Black Heat (9 page)

Fall had always been her favorite time of year at the ranch. Her mother cut corn stalks from the summer garden and tied them in decorative sheaves for the front porch. She let Roan help her wire gourds and pretty leaves to a grapevine wreath, and they gathered pumpkins from the patch she grew just for Roan, saving the prettiest ones to carve for Halloween and sharing some with her friends.

Thanksgiving was the best of all, when Mom's sister and her family made the four-hour drive to spend the holiday with them and stayed overnight.

Aunt Nina and Uncle Ted and her cousins didn't come around after Mom died. Roan figured it was just too painful. She could understand that. As for Mimi...after one disastrous attempt in which the turkey never cooked all the way through, and she burned the stuffing even though it came from a mix, she insisted that they go into town for every holiday dinner. Roan soon arranged to be invited to friends' houses to get out of celebrating the holiday with her father and Mimi. Her dad hadn't objected...even though she had always sort of hoped he would.

The last few years she'd gone to Walt's house. It was nice, but it never really felt like Thanksgiving to her. Walt's wife made her dressing with oysters and cornbread, and it was good, but it was nothing like Elaine Brackens' chestnut and apple recipe. Walt's three brothers and their families spent the day watching football, and dinner was served on paper plates to make cleanup easier.

Roan knew she was lucky to be included, and she felt disloyal even considering turning down the invitation, but this year...maybe this year she'd just stay home. Buy a soup bone for Angel, maybe have Gayle save her a slice of pumpkin pie from the diner and eat it while watching the Macy's parade, which she had always watched with her mother while she rolled out pastry crust for the pies.

"I'll turn myself in," she blurted. "I'll go down there this afternoon and tell them it was me."

Except—what if she had to stay in the jail? What she had done was breaking and entering, after all, as well as leaving the scene of a crime. Although technically Cal had been the one to take her from the scene of the crime. If it hadn't been for him, she'd have been waiting in that bathroom when the cops came.

Not that she'd ever turn Cal in. She'd tell them that he tried to stop her from leaving, that she'd kept going despite him. Except, if they saw her ankle, they would know there was no way she could have gotten away without help.

"You're not turning yourself in," Cal said shortly. He rubbed his temples in frustration. She was sure he'd gone through the same thought process that she had.

"Okay, you're right. I'll wait for them to come get me—that'll give me some time to figure out what to do with Angel before I go to jail."

"Criminy, you're not going to
jail
," Cal snapped.

"It's a misunderstanding," Jimmy offered. It might have been Roan's imagination—her desperate wish that she could wind back time and forget this stupid plan, especially since now she'd dragged two other people into it—but she thought he might be softening toward her. "Maybe I could tell them how I didn't give you a chance to explain. Because I didn't, really."

"What
did
you tell them?" Cal asked quietly.

"Just that I told her to stay in the bathroom while I went to the house to call the police, since we don't have much cell service out here, and she ran away while I was gone."

Cal snorted. "They didn't ask you why you thought she'd stay put? There's no lock on that bathroom door."

"I said that she gave me her word of honor that she would stay."

Cal laughed, a humorless sound. "Only you, Jimmy. Who were the officers who responded?"

"Maberry and...Chang, I think?"

Cal made a small moaning sound.

"Is that bad?" Jimmy asked.

"No. They're good cops. They just...well, I doubt they've ever heard of a perp being detained by nothing but the Golden Rule, you know what I'm saying?"

Jimmy gave him a quizzical look. "You're saying that..."

"Never mind, buddy, it's fine. Listen. I owe you one. I know that asking you to lie for me was way over the line. I'll find a way to make it up to you."

"But it's my fault," Roan said. "I'm the one who messed everyone up."

"It's okay," Jimmy said simply. "Cal will fix it. You can count on him."

She gave him directions the rest of the way to her house. Cal got out, offering Roan his hand. She took it gratefully, pangs shooting through her ankle, but then forced herself to let go and walk toward her house on her own.

"You'd better get back to the ranch," Cal said to Jimmy. "Just in case...we don't want anyone seeing you here."

"What about you?"

"I'll call Matthew to pick me up. I want to make sure Roan's okay and then I'll head over to the Bluebird."

"Don't eat there and ruin your appetite," Jimmy said. "Matthew will be pissed if you don't eat at the house. He's making blueberry muffins and maple-cured bacon."

Cal shut the truck door and Jimmy drove off.

"You didn't have to stay with me," Roan said, limping slowly down the path to the back of the house, favoring her sore ankle.

"Yeah, I did."

He caught up with her and didn't so much offer her his arm as tuck her hand under his elbow. Well, she wasn't going to turn down the help; the last thing she needed was to fall again before she got ice on her ankle.

"You need to call in and let them know you're not coming to work," Cal said.

"No, I'll just ice it for an hour. It's barely seven—I'll have Walt pick me up on his way to the shop and I'll be fine."

"Damn it!" Cal exploded. "Do you have to do every self-destructive thing you can think of at every opportunity?"

They'd reached the apartment door. Roan wrenched her arm free and busied herself with her keys, her face burning. But he kept talking.

"Did it ever occur to you to take the easier way, just one time? There are people who would help you if you just give them a chance. Come on, there's got to be other ways to get Angel help. Did you talk to Dr. Raj about a payment plan?"

Roan bit her lip. She wasn't about to admit that Dr. Raj had offered to do the surgery now, and let her pay what she could in the future. She didn't take charity—it was one of her mother's beliefs. Elaine had grown up in lean times on a small farm downstate and had known poverty, but she said it was those tough years that had made her resourceful and tough, that had taught her to feed a family with a kitchen garden and a little ingenuity.

Of course, her mother had never broken the law. So that was a big difference.

"Yes," she said. "I have to pay the full amount."

"Well, what about Mimi? You said she still has your mother's jewelry. How about if you just ask her for it?"

Roan was already shaking her head; she had that bitter taste in her mouth that always appeared when she thought about her stepmother. "Forget it," she mumbled, opening the door and dropping her keys on the table. She went straight over to Angel, who was mewling happily to see her even as she struggled to rise from her bed.

She placed her hands on the soft underbelly where practice had taught her she would cause Angel the least pain as she helped the dog to stand. So intent was she on the task that she didn't realize that Cal had followed and knelt down next to her until his voice in her ear made her jump.

"Did it ever occur to you to give Mimi another chance?"

She didn't answer. Once Angel was standing, Roan headed back out the door she'd just come in, Cal hot on her heels with Angel between them. She tried to pull the door shut behind her but he put his hand on it and wedged his way through, following her.

She shivered in the misty air—now that the adrenaline of her escape had worn off, she was cold in her thin sweater—and crossed her arms over her chest, watching Angel walk around the backyard, sniffing at all her favorite bushes and trees. The yard was fenced, but there was no danger of Angel running off. She wasn't a runner, and besides, she didn't move fast enough to put herself in danger.

"People change, Roan," Cal muttered. "Mimi may have changed. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has regrets. For all you know, she'd like to have a closer relationship with you. According to Matthew, she doesn't have any other family."

Other than the men who constantly streamed in and out of her life
, Roan thought bitterly.

"Thank you for the lecture," she snapped. "Wow, I never thought of it that way. If it wasn't for you, I probably would have ended up making bad choices."

"I'm not afraid of your sarcasm," Cal said quietly.

He was standing much too close. She could feel the warmth of his skin on her bare wrist, and it made her hands twitch with the desire to touch him, to drink in his heat and the sensations she remembered from the day before, when he had kissed her.

Instead, she stepped away. "Come on, Angel," she said, more harshly than she intended, and her dog looked up at her with her ears cocked, a question in her big brown eyes. She tried again, softening her voice. "Sweetheart. Let's go in now. Cal was just leaving."

But he didn't leave. He waited until Angel padded past him, into the house, and then he came back in, too, wiping his feet on the mat.

"I didn't ask you to stay. You need to leave now," Roan hissed, standing in the middle of her front room. She had waited until Angel was settled into her bed, keeping her voice low so the dog wouldn't sense that anything was wrong.

"And I'm not afraid of your anger," Cal said. "It's not me you're mad at."

How dare he? Roan felt her fury build and take over her body, the way it always did. It was like a hot flame erupting from the hurt that smoldered, always, inside her. When she was younger, she would run—through the fields and along the stream, or down Pedersen road to the abandoned house where she could spend the afternoon licking her wounds. But now she was an adult and there was nowhere to run to. What she had was here. This home. This dog. These few possessions.

This stubborn man.

She lifted her hand, fingers curled into a fist. She wasn't really going to hit him—at least, probably she wasn't—but the fury needed somewhere to go and he was standing there and her body was electric with the need to beat something, destroy something, crush something. Anything to get rid of the rage, to dull the pain.

He caught her fist in his hand.

He pulled her to him.

"I'm not afraid," he repeated, a whisper now, his eyes slitted and unreadable, and then she was kissing him, hard.

He didn't respond at first, but he didn't pull away, either. Roan knew this was wrong; she knew she should stop, but she couldn't. She beat his chest with her fists even as she drank in the taste of him, and his arms went around her and pulled her close. He held her close to him, and even though she could feel his hardness pressed against her, he made no move except to keep kissing her, until finally she collapsed into his arms, exhausted and spent. Tears flowed, wetting his shirt, and she pressed her face against the soft cotton.

The anger was gone as quickly as it came, leaving shame in its wake. God, why did she have to be this way? Why did she do these stupid things, never thinking first, never stopping herself? She wanted to sink into the floor, to creep to her bed and stay there until day dimmed to night and she could disappear into herself and her sorrow.

"Roan," he said, holding her up with one arm, gently pushing her hair out of her face with the other. "Roan, honey. It's all right."

"It's not all right," she mumbled. Because she'd wrecked it again.

"Not all of it, maybe," he conceded. At least he hadn't tried to cheer her up. She would have hated that. "But there's time to fix things. I promise. I need you to trust me on that. Can you?"

His voice was so gentle, so kind, that she couldn't help nodding. Cal was the last person she should let affect her—and yet he made her believe in him, in hope.

"And some things..." he traced her bottom lip, very gently, with his thumb. His touch stirred the heat back up, a cyclone of sensation as powerful as her anger moments ago. "And some things are fine the way they are. Some things are as they should be."

She held her breath, not sure what he was talking about. Except...the truth was that she
was
sure. Because she felt it too. Cal's kisses yesterday had been unlike any other she'd ever had: they'd been
exactly right
. They fit. They made her want more. They made her
need
more.

Except he hadn't kissed her back. Just now, when she'd practically savaged him with her lips, her teeth, her fists. Well, who could blame him?

He bent close and brushed his lips against hers. Softly...so softly she wasn't sure if she'd imagined the sensation. A sound in her throat sounded like someone else, some needful hungry thing. "Please," she whispered, her voice cracked and raw.

He bent to her again, deepening the kiss with agonizing slowness. His lips were soft and warm and gentle, but when he kissed his way slowly along her jaw, down to her throat, the sensations of his stubble and his teeth nipping her gently were anything but tame.