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  Not unless he felt like turning into his old man, that was, which was about the only thing that scared him worse than commitment.

  Warmth broke through his worries—the warmth of Abilene’s thigh through his jeans, and her upper arm against his bare elbow. She was short, maybe five-two, small framed but . . . plump? Casey didn’t know what the acceptable term was to use in front of a girl, but you could say she was a little chubby, and had been even before her pregnancy had begun to show. It didn’t bother him one bit. Her skin looked crazy-soft. Soft like her heavy Texas accent. When his dick got the better of him, he’d imagine how his hands would look on that skin, how she’d feel like heaven under his palms. Casey didn’t discriminate when it came to women’s bodies, and Abilene’s was everything essentially feminine to him. Petite and . . . and lush.

  It did things to him, even now. Always had. Probably always would.

  Though it really shouldn’t. She was too young, for one, and she was his employee to boot—she tended bar at Benji’s three afternoons a week. And on top of all that, she’d gone into labor nearly two weeks early, while they’d been closing up together, and had given birth in the back of Casey’s car, halfway to the nearest decent hospital in Elko, in the dead of night.

  He’d had a crush from the second he’d laid eyes on her and hit on her and asked her out a hundred times—fruitlessly—before he’d found out she was pregnant, but he’d never so much as kissed her. Never really even touched her in any meaningful way before he’d found himself kneeling between her legs, getting screamed at, trying not to hyperventilate as a squalling baby had been born into his shaking hands.

  Still, that had been four months ago, give or take, and since then his old desire had crept back in—and worse than ever, if he wasn’t mistaken. No matter that he knew Abilene was over whatever she’d once felt for him. Motherhood ate up all her energy, and it really ought to have desexualized her in Casey’s eyes as well . . . but in truth, he was straight up in awe of her now. And protective, as well, a sensation that always wired straight between a man’s legs, it seemed.

  So for a half dozen excellent reasons, Casey pretended he felt for Abilene what she now did for him—a brother-sister-type affection, nothing more.

  He’d always been a goddamned good liar.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “I was really hoping to give you a decent night’s sleep for a change.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Abilene murmured, soothing Mercy. “Phones ring. Babies cry. I got four whole hours in. That’s more than I would have if I was on my own tonight.”

  “You’re not on your own—you’ve got Christine, too.”

  Abilene and the baby had moved here to Three C a week ago. Trouble was on its way, in the form of Mercy’s father getting paroled. Guy was a gunrunner with a quick temper, the story went, and their breakup hadn’t been pretty.

  “Yeah, Christine’s great for a couple hours’ babysitting in the afternoon, but that’s all I can bear to ask of her.”

  True. Miah’s mom put in sixteen-hour days around the ranch, same as the men. “She frigging loves Mercy, though,” Casey said.

  Abilene smirked. “Miah better get busy and make her some grandbabies before she steals one . . . Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. That was mean.”

  “No, that’s true. She’s broody as fuck. Oh, shit—shoot. Sorry.”

  Abilene shook her head. “You and that mouth . . . Would you fix me a bottle? That might calm her down.”

  “Sure.”

  Casey went to the kitchen and turned on a burner under a pot of water. He mixed the formula with a few good shakes of the bottle, switched off the stove, set the bottle in the pot to heat. Mercy preferred it warm, especially at night. So weird that she could have preferences, and a personality, when at four months old she was still little more than a good-smelling fat loaf—alternately angelic and livid. So weird that he even had this skill set, when four months ago he’d never so much as held an infant. Not that he was much of a natural. He still wound up putting on her diapers backward half the time.

  When the bottle’s temp seemed about right, he emptied the pot down the sink and swirled the formula as he headed back into the den.

  Abilene accepted it, giving it a feel. “Perfect, as always.”

  “I’m like a human thermometer.”

  “Between you and the human poop machine,” she said, nodding to the baby, “I’m starting to feel left out of the superpowers club.” The baby took the nipple and Abilene broke into a smile that Casey knew way too well—a quick grin, stifled by a shy bite of her lip. Relief.

  “Tell me about the house,” he whispered.

  Abilene’s dream house, that was, an ever-evolving vision of the kind of home she’d like to move into with Mercy someday, if she could ever afford it.

  “Nothing fancy,” she murmured. That was how it always started. “One story is fine. With a little yard, at least, big enough to run around in. And a white fence.”

  “What color’s the house?”

  “Also white. With red shutters and a red mailbox. And a red door.”

  “How many bedrooms?” he asked, and absently reached out to squeeze Mercy’s tiny foot in its yellow sock.

  “Just two. Plus a living room, and a kitchen big enough to eat in. And a washer and dryer—I never want to step inside another Laundromat for the rest of my life.”

  Casey laughed, smiled to himself. He’d ask her this question again, the next time they found themselves side by side this way, late at night. Each time, something new—the shutters, the fence, the mailbox, now two rooms and a washer and dryer. Next time, maybe curtains. And someday, he imagined, a Mr. Right to fill out the scene. Something hot squirmed inside him at the thought. Something hot and deeply pointless, as Casey was about as wrong for such a gig as a man could get. Even if some hint of Abilene’s old crush still lived inside her, he couldn’t be what she needed. He had no business promising anything real to anyone, and a kid raised the stakes a hundredfold.

  He gave the suckling baby’s wispy hair a faint stroke. “She has my eyes, you know.”

  Abilene straightened and rolled her own blue eyes. “Now, that would be a miracle of genetics.”

  In more ways than one; Casey didn’t expect he’d ever have kids of his own. He wasn’t cut out for it, for starters, and he also didn’t entirely trust his own DNA. His mother had gone crazy in her early forties, and he had good reason to suspect the same fate might be in store for him. Like her, he suffered from occasional spells, like seizures. What exactly was wrong with him, he wasn’t certain, but he knew for damn sure he had no business making promises he couldn’t keep, not to a woman, and certainly not to a child. It wouldn’t be fair to them, and it wasn’t fair to him, either. Why torture yourself with a taste of that stuff, if it was only going to get ripped away?

  Still, there definitely was something to babies. He’d never thought about them much before meeting this one, but they were good. Squishy to hold, infinitely simple in their needs, entertaining, nice to look at.

  “You remember when she was born,” Casey asked, “the very first words she ever heard anybody say?”

  “‘Bleeping hell, Abilene,’” she quoted, laughing, “‘I’m on a mother-bleeping lease.’”

  “In retrospect, ‘Welcome to the world’ might’ve been nicer.”

  “At least your insurance covered new seats.”

  Casey nodded. “Good to know emergency birth counts as an act of God.”

  “It ought to, considering all the blasphemy involved.”

  They fell quiet, and Casey studied her once her eyes had shut. He’d known her since the previous summer, worked with her on and off at the bar, both before and after he’d become co-owner of the place. Granted, he’d known her mostly while she was pregnant and stressed-out, but he still couldn’t say he’d ever seen her as calm as she’d been since the baby had been born. Exhausted, sure, but at peace, too, he could tell. Like someone who’d found what it was they were
supposed to be doing. He knew that sensation himself—missed the shit out of it. But he was happy for her. It was only a shame this peace was about to get disrupted. It was technically Monday now, and that meant her ex was out on parole tomorrow.

  Just looking at her, with those worries nagging . . . Goddamn, his body didn’t even know what to do with it all. How did men even survive having wives and children, Casey had to wonder, when he felt this mixed-up and protective over a woman he could only really call a friend, and a child who wasn’t even his? That shit must feel deep enough to drown in some days.

  Though to a better man than me, he thought, it might feel like a nice way to go.

  Chapter 3

  The old farmhouse was chilly, winter finding Abilene’s feet through the broad floorboards and her socks. She shuffled out of the guest bedroom around seven with Mercy strapped to her chest in the baby sling. She may have failed at breastfeeding, but the scoldy-mother brigade couldn’t fault her efforts on the wearing-your-infant front. What the benefits were meant to be, she couldn’t remember. It felt like there were a dozen differing ways to be a good mom, and a million ways to mess it up.

  “A woman’s highest calling is to be a good wife and mother,” her father’s cool voice echoed. She shivered. He’d be horrified to see her now, but no matter—she had no wish to see him ever again.

  Am I a good mother? I couldn’t breastfeed. But what was that shortcoming, really, compared to getting involved with Mercy’s father to begin with? I was a different person when we met. She’d grown up a lot since finding out she was pregnant. She might not have everything figured out—not remotely—but she had her priorities in order, at least.

  And she was a good mother, besides. Maybe she was unmarried, maybe she had no clue what she was doing half the time, but she loved her daughter, and she showed that love. It was more than her father could claim to have done for her. And I’m protecting her. Abilene’s mama had never protected her—not from her father’s judgment and suffocating beliefs, and not from the perils and temptations of the larger world, after she’d run away from home.

  The guest bathroom was cold, the lightbulb seeming grumpy as it flickered to life. She brushed her teeth, eyeing herself in the mirror. Eyeing Mercy, and only half comprehending how it was she was here.

  Same as how everything happens to me—I screwed up.

  At least this time, there was a gem to be found in the rubble of the fallout. She smoothed her baby’s soft hair and watched her tiny lashes flutter. It seemed unreal that someone as messed up as Abilene could have created something so perfect.

  It hadn’t even been Abilene who’d told her ex about Mercy—it had been Casey’s older brother, Vince. Vince had done time with James, a year before Abilene had moved to Nevada.

  Well, not moved to. Not exactly. Abilene tended more often to simply find herself in new places, more a matter of mishap than intention.

  That was the story of her life, right there, she thought as she headed downstairs. Flight following mistake, following flight, following mistake, again and again and again. She’d screwed up, getting involved with her ex, and been swept here to the Churches’ ranch for her own safety. She entered the empty kitchen, finding coffee warming in the pot and a plate of muffins on the oversized trestle table. She helped herself to both, settling on the long wooden bench.

  She wanted better for her daughter than all that aimless wandering. She wanted her to have dreams and to make plans, and to move through the world with intentional steps that led her toward her goals. To carry herself to the destinations she chose. She didn’t want her to be a brittle, helpless leaf, blown from place to place, propelled only by a need to escape, and never by desire.

  Freedom—that was what she wanted for her daughter. Freedom of choice, and freedom from the guilt and shame and repression Abilene had grown up shackled by, and from the oppressive environment that had driven her to such extremes in the name of rebellion.

  She glanced down and found muffin crumbs on Mercy’s head. Catching footsteps creaking from the direction of the den, she brushed them away.

  “Casey?” She’d left him sleeping upright on the couch and found him in the exact same position when she’d crept through the den this morning.

  He strolled in, rubbing his face. “Morning. Again. When did you two ditch me?”

  “A few minutes before four, I think. You passed out. So did Mercy.”

  “And you?” Casey asked, pulling a bowl from a cabinet. “You get any more sleep?”

  “An hour or so.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, man. I get less than six and I might as well be drunk.”

  Abilene checked him out while he was distracted, fixing himself a bowl of cornflakes. Her libido had begun to return, if tentatively, and she was starting to take note of certain things for the first time in months.

  Case in point, she was discovering all over again how much she loved Casey’s arms . . . and probably because that was the most of his skin she ever got to see. He wore button-ups and T-shirts, and while they fit nicely, they didn’t give much away. A fine pair of normal-guy biceps—lean and muscular, but not beefy like his brother’s or her ex’s. His forearms were just as nice, with blond hair and about half as many freckles as he’d had back in the summer. The hair on his head was a bit darker than when they’d met, more strawberry than blond now, but his beard had stayed the same—a brazen shade of red. Where he got that from, she couldn’t guess, nor those bright blue eyes. He looked nothing like his black-haired, hazel-eyed tower of an older brother. And that suited Abilene just fine.

  Casey was a nice, normal-sized man, with better things to do, she imagined, than spend his spare time lifting weights.

  What those things might be, however, she couldn’t guess. He was awfully cagey about what he’d done for a living before he’d returned to his hometown last August. But she could handle that. She had plenty of secrets of her own she didn’t plan on sharing.

  Heck, Casey didn’t even know her real name.

  There was something about him, though . . . something that set him apart from all her exes. It was in the way he stood and the way he talked. It was in the easy way he held himself, and in the old Chuck Taylors he wore when he wasn’t in motorcycle boots. He’d be thirty-four on April fifth, more than a decade her senior . . . though he believed she was a couple years older than she was.

  He had more than ten years on her, yet in some ways Casey seemed like a teenager. Normally that wasn’t a plus for a woman, but Abilene’s own teenage years had been forfeited. She’d never experienced young love as she should have, never been with a guy and had it be about fun, about exploring like dumb, eager kids. She was always the student, with men. An innocent in need of teaching, or saving, or corrupting. She’d fantasized a thousand times about how sex with Casey would be, and not even in a horny way—not since her hormones had banished her sex drive, at least.

  He’d be eager, she bet. Silly, and energetic, and shameless. Up for anything, and every emotion he felt would be right there on his face. She loved his voice, too—not deep like his brother’s, but soft, and sexy when he spoke low, late at night. What would he say, in bed? She swallowed, unable to guess but knowing it’d be brash. His ears and throat and cheeks would be bright pink, like they got when he was embarrassed. No guile, just proof that he wanted her. Lust bloomed at the thought, chased by a different heat—shame. The two were as married inside her as bees and their stingers, a product of the strict breed of Christianity she’d been raised in and formed by. The lust, she knew now, was wholly natural, a force from deep in her body. The shame was all in her head. Though knowing that didn’t keep her from feeling it.

  Where Casey was concerned, though, fantasies were all she got. Good as he’d been to her, as both a boss and a friend, she knew it shouldn’t ever be more than that. She knew he’d been to prison, but for what crime, she wasn’t sure and frankly didn’t want to know. For her, it was enough to know that he’d done time. Enou
gh to tell her that letting this crush grow any deeper would just be history repeating itself yet again. For her daughter’s sake, she had to pick with her head the next time she fell hard for somebody.

  And though she and Casey weren’t meant to be, she welcomed the what-if daydreams. She’d missed being sexual these past months, and feeling the surge of power that came with it.

  She might not be the most obvious sex object, but the whole petite-girl-with-big-eyes thing worked on some guys, and she’d always gotten a rush from seeing that glint in a man’s eye. The power she felt, feeling wanted like that . . .

  Sure, she’d been led astray, but never all that unwillingly, she could admit.

  “Refill?” Casey asked, tipping the coffeepot to his own mug.

  “No, thanks. One’s probably plenty. Hoping I might steal a nap, if Mercy goes down at ten like she has been.”

  “Good thinking.” He took a seat across from her, eyeing the baby. “You spill anything on her?”

  “Not yet,” she fibbed, spreading butter on the second half of her muffin. You didn’t spill crumbs, she reasoned. You dropped them. No one told you crap like that about motherhood—how you’d accidentally drip oatmeal on your poor baby’s head, or sneeze on her, or otherwise undermine your dignity on an hourly basis.

  “What are you up to today?” she asked.

  “Meeting my brother and Duncan, before Benji’s opens,” Casey said. Duncan was his co-owner at the bar, her other boss. “To finalize plans.”

  She knew what he meant—plans to do with what might happen once her ex was released tomorrow morning. After her shift tonight, Abilene would be hanging up her bar towel until further notice, and Vince would probably be arranging to meet with James, to take the temperature of the situation. She was afraid of the details. As long as Casey or Miah was nearby, she felt safe.