Page 24 of Dusk's Devotion (Blue Ice Ranch 3)

His sexy AF upper lip rolled. “If you’re being arrested, why isn’t the damn door to this cell locked?”

“Because this is Copper Falls and Mark knows me. I’m a harmless but loveable cowpoke.”

Shep huffed, then flung my checkbook at my face. I knew it was mine because of the Hello Kitty checkbook cover. There had been a clearance sale at my bank and…oh fuck it. I just liked that adorable kitten and her friends. I’d fight anyone who cast dispersions. Tomorrow. Not right now.

“You’re a hardheaded asshole,” he fired back, folding his arms over his chest. He looked edible in some old jeans, fancy boots, and a chore coat that he’d bought in the second-hand shop last week. It was blue flannel with a sheepskin interior and made those sky eyes of his pop. “I thought I told you to keep what I was doing and where I was a secret.”

“How did you get into my cabin to get this?” I asked as I waved my checkbook in the air.

“Your front door is never locked.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds like me.” I threw my feet to the floor and rubbed my aching face with my left hand. “I feel like a combine ran me over.”

“You smell like the drop in a cow barn.” I chuckled, then groaned. “Answer my question.”

I tenderly stood. “It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Got any aspirin?” He shook his head as his sour look grew more sour. “I didn’t tell him anything about where you were or what you were doing. I merely walked up to him and hit him in his pretentious face.” My hand was still sore from that sucker punch, but it was a good pain. Unlike the ache in my nut sack. “He kicked me in the balls.”

“That’s typical Morgan. He would do that to me all the time when we were younger. Or he’d walk up and punch me in the nuts for no reason and then laugh as I lay on the ground gasping.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. A real Christian spirit if ever I saw one. So you let him know you know about what took place between my family and me?”

I blinked dully and rubbed my whiskery chin. “Well, not really.” Shep’s hoity-toity eyebrow rose. “I didn’t come right out and tell him I was sucking your dick or anything. Oh. Wait. Okay, yeah, I might have told him that.”

“Jesus Christ!” Shep stormed off, and I jogged to catch up with him. I reached for him just as we rounded a corner that opened into the cramped outer office. There on the other side of the room stood Morgan and Clayton McCrary, who were deep in conversation with our fine sheriff. All eyes fell on Shep and me as I quickly dropped his wrist. Clayton’s eyes—which were so much like Shep’s it was scary—narrowed as did Morgan’s. The only difference being that Clayton’s gaze filled with repugnance while Morgan’s was pure evil. I’d heard the term “if looks could kill,” shit, I’d probably even used it here and there, but that dead-eyed stare from Morgan was the first time I’d ever seen murderous intent in someone’s face before. It was fucking scary, to be honest, and I moved closer to Shep for some reason that, as usual, would be examined much later.

Shep stood his ground. Words were unneeded. You could taste the animosity in the air. With Mark leading them to the front door, the elder McCrarys left. Shepherd gave me an inscrutable look and walked over to the water cooler. As he filled a pointy little paper cup several times, I met Mark at his desk.

“I’m paying my bail.” He glanced at my checkbook cover. “The bank was having a sale.”

“Uh-huh. Just go home, take a shower, and don’t darken my cell again. As it is, we’re going to have to pay someone to fumigate the place and probably burn that mattress.”

I started to argue, but Mark pinned me to the wall with those stormy eyes of his. I shut up, for once, tapped my brow with two fingers, and left before he changed his mind.

Shep and I climbed into one of the ranch trucks, sitting in silence as we watched Clay and Morgan having heated words in the side parking lot. When Clay slapped Morgan, Shep sucked in a sharp breath, and I glanced his way.

“I’ve felt the sting of that slap a thousand times,” he whispered, cranked the engine over, and pulled out onto Main Street. I sat quietly, belt tight over my chest, trying to figure out what I should say to the stoic man on my left. Nothing that I came up with seemed fitting or strong enough to fit the situation.

“I’m sorry,” I eventually murmured as we cruised up to a stop sign.

He threw me a withering look. “About what? There’s a list a mile long of things that you’ve fucked up tonight.”

“All of them?” I shrugged. He pulled away from the stop sign with a bit more umph than needed, but I held my tongue about the snap of my head. “Okay, yes, all of them. I apologize for whatever I did wrong that set up this whole miserable chain of events.”

He drove for a few miles, lips pressed flat, not saying a word until we rode up on a school bus pull-off and turn around at the county lines. He whipped the truck into the nicely plowed turnaround, cut the engine, and stared out into the frigid night. I shifted in my seat. This was the part in the movie where the leading man—and that was Shepherd because he was smart and movie star pretty and I was just a vomit-coated cow puncher—would either kiss the other leading man, turn into an alien and bite his head off, or kick him out into the snow in a pique. Walking home would suck, but I could do it. A kiss would be incredible. Having my head chewed off by a xenomorph was the least attractive pick, so I was hoping for door number one or two, Monty.

“What makes this so damn hard is that you have no idea what you did that set this all off, do you?” He glanced my way, his brows beetled, his gaze sad.

“No, yeah, I do. I made you feel like I pitied you. I do not pity you, Shepherd. The reason I wanted you to be there with me is because…” The words jammed up on my tongue. He rolled his eyes. “No! Don’t do that. I’m just…” I blew out a long breath. “I wanted you there at the big house because I like you, a lot, and I hate how everyone at the ranch treats you like you’re an infected scab in thousand-dollar boots.”

“You have such a way with words.”

“It’s a gift.” I hoped he would smile, but he didn’t. I exhaled loudly. “Look, I know I obviously crossed some lines in the sand with you earlier, but I didn’t know we can’t mention Lionel.”

“We can mention Lionel, but not when I’m sucking your cock.”

“Do you still love him?” His eyes flared. Fuck. I had not meant to ask that. “Never mind. We’re just sexing it up, so whether you still love him or not is not important.”

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