Page 57 of Snow in Texas

Shit. “Yeah. Real sweet.” He dropped a fast kiss on her lips and headed for the door. “Tell him I’ll beat his ass if he falls asleep on the clock.”

She snorted. “You have a good day, too, dear.”

~*~

Jenny

“Do you care about me?”

Jenny couldn’t stop replaying the words in her head. Over and over. It had been a few days since he’d asked the question, but it hadn’t dulled in her mind, still felt like a loaded gun resting inside her somewhere.

“Do you care about me?”

She’d answered him truthfully, because she’d never slept with any man she hadn’t cared about. It was just that she hadn’t put two-and-two-together until she’d said it. She did care for Colin; she just hadn’t been willing to say it in such simple terms.

It terrified her, if she was honest.

Once upon a time, she’d been a blushing bride with silly dreams of a three-bedroom house, two blonde kids, and a Golden retriever. At some point between the first and second slap Riley cracked across her cheek, the night the illusion crumbled, she’d realized those were dreams for ordinary women. Women who hadn’t aligned themselves with outlaws. In the following years, the dreams had gone from tarnished, to nonexistent…and eventually to nightmares to be feared.

She didn’t trust her own heart. So finding out that Colin had carved himself a sizable place in it? Spooky stuff.

She cupped tepid water from the bathroom tap in her hands and brought it to her face, suddenly feeling flushed. In the flaked mirror, her reflection stared back, a little pale and drawn, crows’ feet and laugh lines noticeable under the fluorescent lights.

Had her white knight finally come? When she was jaded and almost forty? When it was too late to revive all her old hopes?

No, she reasoned. Probably not.

A Cajun beefcake was probably nothing more than a diversion.

Even if she was half-in love with the man.

~*~

Colin

“ ‘Charlie,’ I tell myself sometimes. ‘You’ve got to move up in the world, mate.’ And then I see someplace like this,” Fox remarked as they climbed off their bikes.

“Hmm,” Colin said. “Kinda puts shit in perspective,” he agreed.

Shitbeing an operative word in this instance. The gravel driveway they’d turned down had finally given way to mud, and they’d been forced to leave the bikes.

“It hasn’t rained in days,” Colin said. “What the hell’s with this?”

Fox smirked, the expression just a flicker of movement in his otherwise impassive face. “Take a whiff.”

Colin did, and almost gagged.

“Smell that? They’ve got a busted septic line somewhere, and it’s bubbling up through the ground. That’s not regular mud, yeah?”

“Aw, damn…” Colin muttered. “I ain’t walking through that.”

The house lay a few hundred yards up the drive, a ramshackle hellhole with a partially collapsed roof and a porch overflowing with cardboard boxes of junk and most likely an upholstered piece of furniture or two.

“’Spect we’ll have to,” Fox said, but dug a smoke out of his jeans pocket, surveying the way ahead without hurry.

Colin took the chance to check his phone. No calls or texts. His belly flexed with quiet anxiety. Really, it was a good thing Jenny was leaving him alone. It meant she probably wasn’t being hauled out to a cop car.

Or maybe she was, and that was why she couldn’t reach out to him.

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