Authors: Victoria Dahl
Suddenly Shane had a completely different take on this girl. She seemed carefree and goofy and sheltered. But now he couldn’t help but read between the lines. No dad around. A single mom who probably had to work one or two jobs at a time to put food on the table. And Merry trying to find her way.
“I’ve never lived anywhere but here,” he said. “I can’t imagine.”
“It’s different, living in a big city. I can’t deny that. But people are all the same, really. There’s good and bad everywhere. But considering that people are all the same, I have to say that the scenery is pretty damn awesome here. There’s really no reason for you to go anywhere else.”
“That’s a relief. I can’t say I’m inclined to.”
“How did you become a carpenter? Was your dad a carpenter?”
“No, my uncle was. I started working with him when I was twelve.” His dad had been a horse trainer and rancher, but Shane left that off.
“Hey, I got my first job at twelve, too! A taco joint.”
“You can work in a restaurant at twelve?”
“You can if you’ve just hit a growth spurt and they pay you cash under the table. I was so excited to have spending money, I don’t even think I kept track of how much they paid me. Three dollars an hour, probably. One of the perks of hiring child laborers.”
“Well, you were smarter than I was. My uncle figured I was earning an education. I didn’t get paid anything. But that’s typical for rural kids. You work the farm or ranch for the privilege of learning the life.”
“That’s so cool.”
Shane smiled. “It’s pretty damn boring, actually. Hanging around leathery old men all day. It can be torturous when you’re a teenager and there are never any girls around. The ones that are nearby are all mooning for the guys on the junior rodeo circuit.”
Merry gasped. “You did that, didn’t you?”
“Did what?”
She pointed a finger at his chest. “You did rodeo stuff. You saw all the girls paying attention to those boys and you joined the rodeo, didn’t you?”
Shane laughed. Hard. “First off, you don’t join the rodeo like you join the circus. But…yes, I may have tried a little calf roping in my day.”
“See, you are a cowboy!” She poked him, then her gaze drifted down to his chest, and she poked him one more time as if she were testing his give. She drew her hand back slowly.
“You wouldn’t say that if you saw how badly I lost to the real cowhands. And I discovered that it wasn’t just being a rodeo cowboy that got you attention from girls, but actually doing well at it. Rodeo losers are no different than other losers. Although…if you get injured, there are some girls who like playing nurse.”
“Oh, my God! Dirty!”
Something about her saying the word
dirty
was sexy as all hell. It didn’t help that his brain had flashed through a quick and happy dance down memory lane of his first kisses and teenage groping. Now he imagined making out with her, right here on her uncomfortable couch. Daring to move closer. Hoping she wouldn’t stop him.
He was staring at her, tempted as all hell to taste her, when he heard the faint trill of his phone ringing across the hall. He knew immediately who it was: his mother. Only one person called there. Everyone else called on his cell, but Shane had refused to give her that number. When she got a bug up her ass, she’d call incessantly, and she must have one now, because this was the third call since this afternoon.
Merry was watching him. He liked her eyes, always slightly turned up at the edges in a smile. And her mouth, wide and pink and tempting even when he shouldn’t be tempted.
He leaned back into the sofa and finished his beer.
He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to leave. But he shouldn’t want to kiss her, regardless. Merry was a nice girl. And he was a man no one needed to be around. Not for longer than a night. He’d learned that lesson. He knew who he was.
Merry Kade was not the kind of girl he could sleep with and then make a polite and permanent exit from her life. First of all, because she very obviously wasn’t the one-night-stand type. In fact, she seemed inclined to make friends with anyone who came within earshot, as far as he could tell. Second, because Grace would likely castrate him if he used her friend for sex, and Cole might happily hold him down to help his girlfriend out. Third, and perhaps most important, was the fact that she lived next door. Not exactly a comfortable situation even with the most open-minded of women. He’d had long-term “friends” who were happy with nothing more than casual sex, but neither he nor they had ever flaunted other lovers in each other’s faces. Not cool.
Close proximity had never come up as a problem in the past, since no women had lived in the building. He was going to have to add it to his off-limit list.
“So are you saying you never did anything stupid to get attention from boys?” he finally asked.
Merry yelped with laughter. “Me? Boys never noticed me! I was tall and awkward and into
Star Wars
and video games.”
“But boys love
Star Wars.
”
“Strangely, that love isn’t transferrable. Unless you’re the kind of girl who likes to dress up as the Jabba the Hut slave version of Princess Leia.”
Oh, yeah. He’d never been that into
Star Wars,
but he sure remembered that scene.
“So…just to be clear…you never dressed up like that?”
“Shane!”
“Maybe just once? For a Halloween party when you were eighteen? Work with me here.”
“Good God, it even infected cowboys in the wilds of Wyoming.”
“Hey, we had satellite dishes and VCRs. And active fantasy lives.”
Merry groaned. “No, I only dressed up as Princess Leia once, and that was the kick-ass rebel fighter Leia.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Figures,” she sighed, then shook her head in disgust. “Wait a minute. Have you ever seen
Firefly?
”
“No. Is that a
Star Trek
thing?”
“Star Wars,”
she muttered. “And no. It’s a completely awesome sci-fi series that’s like an epic space Western. You have to watch it. Have to!”
“Okay.”
“Seriously. We’ll rent the first episode one night, okay? Please?”
Shane found himself grinning wildly at her, but told himself it was probably just the beer. “Let’s do that.”
He liked this girl. Really liked her, which settled the issue. He couldn’t touch her. And he definitely couldn’t sleep with her. Not unless he wanted to live with the sure chance that at some point in the future she’d hate his guts. Even without the complication of the lawsuit, it always ended the same for him.
He couldn’t commit. Women tried to accept that, but eventually they left and made clear that he was an asshole and an immature prick. He was. There was no denying his genes.
Shane dropped his head. “Next time, let’s do that.”
Reluctantly he stood and set his empty beer bottle down. “I’d better go. I’ve got an early start tomorrow, but I’ll try to get to Providence in the evening.”
“Don’t wear yourself out. I feel guilty enough as it is.”
“It’s not a problem,” he said. And the strange thing was…it wasn’t. His goal was to make sure that Providence was never anything more than its current state: a forgotten ghost town remembered only by a few old-timers. But somehow being out there with Merry was the most relaxing thing he did all day. Knowing she was close by, even when he couldn’t see her…he liked that. He’d like it even more if she came by and bothered him as much as he’d expected her to.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Merry.”
“Night, Shane.”
He closed the door behind him and waited to hear her lock it. Somehow the world was heavier out here, and the weight only got worse as he walked the few steps to his door.
Hearing the beep from his answering machine as soon as he stepped in, Shane grabbed the phone in resignation and called his mother.
“Mom, it’s late,” he said without greeting her. “I have to get up early tomorrow.”
“I know, hon, but it’s important.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Well, you know. As okay as it ever gets. But listen to this new story I found.”
“Just—” he interrupted, then paused to take a deep breath so he wouldn’t lose his temper with her. “Mom, please. It’s the internet. I’ve explained before that—”
“Yes, yes. You can’t believe everything you read on the internet. But that doesn’t mean some of it’s not true.”
He couldn’t argue with that, unfortunately. He couldn’t, but he’d tried plenty of times.
“Listen! ‘A sixty-five-year-old man whom locals in Guyana call The Gringo is rumored to be an American man who appeared without any identification in 1998, claiming to have no memory of who he was or where he’d come from. The man—’”
“Dad left years before that.”
“I know! But what if he’d just been wandering? What if—?”
“Mom!” he snapped. “Dad left and he didn’t want to be found, end of story. I’m not having this conversation with you anymore.”
“But, honey, he would never have done that. Never. Not to you boys and not to me.”
Shane ground his teeth together because he didn’t want to say the cruel things that were piling up in his throat.
Dad was having an affair. He had a girlfriend. He bought a trailer and hooked it to his truck and he left with her. He didn’t love you or give a shit about any of us. He wanted a place where we didn’t exist.
But he choked it down and swallowed hard. “No one ever found his truck or the trailer. If he’d been hurt or suffering from amnesia—of all the ridiculous things I’ve ever heard—someone would’ve reported an abandoned truck to the police.”
“Or they might have seen a free truck sitting next to the road and stolen it!”
Shane couldn’t count the number of times they’d had this exact conversation. “It would’ve turned up at some point, Mom.” He sighed. “Someone somewhere would’ve run the VIN at some point, and we would’ve heard. He ran off, he disappeared, he made a new life. And at some point he died, or he’s dead enough according to the state of Wyoming.” He’d been declared dead ten years ago and good riddance to all the ridiculous problems the man had caused with paperwork and taxes and every other damn thing he’d walked away from.
“But, Shane, just listen to the rest of the—”
“I’ve got to get up early. Take care.” He hung up, not feeling even a twinge of guilt. He’d done it too many times to feel that anymore.
When he’d been a kid, his mom’s wild imaginings and excuses and explanations had kept him hoping. He’d believed her and she’d strung him along for years. At the drop of a hat, she’d pull him and his brother out of school and pack them into the car to drive hundreds of miles because of some rumor.
Alex had been pissed off from the start, raging that he never wanted to see their dad again even if they did find him. But Shane… He’d held on to his love for too many years and had only opened his eyes on the day Alex himself had skipped town, leaving nothing but a terse note. Alex had been right the whole time. Dad wasn’t coming back. The man had walked away and ruined his family without even a second thought.
At nineteen, Shane had legally changed his name to his mother’s maiden name. He’d cut off his dad’s family entirely, which hadn’t exactly been difficult. The only one left was his grandfather and stepgrandmother, neither of whom had ever been warm or supportive. Hell, the old man had even screwed Shane over in the end.
Shit.
Shane hadn’t planned the lawsuit. Hadn’t even wanted it at first. But the provisions for the creation of the Providence Historical Trust had been a last minute addition before Gideon Bishop’s death, and Shane’s lawyer had said he’d be a fool not to demand the money that should’ve gone with the land. He knew Gideon Bishop had created the trust out of spite. The man had told Shane as much when he’d refused to change his name back to Bishop. But when Shane had realized that the trust involved creating a tourist trap on his land, and what a fucking waste that would be, Shane had gone all in. Screw it. Everything had been meant to go to his father, the last living descendant of that generation. And from there to Shane and Alex.
He was fighting his grandfather’s will. He was getting what was rightfully his. And he couldn’t let it matter to him whether he liked Merry or not.
CHAPTER SIX
“
N
O
,”
M
ERRY
BREATHED
, eyes wide and heart pounding. She stared at a spider poised on the ceiling of the small room, but the horror of the spider didn’t come close to the words her mother had just spoken. In fact, Merry didn’t even run from the room. The spider crawled toward a fly caught in its web, and Merry just stood there and listened to her mother chatter in her ear.
“Mom. Wait. Please tell me you didn’t say what you just said.”
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“Crystal,” she whispered, hoping her mom would laugh and ask where in the world she’d gotten that. But that’s not what happened.
“She’ll be there tonight! Not to stay with you, of course.”
Of course. Crystal didn’t stay with relatives when she traveled. She stayed in avant-garde hotels with espresso machines in the rooms and turndown service.
“She doesn’t want to see me, does she?” Merry asked past clenched teeth.
“Of course she does! Honey, it’ll be fine.”
Merry took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Maybe it would be fine. As far as Crystal was concerned, Merry had a good job and she was living in a beautiful place. She didn’t know that it was all a lie. “She’s not so bad,” her mom said in a familiar, admonishing tone. “And we don’t have enough family that you can pick and choose.”
God, Merry had been hearing that since she was a kid. But her mom was right. Crystal wasn’t so bad. Her perfect glow just put all of Merry’s shortcomings in a spotlight…that she went to the trouble of aiming into Merry’s eyes whenever she got the chance.
“How’s it going there, sweetie?”
“Great!” she said too brightly. She opened her eyes to find she’d lost track of the spider and now she couldn’t see it. Merry backed slowly out onto the porch. “It’s great, Mom. Really busy but fun.”