Too Hot to Handle (27 page)

“What about you?”

“Oh, I had plenty of expensive wine at parties back during my old life in L.A. Now I drink beer and clean manure off my man’s boots.”

Merry laughed, a little shocked that she even had the urge. “Sure. When was the last time you cleaned Cole’s boots?”

Grace shrugged. “Well, I thought about it a couple of nights ago when he was really tired, but then I just stretched out on the couch and told him not to bring those things inside.”

“You’re a regular prairie wife.”

“Yeah. It’s amazing how a good blow job technique can really change a man’s expectations of partnership. Hell, I’ll even wear a sun bonnet and ring the dinner bell while I go down on him, if that’s what it takes to be traditional.”

Merry wasn’t just laughing now. She was choking on it, tears running down her cheeks as she tried to catch her breath. “You’re so damn sick!”

“I know. I think Cole’s ranch hands are a little scared of me. They call me ma’am.”

“But the real question is does Cole call you ma’am when you’re on your knees?”

“Of course. He’s a cowboy. He’s always a gentleman. Now come on.” She elbowed Merry. “Let me be your date. I’ll do your makeup.”

“Okay. Yes. You’re officially my date tonight. You’re the only person in the world who could make me laugh this hard right now, anyway.”

“Perfect. And you know what else we need to do? Go shopping. You need a dress.”

“I can’t afford a dress.”

“We’ll take it out of your rent. Do it for me. Please. You’ll be my pretty dress-up doll for the night.”

Merry smiled. This was how Grace wanted to help. This was how she showed love. “Okay. Fine.”

“Yeah! And then we can rub Crystal’s pointy nose in your beauty!”

Merry exploded in laughter again. “And here I thought you were being sweet and thoughtful.”

“I don’t want to lose my edge.”

There were no worries there. Grace was all edges and hard lines. Until you got past the surface, then she was soft in ways she didn’t want anyone to see. Cole had seen it, though. And for that, Merry loved him like crazy. He almost gave her hope that she could find a good man like him someday. Almost.

“Let’s go,” Merry said, grabbing her phone just as it rang. Jeanine Bishop’s name flashed. Merry stared at it, and even Grace seemed frozen.

She should answer it. No matter what Jeanine was calling about, she should answer it and face the music. She watched the phone until the display blurred. She told herself to answer it. Just answer it. The phone finally went silent.

All her bravery had been used up in that confrontation with Shane. She’d left it on the dusty streets of Providence to dry up and blow away.

She’d find some courage tomorrow. She had to. Or she’d fake it. But tonight, she’d buy a pretty dress, have her makeup done, drink expensive wine and pretend to fit in with her cousin’s friends. She’d pretend to be the success she’d always wanted to be. Tomorrow was soon enough to be destroyed. Her disgrace would be waiting with eager arms.

Merry switched off the ringer. “I’m ready. Let’s go. I want to look like a sexpot.”

Grace paused and shot her a careful look.

“I’m just kidding. I’ll settle for looking like an actual adult for once.”

“Deal. Just relax, darlin’. I’ll make you a woman tonight.”

Thank God. Finally somebody would.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I
T
WAS
LATE
.
T
OO
LATE
for a trail ride, but Shane needed it. He’d spent an hour at his lawyer’s office then headed back to his apartment to take the longest, hottest shower of his life before knocking on Merry’s door.

She hadn’t answered, which had hardly surprised him, but she actually seemed to have been gone. He’d tried Cole then, and gotten voice mail. Not much of a surprise, either. He wasn’t sure if his best friend would ever speak to him again. He wasn’t sure he even deserved his best friend anymore. Cole understood that life could be a series of difficult choices, but he’d always made the right ones. Shane, on the other hand…

“Shit.” Shane had to get outside. He had to think. Or better yet, not think at all. And he knew just where to lose himself.

An hour later, the sun was low over the mountains, but Shane was on his horse and headed for the trail beyond Providence. He felt better once he reached the trees, less like a furious female curator might have a sight on his back from her ghost town hidey hole. Ridiculous, of course. Merry’s car wasn’t there, and she didn’t own a gun. As far as he knew. But he breathed a little easier when he was lost in the trees. She might just be mad enough to want to kill him. Or maybe she was so disgusted she didn’t even care.

He took a deep breath, and then another, as he let the horse follow the trail. But instead of riding up toward the cabin, this time he followed the canyon. It was quiet in the deep shadows, the only noise the water dancing over rocks. You couldn’t even hear birds down here, and the wind was still and silent. He kept breathing, taking it in.

This was his land. His. And somehow, he’d never let that wash over him. It meant something, damn it. It meant something to own this land, and not just because it was his, but because it was a place that had belonged to his father’s father, and all the people who’d come before him.

Merry had been right. Those people hadn’t given up or run. They’d lived here, and died here. They’d married and had children and lost loved ones. But this land was still in the family. It was still being passed down, generation after generation. Minus one or two.

They hadn’t given up. He didn’t have to give up, either.

He glanced toward the north, trying to place himself in relation to the road above, but at this time of year, it was hard to find a landmark. He pressed on, passing the ice house and the memories of Merry when she’d still been happy with him.

Screw this. He wasn’t giving up on her.

He liked her. As a friend and a lover and maybe something far more. He wasn’t giving up. But he owed her something. Something big. Something bigger than Providence, which he’d had no right to take from her, anyway.

The canyon narrowed here. The aspens above him began to thin and the far bank grew darker with pine. When he spotted a manageable incline on the other side, he turned his mount through the stream and urged her up the bank. She scrambled a little, but once she got her hold on the ground, she had no problem working her way up the other side to a higher plain above.

He was almost sure he was near the washed out area of the road. More importantly, he was close to that place he’d spotted something pale below the trees.

Whatever it was, if it was out here, it was old. And if it was old, then Merry would like it. She was funny that way. And perfect. And his chest hurt when he thought of her.

Damn. How was it he’d managed to screw up so badly with the only girl he’d ever fallen for? How had he managed to ruin everything before he’d even touched her for the first time? He’d been so worried about screwing up a relationship in the long-term that he hadn’t realized how bad he was at dealing with women in the short-term.

He wound his way through the trees, the muffled
thump
of his mare’s hooves against the pine floor pulsing through the forest like rings of water. She snorted and frightened a flock of blackbirds from a tree. Shane looked up to watch them scatter, and when his gaze fell again, he spotted white.

He pulled the horse to a stop and puzzled over the vivid white filtering through the branches of a low pine. What could be that starkly white out here, aside from ice or snow? Stone? Was it a stone building? Some kind of fort, maybe?

He turned off the path, ducking as he rode beneath a low branch, then cursing as his mare slid on grit as she picked her way over a flat boulder. When her hooves thumped on pine-needle ground again, Shane peered ahead, and he finally registered what he was seeing.

Not bright stone, but white vinyl. Straight edges, aside from where the vinyl had crumpled in on itself. He dismounted and tied off his horse before ducking beneath another low branch and moving forward. Slowly. He held his breath, alarmed by the strangeness of the sight before him.

This thing didn’t belong here, whatever it was. It was out of place and not right, and he still couldn’t quite process what his eyes were telling him.

But then he saw the words on the side of it. He saw the taillights. The door, popped open and bent down on one hinge. It was a camping trailer. It had crashed long ago, if the ten-foot-tall aspens growing out of one crumpled window were any indication.

And then he saw the truck.

It was twisted around a pine a few yards beyond the trailer, the deep blue paint fading and cracking in the sun. The truck lay at an angle, the driver’s side still held slightly aloft by the pine trunks it had run into. Grass grew tall around its bumper, obscuring the license plate he’d memorized from photocopying thousands of missing posters for his mom. But Shane didn’t need to see the license plate. He knew.

All those years of searching, all that heartbreak and abandonment, and his dad had been right here the whole time. Goose bumps broke out over his whole body, but Shane shook them off and forced his feet to move.

His brain scrambled to try to urge him back, but he didn’t stop. He moved on, slowly yes, but he didn’t hesitate once.

The cab was elevated on this side, and he was eye-level with the steering wheel. He braced himself, somehow expecting to see his father there, his face blackened and bloated like a horrifying scene from a scary movie. But of course, it had been too many years for that. He didn’t see anything but a bowed dashboard and the jagged edges of glass that used to be a windshield.

Strangely, that was the moment he wanted to turn and run. He’d been brave. He’d looked inside. And he’d seen nothing. It was time to go. He’d done his part for his father, and now he felt like a ten-year-old boy, desperate to turn the duty over to someone else.

Shane closed his eyes for a moment. He took a deep breath and watched the shadows of the pine boughs against his eyelids. The last rays of the sun would be gone soon. He needed to hurry.

Opening his eyes, he let the air fall from his lungs and took one more breath. Then he retraced his steps to the bumper and cut across to the other side of the truck.

He’d thought the door might be wedged into the ground on this side, but it had been wrenched open and pressed to the side of the hood as the truck had tumbled down.

Just as on the other side, he saw nothing when he peered into the cab. No bodies. No horror. Just a broken truck left exposed to the elements too long.

Maybe it was all another dead end. His dad had crashed the truck and then he’d walked away and kept on going. Left the truck behind along with his kids and wife.

Shane squatted down next to the door. The goose bumps broke out again. The door looked obscene, bent so far forward, the hinges bulging outward. It looked like a broken limb.

Even as he wished he hadn’t noticed, Shane saw the way the bench seat of the old pickup slanted toward the open door. He closed his eyes again, telling himself no, but then he let his head drop. He opened his eyes. He reached toward the long grass under the lip of the truck and parted it. Nothing. He tried again, his hands arching the grass open, like parting the seas. On the third try, he spotted something near the ground. Something white and dull and definitely not vinyl.

“Oh, no,” he breathed, falling to his knees at the sight of the long bone that looked so pale against the brown dirt. “Damn it. No.”

It wasn’t until that moment that Shane realized he’d still hoped his dad was alive. Despite all his big, belligerent words to his mom, he’d still wanted it. More than anything. To look up and see his dad standing in the doorway, older and haggard and so goddamn sorry about what he’d done.

That wasn’t going to happen now. It wouldn’t ever happen. His dad was dead.

He felt tears try to start in his eyes and blinked them away. He’d cried enough tears for his father, surely.

He was dead. Really, irrevocably dead.

When his throat tried to close, Shane pushed to his feet and focused on walking back to his horse.

Just to be sure, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and checked the signal. Nothing. He kept the phone in his hand and swung up into the saddle. As soon as the first bar showed, he’d call the sheriff, but what the hell would he say?

Would he report an accident? It wasn’t exactly urgent. It could wait until morning. Hell, it would be full dusk by the time he made it down to Providence. The sheriff’s department wouldn’t endanger its people for corpses that were over two decades old. He wouldn’t even want them to. But he had to report it tonight. He had to.

Once he’d ridden down the bank and into the stream itself, Shane checked his phone again, then urged his horse a little faster.

He knew it wouldn’t make a difference, but he suddenly needed to call. He needed it to be over. Over.

He reached for an itch on his cheek and his fingers came away wet. “Shit,” he gasped. He wiped his cheeks and kept riding.

When he finally reached the mouth of the canyon, he drew a deep breath, nearly panicked for reasons he couldn’t comprehend. It made no sense. His dad had been dead a long time.

His eyes caught on Providence as the last rays of the sun caught the roofs of the houses. He dialed 911 and raised the phone to his ear. “This is Shane Harcourt. My father went missing twenty-five years ago, and I’ve just found his truck. I think there are…remains. I’m out at the Providence ghost town, a couple miles off the highway. What should I do?”

What should I do?

Way too big a question to answer, even for the cops. But he listened patiently, nodding before he hung up.

What should I do?
He had no idea.

Shane walked to the porch of the saloon and sat down. Fifteen minutes later, the moon rose over the old church and he was still lost and alone. Then the first hint of headlights broke the dark.