Just Shoot Me (Cowboy Way, #1) (23 page)

Jerking a towel off the rack, she dried off
quickly, then wrapped it around her wet hair turban style. She’d
towel dry it in the bedroom, and put it in a knot of some kind.
Maybe one like the one in her stomach, she thought as she grabbed
the knob and opened the door. She took one step out then squealed
when she came face to face with Dean Dixon, who was still in her
apartment. It looked like he had been about to knock on the
bathroom door.

He looked as surprised as she did, but then
his eyes tracked slowly down her body to her toes and she thought
she heard him groan. Tina put one arm over her breasts and the
other across the top of her thighs. “What the hell are you still
doing here?”

“
I was thinking that I have a
helluva lot of experience talking to principals. Jeremy likes to
visit his principal’s office frequently. You could probably use my
help.”

Tina walked past him with her chin held up,
pretending she didn’t feel him staring at her ass. She had to get
dressed and get to school. She didn’t have time for this. And she
didn’t want Dean Dixon’s help, or interference in the
situation.

“
I don’t need your help,” she said
as she walked into her bedroom. The man had a habit of putting his
foot into doorways, she found out when she tried to close the
bedroom door. She’d like to pinch his damned toes off in there. Her
eyes flew up to his. “Don’t you have anything better to do than bug
the crap out of me?”

“
Not really,” he said, leaning
against the jamb.

Dean didn’t move his foot, and she couldn’t
wait or fight with him. Tina left the door open and walked to the
closet to yank down a skirt, and shirt. She figured if she had on
professional armor she might be taken more seriously than if she
wore the pair of blue jeans she really wanted to put on. The only
pair she owned. The pair she’d bought to wear to the ranch for the
photo shoot with Dean. A sob escaped her throat, and she found out
she wasn’t out of tears just yet. One leaked out of her left eye,
then another out of her right. She swiped them away with her wrist
and turned to lay her clothes on the bed, but ran into Dean’s broad
chest. He grabbed her shoulders, and her eyes flew up to his. The
skirt and shirt dropped to the floor, and he slowly pulled the
towel off of her hair.

“
Let me help you, buttercup,” he
said in that low growly voice that sent her hormones into overload.
He tipped her chin up with his finger. “Please,” he
added.

Tina’s heart stuttered in her chest, then sped
up to road racer speed. Dean dropped the towel to the floor to put
his hands on her hips, then bent and his lips met hers, in a slow
comforting whisper of a kiss. Tina was confused by his gentleness,
his concern, and Lord knew she didn’t need to be any more confused.
But Dean’s presence there did make her feel less alone. If he went
with her to the school, she’d probably feel the same there
too.

“
Okay, you can go, but don’t say
anything.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Really?” he
asked.

“
Really. You can go, but I can’t
let them know Lori is gone. I have no idea what Laney did, but her
teacher said it was bad. I know they can be dramatic sometimes, but
the way she sounded makes me believe I’m going to have to do some
quick thinking to get Laney out of this mess. To keep myself from
getting into more of one.”

“
I’ll let you do the talking,” he
promised. “I’ll just be there for moral support.”

Tina huffed out a breath and took a step back.
“I damn sure could use some right now.”

“
Well, I’m here for you,” he said,
surprising her, as she bent to pick up her clothes.

When she stood back up he had
that
look
in his eyes. The one he got a lot while they were up in the deer
stand. A tingle floated through her body, but she snuffed it out.
“Don’t go there, big boy,” Tina said putting her hand in the center
of his chest to give him a push so she could get by. “I don’t have
time for it.”

They had a lot to talk about before she let
that look get to her again. And she had things to do that were more
important right now. She pushed him again and he stepped back into
the doorway. When he just stood there looking at her, she flipped
her hand at him then grabbed the door knob. “Keep on going. I need
to get dressed.”

“
What if I want to watch?” he asked
in that gravelly voice again. His eyes tracked down her still wet
body, and he whistled. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it all
before.”

Tina lifted a brow. Enough was enough. “At the
rate you’re going, cowboy, you won’t ever be seeing anything again
if you don’t
MOVE
!” she shouted.

Dean laughed as he stepped back out of the
doorway. She closed the door, holding back a laugh herself. Why the
hell did she always feel better when she was with him? It just
didn’t make sense to her. He was just about the grumpiest,
crankiest, most unpredictable man she’d ever been with. But he was
also the sexiest and most exciting man she’d ever met because of
that. She kind of liked never knowing what to expect from Dean.
Tina shook her head and hurried to dress.

Two hours later, Tina wondered what she’d been
thinking bringing Dean Dixon with her to the school. “Principal
Landers, I think what my
fiancé
is trying to say here,” she
said the word through her teeth, then shot Dean a hot glare, hoping
he would take the hint to shut the hell up. “What he’s trying to
say is that Laney was provoked into pushing that girl.”

Snipping off the end of the little shit’s
braid in art class before that, though, was just a little added
bonus for her niece, Tina was sure. That hadn’t been discovered
until some other child tattled after the altercation on the
playground.

“
Well it resulted in bodily injury,
so I’m afraid your niece will have to be suspended for ten days.
It’s school policy. And as I said, before she is allowed back in
school, her
mother
will need to speak to me,” he said with
his nose up in the air. Tina wished it would rain, so the red-faced
bastard would drown.

“
Let me ask you this,” Dean said
sliding to the edge of his chair. His jaw tightened and his eyes
grilled the principal. “If someone called your mother a skanky
whore, what would you do, Principal Landers? Would you just turn
the other cheek? Or would you defend your mother? And where does a
six-year-old learn to talk like that? Is the other child being
disciplined at all here?” That seemed to be the theme of every
comment Dean had made so far during this meeting.

Instead of being appalled that Laney had not
only cut the end of the other girl’s braid off, she had pushed her
at recess. The bodily injury was from the girl falling on a tree
root and breaking her arm. That hadn’t been intentional, but the
pushing had been.

Unacceptable. And even though it secretly
pleased her, amazed her, so was Dean’s defense of Laney’s actions.
Among other things. Like introducing himself to Principal Landers
as her fiancé. Tina had been so speechless there for a second, she
wasn’t sure she’d be able to introduce herself.

Tina stood and stepped in front of Dean to
stick her hand out to the principal. “Thank you for your time, sir.
I will make sure that Lori comes back to school with her in ten
days.” Tina would make sure of that if she had to buy hunting dogs
and a shotgun to find her damned sister.

This was all Lori’s fault. If Laney wasn’t
upset because her mother was gone, Tina knew there was no way her
niece would be in trouble right now.

“
You’re welcome, Miss Montgomery.
You may pick your niece up in the nurse’s office. I believe the
nurse is attending to her scrape.”

That was another thing. When that little hussy
got up from the ground, according to Mr. Landers, she had hit Laney
in the face with her good hand. Hell, Dean was right. Why wasn’t
Camille Petersen being raked over the coals like Laney
was?

Tina bit her tongue though and said, “Thank
you.”

Dean stood behind her, and Tina wasn’t sure,
but she thought he growled as he put his hand at her lower back,
and leaned around her to open the door for her. She could
practically feel the anger radiating off of him.

“
You have experience in the
principal’s office, huh?” Tina hissed under her breath as they
walked down the hall toward the nurse’s office. “Probably because
you were in his office more than the classroom when you were a
kid.”

“
You didn’t ask what kind of
experience I had,” Dean said with a dry laugh. “And that man
deserved to be grilled. How he’s treating her just isn’t
fair.”

“
Fair is subjective, and he is the
one who determines the rules, Dean.”

“
Our taxes pay for this damned
school. That makes him a public servant. Last time I checked, the
school board makes the rules. He just enforces them. Interpretation
of those rules is what is subjective. And his was damned
wrong.”

“
You should have been an attorney
instead of a cowboy,” Tina said with exasperation. They stopped at
the door of the medical office, and Dean opened it to let her go in
first. The nurse, who was leaning over Laney, stood and stepped to
the side to toss a gauze into the trash, giving Tina her first look
at Laney’s injuries. Fear shot through her when she saw the huge
gash on Laney’s forehead, and her quickly blackening
eye.

“
Oh, God, baby…” she groaned as she
stumbled over to her niece. Kneeling in front of her she swiped her
bangs to the side to get a better look at the gash.

Laney’s blue eyes filled and her lower lip
trembled. “She called mama a skank and a whore.” Tina knew her
niece had no idea exactly what that meant, but she’d bet the other
girl did. Laney had just known that girl was insulting her mother.
And she was upset enough that she was gone. Tina could understand
why the fight happened. Laney was hurting in more ways than
one.

“
Oh, I know, honey,” Tina said and
hugged her tight.

The nurse cleared her throat and Tina released
Laney to step back. “I just need to put a Band-aid on her
cut.”

“
That is
not
a fucking
scrape
or a
cut
,” Dean grated angrily.

Tina gasped as the nurse rounded on him. Her
eyes narrowed, and her face looked like she thought he was the scum
of the Earth. “Watch your language, sir!”

Dean wasn’t afraid of Betty Ballbreaker
though. He took a step forward, almost going nose-to-nose with the
woman. “Language hell, we’re going to the
emergency
room.
Maybe someone
there
can determine the difference between a
fucking
scrape and a gaping laceration that might require
stitches,” he grated, taking another step forward. Miss Ballbreaker
took a step back and put her hand on her chest. “And then we’re
going to the school board! After that maybe the medical board might
also be interested to know on top of being incompetent, you must be
fucking blind, if you call
that
,” he pointed to Laney’s
forehead. “A scratch, Lady!”

Tina flinched at the volume and content of
Dean’s tirade, but her soul smiled.

“
I’m afraid I’m going to have to
ask you to leave, Mr. Dixon,” the principal said from the doorway.
“And when your sister comes back to meet with me, I would ask that
she not bring
him
with her, Miss Montgomery.”

Tina groaned and helped Laney to her feet. The
nurse took a step forward with her bandage, but Tina held up a
hand. “I’ll take care of it,” she mumbled as she grabbed a stack of
gauze out of the box on the treatment table. Putting her arm around
Laney, she led her past Dean, whispering as she passed him, “Come
on, before I kill you right here.”

They got into the hall and Laney sobbed, then
started crying. Dean rushed up beside them and grabbed her arm.
“I’ll carry her,” he said swooping her up into his arms. “We are
going to the damned emergency room to make sure she’s not hurt.
That could leave a scar if it’s not taken care of. Or she could
have a concussion.”

Laney wrapped her legs around him and hugged
his neck as he carried her toward the front entrance. Tina’s heart
wiggled at the sight, but then she got a grip on her emotions and
ran after him. She couldn’t afford a hospital visit.

“
Dean it’s a cut. I can bandage it
when we get back to the apartment.”

He didn’t stop, he went out the front door of
the school and straight to his truck, which he insisted they take
since he wouldn’t fit in her car. Two hours later, they were
finally escorted from the waiting room to a treatment room at the
emergency department. No matter how much she protested, Dean
insisted they stay until Laney was seen. She decided to try one
more time.

“
Dean I don’t have insurance to
cover this,” Tina grated after he laid a sleeping Laney down on the
bed. “Let’s just go back to my apartment.”

His response was a pointed look, as he sat in
one of the chairs in the room and folded his arms over his chest.
Tina huffed out a breath and sat in the chair beside him. By the
time they dragged themselves back to the truck with butterfly
stitches on Laney’s forehead and an icepack on her eye, Tina was
worn out and strung out. But she wasn’t broke. Dean had insisted
they bill him for the visit. Where he was going to get the money to
pay the bill, she didn’t know.