“And poor old Buck,” Jimmy said with a good-natured chuckle, “slid right off the road and into a ditch. We had to call for reinforcements to dig him out before the snow swallowed his truck!”
“That shit was wild, I’ll give you that,” Roman answered.
Tossing him a biscuit, Jimmy’s face was transformed with a wry scowl. “Folks around here ain’t used to weather like that. The kids had a great time but plowing and digging everyone out sucked donkey dicks. When you vanished into a snow cloud, I just hoped your survival skills were on point, man.”
They both snickered for different reasons. Roman because hell yeah his survival skills rocked. He’d taken refuge from the storm. Found warmth inside the seductive body of… shit. Cancel that thought.
Pushing back from the table where he’d shared a late breakfast with his new buddy, he did the obligatory gut smack followed by a rich, full belch that Jimmy easily eclipsed with an impressively overblown burp. His smirk was pure son-of-a-bitch, Marine style.
“I bow to your supremacy,” Roman quipped.
“So what now?” his friend asked. “You’re taking off I see,” he said with a nod directed at the duffle bags on the chair next to him.
He was ready for the question. Had given what he wanted to convey a good deal of thought. He liked this guy. He had a cool backstory. They were interconnected by an oath they’d sworn.
Jimmy was good people, and he wanted to set Kelly’s record straight and tell him as much of the truth that he could.
“Back to the big city. Taking Kelly and the boy with.”
Jimmy nodded. “Good. She’s a smart girl. She’ll be fine.”
“I need your help, though. She’s freaking out about the land. Is her worry about the Dulbs taking over for real?”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Jimmy grated angrily. “Bunch of assholes. Look, I have an idea. Is this move to the big city permanent?”
Roman tried to appear nonchalant. He even gave a lazy shrug. “I imagine so.”
“Then what y’all need is a placeholder. Someone to maintain the land. Live in the house. Ya’ feel me, right?”
Hmph. Damn. “Great suggestion. Have someone in mind?”
“Bobby Douglas. Regular Army. Got shot up pretty bad over there. He’s having a rough time now. Wife. Two kids. Boys. He needs to catch a break. Maybe, oh, I don’t know,” he muttered. “Caretaker? He’s got some issues but nothing that’d prevent him from keeping up the house, the garden, you know.”
“I like it,” Roman answered. “When life moves us up and on, that’s when you reach back and lend a hand.”
“I think Kelly might know Bobby. He’s a regular in town and has helped out Sam with some handyman work. Maybe the butcher can be a reference.”
Roman took Jimmy’s hand in a hearty shake and landed a hand on his shoulder. “You rock, man. Is there anything I can do for you?”
The other guy laughed and made a face. “Yelp reviews are always nice.” His snicker was drier than the Sahara desert. Yelp reviews for an off the beaten path hole in the wall were about as helpful as a fork with a bowl of soup.
“I’m serious. What’ve you got going on? Maybe I can help.”
“Well,” he drawled. “There is the whole custom wood thing me and Lil started. Mostly small stuff. Hand carved boxes. Children’s furniture. I make the objects, and she does the most amazing carvings. The internet is a beautiful thing.”
“Well shit, Jimmy! A redneck entrepreneur? I fucking love it.”
Jimmy laughed. “We love the hick lifestyle, what can I say? The thing is,” he said with a shrug, “running a bar ain’t enough. But having a business on the side? Fuck. Welcome to the American dream. Me and Lil made enough last year to take care of all sorts of shit and even managed one of those Carnival cruises out of Galveston. You should try it sometime. That there is some good shit.”
Roman saw his opening and took it. “That’s not a half-bad idea. Kelly would love a cruise, and Matthew? What kid doesn’t have a ball in the ocean?”
He expected Jimmy to ask and he wasn’t disappointed.
“So…the kid?”
“Matthew. About to turn four, and he’s her little brother.”
Jimmy’s startled whistle about said it all. “She-it Roman. Brother? Damn! That girl is my new hero.”
“You and me both.”
He headed out not long after that, taking a bunch of business cards and a brochure of Jimmy’s side gig with him. He knew exactly who to talk to about giving the guy some pointers on how to grow his woodworking business. Draegyn St. John, also of Justice Brothers fame and another of Roman’s tribe of warrior buddies, was a wood artist in a caliber all by himself. What that guy did with a piece of tree was some other level shit.
As he pulled in and parked at his next stop, he did a quick mental rehash of all the things he wanted to say to Sam. Turns out that Roman’s initial impression that the curmudgeonly butcher and his know-it-all wife being more than casual friends to Kelly and Matty was on target.
Another thing Liam was going to have to accept. The two siblings came with a ready-made support system in the form of a strong surrogate family. Not only were a brother and sister about to shake up his employer’s life, so were an unexpected set of grandparents.
When he entered the store, Sam was helping a customer. He looked at him through the glass case he was behind and gave a perfunctory nod. “Be right with you,” he told him.
Roman wandered around and checked the place out. A wall with photos in different sized, mismatched frames caught his eye. He chuckled at several pictures of deer kills with rude comments on sticky notes attached. A photo of Sam wrapped in an apron, holding a trophy next to a huge barbecue smoker was an eye-opener. So was the standard cop in uniform shot showing a much younger version of the man watching his every muscle twitch.
The cord strung with bells hanging from the shop’s door tinkled, letting Roman know the customer Sam had helped was leaving. When he turned around, the man was already moving to a small round table by the front window with a coffee pot and two white mugs in his hands.
“Take a load off, son. You look like someone wishing they were anywhere but here. You’re safe. For now.”
Thank god the conversation went smoothly. It was hard enough managing Kelly’s wild mood swings whenever the subject of her future came up. He didn’t want to battle the old guy, too.
Sam offered up some sage advice as they shook hands and said goodbye. He’d stayed neutral before now when Roman first presented Kelly with the options before her—as he saw them. After some time to process the changing conditions, he’d told him, the only way forward from Sam’s standpoint was for Kelly to ball up and meet with her older brother. Until she did that, anything else was nothing but a stalling tactic.
The problem with that, however, was her belligerent reluctance to take that step. Hell, she still refused to say Liam’s name.
“Don’t ease up on the gas, my boy. Pedal to the metal. That girl can sniff out uncertainty better than a bloodhound on a trail. If you give an inch, believe me. You’re doomed. And whatever you do, don’t let her shove you into a corner. It’s her best move, by the way. Clueing into weakness in any form and shooting from the corner is how she wins at pool.”
“Thanks, Sam,” he told the old guy with a warm handshake.
“And if you hurt my girl, I will personally rip off your nuts and shove ‘em down your throat.”
So much for warm and fuzzy goodbyes.
Message received. He just nodded. That was enough.
He gassed up and took advantage of the public Wi-Fi from the parking lot at the Laundromat. The signal was shit, but he was able to shoot off half a dozen emails and touched base with Liam via text.
His boss reacted to the news about Matty much better than expected. Roman owed Rhi big time for handling that particular microphone drop with her usual aplomb. Somehow she managed to get Liam focused on the future rather than kicking a bunch of dead horses that’d get them all nowhere.
When Liam deferred to Roman’s judgment on how best to wind things up in Oklahoma, he was relatively sure Rhiann was also responsible for that. Telling him that he was sleeping with his little sister and was moving them into his home, well, that part Rhiann wisely left unsaid. It was his responsibility to do the right thing on that score.
Driving along the winding road leading to Kelly’s home, he took a few deep breaths. Their snowbound fantasy was coming to an end. It was time to get back to the real world.
He sensed the battle waging inside her. She wasn’t making it easy and refused to hand over the reins. It was her life she liked to say, and while she reluctantly conceded that a previously unknown sibling was intriguing, she had other things on her plate that were way more important. Kelly’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the two things were linked was driving him nuts.
So he was going to force the issue. Jimmy handing him a made-to-order solution for keeping control of her land was what he needed to sail over the last hurdle holding her here.
She was coming to New York with him, and that’s all there was to it.
The pacing wasn’t helping, but she didn’t know of another way to burn off energy and anxiety without drawing too much attention. It was making her twitchy that eyes were watching her all the damn time.
Matty, Ginny, Sam, Roman. Even the damn goats looked at her like they thought she was about to unravel right before their eyes. And maybe she was, because right now Kelly was close to jumping out of her skin.
Pushing both fists into the small of her back, she stopped and arched enough to get a good stretch going. Her back was killing her, and she wasn’t sure if the ache was from sleeping on the floor, the high-intensity sexual gymnastics, or the non-stop tension she was barely managing.
Pacing resumed, she shook out her hands and willed the wild beating of her heart to settle down. If only it were that simple. A heavy conscience came with a price.
Matty had a particularly awful morning, and she was the reason why. He was picking up on her anxiety. When she snapped at him over nothing, and his little lip quivered, she hated herself.
Angered, she kicked the door jamb with her boot. Deb was a snapping turtle. Non-stop. Having a tart, insensitive attitude was something her mother excelled at, and she didn’t want to be like that.
Damn. Poor Matty. She was coming unglued right before his eyes. This morning he asked a simple question about his birthday, and she nearly tore his face off. What was wrong with her? She’d been looking forward to Matty’s fourth birthday more than he had.
Wishing she hadn’t lost it though was useless. Because she had. Lost it. And why? Because in the blink of an eye she realized that his birthday was timed to take place somewhere else. Not here. Not in the little house in the woods on the not very big mountain in their little corner of Oklahoma.
That was the moment when panic, real, gut-freezing panic, took hold. And because these feelings were foreign and so out of character, she was having a hard time keeping her shit together.
Without the snow to keep the outside world at bay, their altered reality slowly filtered in. That guy in New York City, Liam? He wanted to meet her. And Matty. There was talk of a trust fund and questions about Matthew’s future schooling that made her super uncomfortable.
There was a woman too. Rhiann. She was Liam’s fiancée. Kelly spoke with her briefly. Reluctantly. It was only hello, but she got the impression this was a person who was good at ironing out wrinkles and making things go smoothly.
The nagging sense that she was a major wrinkle tore away at her. Was her entire life going to be about other people and how they reacted to her and Matty? Jeez, but she was sick of being the cog in the wheel. Her mother, a father who hated her enough to send a subtle fuck you on every birthday, and now him. Liam. He didn’t know her. And what he did know was total bullshit if he thought she was some stupid backwater country girl.
She didn’t want to be ironed out. Why the hell would she? To make someone else feel good?
Blech. Her face contorted with disgust.
Where was Roman? She needed him.
A for real guardian angel must have been on stand-by. That’s the only way to explain how she missed smacking her head on the coffee table when her feet unexpectedly circled left, and she went crashing to the floor.
Huh? She needed him?
Was she drunk?
Is this a dream?
Needing anything was not her style. She made do. That’s how she got this far by herself.
“Oh my god. I need him,” she whispered out loud. Staying on the floor seemed safer than pacing, so she scooted until her back hit the sofa. Pulling her legs in she sat cross-legged and slumped. Her hand rubbed and squeezed the back of her neck. How the hell did she end up here?
She let the stillness engulf her. Faint, barely audible sounds of light classical music floated in the air. From the time he was a baby, she’d played music when Matty took his nap. Not long after he was born when she started taking care of him full-time, she’d read every baby book and child development manual the library had. Theories and practices about naptime were a dime a dozen, but she liked the one that focused on teaching a kid how to relax rather than forcing eyes closed. She always told Matty that she didn’t care if he slept, as long as he spent the time being quiet and relaxing. It worked. Classical music became Matty’s calm down switch. She sometimes wondered what went on in that busy little head of his when things settled and got quiet. He was a deep thinker. Part of that old soul thing, so she hoped he got something positive out of the quiet time.
In the few days they’d been together, she’d discovered that Roman had interesting musical preferences. He knew every single classical song on all three of the CDs she had. And he could sing along to most of the country rock but lost his master of the universe title when the kid songs came on. Who didn’t know the wheels on the bus? Sheesh!
She needed him. With him, she felt alive. And safe.
“Am I an idiot?” she asked. The silence held no answer. Just her luck. She was going to have to figure this one out on her own.
Her eyes drifted slowly around the living room. The small house was all she’d ever known. The few modern touches she added, like the cheap CD player, the off brand flat screen, and her very cool laptop, didn’t compensate for the elephant in the room.
As long as she dug in and refused to budge, they’d remain isolated. No longer forgotten but still separate from the rest of the world. And wasn’t that exactly what she was trying to change about Matty’s future?
Her outsider status had been shoved down her throat a long time ago, but he still had a shot at a different life. She owed it to him to make the best of their strange turn in circumstance.
If she stuck to her guns and put her foot down, maybe, just maybe, the future she so meticulously visualized could still be hers.
A place for her and Matty where he could go to school and they could both find a place in the world. She wanted to grow her brand and make KA James into a real business. And she wanted to stop feeling left out. Invisible. Forgotten. Denied.
Roman certainly didn’t make her feel any of those things. Was it insane that she felt the way she did about a man she barely knew?
Oh, hell yeah. But she’d always listened to her gut, and the message coming at her where he was concerned involved a steady, unwavering beam of rock steadiness tied up with a big blue bow of hope. Why blue? Because blue made her smile and the smile she had for Roman Bishop reached into her soul. Reason enough.
All of that was well and good but what about this old house? It wasn’t much, but it was hers. She had animals to care for and a huge garden to work. This summer she planned to reinforce the shed and at Matty’s insistence was sketching out a brick outdoor fireplace. What would happen if they walked away? She knew damn well it would not take long for the Dulbs to stir up shit. Burt was a smarmy prick with a bad case of girl-humiliation. He’d burn the house to the ground as payback for her being a bigger badass than he could ever be.
Plus there was that other uncomfortable, niggling worry biting her on the ass. She’d almost died of embarrassment when Matty announced to Roman that she’d never worn a dress. Not once. Not ever. Dresses were of no use in her present world. She wore jeans. And flannel. In the summer when it was hot, the jeans were cut-offs and the flannel became t-shirts. Their hats and scarves? She knitted them.
Now, she did have a bathing suit, finally. Got it last year when she picked up an inflatable pool at Walmart. Best summer ever because Matty had been over-the-moon with joy over the water toys. But that was it where her wardrobe was concerned. She picked up her undies from the dollar bin, slept buck naked or in sweats, and when necessary endured picking through boxes of cheap crap at the Payless shoe store.
Who was she kidding? A sophisticated guy like Roman just had to be used to high-class women. Women with dresses and high heels. Women who wore make-up and got their lady parts waxed. It took a fuck-ton of effort to squash the doubts she felt whenever the shit-storm stirrer inside her asked, ‘What the hell does he see in me?’
When she imagined moving away from here, it was never to a place like New York. What she envisioned was more suburban, right on the edge of rural, not the busy streets of a major city. Matty would love it, but she wouldn’t know what to do. How did she handle going from working sun up to sun down, to doing nothing?
The low growl of an approaching truck roused Kelly from her thorny preoccupation. She was never going to be a girly girl, and that was that. What that meant in the bigger picture where Roman was concerned was a huge kernel of self-doubt that she pushed aside for now.
He found her on the floor and laughed. “What’s going on sweet pea?”
Sweet pea. Ha! That one was new. The guy had a world-class vocabulary and was going through every imaginably cute way to call her little without riling her up.
Those doubts she had one minute ago? All gone. Poof. Vanished.
Patting the floor next to her, she scooted over a bit and gave him room to sit down. On his way to planting his spectacular butt on the carpet, he swooped in for a hello kiss.
“Matty’s napping? Cool,” he joshed with a shoulder shove that nearly toppled her over. “Wanna do it on the floor?”
The playfully fiendish eye waggle and teasing, “Huh? Huh? Come on! You know you want to,” made it impossible to scowl. Even as a joke.
She threw in the towel. There wasn’t any other option. Instead of attempting a calm, rational discussion about the future, she said a little prayer and let the winds of change blow through her life.
“To be perfectly honest,” she quipped with a saucy smirk, “I’m sort of over the whole sex on the floor thing. I think it might be killing my back.”
“There’s a solution for that, you know,” he chuckled. “Your riding skills are exceptional, love.”
“Shut up,” she chided. “I was going somewhere with that speech, and so if it’s ruined now, it’s your fault.”
“My bad,” he conceded. The smirky nod was one hundred percent Roman.
Pretending exasperation, she drawled, “Anyway…as I was saying. The floor. Meh. So yesterday – so over it. Which got me wondering,” she paused and took a deep breath, “exactly how big is your bed?”
He almost answered. The matter-of-fact expression on his face told her he missed her point. Then the light bulb went off over his thick man-skull, and she watched as her comment hit the mark. So fast she yelped, he flattened her to the floor and wedged between her thighs.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Carina? Don’t mess with me, little lady. Is that a white flag you’re waving?”
She wrapped her legs around his body and touched his handsome face. “I think I’m ready.”
“Kelly,” he groaned.
“But I can’t do this by myself, and I’m scared.” She couldn’t believe those words came out of her mouth. His wide-eyed reaction told her he was equally shocked.
“I swear to God, babe. You won’t regret this.”
She grimaced. “I already regret it, but I know this has to happen.”
He took her face in his hands. “You’ll call all the shots, honey. I’ll make sure of it. And nobody but you gets a say where Matty is concerned.”
His words tore at her heart. He understood, and that was enough for now.
“I need you to be there if this is going to work. Don’t leave me, Roman.” That’s more honest and vulnerable than she could ever remember being.
“Ah, Jesus, Kelly. Leave you? Don’t you understand yet? I’m going nowhere that doesn’t involve you and Matthew at my side. That’s a promise. And before you start imagining I’m only worried about getting you pregnant, let me make this clear. I’m too fucking old for you and keeping you to myself is hella’ messed up, but that’s the hand I was dealt. So expect the full package. All of it. We’re a couple. I take care of you.”
She rolled her eyes. He kissed her and continued.
“And you will let me. If you’re a bitch about it, then we’ll have a heart-to-heart about the spanking scenario you’re panting over.”
She laughed. “Hello? Did you hear what you just said because unless I’m mistaken, I believe you just gave me permission to be a right royal bitch and reap some super sexy benefits in the deal.”
His eyes flared, and then he chuckled too. “Fuck. Can I get a do-over?”
“No, ya’ dope, but you can answer the damn question about your bed. Are we talking a hermit’s lumpy cot? Maybe an air mattress? Ooh! Or one of those futon things.”
He took her hands by the wrist and stretched them above her head. Her legs dropped from his body, and her heels dug into the carpet. Did he have her attention? Oh hell yeah.
“King size…bed and cock. Four posters. Perfect for leather restraints.” She held her breath as he spoke. He released her wrists and with one hand stroked the sensitive skin. “Or perhaps satin bindings. Shame to mar your beautiful skin.”
As usual when he allowed a glimpse of the things that fueled his sex drive she started melting down. While their lovemaking had been intense and adventurous, she sensed an undercurrent of leashed sensuality that she longed to set free.
“Will a blindfold be made available?” she asked with a breathy moan.
His smile was genuine. And very, very hot. “Really? You’re okay with being blindfolded?”
Was she?
The slamming of the bathroom door jolted both of them, and they reacted like the goddamn sex police were about to walk into the room. Quickly disengaging, Roman leaped to his feet and extended a hand to help her up.
When Matty came bounding into the room, they managed to make it seem like they’d been doing nothing more than having a casual conversation.