She grinned. “Yes. You do.” She took a deep breath, the grin softening into something sweeter. “And I love you with all I am.”
The kiss was close enough to coming home; he didn’t even care that they probably wouldn’t be back to Blue Valley before tomorrow. She was here. She was his. And that was more than enough to get them through.
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Outlaw Cowboy
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Read on for an excerpt from the next book in Nicole Helm’s Big Sky Cowboys series:
Outlaw Cowboy
Caleb Shaw stared at the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. It sat, innocently enough, on the table next to his snoring father.
In his mind’s eye, he unscrewed the black plastic cap and poured himself a double. And then another. The scorching heat of the amber liquid would dull away all the sharp edges inside of him.
Next to the bottle was that damn scrapbook Dad paraded out whenever he was drunk and sad. It was happening with increasing regularity. Caleb never wanted anything to do with the scrapbook. In fact, for an uncountable amount of time, he thought about tossing the damn thing in the fire.
In fact, he wanted both items gone. Banished forever. Hell, at this point in his life, he’d as soon use the alcohol to amp the blaze than drink it.
Liar.
Fair enough. His mouth was watering, and the edgy, simmering anger threatened to spill over. No amount of good seemed a match for it. And there had been good the past few months.
But it seemed like with him, bad always lurked in the shadows.
What would be the harm in one drink? His older sister would never know he’d broken his promise. She didn’t live here anymore. She’d left him with all of this for love.
“Caleb?”
Summer’s hesitant voice was enough for him to close his eyes. Christ, Summer. She was a blessing and some kind of curse, this younger sister he’d only found out about last year. Somehow she was managing to fill some of the holes Mel’s marriage and move had left in his life.
But, damn, he missed Mel. Sure, it wasn’t as if he never saw her. She was only across the valley on her husband’s strange little llama ranch, but he’d never felt responsible for Mel, and rarely felt like he needed to soothe her. Summer was in constant need of both.
It’s in you.
The voice that had haunted him growing up—the voice he thought he’d erased—had returned with Summer’s appearance and Dad’s confession. Honestly, it had resurfaced before that, when Mel had trusted him to be in charge when it was the last damn thing she should have done. No one should ever trust him. Hadn’t he proven that by now?
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Summer continued, her voice wavering.
Summer was constantly sorry. Sorry to be a burden or distraction. Sorry she didn’t know everything. If she wasn’t sorry, she was delighted: by the horses, by the mountains, by family.
She cooked and kept the house clean, for him and the father she’d only just met—the father who admitted she was his, but refused to have any interaction with her. Though, to be fair, Dad didn’t interact with much of anybody. Not since he’d been paralyzed six years ago.
It’s in you.
Mom’s voice. Mom’s accusation. The evil. It’s in you.
“I’d go away. It’s just…”
“Just what?” Caleb snapped, immediately wincing. Losing his temper with Summer was like losing his temper with a puppy. Puppies and Summer Shaw could not take harsh words. They cowered.
It was hardly her fault she reminded him of…that.
“I think someone’s in the cabin.”
He let out a breath. No Jack for him. Which was good. He hadn’t had any in nine months. Nine long, sober months living with that boiling anger, a constant presence he had to fight back. But he hadn’t broken his promise, so at least there wasn’t new guilt to mix in with the old anger. “Someone?”
“I went back to my caravan for lunch—”
“You can eat here, you know.” Something about the way she acted like a maid in a house that was very much owed to her always rubbed him the wrong way. She wouldn’t take Mel’s old room and she wouldn’t eat lunch at the main house. She’d only eat dinner with him if she’d cooked it. She slept in a little caravan she’d arrived in last year, parked at the edge of the property.
She was a Shaw, and she acted like an employee inside these four walls.
He hated it, and he had no one to tell. Mel was gone, a new focus in her life. Dad was…gone in his own way. And Summer cowered against his temper.
So he kept the anger inside. He tried to freeze it out, muscle it away, but it lingered, in him. Always.