Courting Trouble Read online

  Cade slammed the brakes of his truck and jumped from the cab.

  “Get in the truck,” he growled as his boots scattered the gravel between them.

  Tulsa reached for the power locks, but Cade was too fast and he yanked open the driver-side door.

  “Did you hear me?” If the woman didn’t have sense enough to save herself then he’d do it for her—even if he had to weather that McGrath temper.

  Tulsa’s eyes squinted. As if an empress on a throne, she tossed her head and flipped her curls over her shoulder. “Who do you think you are?” A shudder of anger rolled through her shoulders.

  Dammit, she had the cutest nose. She infuriated him and yet part of him wanted to lean forward and kiss that smart mouth.

  He changed tack, softened his tone, relaxed his jaw. “Tulsa, please get in my truck.”

  “No.” She stared through her windshield and wouldn’t meet his gaze. She wouldn’t acknowledge his presence—this show of bravado and nonchalance was more like the Tulsa that Cade remembered.

  “No?” He tried to keep the laugh out of his voice that wanted to burst forth.

  “No,” Tulsa said a second time. This time her head swiveled and she stared at Cade, the McGrath temper finally flaming within those pretty blue eyes. “N. O.”

  “Right.” Cade nodded.

  No wasn’t an option. He reached across Tulsa and pulled her purse from the passenger seat.

  “You got a laptop in here?” Cade scanned the car for valuables.

  “What?” Tulsa pulled her head back. “You’re a thief now? You’re taking my stuff—”

  “Not a thief.” Cade hoisted the laptop and purse over his right shoulder. “I’d leave you behind if I was a thief.” He reached into the truck, wrapped his arm around her waist, and hoisted Tulsa over his shoulder. Another electric jolt pounded through him to the tips of his toes. He breathed deep and reminded himself that this woman was not the woman for him.

  “Put me down!” Tulsa shrieked. She flailed her legs.

  Damn, he’d have to be careful—she had on heels.

  “Tulsa, darlin’, you put on some weight in Los Angeles? I don’t remember you being this heavy when we were eighteen.” His boots crunched across the gravel to the passenger side of his truck.

  “Cade Montgomery, when my feet hit dirt you better run like hell.”

  A smile he couldn’t squelch burst across Cade’s lips. Now that sounded like the Tulsa he remembered.

  “You stop that kicking or I’ll put you in the bed of my pickup and then maybe you’ll remember just how cold it gets in the Rockies after dark.”

  Tulsa stopped flailing. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “What do you think?”

  Her body stilled and Cade opened the passenger door. He tossed in Tulsa’s purse and laptop case. “Now I’m putting you down and I don’t want your guff. Got it?”

  She didn’t respond and Cade took the stillness of Tulsa’s body on his shoulder for a yes. He bent forward and Tulsa’s butt gently landed on the passenger seat. He tucked her legs inside the cab and shut the door.

  There was more than one way to take care of a McGrath.

  *

  Anger straightened Tulsa’s spine. She wasn’t a helpless little girl that needed rescue. She clutched her purse on her lap—her jaw locked tight and tension ran down the side of her neck. She closed her eyes and breathed. She couldn’t stem the flow of adrenaline that flooded her body—she could lock her face into a flat expression, but the rush of emotions was too much and she couldn’t still her heartbeat. Even her breathing was short and shallow. Fear and excitement twisted within her chest, fighting for primacy. Fear over Ash’s pending custody case and excitement about finally, after nearly a decade, returning home.

  She slid her eyes to the left and maybe, deep inside, there was even a hint of leftover attraction to Cade. He was bigger, broader, the difference between an eighteen-year-old boy and a man. Against her better judgment a desire for him lay thick in the pit of her belly. His black, wavy hair danced at his shirt collar. The hollow of his cheek cut deep beside his full mouth and a shadow danced across his jaw.

  Once upon a time Cade’s blue eyes insinuated pranks and laughter and good times when matched with his cocksure grin, but not now. Now, inside the cab of his truck, there was the thin tight line of his mouth. His jaw set solid as if he had so much to say but instead bit down to halt a flow of words.

  “You call Miller’s garage, they’ll come tow that rental you got.” His tone was cool. Nonchalant. Noncommittal.

  “Why’d you take the case?” Tulsa’s words sliced through the silence. She wanted to surprise him with the bluntness of her question. Perhaps if Cade teetered off balance she’d get the truth.

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Cade’s gaze remained glued to the road but she heard the hint of doubt, the wisp of remorse—confirmation that Cade realized that representing Bobby Hopkins was wrong.

  “Really? No choice?” Her voice bore a challenge. “Everyone has a choice about everything they do, everythi—”

  “Why’d you run away?” Cade’s voice was harsher than hers even—bitter and sharp like shards of broken glass piercing her skin.

  The knot of emotions tangled about her heart pulled tighter, sucking air from her lungs. Cade glanced from the road and his sky-blue eyes cut through her, his jaw set tight, a ragged look in his eye.

  Tulsa’s stomach tightened and twisted, a hot heavy feeling moving through her body and a flush threatened her face. With that one look from Cade, her anger, her judgment, even her righteousness, dissolved. Her feelings meant so very little when Cade’s eyes were haunted with hurt. How could she answer? What could she say? There was nothing for her in Powder Springs but pain. She needed to define herself instead of being pigeonholed by this town. She needed to get away from the memories….

  “Because I couldn’t stay,” Tulsa said. A simple statement, the truth, but a truth that held pounds and pounds of unspoken hurt.

  Silence filled the truck cab. A silence tense with all that was asked and all that went unsaid. They couldn’t fix the past. They couldn’t reclaim the lost years or even pretend what had happened between them—what had happened between their families—was a memory with no scars, no pain, no baggage, that they each still carried.

  Tulsa stared out the passenger window, unable to say anything more and truly not knowing what to say. Instead, her eyes ate up the outskirts of Powder Springs—all that changed and all that remained the same—until Cade took a tight turn on Mayweather Street and a sharp pain jabbed Tulsa’s gut. Longing rushed into her heart, a longing for home she hadn’t even known lived within her. Just beyond the giant pine tree on the corner sat the McGrath family home. Tears burned the backs of her eyes. She hadn’t seen the house since her grandmother died. Inside the grand yellow Victorian with its wraparound porch lived the two people she loved most in the world.

  Cade pulled the truck onto the gravel drive. He leaned forward over the steering wheel and peered out the windshield. “I see Wayne gave Savannah back her shotgun.”

  Fear bubbled up from Tulsa’s belly. Her eyes widened at the sight of Savannah on the front wraparound porch of the daffodil-yellow house. In her arms rested Grandma Margaret’s shotgun.

  “Has she lost her mind?” Tulsa mumbled.

  Cade rolled down his window. “Savannah,” Cade yelled, “I got Tulsa in here.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn who you’ve got, Cade Montgomery; you get your sorry Bobby-Hopkins-loving ass off my property.” She took a menacing step forward on the porch.

  “I think you’re on your own with your bags.” Cade’s eyes never left Savannah and her shotgun.

  Tulsa nodded. The faster she got out of Cade’s truck, the less likely Savannah picked up a second illegal discharge case.

  “You hear me, Cade?” Savannah stepped down the first porch step. “You back that damn Montgomery truck off my drive!”

  Cade put the truck in r
everse but kept his foot on the brake. “You got everything?” he asked Tulsa. Her laptop, her purse, her—

  A shotgun blasted into the air.

  Tulsa hopped out of the truck, “Go!” She didn’t have to tell him twice. Cade hit Mayweather Street and was gone without even a wave.

  Chapter Four

  Tulsa followed Savannah into their childhood home. The memories of her grandmother and her mother—both gone—collided in Tulsa’s mind. Shadowy imprints of both women traced the house’s interior. The giant maple-wood staircase rose from the entryway to the darkened upstairs and a worn blue braided rug lay on the floor just inside the front door. Even the red and brown hall runner that led to the kitchen and family room in the back of the house was a relic from Grandma Margaret’s mother. A stillness wove through the house like a memorial to two long-gone McGrath women. The quiet remained deep and heavy until Savannah wheeled around and glared at Tulsa.

  “You want to explain why you’re pulling up into the drive with Cade Montgomery?” The wild-eyed look was familiar—a staple of the McGrath temper.

  “Give me the gun,” Tulsa said.

  “There’s a whole lot of history between you two,” Savannah continued, unwilling to release the firearm.

  “Yeah, and not much of it good.” Tulsa wouldn’t revisit her past with Cade. The past was long gone and while yes, she still had desire for Cade, that wasn’t a reason to rip open a scarred wound. Tulsa set her laptop case and purse next to a vase on the table beside the front door. “Cade found me on Yampa Valley Road. Stranded.”

  “That’s convenient.” Savannah jutted out her bottom lip and blew air upward, forcing her wild curls from her eyes. “Guess I’ll have to believe you.”

  “Have to believe me?” Tulsa shook her head. Her jaw twitched. As if Tulsa would have asked the man who was trying to take Ash away from Savannah to give her a ride?

  Looking at Savannah was like looking into an off-kilter mirror. Her sister’s hair was wilder and longer, her nose broader, her eyes bluer. She wore no makeup, a beat-up white button-down man’s shirt with clay stains streaking the front, ripped jeans, and dirty work boots, but even with all their differences they remained similar.

  “Now, give me the gun,” Tulsa said again, this time more sternly.

  Savannah pulled the shotgun tighter to her chest. “Grandma left it to me.”

  “Correction,” Tulsa said. “She left the house and all its contents to us. One of those items is the gun.”

  “You can have the marble-top buffet.”

  Both sisters looked across the unused formal dining room toward the stubborn antique.

  “What would I do with a three-hundred-pound, solid maple, marble-top buffet?” Tulsa asked.

  “Might look nice in your dining room.”

  “My dining room is California contemporary—that monstrosity would look like an elephant in an igloo.” Tulsa turned her head and faced Savannah. This wasn’t a joke and none of it was funny—not the shooting, not the clutching of a firearm to her chest, and definitely not her sister’s arrest. “Give. Me. The. Gun.” Tulsa emphasized each word. The blaze in Savannah’s eyes had burned out and a hint of doubt, maybe even fear, flitted across her face.

  “You can’t go around racking up weapons charges and expect to keep custody of Ash.”

  With the mention of Ash and the pending custody case, Savannah’s mouth sloped down and her shoulders slumped forward as if a child scolded. Savannah checked the safety and handed the weapon to Tulsa.

  “You are not to shoot this gun again—not now, and quite possibly not ever. At the very least, you aren’t to go near it until this custody case is over.” Tulsa walked across the dining room and placed the gun in the rack over the fireplace.

  Then Tulsa followed Savannah down the long hall, past the staircase, to the back of the old Victorian where the McGrath family did most of their living. The giant open room contained the family room, a remodeled kitchen, a dining area, and walls full of windows. Roughhewn beams broke through the open expanse of the high, raftered ceiling. Their color matched the antique handmade wide-plank wood floors. Fading sunlight reflected off the ochre-colored walls.

  “Where’s Ash?” Tulsa stopped at Savannah’s work table, which was pressed up against a wall of windows looking out toward the backyard and beyond it to the mountains.

  “Volleyball practice.”

  A bit of twisted wire poked out from the red clay Savannah used to make her sculpture models. Although Savannah’s workshop was in the backyard, she usually started a new project here, in the house, at this table.

  “What’re you working on?”

  “I got an idea.” Savannah ducked her head and didn’t meet Tulsa’s gaze. “It’ll be bigger than that.”

  “Commissioned?”

  Savannah dug a piece of clay from under her nail. “Not this one. Trying something new.” She shifted her weight and plopped both her hands on her hips. Discomfort flooded from Savannah. She wasn’t ready to discuss the piece yet. Her specialty was animals: eagles, bears, mountain lions, all cast in bronze. Her great gift was capturing the movement of each creature.

  Savannah dusted some dry clay off her work space and dumped it in the trash. She stood beside her work table, her eyes glued to the lifeless clay that lay waiting for her magic touch. While Tulsa dove straight to the depths of a problem, Savannah edged around life like a crab. To hit upon something direct, Savannah usually needed anger to buoy her; otherwise, she kept most of her thoughts to herself.

  “You’re not finished working yet.”

  “I can be,” Savannah said.

  Tulsa hadn’t seen Savannah since summer, but silence fell around them. A silence, Tulsa knew, that could only be cured by Savannah working on her latest piece until she felt that she was finished.

  “Why don’t you work,” Tulsa said. “I need to find a tow truck.”

  Set free to do what she loved, a wide smile broke across Savannah’s face. She settled onto her work stool, her fingertips finding their home within the clay, amongst the wires.

  “Maybe I’ll start dinner,” Tulsa said softly. She pulled open the refrigerator door. A sour odor wafted out of the refrigerator. Tulsa wrinkled her nose. Milk? Eggs? Bad cheese? She lifted out the milk carton that contained an expiration date from three weeks prior.

  “Or maybe we could order in,” Tulsa said.

  Tulsa covered her mouth and braced herself against the sour smell. She turned the water on and poured the clumpy milk down the kitchen drain.

  “What?” Savannah looked up from her mound of clay. Caught in the world of her work, her myopic focus glazed over her eyes. “Dinner? Did you say something about dinner?”

  “I’ll pick something up.” Tulsa pulled open a kitchen drawer reserved for takeout menus.

  “How about Chinese?” Savannah mumbled, again consumed by her work. “Ash loves Chinese food.”

  Tulsa rifled through the newspaper clippings, a past review of Savannah’s work from the New York Times and articles about Savannah’s art shows all stuffed within the drawer. These were impressive reviews, important reviews, reviews that deserved to be framed. Tulsa contained her sigh. She pulled out the Chinese carryout menu and beneath it lay the familiar blue backing of legal documents. Tulsa pulled out the papers from the drawer. Not a good place for the legal documents that had the potential to change your entire world.

  “You got those, right?” Savannah called from across the room.

  “Just the signature page,” Tulsa said.

  By now, Sylvia must have sent the PDF of the entire petition. Tulsa scanned through the first page and then the second. Pretty standard stuff, until…

  Her heart flipped upward and punched the base of her throat. Her eyes continued to devour the words within the custody petition. With each word, each paragraph, her heart slammed harder and faster against her ribs. She couldn’t show her distress to Savannah. Even if it was merely a facade, Tulsa’s calm was the only thing bet
ween Savannah and another arrest.

  “What is it?” Panic laced Savannah’s voice.

  In an attempt at nonchalance, Tulsa shook her head and lifted one shoulder. “Did you know that Bobby is asking for sole custody of Ash?”

  “What?” The chair leg scraped across the floor. Savannah stood. She leaned over Tulsa’s shoulder. “That can’t be right. He—”

  Tulsa pointed to the offending paragraph. “The mother will have visitation at Christmas and two weeks each summer.”

  Savannah yanked the pages from Tulsa’s hand. Tulsa expected better than this from Cade, but didn’t know why.

  “He can’t have her! Tulsa, if he takes her… What if—”

  “I’ll take care of this.” Her tone was cool and reassuring, but anger burned through her chest. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Mind if I borrow your Jeep?”

  “The keys are next to the urn beside the front door.”

  “Urn?” Tulsa looked at Savannah.

  “Yeah,” Savannah said. “You know, where we keep Grandma Margaret.”

  Chapter Five

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  A tingle scurried up Cade’s spine as Tulsa’s voice rolled over him. He looked up from the Pacific Reporter he’d pulled off the bookshelf in his office. The dark-haired beauty stood just inside his office door.

  “I’m sorry, Cade, she ran right past me.” Her palms turned upward, Becky, Cade’s legal secretary, stood behind Tulsa.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cade said.

  Becky shut his office door and Cade returned the book to the shelf.