Cowboy Tough Read online

  Perhaps she had something else to give. And without stopping to weigh the complications, she blurted out, “Hire me. I can take care of the boys for a week, giving you time to find someone permanent, in exchange for room and board.”

  A week?

  She didn’t have a week. But anything shorter would’ve been a transparent plea for help, and she needed to feel in control again. She needed to feel like she had worth, instead of being dependent on others to save her from this wretched mess she’d gotten herself into.

  He came over and stood by the sink, where he gave her a hard look. The one thing she knew with certainty about Jace Dalton was that he wasn’t a fool. His instincts about her had been spot-on so far. And he evidently had a good memory.

  Didn’t you say you sold your store ten years ago?

  No, he wasn’t a man to be played. Not that she wanted to dupe him. She liked his boys and everything about this ranch. It would be no hardship for her to stay for a week, though Meredith would likely say otherwise.

  “I thought you had people waiting for you in Colorado.” He folded his arms over his chest.

  “The situation has changed and I find myself with a free week on my hands.” It was a partial truth. “And it seems to me you could use a little help around here.” She glanced at the pile of breakfast dishes in the sink and remembered the clutter in the great room where the boys left everything from an old banana peel to a mound of video games on the coffee table.

  “I could,” he acknowledged, then stood back for a second, eyeing her. “You need a place to stay, Charlie?”

  He’d seen right through her proposal. Even so, he was considering it. She could see it plainly in his wavering smile. It was no secret he was desperate for childcare.

  She nodded, unable to keep up the charade and knowing it was futile anyway. “It would be a win-win for both of us.”

  “Would it?” He scrubbed his hand through his dark hair. “I don’t know who or what you’re running from, Charlie. Can you guarantee it won’t touch my family?”

  Yes, Corbin had too much to lose, including his father’s money and backing. Besides, he was a coward at heart, turning his tongue-lashings and fists on defenseless women behind closed doors. He’d never cross someone like Jace Dalton. Corbin was more likely to buddy up to him so he could persuade him that Charlotte was a nutjob.

  “It won’t touch your family.” She was the only one at risk.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “Can you wait until this afternoon?”

  She nodded because what choice did she have?

  Chapter 6

  Grady came into the kitchen, turning Jace’s attention away from Charlie.

  “Can I go over to Uncle Cash’s and show Ellie my cast?”

  “Sure,” Jace said. “You should call first, though.”

  Grady grabbed the landline while he raced around the mudroom. The kid couldn’t stand still even for a second. Jace could hear him telling someone the entire story of his accident. Cash. Aubrey. Jace couldn’t tell who Grady was talking to. Honestly, he was distracted by Charlie.

  She finished the dishes in the sink and was tidying up the kitchen in a pair of slim black pants and a red turtleneck. He wasn’t an authority on fashion—far from it—but her clothes looked expensive. Tailored to her petite figure and made from the kind of quality fabric you’d find in the high-end department stores Mary Ann used to drag him through when they were married.

  It didn’t take a crack detective to figure out that Charlie Rogers had fled money. Everything from her new car to her trip to Thailand spoke of privilege. Yet, she wasn’t above getting her hands dirty—pitching in on KP or fixing food at mealtimes.

  When Grady had taken his tumble, she’d been the one to rush him to the hospital and stay by his bedside. The boys appeared to like her, though that wouldn’t stop them from running her ragged. And she seemed reliable and above all, responsible, despite her reticence to talk about her past.

  Still, until he knew more about her situation, would he be putting his sons at risk?

  “Dad, Uncle Cash says I can come over.” Grady hung up the phone.

  “Okay, but put on real shoes, not those slippers. Where’s Travis?”

  “He’s talking to a girl on his phone.”

  A girl? When the hell had that happened?

  From the side of his eye he caught Charlie’s lips curve up. She folded the towel she’d been using and left the kitchen. He presumed she was returning to her room.

  “When you get back from Uncle Cash’s, I thought we’d go to town and have lunch at the coffee shop.” He had to pick up his new campaign signs from Tiffany’s house and wanted to hit Tractor Supply for a few watering troughs. The old ones were rusted.

  “Okay. Can Mrs. Rogers come?”

  “Sure, if she wants to come.” It wasn’t as if he planned to kick her out today. Or even tomorrow, for that matter. But letting her watch his kids…he didn’t know how prudent that was.

  “What about Uncle Sawyer? Can he come too?”

  “Uncle Sawyer went to New York. I don’t think he’ll be home for a few days.”

  “How about Ellie, then?”

  “If Ellie wants to come, she’s welcome to join us.” Grady would include all of Dry Creek if Jace let him. The kid liked to collect people and keep them close, which Jace assumed had something to do with Grady losing his mother when he was five. “But, Grade, we’re good with just the three of us, right?”

  “Yup.” Grady tugged on a pair of boots from the mudroom. “See ya.” He flew out of the door so fast that Jace hadn’t had time to tell him what time to come home.

  He shook his head and went in search of his eldest, who sure enough was lying on his bed, talking on his phone. Travis abruptly hung up as soon as Jace popped his head inside the bedroom.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “No one.” Travis swung his legs onto the floor and quickly stashed the phone in his nightstand.

  Jace raised a brow. “No one, huh? It sounded like someone to me.” He rubbed his chin. “Do we need to have a man-to-man?”

  Travis rolled his eyes. “No. Don’t be weird, okay.”

  Jace chuckled and sat on the edge of the bed. Travis’s room reminded Jace of the year he’d wrangled at a dude ranch in Wyoming, where he’d slept in a bunkhouse with a dozen ripe cowboys. Who knew one fourteen-year-old’s room could rival the smell?

  “Nothing weird about girls,” Jace said. “Anyone I know?” He knew pretty much the whole damned town. And if he didn’t know this young lady in particular, good chance he knew her parents.

  Travis hitched his shoulders. “Tina Kline.”

  “Tina Kline with the sorrel mare who came in first place in last year’s barrel racing competition at the Dry Creek Junior Rodeo?”

  “Yeah. Now don’t go saying anything to her.”

  Jace threw his hands up in the air. “Now would I do something like that?”

  “Yes. We’re just friends, Dad.”

  “Friends are good.” Jace prayed it wasn’t the kind of friendship where benefits were involved. He’d had a couple of those himself and they didn’t tend to end well, especially for a fourteen-year-old with raging hormones. “Let’s keep it that way for a few more years, okay, Trav?” He maintained eye contact with Travis to make sure he understood without embarrassing him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” When had Travis gone from being a tyke to a young man? As much as he missed that little boy who used to follow him around the barn, he sure admired the young adult Travis had become. “On to other business, then. You’ve got to clean this room, kiddo.” Jace got up. “It reeks and looks like your laundry basket blew up. After you’ve made a good dent, we’re going to town for chicken and waffles. So giddyup.”

  Jace hiked the quarter mile to the ho
rse barn. Tomorrow, he planned to move some of the herd to one of the back pastures where the grass had grown thick and tall from the rain. They were having a wet year, which Jace never took for granted. Here in the foothills—the entire state of California, for that matter—it could go from waterlogged to parched in the swish of a horse’s tail.

  He gazed out over the horizon. He loved these five hundred acres as much as he’d loved his grandfather. Nothing but fields and hills and trees and sky for as far as the eye could see.

  He could hear the creek in the not-so-far distance. In summertime, he and his cousins had fished and swum until their lips turned blue. Now, his boys and Cash’s daughter, Ellie, did the same.

  This was and always would be home. He just had to figure out a way to pay for it.

  Just as he got to the barn his phone rang. He checked caller ID and picked up. “You want me to get Grady out of your hair?”

  “Nah.” Cash laughed. “He’s entertaining us with stories about his ER visit. Where are you?”

  “At the horses.”

  “I’ll meet you there in five.”

  Cash probably had a cattle-rustling case he wanted to kick around with Jace. When Jace had a law enforcement conundrum, he did the same with Cash.

  He draped his arms over the corral gate and let out a loud whistle. Amigo’s ears perked up and the gelding crossed the pasture to hang his head over the fence so Jace could scratch his nape. The horse nickered and nudged his nose against Jace’s pocket.

  “I don’t have anything for you today, boy. Tomorrow.” He patted Amigo’s neck.

  A flock of birds burst from the trees and Jace turned to see Cash coming down the hill. His cabin was the same distance to the barn as the ranch house. Jace pulled down the brim of his Stetson to keep the sun out of his eyes and searched his pocket for his Ray-Bans, only to come up empty-handed.

  “Morning,” Cash said, and joined Jace at the fence.

  Jace checked his watch. “Not anymore.”

  “Guess not.” He grinned, looking like a man in love.

  “You oversleep?” Jace ribbed.

  “Something like that.” Cash rubbed Amigo’s forehead. “I hear Jacob Jolly hired a campaign manager out of Sacramento.”

  This wasn’t news to Jace. His opponent had a big war chest. According to rumor, a lot of the local pot farmers were making big contributions to Jolly’s campaign. Pot was legal in California and Jace didn’t have anything against farmers. What he did have a problem with was taking money from big business of any kind. And pot farming was a huge business.

  “I heard,” he said. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

  “Nope, just wanted to make sure it was on your radar. I wanted to talk about this Rogers woman. Grady says she was the one who drove him to the hospital. I hadn’t realized she was still here. You said she was leaving.”

  “Plan changed.” Jace toed a dirt clod with the tip of his boot.

  “Why’s that?”

  “She was on her way out when Grady fell off the fence. By the time we left the hospital it was late. I told her to stay another night.”

  Cash pinned him with a look. “You think that’s a good idea?”

  Probably not. “She took care of my kid. What was I supposed to do, say, ‘Good luck driving these roads in the dark’?”

  Cash pushed off the fence and continued to stare him down. “What’s going on, Jace?” His cousin knew him better than anyone.

  Jace let out a breath, watching it evaporate in the cold. “I don’t know. I guess I feel sorry for her.”

  “Is that it? You’re letting a stranger stay in your house because of pity?”

  “Yeah…no…ah hell, I don’t know.” He felt drawn to her, which was crazy because he knew nothing about her. She was married, for God’s sake. “You ever think Angie might be out there somewhere in trouble? I hope to hell someone’s taking care of her.”

  Jace waited for Cash to let that sink in. They all loved Angie and had felt helpless when she’d gone missing. If he could save someone else… “She wants to stay another week.”

  Cash didn’t say anything at first, and Jace could feel his cousin’s judgment as sharp as a spur.

  “Look,” Cash finally said, “I’m not telling you to throw her out into the cold. Just be wary. Just be a goddamn cop.”

  Jace tried to summon enough anger to tell Cash he was a sanctimonious sumbitch. Be a cop. As if he needed his cousin’s unsolicited advice. But he was honest enough with himself to know that Cash was 100 percent right. That if the boot were on the other foot, Jace would be telling his cousin the same thing.

  He didn’t respond, letting the silence stretch between them while they stared out over the land. Somewhere in the distance a cow bellowed, and Amigo’s ears twitched. The chill bit through Jace’s jacket and he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them warm.

  “Aubrey and Ellie have a nice trip to the city?” Jace asked just to break the stalemate.

  “Yep. They stayed with my folks and managed to bring back an entire department store, even though we’re already bursting at the seams in that cabin. Aubrey’s partner has offered to draw up plans for a house, but I want to wait until we figure out this property tax business with the ranch.”

  Jace knew they had to get this done. “When does Sawyer get home?”

  “Next week sometime.”

  “Let’s talk about it then. I’ve got to get to town, pick up some campaign signs from Tiffany.” Jace started to walk away.

  “Are you planning to let her stay?”

  Jace kept walking. “I don’t know yet.”

  By the time he got home, Travis had dumped a mound of laundry on the mudroom floor. The washing machine and dryer were both going and he found Charlie folding towels and linens at the counter.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said, taking off his hat and maneuvering around the piles of clothes to hang it on one of the rows of hooks on the wall. He used the bootjack to pry his boots off. It was a time-honored tradition. No dirty boots on Grandma Dalton’s shiny floors.

  “I actually find it relaxing.” Charlie folded a sheet into a tidy square.

  He’d never been able to do that, at least not with the fitted ones. The elastic edges always got in the way.

  “I’ve got to go into town. On Saturdays the boys and I sometimes have lunch at the coffee shop there. The owner…Jimmy Ray…is famous for his chicken and waffles. You interested in coming along?”

  A look of pure panic streaked across her face.

  “Charlie, is there a problem?”

  “No. I just don’t know if I’m ready to be around people yet.”

  Jace’s bullshit meter instantly went off. She’d been around him, his kids, the hospital, without showing any real signs of distress. Sadness for the baby she’d lost, sure. But what he’d just witnessed a second ago was fear, not grief.

  “You ever been to Dry Creek?” Maybe he was missing something here.

  “I don’t think so. Where is it exactly?”

  “It’s off 49, past Auburn. We turned off for the ranch the night I drove you here, otherwise we would’ve driven straight through the middle. It’s a small town. Not more than a coffee shop, a grocery store, a post office, city hall, a Greyhound bus station, and a couple of schools. Blink your eye and you’d miss it.” Whatever she was running from wouldn’t find her there.

  And if it did, it would have to get through him.

  “I guess I could come,” she said, hesitant.

  “Let me gather up the herd. In the meantime, you can leave the rest of that for me.” He gestured at the basket of clean laundry. He’d gotten behind with the wash since Mrs. Jamison had left.

  “It’s no big deal,” she said. “And the least I can do. Look, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot before. If you’re opposed to me
staying another week, I totally understand. I would be just as cautious if I were you.”

  He leaned against the laundry counter and met her gaze. “I just need the day to mull it over. It would help if I knew what your situation is, though.” He was starting to sound like a broken record. But it was her secret to tell and she obviously had her reasons for holding out on him.

  She nodded but, as suspected, didn’t offer any new information. “Thanks for your consideration.”

  He went to check on Travis and called Cash’s cabin to let Grady know he’d pick him up on the way to town. They made it out of the house in a record ten minutes. Travis climbed in the back of the king cab and Jace signaled for Charlie to take the front passenger seat. She’d put on a woolen hat and a pair of sunglasses. If she thought it was a good disguise, she was wrong. The beanie did nothing to hide all her silky brown hair. And the shades only emphasized her heart-shaped face.

  When he reached Cash and Aubrey’s he tooted his horn and Grady came running outside with Ellie.

  Jace unrolled his window. “You coming with us, El?”

  “No. We’re going to look at a horse today.” Ellie came up to the driver’s window and leaned in to wave to Travis and her gaze fell on Charlie.

  “This is Mrs. Rogers.” He tweaked Ellie’s nose and she and Charlie exchanged hellos.

  “What kind of horse?” Jace asked. Ellie and Cash had been looking for a fancy show horse for more than a month, so Ellie could ride dressage. The quarter horses on the ranch were for cutting cattle, not contests. He’d been teasing her about it for weeks.

  “You know what kind, Uncle Jace.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Where is this horse you’re looking at?”