Burn It Up(3)

Above, on the landing to the second-floor rooms, a door opened, spilling soft light. Shit, Abilene.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re fine.”

She padded down the steps and into the den in her sleep clothes—pajama pants with a pattern of stars and moons, an oversized and faded Dolly Parton concert tee. Her long, dark ponytail was all cockeyed, her normally wide eyes squinty and bleary. Cute as f*ck, really.

“Sorry,” Casey said, bouncing the angry baby. “I’ve got her. My phone rang. She’ll be back to sleep in no time,” he lied. He didn’t know much about babies, but he was steadily coming to understand this one, and when Mercy was pissed, she stayed pissed.

“Give her here.”

“No, go back upstairs.”

“Try giving birth to a baby and then ignoring the sound of her crying,” Abilene countered. “Sit.”

He dropped back on the couch and Abilene sat beside him. He passed the squirming bundle into her arms.

Casey stretched his neck from side to side, feeling the hour. Feeling, as he often did these days, half-incompetent at most everything he was attempting to do—run a bar, help out with his family’s issues, care for an infant. The one thing he was truly exceptional at was off the table. He’d grown used to feeling capable, used to knowing without a doubt that he was the only man for the job. But with that job shelved, and maybe for good, he couldn’t say he much enjoyed the alternative. It roused an old, familiar restlessness in him, the same one that had driven him out of this town to begin with. His self-serving side wanted to run straight back to Texas, except he was all in now. For the first time in his life, he was neck-deep in responsibilities, with others seriously depending on him. Running wasn’t an option . . .

Not unless he felt like turning into his old man, that was, which was about the only thing that scared him worse than commitment.

Warmth broke through his worries—the warmth of Abilene’s thigh through his jeans, and her upper arm against his bare elbow. She was short, maybe five-two, small framed but . . . plump? Casey didn’t know what the acceptable term was to use in front of a girl, but you could say she was a little chubby, and had been even before her pregnancy had begun to show. It didn’t bother him one bit. Her skin looked crazy-soft. Soft like her heavy Texas accent. When his dick got the better of him, he’d imagine how his hands would look on that skin, how she’d feel like heaven under his palms. Casey didn’t discriminate when it came to women’s bodies, and Abilene’s was everything essentially feminine to him. Petite and . . . and lush.

It did things to him, even now. Always had. Probably always would.

Though it really shouldn’t. She was too young, for one, and she was his employee to boot—she tended bar at Benji’s three afternoons a week. And on top of all that, she’d gone into labor nearly two weeks early, while they’d been closing up together, and had given birth in the back of Casey’s car, halfway to the nearest decent hospital in Elko, in the dead of night.

He’d had a crush from the second he’d laid eyes on her and hit on her and asked her out a hundred times—fruitlessly—before he’d found out she was pregnant, but he’d never so much as kissed her. Never really even touched her in any meaningful way before he’d found himself kneeling between her legs, getting screamed at, trying not to hyperventilate as a squalling baby had been born into his shaking hands.

Still, that had been four months ago, give or take, and since then his old desire had crept back in—and worse than ever, if he wasn’t mistaken. No matter that he knew Abilene was over whatever she’d once felt for him. Motherhood ate up all her energy, and it really ought to have desexualized her in Casey’s eyes as well . . . but in truth, he was straight up in awe of her now. And protective, as well, a sensation that always wired straight between a man’s legs, it seemed.

So for a half dozen excellent reasons, Casey pretended he felt for Abilene what she now did for him—a brother-sister-type affection, nothing more.

He’d always been a goddamned good liar.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I was really hoping to give you a decent night’s sleep for a change.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Abilene murmured, soothing Mercy. “Phones ring. Babies cry. I got four whole hours in. That’s more than I would have if I was on my own tonight.”

“You’re not on your own—you’ve got Christine, too.”

Abilene and the baby had moved here to Three C a week ago. Trouble was on its way, in the form of Mercy’s father getting paroled. Guy was a gunrunner with a quick temper, the story went, and their breakup hadn’t been pretty.

“Yeah, Christine’s great for a couple hours’ babysitting in the afternoon, but that’s all I can bear to ask of her.”

True. Miah’s mom put in sixteen-hour days around the ranch, same as the men. “She frigging loves Mercy, though,” Casey said.

Abilene smirked. “Miah better get busy and make her some grandbabies before she steals one . . . Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. That was mean.”

“No, that’s true. She’s broody as f*ck. Oh, shit—shoot. Sorry.”

Abilene shook her head. “You and that mouth . . . Would you fix me a bottle? That might calm her down.”

“Sure.”