Ride It Out Read online

  Also by Cara McKenna

  The Sins in the City Novels

  Crosstown Crush

  Downtown Devil

  Midtown Masters

  The Desert Dogs Novels

  Lay it Down

  Give it All

  Drive it Deep

  Burn it Up

  Other Novels

  After Hours

  Unbound

  Hard Time

  Ride It Out

  A Desert Dogs Novel

  Cara McKenna

  INTERMIX

  NEW YORK

  INTERMIX

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Cara McKenna

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN: 9780399585487

  First Edition: September 2017

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Also by Cara McKenna

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Jeremiah leaned back, welcoming the late August sun to warm his face, his closed eyelids. Welcoming the rough wood of a fence post against one palm and the whisper of long, soft hair against the other. The wet heat of a woman’s mouth around his cock. Welcoming this brief escape from reality, above all.

  He felt his jeans slipping and let the girl’s hair go to clutch his belt to his hip. Release was close, its tension licking down his spine and gathering hot in his belly.

  “God, don’t stop.” He urged her head gently, needing that speed, that pressure. “Just like that. Please.”

  Please, give him this relief. A few minutes’ peace. A few minutes of forgetting.

  She took him deep as he came, then swallowed with a shy smile as he helped her up. She was beautiful, really. Near-black hair, blue eyes. Clear, creamy skin.

  But far too young—nearly fifteen years his junior.

  And worse than that, his employee.

  In no time the relief was ebbing, reality intruding with a side of embarrassment. It was the third time this week they’d wound up out here behind the stables, the third time they’d done exactly this. Jesus Christ, what was wrong with him? He buckled his belt, feeling awkward and ashamed. This wasn’t like him, using a woman this way. Giving nothing back aside from the attention she seemed to relish. She dusted off her knees and he pulled her close, more out of guilt than true affection. He kissed her temple, stroked that soft hair. Gave her a pale imitation of what she surely wanted from him.

  He murmured, “Thank you,” and he meant it. He felt her fist his shirt at either side of his ribs. You’re wasting your attachment. I don’t deserve it. Can’t return it.

  A smile warmed her voice. “You’re welcome.”

  “You can do better than this, you know.” He said it without meaning to, but with the dam cracked, honesty spilled out. “Better than this . . . what we’ve been doing.”

  An airy giggle as she stepped away. “I like what we’ve been doing, Miah.”

  “I do, too,” he fibbed. In truth he only liked it for as long as the promise lasted, as long as it took to come. Once that spell wore off? Nothing but the stress and grief and anger he’d been trying to forget. “But I’m your boss. It’s not okay.”

  “Feels more than okay.”

  Shit. He thought he knew that tone. The voice of a woman who cared for a man, of one who hoped for more.

  It was the tone he’d once waited to hear in Raina Harper’s voice, the one that had never come. He was in danger of getting this girl’s hopes up. A girl who wanted more than an empty man like Miah could ever hope to give.

  “I’ve gotta get back, Den. Thank you, for . . . this.” They’d need to have a serious talk about this, and soon, but not just now. Just now he was being one hell of a shitty host.

  Denny gave his arm a squeeze then shot him a final mischievous smirk over her shoulder as she started walking back toward the hands’ bunkhouse. Not walking, actually—sauntering.

  “Goddamn.” He took off his old Stetson, ran a hand through his hair and felt his stomach fold in on itself. Far from an unfamiliar sensation these past few months.

  From the distance came a boisterous whoop, the sound of a party passing him by. He hiked back toward the farmhouse feeling about eighty.

  He kept his eyes on the white marquee tent erected on the lawn, avoiding the spot to his left where the old barn had stood until that hateful afternoon at the close of winter when it had burned to the ground. With his father inside it.

  It was you they wanted.

  He shook his head, gritted his teeth, and shoved those sickening words from his mind with the force of a bull.

  Up the hill, guests milled and laughed, chatting and dancing to music playing through the speakers perched on Miah’s open truck bed. Though the song was a fast one, the bride and groom were meandering in lazy circles, faces close, smiles wide. Miah mustered a smile of his own, feeling about half as happy as he wished he was.

  He’d thought the wedding would be a welcome distraction. He’d thought he was ready for a little fun, six months on from the tragedy and the confusion and the stress that the fire had unleashed, but he wasn’t. Melodramatic as it sounded, his heart felt dead. The parts that were still pink and pulsing had just enough strength to be there for his mother, but the rest had gone cold. Hard like leather, black as charred wood.

  “Miah!”

  He turned at his mother’s voice, finding her making her way with overloaded arms from the farmhouse and across the lawn toward the party. He hurried over.

  “Here, give me those.” He wrestled two six-packs of soda away, leaving her with just plastic-wrapped stacks of paper plates and napkins to carry.

  “I was managing.” And she was—she was strong, always had been. Her long black hair might sport more gray than it had in recent years, or indeed recent months, but her tall, athletic frame was still the envy of plenty of women even half her age. Nevertheless, widowhood had aged her. It had slowed her, and brought a melancholy to her dark eyes that Miah had never seen there before.

  “I’ll get these in a cooler,” he said. “You need me for something?”

  “I was only going to ask if we’re low on anything else.”

  Miah felt his face heat. “I’m not sure—I had to step away for a bit. One of the hands needed something.” His stomach lurched anew. “I’ll do a sweep, see how we are for cups and condiments.”

  “Thanks. Dishes are under control inside.”

  “Make sure you take some time out to have fun,” he said.

  “I will. The groom himself reserved a dance with me, in fact.” Her smile was warm but weak, and Miah couldn’t help but think the same thing she must be thinking—that it was his late father, her own groom once upon a time, that she ought to be looking forward to a dance with. Anger bloomed inside him, a familiar sensation, hot as lava and just as slow to cool. He willed it away, failing as usual.

  Miah found homes for the warm sodas in a dwindling cooler. He went inside for a fresh bag of ice, then filled himself a cup from the keg, hoping it might cool the fire inside him, but also knowing full well that it stood no more chance at giving him true peace than Denny’s fleeting attentions.

  He spotted his best friend standing at the edge of the crowd, nursing a beer of his own, eyes on the festivities. Vince’s girlfriend Kim was busy with her camera, photographing the reception. She was dressed for the occasion, in a sundress and fancy sandals, while Vince looked like he’d just hopped off his motorcycle. Which he had.

  At least he shaved. Miah couldn’t sa
y as much. He probably hadn’t shaved in three months, though he’d tidied his beard after he’d wrapped his ranch duties for the afternoon, and he’d changed, if only into clean jeans and a button-up shirt. He picked his way through the crowd to Vince.

  “Not bad, as weddings go,” Miah said, sidling up.

  “Too fucking soon.”

  Miah smiled and nodded, took a sip of his beer. “Maybe. But when has your brother ever waited when he had his heart set on something?”

  “Too fucking true.”

  Casey and Abilene had been together for six months, maybe not even that long. She had a baby from a previous relationship to boot, and Casey had always been the poster boy for flighty self-interest. But Miah was hopeful. The guy had grown up a lot since he’d come home to Fortuity.

  “Whatever you think of the timing, this is how I’d go,” Miah said, nodding at the scene. Picnic tables and hay bales, white Christmas lights strung from trees and the corners of the marquee, guests dressed however they liked, dancing on the grass in cowboy boots and bare feet. “No tuxes, no thousand-dollar florist bills. No pretense.”

  “BYOB,” Vince added, smirking.

  “Hey, I paid for the keg.” True, though—the reception was basically a potluck, plus some good roadside barbecue from the restaurant Casey co-owned. “This how you picture you and Kim’s big day?” Miah asked.

  Vince snorted. “Cool your jets.”

  “Kim dropped any hints since Case put a ring on Abilene’s finger?”

  “Not a one. She’s in no more of a hurry than I am.”

  Miah scanned the lawn, finding his mother now talking with a couple of her friends by the buffet tables. He tried to conjure images from old photo albums, to remember what his parents’ wedding had looked like. He’d never been interested in those pictures when he’d been a kid, way more preoccupied with the old shots of the ranch and the animals. Now he was half tempted to jog inside and dig them out, lay his eyes on the man his father had been in his midtwenties.

  Shit, midtwenties. By twenty-eight, Miah’s dad had been running Three C, and was a husband and father to boot. Miah was thirty-five, and though he was in charge of the ranch’s daily operations, he felt like an imposter. He was no closer to getting married and starting a family than he had been ten years ago, and he wasn’t gun-shy about settling down. Or hadn’t been, before his heart had gone so hard and cold.

  He wished his dad were here. He wished he’d had a chance to grill him about how to be a boss and a father and a husband before he’d gone. Every time somebody told Miah he was strong and resilient and a good boss and citizen and son, all he felt like was a paler and paler shadow of the man he wished was still here with him. The man he’d always looked up to like a god. The one he knew now he could never replace.

  His eyes kept wandering, settling on his ex, Raina Harper. She was dancing with one of the ranch hands. Her boyfriend, Duncan, was apparently occupied elsewhere and probably not much on dancing, besides.

  “Hey, now.”

  Miah snapped out of his fog at Vince’s words, and craned his neck to see what his friend was looking at.

  A cruiser. A Brush County Sheriff’s Department cruiser pulling up along the front fence, not bothering with the packed lot. The driver’s door popped open and a slim woman clad in BCSD khaki stepped out. Even without the uniform, Deputy Ritchey was impossible to mistake—she had to be one of only a dozen black folks in all of Brush County, and the only one working for the sheriff’s department. She stood with her hands on her hips, studying the festivities as though debating whether or not to intrude.

  Miah handed Vince his cup without a word. It had been at least two weeks since Deputy Ritchey had come by—two weeks without any updates on the ongoing murder case. An eternity. He crossed the front lawn at a run, just as the deputy was climbing back inside her car.

  “Hey! Deputy, wait!”

  She turned at his shout and straightened up, slammed her door. Miah trotted to a halt on the opposite side of the fence.

  “Afternoon, Miah.”

  “Deputy Ritchey.” He dipped his hat. “Saw you pull up.”

  “Looks like quite a party.”

  “My best friend’s brother got married this afternoon. Casey Grossier.”

  She nodded, brows rising at the name. “Ah, the infamous Grossiers. This is the younger one, right?”

  “Yeah. Red hair, beard? He owns Benji’s now. Anyhow, that’s their reception, back there.”

  “That’s nice. Well, don’t let me keep you.”

  “Did you have any news?” Any clues, any breakthroughs regarding who’d hired a former employee of Three C, Chris Bean, to shoot Miah’s father and then try to make it look like an accident by burning the barn down with him inside it.

  Miah had hunted the arsonist down, shot him in the leg, and probably tipped him over the edge into methamphetamine-induced shock. Bean had died in the ambulance before he’d had a chance to spill anything more than the fact that he’d been hired for the job. And that Miah, not his father, had been his intended target. So far there’d been no real leads, not a single scrap to go on in pursuit of whoever had given the orders.

  And as Deputy Ritchey shook her head, Miah felt his body slump.

  “Nothing?” He had to wonder, was the continued drought of progress down to slick conspirators or incompetent investigators?

  “Sorry,” she said. “Trust me, I’ve been asking the detectives about it every chance I get, but . . . nothing. I’m sorry, Miah.”

  “Not your fault, Deputy.”

  “Nicki,” she reminded him, for probably the thousandth time.

  “Nicki. Sorry, I was raised to respect a lawman. Lawwoman. Lawperson.” His face grew warm.

  “Every time I call you Mr. Church, I get corrected,” she said with a little smile, a flash of white teeth. “I really wish you’d extend me the same discourtesy.”

  “I’ll try, Nicki.” It was a nice name, after all. It fit her—a perky name that went with that smile and the burst of tight curls pulled back by her hair elastic.

  He leaned on the fence, dead tired and nowhere close to as drunk as he wished he could get today. “Can I ask what brought you by?”

  “I just wanted to see how you guys are doing. It’s been a while.” She’d been coming by at least once a week until recently, at first to check up on Miah and his mom in the wake of the murder and offer any news from the BCSD, and then just as a friend. She and Miah had about as much in common as a former Chicago beat cop and a fifth-generation cattle rancher could hope to. Both had followed in their father’s professional footsteps, and both had lost those fathers to a bullet. He liked her. Respected her. It couldn’t be easy, being a young black woman doing her job around here.

  “We’re holding up,” Miah said, not even sure if it was true. “Finally got a new foreman hired, at least.” That freed Miah up to take his father’s reins officially, though they still felt leaden in his hands.

  “That’s good.”

  “How about you?” he asked. “How’s your boy?”

  “Good,” she said, nodding, then frowning. Rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she corrected. “He’s not looking forward to school starting back up, but that’s life.”

  “Must be hard. I got enough shit just being half Native. He the only black kid in his class?”

  “In his school.” Her smile was grim. “Plus Matty’s young—he doesn’t turn eleven until October. He’s tough, though.”

  “He have a good summer?”

  “He was bored out of his skull, to be honest. He’s been back in Chicago with my ex for the past week, drinking his fill of city life. I’m picking him and my mom up from the airport on Wednesday, first thing. School starts Thursday.”

  Miah couldn’t imagine any kid being bored cut loose in Fortuity, but then again he’d never been a city person. He’d grown up with thousands of acres to run free in, animals to train, and endless chores to keep him busy.

  “All Matty’s going to want to do is play video games once he’s back,” Nicki said, “and I’m half tempted to let him. My mom’ll order him outside and tell him to play basketball, but honestly, I think it only reminds him he hasn’t really made any friends yet. I mean, the kid plays Horse by himself. I’m his mother and even I think that’s pretty damn sad.”