Chapter 46
“I thought the prettiest girls in the world came from Tulsa,” Shep said. “Guess I was wrong.” He had no way of knowing exactly how many days had passed since his incarceration. All he knew was that Carlotta had returned.
She turned toward him, as bright as a star.
“Come to Oklahoma with me.” The words left his mouth before checking in with his brain, but she just glanced at him askance, dark eyes somewhere between amused and skeptical.
“And what would I do in this…Oklahoma?”
“Besides be bowled over by my country charm?”
Her eyes had gone cynical. “Sí, besides that?”
He shrugged. “Ya could be a…hair girl.”
“Hair girl?”
“Ya know…one of those women who does stuff with hair. What are they called?”
“Eat your soup.”
“Are you sure?” He made a face and shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right. Stylist,” he said suddenly. “Ya could be a hair stylist. Yours looks especially good today, by the way.”
“It does not matter what it is you say,” she warned him. “I am not going to make you free.”
“Ya don’t think I’m just flatterin’ ya so you’ll take off the cuffs, do ya?”
“No,” she said and reached for his pillow. “Sit up.” He did so. “I also think you flatter me because you want to have the sex with me.”
“What?” He gave her his best shocked expression. “I don’t wanna… Well…” He snorted softly. He was a damned good liar. But the devil himself couldn’t pull off a whopper like that. “I do wanna if you wanna, but…” He paused. “Do you wanna—”
“No,” she said.
“Oh. All right, well, your hair’s still really sexy.” It was long and dark with waves that looked as if they could wind around a man’s heart and into his soul. “There’re about seventy billion American women who’d kill for hair like that.”
“I think their deaths would do me little good.”
He thought about that for a second. “Well, no, ya probably wouldn’t gain a lot if they were TU, but my point is…”
“TU?”
“Ahhh…toes up,” he explained, fudging a little. “Anyway, you’d have a pretty good income if ya could make other women’s hair look like yours. Even actresses… Hey, I bet ya could be a stylist for the stars.”
“Be silent and eat,” she ordered.
He stared up at her and felt a little breathless at her nearness. It wasn’t that she was beautiful…exactly. Well, okay, it was that she was beautiful…exactly… So maybe that was all that was to it. How the hell long had it been since he had been with a woman? Any woman? “I would eat,” he said, but I’m cuffed to the bed.” He lifted his left hand, rattling the metal that bound him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to help me…again.”
“You only need the one hand to eat.”
“I’ve been injured.” He tilted his head, hoping he looked harmless and maybe a little helpless. “By your people.”
“Herrera is not my people.” She hissed the words.
“But Doc is.”
She pursed her lips. They were as lush as ripe berries. “Señor Tevio, he is a good man.”
“No,” he said and though he tried to maintain his smile and play it cool, the muzzy memories kept creeping in. “He’s not.”
She drew herself up. “How is it you dare slanderize his name?”
He watched her, pulled irrevocably into seriousness. A place where he rarely tread. “I dare because ya know it’s true.”
“I know no such thing as this. He saved my family just as he saved you.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because he does not wish for you to suffer.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Sí.”
“He doesn’t have any problem with handcuffin’ me to the bed.”
“He must do so because you are a dealer of the drugs. A man who ruins the lives of innocent children and—”
“Rangers don’t deal drugs!”
She scowled. “Rangers? What is this?”
He shifted his gaze toward the door and ground his teeth. He ached to tell her the truth, to raise her opinion of him, but maybe that’s why she was here, to learn his secrets, to feed those confessions back to a man who could kill as casually as he could eat dinner.
“Come to America with me,” he said.
She shook her head at the abrupt change of subject. “And how would we get there, cowboy?” she asked. “Do you have the fortune in American dollar hid away somewhere?”
Holy shit. Really? After all they’d been through together she was after his money? “No American dollars,” he said, “but Durrand will buy the tickets. In fact, he probably has already.”
“Durrant?”
“Durrand. He’s a friend of mine.” He inhaled, careful not to think too hard about the damned know-it-all he loved like an idiot brother. “Makes a habit of saving my bacon.”
She looked increasingly confused. “What is this bacon you speak of?”
He grinned at her. “He likes to save my life. Makes ‘im feel human.”
“Then he had best waste no more time,” she said. Her expression was somber, her eyes as bright as Montana silver. “Because señor, he will not hold you much longer.”