Unforgettable (The Dalton Gang #3) (23 page)

“In a good way, I hope.” Though why she said that after her earlier thoughts . . . Confused wasn’t the half of it.

“In the best of ways, I promise. And I thought I had a handle on that. I knew you wanted a no-strings affair. And I was dealing with that just fine.” He closed his eyes, scrubbed both hands down his faced. “But then, Friday night . . .”

Friday night. The sex where he’d torn and cut off her clothes. When her world had been upended. When she’d wondered what the rest of her life would be like without him. When she’d realized how much trouble she was in. “What about it?”

“I didn’t use a condom.”

He was upset about not using a condom? “I told you the first time that I’m clean, and I’m not going to get pregnant . . .” She let the sentence trail, her face heating. The pregnancy Les Upton had hinted at. Penny’s pregnancy. Boone had insisted on using a condom even as their relationship—was it a relationship?—advanced because of Penny’s pregnancy. Les hadn’t been lying at all.

Boone crossed the kitchen, fetched two bowls from a cabinet, two spoons from a drawer, set them on the table. “Until Friday night, I’d used a condom every time I’d had sex since high school. I know you’re on the pill, but I know accidents can happen. I let down my guard. I don’t like that I let down my guard.”

“Because you let it down with me?” she asked, fearing the answer.

“No, because I learned my . . . Because I learned a long time ago about responsibility. I want a family. I want a big family.” He found a pot holder, hefted the soup from the stove, set it on a trivet he’d tossed to the table. “I want to see my kids playing hide-and-seek on horseback. I want to play hide-and-seek upstairs with my wife. But I can’t afford to take care of myself right now, much less a family. And if things don’t get better, I won’t be able to afford the life I want. I’ll be stuck with this one.”

“No you won’t,” she said, joining him at the table when he motioned her to come. “You’ll find something else to do. Some way to dissolve your partnership, or sell the ranch and hire on as a hand elsewhere, or you’ll go to school, get your degree, coach football with your father. I promise. It’s not that hopeless.”

His gaze took her in, searching her face, looking for something she wasn’t sure she had in her to give. “It’s felt less hopeless since you’ve been here, and that’s probably the worst part because you won’t be here forever.”

“Boone—”

“I know,” he said, holding up both hands, then pulling out her chair and his. “No room in the bed for all that touchy-feely crap.”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Should she tell him all the things going on with her? How every day she thought about spending the rest of her life with him? How Crow Hill had become her home in ways Austin never had been? Even though earlier on the drive she’d decided he was right? That she was wasting her talent and connections? That it was time to move beyond the past that had driven her here?

She sat. She ate her soup. She didn’t say anything at all.

TWENTY-FOUR

T
HE LOOK
E
VERLY
got from Arwen as she passed the bar on her way to see Dax didn’t bode well for his interview. Hardly a surprise this appointment would start off on the wrong foot considering how things had gone down with Casper. At least for that one Faith had been on her side.

Since getting the assignment, Everly thought she’d made it clear to her girlfriends that she wasn’t out to ruin their men. Seemed she still needed to win over Arwen.

Dax had hardly had it easy since his return to Crow Hill. A lot of that was his fault; she’d heard him referred to as a douche, or worse, more than once. But those people didn’t know the man he was. All they saw was what he wanted people to see. The asshole shields he threw up to protect himself from a repeat of his past hurts were high and wide and did their job well.

And that was the point of her story. To let people see who Dax really was. The brother who’d been there for the teenage Darcy when their parents weren’t. The partner who’d challenged Arwen to reconnect with her father, who’d given her the strength to do so when she could no longer put it off. The man who fought daily beside his two best friends to save a near worthless inheritance because of their love for the Daltons.

This was the Dax she knew. The Dax who’d raised hell of the sort most boys couldn’t imagine. But he’d come home and faced his naysayers, made his place in Crow Hill. And he’d proved himself worthy of the very real gift of Tess and Dave’s love. That, more than anything, is what she wanted to show.

He was already digging into a plate of Hellcat Saloon enchiladas when she sat opposite in the corner booth near the bar. And she hadn’t even had time to say hello before Arwen arrived. “I told him the polite thing to do would be wait for you and see if you’d like to eat with him.”

“That’s okay,” Everly said, reaching into her bag for her notebook and pen. “Boone wouldn’t have waited either. I’ve never seen any man with the appetite of a rancher.”

Dax raised just his eyes as he shoveled another bite into his mouth, holding her gaze as he chewed. Once finished, his fork in his hand like a tool, he smiled. “Arwen, bring Ms. Grant here a margarita and a plate of tomatillo enchiladas. On the house.” As if he, and not Arwen, who was heading for the margarita machine, owned the place.

“I’m fine,” Everly said, her stomach rumbling. “Really—”

“I insist. Any woman who can get Boone Mitchell riled up enough to stop bitching about the money we don’t have, deserves a free meal.”

Hearing about Boone being
riled up
fit with his admitting the same about himself yesterday, but she was curious to get Dax’s take. “He bitches about money a lot?”

“He bitches about money every day, but that’s hardly a surprise.” He cut into his enchiladas, scraped up a bite. “We haven’t even been back six months and the way it’s looking, we probably should’ve sold the place and never tried to resurrect the Dalton Gang.”

Is that what they’d done? The reason they’d all returned? To take another run at what all of them claimed were the best years of their lives? “Then it’s the state of the ranch to blame for his being—”

“An asshole?”

“I was going to say a grump.”

“Oh, it’s you making him a grump, but that’s a whole ’nother subject,” he said, a brow going up as he reached for his beer.

No way was she going to open up her personal life with Boone to this man’s speculation. Casper butting in had been bad enough. And the subject at hand was the interview . . . “Were the Daltons responsible for you bucking generations of Campbell tradition? Or had you already decided you didn’t want to be a lawyer before you went to work for them?”

“Is that what you really want to ask me?” he asked, his frown on his food, his fork making shreds of his tortilla. “Everyone in town knows that story. My old man has made sure of it.”

“But everyone in town doesn’t know your side of things.”

“Lady, no one in town gives a fuck about my side of things.”

“Dax!” Arwen slid Everly’s enchiladas in front of her, looking at her man as she did. “What did I say to you about playing nice?”

Dax went back to mangling his food. “You said if I didn’t, I’d be sleeping on the couch while you slept naked in the bed.”

Arwen rubbed at her forehead. “Good lord, man. I did not mean for you to repeat that to Everly.”

Everly was caught between laughing and a budding frustration that she couldn’t get anywhere with Boone’s partners. She didn’t think it was her, but more the threesome’s loyalty, and under other circumstances, she’d be fine with that.

But this was her job, and she was not fine at all, so since she wasn’t making progress tonight . . . “We can always do this another time. When you’re in more of a mood to talk.”

“He’s never going to be in a mood to talk,” Arwen said, heading for the bar and another beer. “Might as well get it over with now.”

Get it over with.
Like she’d be pulling out the bamboo to shove under his fingernails any minute. Or performing a root canal with her fork. Maybe she should just give her interview notes to Whitey, let him finish the story.

Except the moment she had the thought, she remembered Catherine Mitchell’s excitement. Then she remembered Boone fearing she would let his momma down.

“Okay,” she said, forcing a cheer she didn’t feel and clicking the end of her pen. “Where were we?”

Dax set down his beer, wiped his mouth on his cuff. “I’m pretty sure we were talking about what’s been making Boone mean.”

Before Everly could tell Dax to back off, Arwen, leaning against the booth’s tall back, said, “I know the answer to that. Les Upton coming out of the woodwork after all this time.”

And now Everly’s antennae were twitching. “Have you seen him, too? Or am I the only one to be so lucky?”

“I’m not talking to you about Les Upton,” Dax said, his tone reminding Everly way too much of Casper’s when he’d accused her of talking Boone for a ride. “That son of a bitch is Boone’s business. And I don’t share Boone’s business with anyone.”

Okay. Enough was enough was enough. “First of all, I was speaking to Arwen, not to you. And secondly, I’m not expecting you to talk to me about Les Upton. Or even asking you to.” She reached for his beer, slammed the bottle against the tabletop. “I came here to talk about you, not about Casper or Boone or anyone else. But if doing this interview later suits you better, then it suits me, too.”

Dax blinked, looked up at a still-hovering Arwen. “You going to let her talk to me like that?”

“Dax, sweetie, not only are you going to be sleeping on the couch, Crush is going to be sleeping there with you. Think about cuddling with twenty pounds of orange tabby with feta cheese breath next time Everly asks you a question.” Arwen looked from one to the other and shook her head. “And now neither one of you are eating. You’re going to give Myna a complex if she sees her enchiladas come back.”

“Hard to eat,” Dax said, “you bringing up Upton, and thinking about all the shit that family put Boone through, especially that goddamn Penny.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you.” Arwen slid onto the booth next to him. “Remember a week or so ago when you came home and asked if I’d ever heard where she ended up? Penny?”

Dax nodded, dug back into his enchiladas. Everly did the same so it didn’t look like she was eavesdropping. Which she totally was.

“Well, yesterday I heard Amy and Callie in the kitchen say something about Penny. After Justin Walker, Callie’s boyfriend”—Arwen looked at both of them as she added the explanation— “sold his construction company to John Massey? He went to work for Len Tunstall at the slaughterhouse. Dean Blaylock works there. Turns out he married Penny Upton. They live over in Southwest Crow Hill.”

“No shit,” Dax said.

“No shit,” Arwen answered.

And now this evening wasn’t looking like the total bust Everly had thought it would be.

If she was going to find out the truth of what had gone on with Boone and Penny Upton, she was going to have to get it herself from the source.

*   *   *

S
INCE
B
OONE’S RETURN
to Crow Hill, he had yet to visit his dad at work. Kinda funny that, considering he’d ridden to school with both parents every day his last four years of living here. That meant he was more than familiar with where to find the Coach this afternoon. It was late October. Football season was in full swing. And after-school practice, JV and varsity both, lasted till supper time.

He drove through the high school’s small parking lot to the equally small stadium behind the small campus. Calling the field and the metal bleachers a stadium was probably a stretch, though in the last sixteen years a second set of bleachers had been erected, he saw, giving the visiting team their own side instead of forcing them to share one end of Crow Hill’s stand of cold metal seats.

After parking in front of the field house, he made his way down the sidewalk and through the open gate to the track that circled the field. His father stood at the fifty-yard line, consulting a clipboard and talking to his assistant coach while the boys on the field ran drills. Boone headed that direction, a flood of memories coming back, all of them unbelievably good.

He’d played defensive end for the Hurricanes, two years on varsity, two years on JV. Dax had been the team’s first-string quarterback, Casper a wide receiver. Cory Mallory, the center, had been team captain. He’d also been their graduating class’s valedictorian, winning a football scholarship to Texas A&M. Last Boone had heard, Cory had been drafted by the Denver Broncos. Could be something to never having raised anything like the Dalton Gang’s hell.

“Dad,” Boone said, lifting a hand in greeting as his father looked over, caught by his approach.

Curtis Mitchell finished giving his assistant instructions, then clipboard in hand, walked to where Boone had stopped, grabbing him for a quick back-patting hug. “What’re you doing off the ranch this time of the day?”

“Dax and Casper both took off early. Hell if I was going to be the only one working my fingers to the bone,” he added, grunting.

His dad turned to face the field, cutting his gaze to the side. “I guess they’re doing a lot of that now that they’re living in town.”

“Yeah.” Though it wasn’t the living in town but their new living conditions getting to him. Mostly because his living conditions hadn’t changed. “I guess having a woman waiting at home has them looking for any excuse to cut out.”

“Well, it’s like that sometimes. Or most of the time.” His dad chuckled. “Which I hope you get to find out for yourself one of these days.”

“Maybe.”

“Your mother really enjoyed visiting with Everly,” he said, hugging the clipboard to his chest. “You should bring her around again sometime.”

“We’ll see.” Nothing like being thirty-four years old and made to feel like a teenager by the man who’d explained the birds and the bees. “Everly’s kinda why I’m here. I’ve got a problem.”

“Yeah? Something I can help you with?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, I need to handle it. I’m just not sure I’m handling it right.”
Criminy.
He wasn’t handling it at all. “Or the best way
to
handle it. I guess that’s why I’m here.”

His father nodded, his eyes on the field and the players. “What’s the problem?”

“Les Upton.”

“Ahh.” The single word spoke volumes.

“He’s causing trouble. Not for me, though it’s about me, but he’s bugging Everly.”

“Hmm. Well, first off, is it anything the law can help with?”

Boone shook his head. “Darcy asked if I’d thought about a restraining order. At the time, he was just being a pain in
my
ass, following me, lurking like some sort of stalker creep.”

“But now that he’s bothering your girl, you’re thinking Darcy might be right?”

Was Everly his girl? Boone looked up at the sound of blown whistles, felt a pang at the memory of the violations he’d been called for on this very field. “I don’t want to bring in the law and stir up all of our history again.”

“I can understand that. Those were some dark days.”

And his father didn’t know everything. “He hasn’t threatened her,” Boone said, rubbing a hand over his nape. “But I know he’s making her uneasy.”

“I suppose you could try ignoring him, but he’s never struck me as the type to grasp, much less notice, a subtle response.”

His dad. Such a kidder. “Subtle’s the last word I’d use to describe Les Upton.”

“You might try making him uneasy in return,” the Coach said after a minute spent focused on the field. “Do some stalker-creep lurking of your own.”

He snorted at that. “Could be fun, driving by his garage, showing up wherever he happens to be.”

“Then again,” the older man said, gesturing with the clipboard, “I’m not sure the two of you being in the same place at the same time he’s bothering Everly would be a good thing.”

The understatement of the century. “She slapped him.”

“What?” his dad asked, looking over.

Boone pushed up on his hat brim and nodded, smiling as something big and prideful swelled in his chest. “He stopped at her table at the Blackbird the other day. She’d been talking to Teri and Nora for her story. Upton got nasty with her, and she slapped him.”