw a confused frustration there. So she waited for what he had to say. And waited, and waited.

   “What?” she finally snapped.

   It was cold in the house and she was in shorts and a tank top and freezing her ass off in the old hallway.

   Mr. Canter’s jaw tightened in a clench. “You bother me.”

   Devil mouth fell open in surprise.

   That was it? That was all he had to say to her? That she bothered him?

  
Why of all the-!

“You get under my skin and I don’t like it one bit, but your little silence game is driving me nuts! Speak woman!”

   “That’s it?” Devil asked him.

   Winthrop raised his eyebrows at her question.

   “That’s it? Is that all you have to ask me, all you have to say? You avoid me like the plague for three days and that’s it?” he asked in astonishment.

   Devil was uncomfortable with him being so close and she herself was close to blurting out what she had been thinking over those last three days. But she couldn’t for it would be like stabbing her sister in the back. But somehow that evil little bit of evil inside her forced her to say something and it was that something that made her want to shoot herself. However she couldn’t stop the words that fell form her bowed lips.

   “You bother me too, you giant jerk. You’ve been the only thing on my mind since I got here. Do you even know how much you bug me? All I’ve been thinking about is kissing you and it’s your entire fault!”

   Devil’s hands were too late to cover her mouth and stop the words from coming out. 

   Suddenly it was as if all the air was sucked out from between them and the world disappeared.

  
             
Winthrop found it hard to swallow pass his suddenly dry throat and even harder not to fall over on his backside, stunned. Had the kid just said what he thought she just said? By the look on her face it told him she had and he wasn’t just hearing things. A million things raced through his mind. This girl was only eighteen, he was thirty. She was still a kid who had a kid. She was his brother’s.

   And he didn’t give a damn about any of it because she wanted to kiss him. Without much further ado he crushed his lips down on her’s in a feverish haze of need and took her up in his arms, crushing her small body against his own. Winthrop threaded his fingers in the thick long hair at the bottom of her neck and angled her head so he could deepen the kiss.

   Devil was stunned at the turn of events and was going to push away when the evil little her asked,
“Why not kiss him? He is single and he wants you. Live a little for the first time in your life.”

   Devil wanted to argue that this man was her sister’s but found that she couldn’t. He had once been her sister’s but she had left him, so he belonged to no one. The way was clear. She felt a twinge of guilt, but when she remembered how her sister had left her when she ran away from home she tossed it aside. They were even now.

    So she kissed Mr. Canter back.

   Winthrop was surprised when his assault of her mouth became a real two-sided kiss and he tipped her head back even farther and gently bit her bottom lip.

   “Open for me,” he breathed.

   And she did just that and how sweet it was as they became both the kisser and the kissed. Heat spread low in Devil’s belly and Winthrop passion was growing blindly. They both wanted more but weren’t sure how to go about it. So Devil took the first move in hopes it was the right one. She slipped her hands from around his neck down his sides and slipped her fingers just beneath his jeans.

   With a possessive growl he backed her up against the wall so that their bodies were as close as they could be. Winthrop could feel the heat of her body through her thin clothes and he burned for her. She had started a fire that couldn’t be put out and was about to turn into an explosion.

   Devil nipped at his lower lip and kissed him back as hard and sweet as she knew how. He didn’t seem to mind that she had no idea what she was doing, but it seemed to be working. She was hot and trembling with feeling she didn’t even know she could feel. She wanted to be closer, wanted to be part of him yet somehow that seemed as if it would never be enough.

   A high pitched wail sounded from the room next to the wall where they were kissing.

   The cry had went straight through Winthrop red hazy passion in a second and he broke away cursing, “Damn it!” He hit the wall next to Devil’s head and winced as his rough voice.

   Devil stared at him dazed with wide eyes.

   Winthrop stared down at the girl whose large baby blue eyes stared into his dazed. Just like a deer in the head lights. She looked so frail in that moment that he felt almost guilty at what they had done. Almost.

   He bit back the words of comfort that almost fell from his lips and gazed down at her silently to see her reaction to what had just passed between them. When she simply just kept searching his face he gave into the urge to kiss her lips gently one more time. So he brushed her reddened lips with his and smiled faintly as another cry sounded from the room.

   “This isn’t over,” he promised before he pushed away from the wall and headed down the stairs leaving her there to watch after him.

   He felt odd, almost light in a way. He had never given into such feelings for a woman before, yet he had the feeling that she would be different then any other. He smiled to himself as he went to the bathroo
m downstairs for a cold shower.

   No, it was far from over.

…

Devil watched him head down stairs and felt her heart flutter. She felt as if he had just breathed life back into her. He had give
n
her a gift she would always remember and she wasn’t going to let it go just yet. He could give her more and she was going to be selfish and take it all.

   She smiled, feeling fuzzy inside.

   Oh, she was going to have fun for the next month before she had to make the hardest choices of her life. She was going to take what she would never be given again.

   Devil could still feel him on her and hear his last words breathed in her ear.
“This isn’t over.”

   Devil went into Lilla’s room and picked her up out of the crib to rock her and Devil started to sing. It wasn’t one of her normal songs but the only warm one she knew from her mother.

   So many things were changing so
fast and they would never be the
same. Then it came to her. She wanted to give a gift to Lilla, one filled with her love for her and her new feelings about the world so one day she might understand.

    Devil wanted to write a new song and so she would.

…

A sweet low lullaby was drifting in
a
breeze from the ranch house out to the barn and Winthrop stopped to listen. He knew that voice. It was the voice of his favorite country star, Alto Devil Runner. Up coming singer, model, and actress, and she was already a super star.

   This was a new song that he didn’t know and figured that Devil had found the radio in the living room and was playing some music while she was working inside.

   Even her name brought a smile to his lips. He rarely smiled and yet she had him doing it all the time since she had been here. She was a wonder and she was good for him. She had become the one thing he looked forward to each day. He felt guilty about starting to like her since she used to be with his brother, but he figured that since his brother was clear that he had a chance and he knew that his brother would want him happy.

   He would have to be careful not to take things so far that one of them got hurt, but just far enough for them to have some fun. After all she was a young mother and he had an entire ranch to run with his men, but they could be very good friends.

   The song called him back from his thoughts and he found himself drifting towards the house by the lull of the sweet soft love song. It made him think of Devil while she was wrapped up in his arms.

   “Hey Boss! Where ya going?” Kip called from the carrel of horses.

   “To get me a Devil,” he said with a grin and made his way to the house.

Devil found Mr. Canter’s office on the east side of the ranch house and decided that a peek inside the room couldn’t hurt. She should know what kind of man she was trusting with her daughter with right?