Oklahoma Moonshine (The McIntyre Men #1) (20 page)

“Fell apart,” he said. He moved closer, put an arm around her shoulders.

“I wanted to come home, started looking for news about Big Falls online. Found out the place was going to be auctioned.”

He was half afraid to hear the rest, but he braced himself for it, told himself it wouldn’t be that bad.

“I knew I had to come home. I couldn’t bear to see my home auctioned to strangers. I thought—I thought just one con, a big one, and it
would be my last one ever.”

Rob closed his eyes.

“I put up a website with a video of a chihuahua who’d lost his hind legs. Spun a big sob story about my best friend needing expensive
prosthetics, and asked for donations. It went viral. In three weeks, I had half of what I needed to buy back the place.”

He felt like he’d been hit in the chest with wrecking ball. The breath just left his lungs. And he tipped his head back, stared at the ceiling.
“You stole the money to buy the ranch.”

“I never considered it stealing.”

“What you considered it doesn’t change what it was, Kiley. It was stealing. You stole…half a million dollars.” Saying it out loud
made it seem even worse, not that much probably could. “My God, do you know what kind of time you’d do for that?”

She closed her eyes. “I kept the email addresses of every person who donated. I’m going to pay them all back.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

He was angry. Really angry. He got up and paced the room. This couldn’t be happening. My God, she wasn’t just a petty con, she was a major
criminal. And there was no way this wouldn’t come out, no way she wouldn’t end up in prison.

God, he didn’t want her to end up behind bars.

He got an idea, and said, “What if I—?”

“No.” She stood up, too. “You’re not loaning me the money to pay them all back. I have to do this myself.”

He stared into her eyes, saw her resolve there, believed she meant what she said. But hell, she’d stolen a half million dollars. “But Kiley,
how?”

“I’ll figure it out. But in the meantime, I’ve got a bigger problem to deal with. That flyer,” she said, with a look at it lying on
the counter. “It’s got entire paragraphs lifted from the dog park scam my sister and I ran before we split up. Some of the graphics are even
the same. She just changed it enough to apply to a reservoir instead of a dog park. My father and my sister are about to rob our friends and neighbors and
your family. Last time I saw one of those Big Falls’ Big Future signs, the red in the thermometer was up to three-hundred and fifty thousand.”

He nodded. “You’re right. We have to stop them. Maybe it’s time to call Jimmy.”

“
I
have to stop them. Not
we
. And I’m not bringing the police into this.”

“Jimmy’s family.”

She shook her head. “My father knows about my chihuahua scam, Rob. He’ll turn me in if he finds out I’m trying to do anything to stop
him.”

He walked up to her, took her by the shoulders. “Listen to me, okay? This is a pivotal moment for us. Are you getting that?”

She lowered her head. “Pivotal. Like it’s not already over? Like you’re going to want anything to do with me after this? You, the guy who
vowed not to tell a lie if you could help it? You’re still going to want anything to do with me now that you know what I’ve done?”

He held her eyes for a long moment, then lowered his head.

“That’s why I couldn’t tell you, Rob. I knew—”

“No you didn’t. You can’t possibly know what’s going on in my head, so don’t think you do. The only thing I’m sure
about is that we can’t let your father and your sister scam this entire town and get away with it.”

“I don’t plan to.”

“He’s screwing with my family, Kiley. So you’ve got two choices here.”

“Oh, hell,” she said, turning away and pushing a hand through her hair.

“You either let me help you stop him, or I call Jimmy and turn them in.”

“You do, and I go down with them.”

“You don’t make this right, you probably deserve to.” He sighed heavily. “But I’ll give you a head start to get out of
town.” He picked up the flyer, looked at it, shook his head in disgust and threw it on the counter. “That’s the best offer you’re
gonna get from me. Take it or leave it.”

She felt like screaming. Fighting. Crumbling on the floor and crying. “That’s no choice at all, Rob. I guess I’ll take it.”

Somehow, he managed not to go off like a bomb, or curl into a corner like a boiled shrimp. Somehow, he managed to hold the broken pieces of himself into a
semblance of the man he was for the next several hours. They stayed up late, talking and listening. But only about her father and sister. Not about them.
Not about the bomb she’d just dropped on the fragile seedling of whatever had been growing between them. Not about anything important.

Just about little things, like saving the town.

“Keep your focus on the goal,” he said, for about the tenth time. She kept sliding off onto side roads, like keeping her family out of jail.
Then she’d gone through six permutations of an escape plan for them, and swilled a bottle of Algernon West with each one. He had to keep pulling her
back on point. “Remember the goal? The goal is to get the town’s money back.”

“Right. And the
trick
is….” She tipped the longneck to her lips, then frowned and tipped it upside down, shaking it a little.
Nothing came out.

“Go on, tell me. The trick is what?”

Her round blue eyes met his. “The trick is to make Dad think it was his idea to give it to us.”

“Why would he want to give it to us?” he asked.

“Lots of reasons. Maybe I need a kidney,” she said with a smile. And he knew that she knew that would never work. “Or maybe we have
something he wants.”

“You mean, the ranch?” he asked. His stomach twisted a little. He didn’t want to risk the ranch. It was right then he realized how much
this place meant to him. Already. “He wants it back?”

“No.” She set the empty on the table, then leaned back on the sofa and put her bare feet up there beside it. “We have to make him want
it. And there’s only one thing my father wants. Money. So we make him want to buy back part of the ranch.”

“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of it?” he asked.

She nodded once. “We can let on that we fought. You found out the truth about my past and you want no more to do with me.” Her voice got thick,
and she stopped, swallowed, and said, “Is there anymore beer?”

“We make him think one of us might be willing to sell our half bad enough to take a loss.”

She nodded. “I’m not anywhere drunk enough.”

“I need you to not get any drunker, though. We need to figure this out.” He sat around the corner of the modular sofa from her, his feet up
beside hers on the coffee table. “Kiley?”

“What?”

“How can we make your father want to buy into the ranch?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’d have to find gold in the river or strike oil or something.”

He grinned. “Yeah, maybe there’s a diamond mine out back or—  Hey, we don’t really need to strike oil or find gold. We just
need him to believe we did.”

She sat up on the sofa and picked up one of her empties, tipped it up to look inside, and reached for another. “We can’t jus’
tell’m. It’d be transparent.”

“Maybe we could help him find out by accident?”

“He has to find out by snooping. He’s a turble snoop. Turrble. Rhymes with
gerbil. Who knew?” She leaned her head back on the sofa, closed her eyes.

“Okay. Okay, I think I’ve got an idea. What if we—” 

The sound of a wildebeest choking on a grizzly bear, interrupted his thought. Kiley’s snore was so loud it startled her awake, and she sat up,
blinking like she didn’t know where she was. Then her eyes landed on him, and she relaxed, smiled.

She was a cute drunk.

He looked over at her, and thought he was kind of in over his head. “I wish I understood you.”

“No point trying, Robby. There’s a whole lot about me no one’s ever gonna understand.” Her words were sloshing into each other.

“How do you know unless you give someone a chance to try?”

She stared up at him for a long time, frowning so hard it made him grin. “I gave you a chance to try. How’s it goin’ so far?”

God, he had fallen hard for her. Harder than he knew. It wouldn’t hurt this bad otherwise.

He held out his hands. “Help you to bed?”

“You coming with me?” She pointed at him in six-gun position, clicked her tongue twice, and tried to wink. It seemed to be more things than she
could manage at once, and the wink looked more like her face had melted on one side.

“Just wouldn’t be honorable, ma’am. He fake-tipped a nonexistent hat.

“You’re a true cowboy, aren’t you, Robby McIntyre?”

“I try to be.” He scooped her right up off the sofa. She locked her arms around his neck, pulling herself up so she could nuzzle his throat as
he carried her up the stairs. It tickled when she spoke against his neck. “I really like you.”

“I like you, too.” His voice was raspy as whiskers on silk. God, she got to him.

She leaned up and kissed his chin. “I like your family, too.”

He’d made it to the top of the stairs, and turned to head down the hall to her bedroom. The whole time a voice inside his head was yelling,
This is not a good idea!
He turned the knob and opened the door, saw her unmade bed, and clothes scattered around the floor. “Not a neat
thing, are you?”

“I like it messy.” Then she laughed very deeply and softly. “I don’t even know what that means, but it sounded sexy. Didn’t
it?” She threaded her fingers up over his nape and into his hair, pulling his head down and lifting her own up.

She brushed his lips with hers.

Robby’s soul caught fire, and he almost lost it. In the nick of time, he dropped her onto the bed out of sheer desperation, and the breath huffed out
of her when she landed. 

She looked up at him, eyes as round and wounded as a whipped pup’s. “I don’t think I can take it if you hate me.”

“Hasn’t been a man born who could hate you, Kiley Kellogg.”

He went back through the door and closed it behind him. And then he wiped the sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve, and headed for the shower

The gentle tap on Kiley’s bedroom door made her feel as if her head had been tossed into a dryer set to tumble. With a bucketful of rocks.
Sharp
rocks. She said, “Knock again and die,” but the sound that emerged was a muffled “Nogundee.
”

The door opened, the familiar squeak of the hinge like nails on a chalkboard, and the soft step of sock-feet, like the approach of Godzilla.

Then the smell of something ambrosial filled her nostrils, soothing the steady thud in her head just a little.

She opened one eye. Male forearms, in rolled-back sleeves, big strong hands, one of them holding a plate with a giant, still-steaming, blueberry-oozing
muffin. Butter melted from the top and spilled down the sides like the tears of her guardian angel. The other hand, just as tanned and sexy, held the
elixir of the gods in a stoneware mug, steaming even more than the muffin was.

“You’re not really human, are you?” she whispered, and it hurt her ears.

He handed her the coffee first, like he could read her need for it.

She scootched up higher onto her pillows, cupped the mug in her palms and brought it to her lips, sipping. Her brain cells opened like flowers in the
morning sun. “Nirvana,” she whispered.

She sipped again, and then opened her eyes enough to locate that muffin. Her stomach was queasy, but carbs might absorb the ick. She set the plate on her
thighs, broke off a small piece and ate it, chewing slowly, savoring every taste.

“God, that’s good.” She broke off another piece. “Thanks. I don’t deserve you.”

He sat on the edge of her bed. “Kiley, listen. I don’t play games. I don’t hide anything. I’m straight-up honest. What you see is
what I am. Nothing to puzzle out or uncover. You get that, right?”

She ate her second piece of muffin, then smacked her thumb and forefinger. “Are you about to ruin this incredible moment with serious talk?”
she asked. “You are, aren’t you?”

“‘Fraid so.”

“Wait.” Holding up a forefinger, she ate another piece of the muffin, a bigger piece this time. Then she sipped the coffee, then sipped it
again. One final sip and she leaned back against the headboard and nodded. “Okay, go ahead. No, wait.” She grabbed another bite of the muffin,
then said, “Mmkay.” She washed it down with more coffee, then looked at him expectantly.

He didn’t say anything.

She said, “I kind of thought we could talk about the…you know, the us stuff…after we send my family packing. Cause, if it doesn’t
work, the rest is kind of gonna be decided for us. I’ll either be in Mexico or in jail.”

He took a deep breath, tried to count to ten and only got to four. “Are you a part of your family’s con?”

She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Are you a part of it? Is this, all this,” he waved an open palm in a half circle.
“Is all of it part of some bigger game? Are you just—”

“Jeeze, Rob.” She slid right out the other side of the bed, and put her bare feet on the floor. She’d pulled her blanket with her, but
realized she didn’t need it. She was still fully clothed. “I thought you trusted me. I thought you said you’d give me the benefit of the
doubt. I thought—”

“I want to trust you, dammit. But you’ve been lying to me since you came here.”

She marched across the room and faced him. “I haven’t told you one thing that wasn’t true since the day you asked me not to lie.”

“But you haven’t told the truth either. Still.”

“About what?” she asked in a squeaky voice.

“God only knows. I feel like there must be a hundred things. But we could start with the ring.” She frowned. “Your grandmother’s
ring? The one that went into the drain when I hit you with my truck?”

She closed her eyes. “I kind of…forgot about that.”