Unbreakable (40 page)
“Yeah, yeah. You’re not coming back. I guess this will have to do.”
“You want me to go as a cowboy,
this
is what you get.”
“Wait. I’ve got an idea,” Casper said, turning to bound up the stairs, the plastic ball and chain fastened around his ankle thumping behind him.
Boone looked from the man he was having a hard time recognizing to his sister, who he’d never seen so happy. “Ball and chain, huh?”
“It’s a good life. You should find someone to tie you up. At least once in a while.”
“I’ve got once in a while covered. And she doesn’t make me run around wearing zebra pj’s.”
Faith huffed. “I’m not making Casper do anything. I just told him if he wore that, then I’d wear this.”
“Are Mom and Dad going to be there? Because you wearing that”—he gave her a quick once-over because she
was
his sister and he preferred not to linger—“is going to have Mom gathering napkins from the tables to make you a serape.”
“Momma and Daddy are in Houston for the weekend. Texans football, I think they said.” She tugged on the bottom of her vest that left her midriff bare. “Besides, if you think my outfit’s going to raise eyebrows, you should see what Arwen’s wearing. Dax is going to be shooting eye daggers at anyone who looks at her wrong. Assuming he lets her out of the house.”
Now the Dax part of that equation would be worth seeing.
But Boone wouldn’t be looking at Arwen just like he didn’t look at Faith. She belonged to his partner, making her family and off-limits. “Doubt he’ll have much choice, the party being at the Hellcat Saloon and Arwen being hostess.”
“Well, he’ll have to get over it. Having her place chosen to host the library’s fund-raiser is a huge coup. Kendall was afraid the committee would vote down the suggestion and we’d end up at the country club where everything would cost twice as much.”
“Kendall?”
“Kendall Sheppard. She owns the bookstore? You danced with her at the folks’ anniversary party? She’s on the library board.”
“Right.” One of the few eligible single women in Crow Hill, and a friend of his sister’s. Meaning he crossed paths with her often enough to make Faith’s matchmaking obvious. “I guess that means she’ll be there tonight.”
“She will. As will Everly Grant and Lizzie Nathan and Nina Summerlin. You’ll have a great time.”
Before he could tell her his idea of a great time would have all four women in his bed, not on a dance floor, Casper clattered his way back into the kitchen. “Here,” he said, handing Boone a leather gun belt. And a gun. “Buckle this on, and with the Zorro mask, you’re set.”
Boone spun the cylinder looking for bullets, happy to find he wouldn’t accidentally be shooting anyone, or his own foot. “Like two eye holes in a black scarf is going to fool anyone?”
“The point isn’t to fool anyone,” Faith said, tying on her own mask that was a lacy-looking metal cut-out and didn’t hide much of her face at all. “The point is to have fun. To dance and drink and flirt and pretend that you’re someone else for a few hours.”
“I like who I am. I don’t want to pretend I’m someone else.”
“Then don’t. Just dance and drink and flirt.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Just drink. Jesus, Boone. You can do that, can’t you?”
“Sure he can. Especially with all that drinking going toward a good cause.” Casper pulled a long strip of drink tickets out of Faith’s top, tore off half of them, and gave them to Boone. “Sheriff here’s made of money. She can buy more.”
Boone folded the tickets and stuffed them into his pocket while Casper stuffed his between Faith’s breasts. She slapped at his hand, took care of the tickets herself, then handed him a plain black mask that Boone supposed was prison issue to go with the stripes. He snapped it into place, rolling his eyes as Faith lifted his hair to hide the elastic, yelping when she pulled too hard.
Seeing the two together had Boone smiling. And after all the years he’d spent enforcing the Dalton Gang’s no-sisters rule to keep them apart. Still, the time had needed to be right, and the sixteen years he, Casper, and Dax had spent away from Crow Hill before returning to take on the ranch they’d inherited had given both Faith and Casper a chance to get their act together. It had been a lot of years, but it had been worth it.
“Wow, y’all look great,” came a voice from the doorway into the house’s main hall.
“Hey, Clay,” Boone said to the fifeen-year-old boy Casper was in the process of adopting. “You and Kevin up to holding down the fort? Because say the word and I’ll grab a pizza and we can hang out and watch all the Bruce Willis movies you want.”
“Kevin and I got it covered,” Clay said, reaching down to pat his scruffy mutt that was the size of a few of the calves Boone had moved from the Braff pasture this morning. “And I think tonight’s going to be
Star Wars
. We did most of
Die Hard
last weekend.”
“See?” Faith waved Boone and Casper toward the door where Clay was standing. “Clay and Kevin have it covered. Let’s go.”
Boone jammed his hat on his head and followed the sheriff and her prisoner to the front of the house where his truck was parked on the street. He’d drink up the tickets Casper had given him, doing his part for literacy, and hope like hell he didn’t end up the night wearing prison stripes. Or worse—dragging home his own ball and chain.
A native Texan,
Alison Kent
loves her cowboys and is thrilled to be writing about them for Berkley Heat. She is also the author of more than forty contemporary and action adventure romances, and
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance.
If there’s a better career to be had, she doesn’t want to know about it, as writing from her backyard is the best way she’s found to convince her pack of rescue dogs they have her full attention. Alison lives near Houston with her petroleum geologist husband, where every year she fights the heat to grow tomatoes, and spends way too much time managing a feral cat colony.
You can find her online at alisonkent.com, on Twitter at twitter.com/alisonkent, and on Facebook at facebook.com/author.alisonkent.
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Titles by Alison Kent
UNDENIABLE
UNBREAKABLE
