“For a moment, the truck bucked against the barbed wire, the motor revving. The wheels dug up such a cloud of dust it filled the cab. Then the wire broke and we lurched forward and into a tree.”
Hardly aware she was doing it, she touched the faint ridge of a scar hidden in the hair by her temple. “I hit my head against the window post. Next thing I knew, the airbag was hanging out of the dash and smeared with blood, and Daddy was hunched over, grabbing at his chest and making terrible groaning, gasping noises. Like a cow having a calf, only worse.”
The words came faster. Her voice started to wobble. “At first, I thought his airbag had hurt him. I yelled at him and shook his shoulder. Panicky. Crying. Desperate to make him stop making those awful noises. But he didn’t.
“Until he did. And everything went quiet.”
Dalton’s silence weighted the air.
She struggled to take a deep breath. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. Hadn’t since that day.
And the words kept coming. “I always felt I should have done something. God knows I wanted to. But I didn’t know what. It was so quiet and still. Not real. So, I just sat there, watching blood soak into my jeans and hoping it would all go away.”
More silence.
Embarrassed to have blurted out such a thing, Raney gave a shaky laugh. “How’s that for a mood killer?”
When Dalton still didn’t respond, she looked over to see him staring at her, unmoving, the beer warming in his hand.
“I didn’t mean to burden you with all that,” she told him. “I just wanted you to know I understand why you might feel like you might be letting Timmy down.”
He set the beer aside and moved over to hunker beside her chair. The look in his eyes was as full of pain as the memories clutching at her throat.
“I’m sorry you went through that, Raney.” He cupped her cheek, his palm warm against her cold skin, his fingers so long they reached into her hair at her temple. “I would change it if I could.” Leaning in, he put his lips against hers. Gently. Briefly. Without passion. Like Daddy would do every night before he said good night and turned off the light.
It nearly broke her.
Then he drew back and looked so deeply into her eyes she felt stripped bare. “But I’m glad you told me.”
Then he rose and walked away.
CHAPTER 6
I’m in trouble now, Dalton thought, heels coming down hard on the packed-gravel drive as he walked toward the bunkhouse. It was probably written somewhere—in an FBI memo, or an OSHA manual, or a Supreme Court ruling—that it was against the law to kiss your boss. Workplace harassment, they’d call it. Rampant sexism. Toxic masculinity.
It hardly even qualified as a kiss. A quick, passionless press of his lips to hers. As a kid, he’d kissed his dog’s head the same way. Nothing to it. Almost fatherly. Meaningless, as far as kisses go. He could definitely do better.
But he wouldn’t.
Couldn’t even try.
Because she was his boss, and he didn’t want to be that guy.
He played it through his mind. Every word, every move, that sad, lost look in her eyes, the way her mouth trembled against his. A man and a woman and an expression of sympathy. He refused to consider it might have been more than that. Just an innocent kiss, that’s all.
With a woman who happened to be his boss.
Shit.
There was no way around it. Despite the power games she and her mother played, Raney was the boss of Whitcomb Four Star. It was Raney’s signature on the checks. Her voice issuing the orders. Her guidance the workers sought when they had a question or a problem. In only a few days, he had seen it happen again and again. No matter whose name was listed first on the deed, Raney ran the show.
And he wouldn’t be that guy. The one who overstepped, opened her to speculation and innuendo, diminished her in the eyes of the men who worked for her. He’d suffered that same kind of scrutiny since the day of his arrest. And he wouldn’t be the guy who brought it down on her.
Shit.
Doing an about-face, he walked back to the main house and knocked on the kitchen door. When Maria opened it, he said, “I need to see Mrs. Whitcomb as soon as she’s available.”
* * *
Raney was sitting at Daddy’s desk, calculating the projected irrigation costs versus the hay yield in Pasture Two when Mama walked in with a bemused expression on her face.
“I just had the oddest conversation with Dalton Cardwell.”
“About what?” Surely not what happened on the veranda an hour ago.
“About working with Press Amala. Did you talk to him about it?”
“I may have mentioned it. Is that a problem?” Raney bent over the ledger again. She didn’t want to talk about Dalton Cardwell. Or even think about him kissing her an hour ago. What was that about?
“Well, he’s all for it.” Her mother walked over to straighten a picture of her and Daddy with some long-dead senator. “He even gave me a half-dozen reasons why he thought it was a good idea.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I suppose. But he was so pushy about it. He even insisted I call Press this evening to see if he could start right away.” She brushed dust off a bookshelf, then turned and frowned at Raney. “Did something happen between you
