King's Country (Oil Kings Book 4) Read online

  “Give me that throw pillow back. You need to be hit.”

  He laughed and stretched his legs out like mine, minus the big cast. “No. I go on dates and we talk and it’s just . . . there’s no chemistry. It’s like I’m sitting there while we’re talking and I can just hear their complaints about why I’m gone all day. Why do I drag so much mud in the house? Why don’t I take weekends off? Why can’t I travel in the winter? My college girlfriend asked me all that. The neon-pink writing was on the wall.” He glanced at me. “Do you get that from guys?”

  Commiseration kept me from holding back. “That’s why Marshall dumped me. I missed dinner with his parents because I was looking for that cow.”

  “You were saving a life and he was pissed?” Disgust dripped from his voice.

  “I’d already messed up the first dinner we’d planned and they’re not from here, so . . .”

  “Messed up how?”

  I wrinkled my nose, wishing he’d missed that. I gave him a version of the truth. “He hated what I was wearing.”

  Dawson stared at me. “Please tell me you told him to fuck off.”

  “No. He’s a nice guy and his parents had to drive up from Miles City.”

  Dawson’s expression changed to doubtful. “Nice guys don’t send messages like his.”

  “He’s nicer than anyone I’ve dated. At least he didn’t brag all over town that he’d banged me in the back of his pickup.” I seriously had no filter around Dawson. “There’s two minutes of my life I’ll never get back.”

  He snorted. “I know who you’re talking about and I’m surprised he made it that long.”

  “As if most guys make it longer?”

  “If they can’t, they better damn well fill the rest of their time pleasuring their lady.”

  I coughed out a laugh, but my body thrummed. The easy confidence in his voice told me that Dawson was good for more than two minutes and filled up a lot of extra time to boot. “Well, not many have tried.” And like climbing Mount Everest, not many had succeeded.

  “I haven’t slept with all the girls I’ve dated. I don’t know why people think I sleep around.”

  I sent him a dubious look. I went into relationships knowing that whomever I dated wouldn’t marry me, and he definitely wouldn’t live out at the ranch. There wasn’t any other point to dating.

  He spread his hands out. “I haven’t. I know you’ve seen me out with women, but they weren’t all a roll in the hay.”

  “Hay’s itchy.”

  He grinned. “Tell me more.”

  “No.” I couldn’t bite back my smile. Credits rolled on the movie I’d hardly paid attention to. The conversation had been more enjoyable than having internet access. Dawson hadn’t touched me but tonight he’d outdone all of my previous dates.

  Dawson grabbed the remote. “The roast was frozen, so it isn’t done yet. Want to watch the sequel?”

  “Sure.” I stuffed my hand into Daisy’s fur, ignored Marshall’s messages, and marveled over a Friday I’d never forget—and the sad irony that experiencing this would only make going back to my life that much harder.

  Dawson

  Water plopped in an uneven rhythm. Snow melted off the roof of the shop, dripping off downspouts, and icicles shrank under the spring sun.

  April had arrived and, with it, seasonably warm temperatures. And mud. Mud everywhere.

  I parked the Ranger by the shop closest to the house. Tucker pulled up next to me, his once-red pickup now Montana-clay brown.

  Tucker jumped out, removed his ball cap, and wiped an arm across his brow, leaving more grit behind. “When do you think Bristol’s going to be back to work? I know it’s only been a month, but just so we have an estimate.”

  We were all running. We had our normal spring work, like getting ready to plant corn for silage. We’d be doing Bristol’s planting too. Bristol’s herd hadn’t quit calving yet and she had more calves that needed bottle-feeding than I ever had. Kiernan had pulled shifts to watch for cows in labor in the darkest hours of the night, but now he was on bottle-calf duty. Some simple planning and better nutrition would’ve prevented most of this, but I’d heard enough of what Bristol was willing to say and a lot of what she’d left unsaid. Danny had been impossible to work with in the last few years. Alcohol had eaten away at his mind and everything around him had suffered.

  The guys and I were working overtime during a normally stressful time of year. “She has another couple of weeks on crutches at least.” Then physical therapy I doubted she’d do. “Think I should find a high school kid to help out?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to have an extra pair of hands for the smaller tasks. If it’s only for a couple more weeks and then Bristol can jump in, that’ll be fine, but we all could use a break.”

  I worked the idea over. Bristol was moving around better. She cruised on her crutches and tried to keep up with laundry and minor cleaning that she could do with one hand while leaning on a crutch.

  She wouldn’t like some kid up in her business. “He could help us and I’d be free to work on Bristol’s land.”

  “About that.” His somber expression was on the house. “I rode out to make sure we have all the Cartwright head accounted for. There’s a nice tidy pile of firewood around the cabin and a fire pit that looks like it’s been used in the last year. I think someone’s staying there.”

  “Like right now?” It was nothing more than an old hunting shack.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. They’d have to have been there before winter. There’s a small garden tilled out. The door had a lock, so I didn’t force my way in. The lean-to and little fenced area would be perfect for a horse. Think Bristol’s been living there?”

  “There’s no electricity or water.” She couldn’t have lived in that cabin. That was camping, not living. The trailer house wasn’t any better, but it had heat and running water. An old AC unit hung crookedly out of a bedroom window. Did it work?

  “There’s that old well. And an outhouse.”

  Bristol was stubborn enough, and savvy enough, to live in the cabin during the nicer months. She wouldn’t have had to live on top of her permanently angry dad, and it’d be cheap.

  No wonder she soaked up the TV like it was a clear blue sky and she’d never seen daylight. “I’ll ask her. If it wasn’t her, she’ll need to know anyway.”

  Tucker bobbed his head. “What about the trailer? If she’s out for six weeks, someone should check on it before it goes up in smoke, if it hasn’t flooded from frozen pipes by now.”

  “I’ll offer.” She’d say no. We hadn’t talked about the trailer since the night I’d pulled away. “I’m sure she’s itching to get in as soon as possible.”

  “You don’t seem like you’re in a hurry to kick her out.” He cocked his head and evaluated me. “You like her, don’t you?”

  “Are you asking if I like her, like this is middle school and I passed her a note?”

  “You couldn’t talk about her before without swearing.”

  “I wasn’t that bad.” I didn’t look at Tucker. He’d call me on my lie. But since he and Kiernan were adding the Cartwright duties to their plates and hadn’t complained, I owed him more than a subject change. “I misjudged a lot of things about her. Her life hasn’t been easy.” I think it’d been harder than she let on. Harder than anyone knew. “And that big house gets too damn quiet.”

  I kept it at that. I didn’t think about how I tossed my gear aside and rushed to the house every day after work. That I hadn’t moved from the couch at night because that’d be farther away from where she was sleeping. Or how quickly I’d become addicted to our nightly routine of watching movies with Daisy snuggled between us.

  “That wasn’t exactly an answer, jackass. But if you don’t hate her anymore, you’d better go save her from your grandma.”

  I spun around. Grams’s black SUV pulled up in front of the house. “Shit.” I sprinted across the yard, Tucker’s laughter fading behind me.

>   “Grams,” I called before she marched into the house like she owned the place. My family all knew I had an open door and they were welcome anytime.

  This was just a really bad time. Anytime from now until my birthday was a bad time.

  She waited at the bottom of the porch stairs, but she didn’t look at me. Her gaze was on the figure sitting in the porch swing. Daisy darted across the porch and down the stairs to greet me. Grams’s shrewd gaze watched her the whole way.

  I stooped to pet the dog but kept my gaze on Grams. Her mouth was turned down and her eyes glittered.

  “I see you have company,” she said crisply.

  “Yeah, Bristol’s staying with me for a while.” I willed my grandmother not to make a scene. She’d come here to pester me about dating and getting married before I turned twenty-nine. This was the most she’d ever been involved in my life—she’d done the same when my brothers had been my age—and that was because there was money on the line. A lot of it.

  The sun rose and set over piles of cash for Grams.

  “Why would she be doing that?” Grams talked like Bristol wasn’t on the swing, her body stiff, her jaw tight. Bristol’s hair was up in a clip I’d found in the upstairs bathroom—left behind by one of my brothers’ wives, or maybe Kendall. Her gorgeous red strands spilled over her head. I’d never seen the style on her before, and at least two hunks of her hair had escaped to trail down her neck like she didn’t have much practice at getting either her hair or her clip to do what she wanted. Which made it all the more endearing.

  Most likely she just didn’t give a shit.

  Getting to know the other side of Bristol over the last four weeks had become my favorite pastime. Ice-cold Bristol that gave as good as she got was sexy as hell, and I could finally admit it without feeling like a traitor. But the softer Bristol, the one with vulnerable emerald eyes and sudden smiles, made a guy go stupid.

  “She broke her leg. I’m helping her out.” I jogged up the stairs. “You coming in?”

  Grams stood at the bottom, her gaze jumping between us and settling on Bristol. “How’d you break it?”

  Well, she could’ve been ruder. As it was, I didn’t trust where her line of questioning was going.

  “I fell,” Bristol answered flatly.

  I wouldn’t have to worry about Bristol handling herself. She was the third generation of Cartwrights that’d been on the receiving end of Grams’s insults. But that didn’t mean she had to deal with it.

  “You fell and couldn’t stay with anyone else to recuperate?” Grams asked just as flatly.

  “Grams,” I snapped. “Bristol is a guest in my home, here by my invitation.” I cocked a brow as if to say and you aren’t.

  Grams drew herself up and gave me a cold, appraising look, managing to look down on me when I was at the top of the porch stairs. “We need to talk. Privately.”

  I was about to tell Grams she needed to leave when crutches scraped against the boards.

  “Don’t worry. I was just heading in.”

  “Bristol—”

  “It’s okay.” She gave me a small smile. “I’ll go in the bedroom so you two can talk.”

  Grams wasn’t welcome inside if this was how she was going to act. I went down to meet her before she came up the stairs.

  “That was uncalled for,” I said.

  “You do realize what birthday’s coming up, don’t you?”

  That damn trust. Mama had created it with stipulations that my brothers and I each marry before we were twenty-nine, and that we remain married for at least a year. I didn’t know why she’d thought my brothers and I needed prodding to get married, but that was what she’d done.

  The other stipulation, what would happen if the trust’s demands weren’t met, was what stuck in Grams’s craw.

  “Of course I do, but that’s not for months yet.”

  “Then what is she doing here? Don’t you have a girlfriend who would be upset?”

  “No. I offered.” I skipped the girlfriend part.

  “She has to know.” Grams’s derisive snort almost had me looking back to make sure Bristol couldn’t hear the way Grams talked about her. “She’s here making sure you stay single, or she’s trying to marry you and get at least half.”

  Keeping my voice low, I hissed, “She doesn’t know about the trust. You know we kept it in the family.”

  I wouldn’t hurt her that way. Knowing all my brothers had married before they were twenty-nine to keep her family penniless would hurt her more than how the rest of the town treated her. Their marriages had all turned out to be true love, and maybe I’d hoped it would work out for me too, but unlike them, I didn’t feel the pull to marry just because.

  Grams shook her head. “She has to know. She wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “I found her in the pasture, wrapped in barbed wire and freezing to death. She could’ve died. Are you saying she planned that?”

  Grams had the grace to blanch. “How’d you locate her?”

  I pointed to Daisy. “She didn’t even have her phone, Grams. It was life or death.”

  “That may be, but I wouldn’t put some kind of scheming past a Cartwright.”

  “You mean like selling land you suspected had oil in it, keeping the rights, then profiting two different ways on it?”

  Grams’s expression hardened. “Keeping mineral rights is common practice.”

  “The Cartwrights were your best friends.”

  “Then they shouldn’t have told the whole town we were heartless crooks.”

  “Kinda sounds like you were.”

  “You forget that the quarter of land they’ve been living on right next to yours used to be in your father’s family, until they conned Gentry’s dad out of it.”

  “Maybe, but that was before Bristol’s time. That was even before her dad’s time.” It was no wonder Danny Cartwright had turned out like he had. He’d grown up nursed with resentment and bitterness.

  “She’s still a Cartwright. Who’s doing all her work?”

  “I am. I offered.” I skipped the part where Bristol had insisted she’d pay me back, including Tucker’s and Kiernan’s pay. I wouldn’t accept it. I could cover the cost. She couldn’t.

  “Hmph. Have you told your father yet?”

  I clamped my lips shut. I hadn’t told any of my family. A knowing gleam entered her eyes.

  “If it’s not a big deal, then why don’t you call him? Tell him you’ve got the daughter of the man who got his wife—my daughter—killed staying with you.” Her voice shook by the time she was done talking.

  “Dad is old enough to keep the two separate.” I hoped he was, since I should’ve been old enough to do the same years ago. “Bristol’s not her father.”

  “You need to take this seriously, Dawson. If not for your mother, then for me. Do you remember how I sat in your room all night with you for two months after the funeral? Gentry trying to juggle his job at the company and taking over your mother’s duties. Four scared and grieving boys. You seem to have forgotten what I’ve sacrificed. What I’ve lost.”

  I’d clung to Grams during that time. The most maternal this woman had been her entire life and she’d done it for me, for the rest of the family, so Dad could get some sleep while she soothed my nightmares. “I haven’t forgotten,” I murmured.

  “Then tell your father what you’re doing.” Grams went to the driver’s side of her vehicle. “Or I will.”

  She hopped in and pulled away. I was left standing with Daisy at my side. I waited until her taillights disappeared before I went inside.

  Bristol was nowhere to be seen. I went to the bedroom but she wasn’t there.

  “Bristol?”

  An object clattered from the hallway. The office door was open.

  Inside, Bristol was balancing on her good leg and picking up a picture frame.

  “I’m sorry. When you didn’t come in, I got restless.”

  The picture was a family photo. The last one we’d take
n before Mama died. I kept it on my desk.

  I went around the simple rectangular desk Mama had hauled from Billings and assembled in one afternoon and pulled open a drawer. Deep in the back was a framed photo I hadn’t had the heart to throw or pack away.

  I held it out.

  Bristol accepted it and gasped. The picture was of Mama and Bristol when she was six. Mama had put pigtails in Bristol’s hair and asked me to take a picture. I’d been so proud to use Mama’s camera despite how crooked the picture turned out. Both girls were smiling. I’d never seen Bristol look so happy.

  She pressed her finger to her lips and moisture glittered in her eyes. “I . . . I can’t . . .”

  She set the picture down, grabbed the crutch she had set aside, and clomped out.

  “Bristol?”

  “I shouldn’t have been in your office, I’m sorry.” Her voice was thick. Was she crying?

  “Bristol.” She was fast with her damn crutches. I caught up to her but I wouldn’t grab her arm and throw her off-balance. “Bristol.”

  She stopped abruptly outside my bedroom and I nearly ran into her. “I remember playing in there with her. That’s why I went in. It was a mistake.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She still wouldn’t look at me. “About what?”

  “You and Mama. What did you two get up to in there?”

  She crossed to the bed and swiped at her eyes before turning to sit. Setting her crutches aside, she scooted back so her feet hung off the bed. She was supposed to have the cast off in a couple of weeks. I’d asked her about a checkup, but she’d brushed me off.

  “She used to let me draw on the other side of the desk as she balanced the books. I’d ask her about running the ranch and she’d talk to me. Like I was an adult, you know. With respect. She . . . never yelled.”

  I snorted. “She never yelled at you. Four rambunctious boys were different.” I pushed off the door and sat next to her on the bed. “She was like that with us too. We didn’t get babied. I always wondered if that’s why Aiden’s been an old man since he was fifteen.”

  “He is not.”

  “He is too. He’s serious as fuck. I don’t think Kate knows how to remove the stick up his ass but I can guarantee she wants to see his wild side.”