Unforgettable (The Dalton Gang #3) (16 page)

SEVENTEEN

T
HE ONLY TIME
Everly had been inside Casper’s house on Mulberry Street was for Faith’s parents’ thirty-fifth anniversary party. It had been a wonderful night, the place newly renovated, empty of furniture save for rented folding tables and chairs. The decorations had been simple—hurricane lanterns in bowls of aromatic cedar and mesquite, and tiny white Christmas lights strung in what had seemed like miles and miles of decorative greenery.

Now, a month later, the entire house was furnished, and all at Faith’s hand. That had Everly smiling because Faith had studied business and finance, yet Everly had always known the other woman wouldn’t be happy for long at Crow Hill’s First National Bank. This house and its gorgeous interior proved where her true talents lay. And the best part was that Faith had not only found her calling when she’d found her man, she’d found herself in the process.

Walking through the front door into the hallway that bisected the first of the three floors, Everly breathed deeply of the scents of old and new wood. “When is
Architectural Digest
going to feature Crow House?”

“No time soon,” Faith said, closing the front door behind her. “Nor will any other publication, though I can’t say I mind.”

“Why not?”

“Why won’t we get a magazine feature?” Faith shook her head. “We didn’t apply to register the house as a historical landmark. And we didn’t stay period authentic with the renovations. We did what we wanted. We’ll be lucky to get a mention in
Texas Monthly
, though Casper doesn’t want the house mentioned anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“He’s got this idea that hordes of visitors will stop by with cameras and wanting tours.”

“I can see that going over well. Casper opening his home to strangers.”

“Hey now,” said the man in question, stepping out of the library where Clay sprawled in a recliner, his dog sprawled on the floor at his feet, watching something with a lot of explosions on a big-screen TV. “Here I am, opening it to you.”

Everly bit her tongue and let Faith answer. “Everly is not a stranger and you know it.”

“Not to you maybe.”

“And not to you either,” Faith said, punching him in the shoulder before turning to Everly to add, “He’s just being grumpy because I told him he had to talk to you.”

Everly bit back a grin as she watched him rub the sting from Faith’s playful blow. “I promise it’ll be totally painless. Or at least mostly painless.”

“Well, c’mon then,” he said, gesturing with the hand around which he still wore a brace, giving his woman an eye. “Let’s sit in the kitchen. Faith says it’s not comfortable, but it’s where she keeps my food and drink, and I think I’ll be needing a hefty dose of the latter.”

“He’s not the only one,” Faith mumbled as she walked beside Everly behind him. “And don’t worry. I’m leaving. I’m taking Clay to Sheppard’s Books to stock some new titles for Kendall. And I’m taking along a bottle of the CapRock Roussanne from your housewarming gift.”

“Mmm. Wine. Good stuff that wine.”

“Oh, yeah,” Faith said, wrapping an arm around Everly’s shoulders, the two of them giggling like they’d already downed a whole bottle as they followed Casper to the kitchen. Once there, Everly climbed onto a stool at the center island while Faith pulled a glass from the rack hanging above the kitchen’s stainless steel wine cooler. From there, she selected two bottles, one for Everly and one to take with her.

She handed Casper the corkscrew while she packed her tote with her bottle, her corkscrew, glasses for two, and cheese and grapes from the fridge. When Casper frowned, she pecked him on the cheek and said, “Girls’ night out,” then stepped back and called down the hallway, “Clay! Let’s go!”

“Don’t you be driving home,” Casper told her, nodding toward the bottle in her tote.

“I’ve got Clay and his new hardship license. And it’s one bottle of wine for Kendall and I to share. We may not even go through the whole thing. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah. Letting a barely fifteen-year-old behind the wheel. That makes me feel so much better.”

“The license was your idea, sweetie. And he drives out to the ranch by himself all the time.”

“That’s different.”

“Right. Because it’s a thirty-minute instead of a three-minute trip.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just go. Have fun. Be safe.”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her to him for a kiss that was not a peck on the cheek, and left Everly wanting Boone.

Clay came clambering into the kitchen then, grabbing Faith’s keys off the counter before anyone had a chance to object. “I’m driving, right?”

“You’re driving. I’m drinking.” Faith ruffled his hair, though he was almost taller than her, and she had quite a reach. “But not so much that I won’t be able to keep an eye on the speedometer.”

“C’mon, Mother Faith. I don’t speed.” He leaned down, nuzzled his face to that of his dog. “You be good, Kevin. You stay with Father Casper. I’ll be back soon.”

Faith hooked her tote over her shoulder, pushing Clay toward the front door when he straightened. “Let’s go, driver.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and bounded down the hall to the door.

Everly couldn’t stop grinning. “Mother Faith? Father Casper?”

“It’s his fifteen-year-old idea of a joke,” Faith said with a roll of her eyes, giving Casper one last kiss, and Everly one last hug. “You two behave.”

And then she was gone, Everly and Casper alone, the big house an echo of noises around them. Casper reached for the wine bottle and filled her glass, his eyes on his task as he asked, “Where do you want to start?”

At the beginning,
she thought to say, then decided Casper wasn’t the Dalton Gang member to be flip with. He was the one with the abusive background, the one no one had ever thought to see settled down and settled well. Yet here he was, father-to-be of a fifteen-year-old, husband-to-be of one of her oldest friends.

He owned a showpiece of a house built over a century ago by one of the town’s founding fathers, Zebulon Crow. And he owned part of a ranch bequeathed to him and the others by one of the best-loved couples to ever call Crow Hill home.

He’d come a long way. He’d established himself as a responsible and productive community member. She wanted her story to show that. She wanted to tell the residents of Crow Hill about the real Casper Jayne—not focus on the hell he’d raised as a teen.

“Faith said you moved to Crow Hill around sixth or seventh grade?”

“Seventh. Met the boys the first day of football practice,” he said, grabbing a beer from the refrigerator and screwing off the top with his good hand. “Well,
my
first day,” he added, climbing onto the stool across from hers. “They’d been having two-a-days since early August. It took Mrs. Mitchell to convince me to try out for the team. She was still over at the middle school then. Moved to the high school the same year we did. We had her watching our grades and the Coach watching to make sure we didn’t show our asses.”

“That worked out pretty well,” she said, knowing how influential Boone’s parents had been in Casper’s life, too.

“For the Mitchells, maybe,” he said, the longneck cradled between his good hand and his bad. “I’d been used to doing pretty much what I wanted with no one giving me a second look. Now all of a sudden I couldn’t so much as take a piss without one of them wanting to test it.”

“For drugs?” she asked, surprised. “Or . . . that was an exaggeration, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but not much of one. The Mitchells were not about to let their kids, and me and Dax by extension, turn out to be anything but well-adjusted members of society,” he said, then brought the beer to his mouth.

“Looks like they did a good job.”

He cocked his head, cocked a brow. “Hard to believe, really, since it was all Boone’s fault we got into so much trouble. He was the biggest hell-raiser of the three of us.”

Again Whitey’s words came back to haunt her. And now having heard the story of Les Upton . . . “Boone? Really?”

Casper laughed, a gruff grating sound that was filled with more evil than humor. “Don’t let the boy fool you. He hasn’t always been the nice guy he is now. Hell, I’m not even sure the nice guy now bit isn’t an act.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked, reaching for her wine and downing a long swallow.

“We all left a lot of messes behind when we split, so none of us were looking forward to the shit we knew would hit the fan when we got here.” He lifted his bottle again. “Boone being a nice guy, well, who knows how much that’s helped keep the vultures at bay.”

“You’re saying this Boone that everyone sees around town is not the Boone you and Dax work the ranch with every day?”

He shook his head, swallowed. “No, he’s the same. He’s just a lot . . . quieter, I guess. We’ve all tried to stay out of sight, but Boone’s done the best job at keeping his head down. And he’s had less blowback.”

She found Casper’s assessment intriguing. “Because of his doing that? Rather than the status his family has in Crow Hill? Or maybe the pranks he pulled—”

“Pranks,” he said with a snort. “Guess you could call some of that shit ‘pranks.’ Like him and Dax loading up Harris Bell’s prize longhorn bull and hauling it to Len Tunstall’s slaughterhouse.”

“He told me about that,” she said, the admission earning her a nod.

“I think that was the one that had the big man’s folks sending him to the Daltons. Unless it was his shooting up the back of Lasko’s.”

And that answered that. “They must’ve meant a lot to you. The Daltons. For you to come back knowing you could face a lot of backlash.”

“We wouldn’t have been able to come back if not for Tess and Dave, and I don’t mean their willing us the ranch.” He stared at the label on his beer, frowning and rubbing a thumb across the raised print. “They weren’t the ones who straightened us out, you know, even though that’s what everyone thinks. They’re the ones who gave us what we needed to straighten out ourselves. I’ve always wondered if the Mitchells knew that would happen when they laid down the law.”

“To you and Dax, too?”

“Yep. All for one, one for all. They basically told us if we wanted to spend any more time in their home, we’d help Boone give Tess and Dave a hand.”

Interesting. “Some kids might’ve balked at orders from a friend’s parents.”

The sound he made was as much chuckle as snort. “Those kids have never had Catherine Mitchell’s pot roast.”

She really needed to try this pot roast. “Did you stay in touch over the years? You and Dax and Boone? You rode bulls professionally, right?”

“I did, and we didn’t.” He finished off his beer, rocked the bottle side to side on the island. “Rodeo means one night in one town, the next in another. Sometimes a state away. Sometimes more. I hit Albuquerque one year when Boone was cowboying nearby. Turns out he’d planned to come to the show, not even knowing I was there, but work got in the way.”

“Ships passing in the night.”

“Something like that. Seeing them again once we were all back”—he shook his head, smiled at the memory— “that was one of the best days of my life for sure.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, scratching the word
reunion
in her notebook.

“Boone was already here. He was the first one to come home. And he may have already told you this, but he’d been back pretty regularly, family holidays and all.”

He had, so she nodded, and that seemed to give Casper a reason to frown. “What’s the deal with you and Boone anyway?”

The question came out of the blue and she looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“You just taking him for a ride, or what?”

“My being with Boone isn’t any of your business,” she said, looking down and drawing three sharp lines on the page of her notebook. Then drawing two more.

“He’s my friend. I don’t want him getting hurt, or being used, or whatever’s going on here,” he said, hopping down for another beer, tossing the bottle top at the trash. It bounced off, hit the floor, rattled to a stop.

“Again, my business is not your concern.”

“And, again. It fucking well is,” he said, then held her gaze as he drank.

“We’re done here,” she said, her eyes on her notebook as she closed it, as she clicked off her pen, as she stored both in her oversized hobo. No story was worth having her personal life brought into the mix. “If I need anything else, I’ll let Faith know.”

“You do that. Just don’t be messin’ with Boone.”

She jumped from her stool, circled the island to where he sat, got as far in his face as she possibly could. “Do
not
tell me what to do. You have no say in my life. And I’m pretty sure the only say you have in Boone’s concerns the ranch.”

He said nothing, so she went on. “You have your life in town now. You have Faith and you have Clay. Boone is alone out there. He eats alone. He sleeps alone. He may spend his days working with you and Dax, but a lot of that time he’s also alone. So do
not
talk to me about what I do with Boone. It is none of your goddamn business.”