Keeping Kayla: a Cowboy Fairytales spin-off (Triple H Brides Book 4) Read online

  He glanced her way. Probably not hypothermia. Her color was good, and she seemed alert, though quiet.

  He wanted to strangle her.

  She hadn't been thinking, that much was clear. She'd seen an animal in danger and had jumped to the rescue. But who’d she figure on to rescue her? If he hadn’t come along… No, he wouldn’t think about that right now.

  She stepped out of the truck as he rounded the front of the vehicle. She glanced at the interior of the truck—probably at the dog still lying across the floor—then back at Nate, biting her lip. A quick glance at the house.

  He waited.

  "Would you carry him inside for me?"

  "That wasn't so hard, was it? Asking for help?"

  She glared at him.

  Maybe he shouldn't have said it, but the fear that was still running through him wouldn't let him stay quiet.

  "Happy to." And if she thought he was going to drop off the dog and walk back out, she was sorely mistaken.

  He brushed past her and carefully got the dog out of the car. It laid its head on Nate’s shoulder. It was obviously exhausted and felt lighter than a dog its size should've. But it wasn't scared of him. Or maybe it was too tired to be scared.

  She'd already climbed the porch steps and was opening the door—folks out here usually didn't bother locking things up. He followed her into the foyer of the ranch house.

  He'd barely gotten over the threshold when another dog, this one a black-and-white Border Collie, ran into the room, its nails clicking and clattering on the scratched wood floors as it rushed Kayla. It took one sniff at her and beelined for Nate. He braced for impact, but the dog stopped short. It sniffed his boots and circled him before looking up and trying to get a sniff of the dog in his arms. At least Kayla’s dog hadn't jumped on him.

  Kayla disappeared down the hall, leaving him alone in the mostly-empty front hall with two canines. He hoped she was going to change into some dry clothes.

  "Where do you want this one?" he called out. He wanted to put the dog down and make sure Kayla was all right. She wouldn't welcome a hug, but seeing her so frightened—he'd probably have nightmares of her white-faced terror in that water—made him long for an embrace.

  "The kitchen." Her voice returned distant, maybe from a bedroom in the back of the house.

  "The kitchen," he muttered. "Which is...?" He did a slow turn. Through a large, curved doorway, he could see a room with a light brown sofa and colorful throw pillows. A brick fireplace was unlit, and a dog bed lay empty on the floor. Dog toys were strewn everywhere. Several books and a pile of papers had been spread on the coffee table beside an open laptop.

  The other side of the foyer opened to a hallway, which he assumed led to the bedrooms. If he had to guess, there’d be three bedrooms, based on the age of the house. He followed the third option, walked straight ahead, and got dumped into a sunny, open eat-in kitchen. She had a small round table and chairs in the nook that looked out toward the barn. The linoleum and appliances were butter yellow, clearly relics from the eighties. Nice.

  She had a nice toaster and one of those single-cup coffee makers on the counter, but two small appliances didn't make up for the cracks in the sheetrock, peeling paint, or warped spot in the linoleum just in front of the dated fridge.

  The whole place needed updating. Desperately. It was an awfully ambitious project for a single woman.

  From the corner of the kitchen, he spied another dog, this one a Chihuahua in a flat cardboard box curled around little fluff balls. Puppies.

  He started to shake his head. What was Kayla doing with all these dogs?

  He set the lab mix on the tiled floor. He could still hear Kayla rustling around somewhere else in the house.

  He looked down at the black-and-white dog, who'd sat at his feet and was staring up at him with an adoring doggie grin.

  "I wish your mama would look at me like that," he mumbled.

  A knock on the back door brought his head up and a sharp bark from the border collie. The dog went to the door, wagging its entire backside. Either whoever was on the other side of that door was a friend, or the dog was a horrible guard dog. Or both.

  The nook window showed enough of the back stoop to see a woman standing there. He opened the door and hoped he wasn't stepping on Kayla's toes.

  "Mornin'," he said. She wore a neat suit jacket and matching skirt with a red wool coat unbuttoned over them.

  A noise behind him had him glancing back. Kayla entered the room, her arms full of a load of towels. "You don't have to stay—"

  She stopped short, and her eyes widened as they darted from his face to the woman at the door. "Rachel. I wasn't expecting you."

  "I came by to talk about the emergency placement."

  Emergency placement for what?

  Kayla shot him a sideways glance that had his mouth clamped shut.

  Rachel nodded to him. "This must be your husband."

  Blood rushed from the top of Kayla's head into her toes, making her feel faint. What was the social worker doing here?

  "This is—this is Nate." She couldn't force the word husband from her lips. Her hands were shaking and she quickly deposited the soiled towels on one of the kitchen chairs. Laundry could wait.

  Was he going to deny it? He'd joked about not wanting an annulment.

  He held Kayla’s eye contact for a moment before he reached forward to shake Rachel's hand.

  "It's nice to meet you," he drawled in his calm, easy way.

  Rachel responded with a murmured greeting, her gaze not missing a thing. Not his dimpled smile, not the sparkle in his eyes, not his muscles shoulders.

  Kayla wanted to strangle him. Even more when he settled closer to her, his shoulder almost brushing hers.

  "I came by to drop the paperwork off so you can make corrections," Rachel said. She tapped a thick sheaf of papers against her opposite palm. "That is, if you still want to take Miles on."

  Kayla's stomach plunged. "Of course I—we want him here."

  Her face flamed, and this time, she couldn't look at Nate. Her ears were ringing as she waited for him to say, who is Miles?

  But he didn't.

  Rachel laid the pile of papers on the kitchen table—thank God Kayla’d cleared away her cereal bowl from this morning—and glanced around the kitchen. She'd only been here to pick up Miles before, and Kayla realized her first impression of the home might not be ideal.

  She opened her mouth to say something about it, but Nate beat her to it.

  "We've got a long list of repairs," Nate said easily. "Probably start with the floors and work our way up."

  Her mouth snapped shut. She wanted to reprimand him for speaking for her, but he was playing the part of husband, wasn't he?

  Rachel's eyes shifted to the dogs. Bando had wagged his way to sitting at her feet, his tail sweeping across the floor. Another thank God that he hadn't jumped on her in his enthusiasm to meet a new person.

  "I'm starting a dog rescue," Kayla said quickly. "Most of the dogs will be housed in the barn, but I haven't got it cleaned up out there the way I want it yet. Bando is a house dog." If that was a deal-breaker, she didn't know what she'd do.

  Rachel's expression showed some concern. "Will you have time to care for a little boy while you're busy with all these projects?"

  "Of course." The words were out before she'd really thought about them. It didn't matter. She could vividly remember being about eight and needing help with a third-grade homework project. She'd stood for a long time in a darkened hallway, watching her foster mom sitting at the kitchen table reading a magazine. She'd known, somehow, that her request for help would be met with a sneer and a dismissal. And it had been.

  The next time, she hadn't even bothered asking. Sarah had helped, though it had meant her big sister had had to stay awake long after lights-out, using a flashlight beneath the covers to finish her own homework.

  If having Miles here meant Kayla stayed up late working on her grant proposals, so be
it. She never wanted another kid to feel like she had all those years ago.

  As soon as Rachel left, Nate turned on her. "You wanna tell me what that was about?"

  Kayla winced as she looked away from Nate and the intensity of his curious gaze. She ignored the towels she'd abandoned to the kitchen chair when Rachel had shown up and bent to check on the Labrador—who was, in fact, a girl.

  Nate's larger-than-life presence here, in her kitchen, discombobulated her. She felt that same feeling of panicked weightlessness as she had when she'd sunk beneath the pond water.

  "Nothing that concerns you," she bit out. She just wanted him gone.

  He squatted on the other side of the dog he’d helped rescue. Even with the Lab between them, he was still too close. She kept her gaze on the dog, but as she reached out to towel it off, Nate reached out and tugged the towel from her suddenly nerveless fingers.

  "Seems like it does concern me. An hour ago, you were reading me the riot act over the fact that we're still hitched, but just now you were play-acting like we're happily married."

  She winced again, squeezing her eyes closed. "Yeah. About that..." Unfortunately, closing her eyes didn't make Nate disappear. He was still there when she opened them.

  She focused on the dog, but it had that Lab fur that shed water quickly—the animal was almost dry. So she stood up. Anything to get out of Nate's overwhelming proximity.

  "Who's Miles?" There came the question she'd been expecting earlier.

  "He's little boy. Not so little, I guess. He's ten. He's in foster care, and I applied to be an emergency home for him. The social worker called me to ask why I hadn't included my husband's information on all the forms."

  Those words over the phone had knocked the wind right out of her and sent her spinning for days.

  Now, just remembering that out-of-control feeling went through her, and the nervous energy pushed her toward the pantry. She opened the large tub that sat on the floor and scooped out some dog food into a dish. Not too much. She didn't want the hungry lab to make itself sick by overeating. She set the bowl of food in front of the dog. From the corner, the Chihuahua hadn't moved from her position guarding her pups. It'd been four days, and Kayla still hadn't earned her trust.

  "I'll bet that ticked you off," Nate said quietly. He rose from his crouch and stood with his hands loose at his sides.

  Knowing they still shared a connection had frightened her more than anything else. The swirl of hot emotion that had risen when she'd remembered their quickie Vegas ceremony and her certainty that Nate was the one for her—and the devastation she'd felt the next morning when she'd nosedived and crashed back to reality. She didn't want to go through that—any of it—again.

  She turned away from him, afraid he would see the naked emotion in her face. Miles had become important to her in only a matter of days. She didn't want to share that with Nate.

  "That doesn't matter." She couldn't afford to let their not-annulled marriage affect her fostering Miles. "Now I need to figure out what to do about Miles. About this situation." She should've nipped the whole thing in the bud. But somehow, when Rachel had been here, the words we're not married had stuck in her throat.

  Rachel must've been completely green to miss the tension in the room. How had she not known something was going on?

  Nausea roiled as she thought of calling the social worker back to tell her the truth. And then she remembered Miles, remembered his tattered jean jacket and that picture of him and what must be his older sister. His only belongings. Then remembered the vulnerability behind the stubborn tilt of his jaw that said he didn't need anyone.

  She rubbed her hands—still cold from the icy water—over her face. "How do I get myself into these situations?"

  She thought better of asking Nate that question and whirled to face him again. "Don't answer that."

  He'd crossed his arms, and that muscle in his jaw ticked away. He was probably holding back some snide remark about her impulsiveness, the trait that had been the reason she'd ended up in the Vegas chapel in the first place.

  "Why does helping that kid mean so much to you?"

  She examined his face, looking for any trace of a sneer or flare of his nostrils that might indicate his thoughts, but his expression was carefully blank. He'd always been able to do that, hide behind a blank mask. It bothered her then and it bothered her now.

  "I wouldn't expect you to understand.” She would have to figure a way out of this disaster on her own. She hadn't done any research yet on what it would take to annul the marriage. Maybe there was a way to expedite it. Of course, then she'd be in a world of hot water explaining herself to Rachel and why she'd lied about being married.

  An ache started behind her eyes, and she rubbed the thumb and forefinger of one hand into her eye sockets, trying to ease it. She wished Nate would just leave so she could think.

  But when she opened her eyes, he was still there, still regarding her.

  "I'll help you," he said.

  She waited. There had to be a catch.

  "If you ask me."

  His words threw her for a tailspin—they were an echo of what she'd said to him ten years ago. "I'll marry you, if you ask me."

  She bit the immediate denial that rose on her tongue. She thought of Miles, thought of the many nights she'd spent scared and alone in the world. What would she have done without her sister? And here was Miles without anyone.

  She gritted her teeth and swallowed the hard knot in her throat—and maybe a good dose of her pride too. "Will you help me, Nathan?"

  Chapter 3

  It wasn't quite dawn as Nate stood across from Matt Hale, a large oak desk between them in the Triple H ranch house office. Nate had just finished going over the list of cows that were due for calving over the next two weeks. They never had a guarantee of what date a cow would have her calf, of course—only the good Lord knew that—but the list showed which cows were expecting.

  "I appreciate you granting me a few days off," Nate said. Calving season wasn't the ideal time to be away from the ranch, but everything had happened so quickly with Kayla that he was still reeling. He'd already stowed his duffel bag in his truck. Next stop, Kayla's place.

  Matt looked up from the mess of papers on the desk—the accounts payable that Nate had gone over with him not fifteen minutes ago—and leveled a hard gaze at him. He hadn't said much until now.

  "What the heck are you thinking?"

  Nate blinked at his boss's unexpected words.

  "We've known each other a long time. You've worked the Triple H for...what? Nine years? Been foreman for five, right? I've never seen you tied in knots like this."

  His friend was right. Kayla had been gone from his life before he'd come to the Triple H as a twenty-year old. He'd spent the decade working hard, proving himself, but he'd planned to win her back. Just not for it to take so long.

  "My relationship with Kayla has always been... complicated."

  "What relationship?" Matt knocked on the desk with a closed fist. "This is the first I'm hearing of this. And it sounds crazy. You've been married for ten years, but you're separated, and you never see her. That's not a relationship. That's not even a pen pal."

  Nate shrugged, trying not to let his boss's words get to him. "I messed things up between us. When we got married, she freaked out a little, and I didn't say the right things and... she got away. I was going through some stuff with my dad and..." He sighed, shrugged again. "I should've gone after her, done things differently."

  Matt shifted his feet behind the desk. "Do you even hear what you're saying? It's my fault, I didn't, I should have..." His forehead creased with emotion. "It takes two people to build a relationship. Are you sure she even wants to be with you?"

  The barb hit home. Especially after Kayla's efforts to push him away, keep her emotions to herself. Nate's instinctive reaction was to strike back, inflict a wound of his own. Matt understood that well enough. His fiancé Kelsey had broken his heart years ago, an
d they'd only recently made up and gotten engaged. It wasn't like Matt was the poster boy for healthy relationships, either.

  Nate swallowed the urge to bite back.

  "I've been in love with Kayla for a decade," he admitted. "For a while, I tried to ignore it, pretend we'd never happened, but... I never could."

  Matt's frown only intensified, though he must have been able to relate to what Nate was saying.

  "This thing with the foster kid is an open door, and I'm going to walk through it. I'm going to fight with everything I have. And if, at the end of it, I come away with a broken heart, well, at least I’ll know I didn’t leave anything on the table."

  Matt only shook his head.

  "Thanks again for the days off. I'll touch base about next week."

  He left his boss in the office. He had a wife to see.

  Kayla was too antsy to stay in the house. The social worker was supposed to arrive sometime before noon with Miles. No doubt the boy would be standoffish and sullen, unable to believe he'd get to stay for any length of time.

  But that wasn't what had driven her out of the house. She could find a way to expel nervous energy in the barn and headed that way.

  Nate was coming back today. He'd left yesterday after delivering a simple, I'd be glad to in response to her request for help.

  She didn't know what to do with that. She'd thought things were settled between them long ago. Now his presence was stirring up all those old emotions.

  As she crossed the yard, she found her left thumb rubbing the base of her ring finger, the motion entirely unconscious. She fisted her hand and flung her fingers open wide, snarling at the muscle memories that had caused the action.

  She'd only worn Nate's ring, a simple silver band, for the one night, but she'd felt it for months after they'd walked away from each other that fateful morning. For that one night, she'd felt like she belonged, a feeling she'd ached for her whole life. Then it had been ripped away.