Worth the Risk: (A Contemporary Bad Boy Romance) Read online

  Several minutes later the bunk was reduced to a pile of boards and plywood. He carefully broke apart the wood into scraps small enough to burn, the whole demolition process taking an hour.

  While he worked, Dani continued imbibing. When he took his seat beside her, she gave him an unexpected grin.

  "Thank God you're the Mountain Man type," she said, weaving slightly beneath the sleeping bag. "I know I put up a convincing front, but I'm not really much of an outdoorswoman."

  "No," he gasped, once again pulling the bottle out of her hands. "What a shocking revelation!" He thought the sarcasm was clear, but she must have missed it.

  "I know, I know, who woulda thunk it? I'm from the big city. Dallas, Texas. Home of pit barbeque, football, oil barons, and the assassination of President Kennedy. Although it's not so polite to mention that last one. I'm used to big cars with steer horns welded to the front, to gents in ten-gallon hats and scantily clad cheerleaders. Oh, and buildings and restaurants and shopping. Not tents and log fires and endless rain."

  He rolled his eyes good-naturedly at her ramblings, then moved the bottle to his other hand and winced. A quick inspection of his hands turned up several large splinters, plenty of scratches, and what looked like a gouge from one of the nails. Caleb grabbed one of the wood splinters and pulled, grunting as it came loose from his skin.

  "Hey," Dani whispered, finally focusing on his hands, "you're hurt."

  "I'm fine." He leaned forward to pull the first aid kit off the table.

  "Gimme that!" She grabbed the small white box away from him. For a drunk, she had quick reflexes. He probably shouldn't allow her to poke and prod at him, but he didn't want to ruin the comfortable atmosphere by starting another argument.

  She took one of his hands into hers after setting the box on her lap, then pulled out the flashlight and shined it down on his palm. She tsked softly and released his hand, pulling open the kit and finding an alcohol wipe. "Hold out your hands," she said, then paused before using the wipe. "This is gonna sting."

  "Do it." He clenched his teeth, but the sting wasn't so bad. Dani balled up the used wipe and threw it into the fire, then climbed out of the sleeping bag to dig through her toiletry case. "Good thing I brought this along," she said, pulling out some tweezers. She removed his many splinters, and Caleb closed his eyes.

  "Did I hurt you?" she asked softly, and he opened his eyes to look into her concerned face.

  "No. I just hate splinters. The thought of something under my skin makes me uncomfortable."

  "I understand," she said and giggled. "I've got just the prescription!" She pulled out the scotch and untwisted the cap from the bottle. "Take two swigs and call me in the morning."

  "I don't drink."

  It wasn't safe to drink. Not when your parents took to booze like a baby to mother's milk.

  "Don't think of it as drinking," she connived. "You're just taking your medicine." He wanted to laugh as she attempted an inebriated wink. "Besides, it's not like you're going to drive or operate heavy machinery."

  He wanted to agree with her logic. It would be nice to relax. Relax and forget his past. Forget the storm around them and the rivers of mud. Forget the miners threatening his park and the life he'd built for himself. It would feel good to forget.

  But could he risk releasing the stranglehold on his self-control? One more look into her warm brown eyes and he wanted to risk it all, risk anything just to lose himself in this moment, here with her. He took the bottle from her, holding it up to the firelight. The fiery liquid was the same color as her eyes.

  He took it as a sign.

  The scotch was sweeter than expected, perhaps due to the special oak-barrel aging process the label touted. The sweet suddenly turned to fire in his throat, and he wanted to cough, but he tried to hold it in, not wanting to look like a novice in front of company. His efforts were for naught, however, as in the next breath, he was coughing heavily.

  Dani laughed, a musical sound, like water tinkling over small stones. He smiled, his eyes beginning to water, and he noticed with surprise that she was hard at work on his hands and he didn't feel uncomfortable.

  "You really don't drink," she giggled. "Not even in college? I'm disappointed. I always secretly thought that the guys in the Forestry Program knew how to party."

  "Ha ha," he mouthed, and this time she picked up on his sarcasm. "Park rangers always have wood." It was one of those juvenile jokes that had been passed around the classrooms.

  "Are you gonna tell me that you didn't get laid in college?" she asked, relieving him of the bottle and taking another swig. She seemed no stranger to the burn. "Honey, I was born at night, but not last night."

  Caleb laughed in an attempt to deflect her probing, but the look in her eyes made him want to open up. "I didn't say that."

  Her mouth turned up in a grin, but it soon melted, a serious expression taking its place. She just looked at him, and suddenly he felt like one of her specimen that she was trying to see inside him, figure out how he worked.

  He thought about explaining, about telling her of his childhood spent at the mercy of two disinterested drunks, and the only thing they'd liked better than booze was fighting with each other. But he told no one these things.

  He didn't like to remember. So he just shrugged, pulled the bottle away from her again, and took another drink. This time it went down smoother and pooled in his belly, warming it like a layer of coals in a furnace.

  "All done," she said suddenly, dropping his hands after making sure all the cuts were cleaned. Dani scrutinized him, one eye squinting as she looked over his face. "I think you hide many secrets, Ranger Caleb." He noticed that she was beginning to slur a little.

  "A man's entitled to his secrets," he replied, then reached over to grab the packages of beef jerky and trail mix. He then snagged one of the water bottles and handed it to her.

  "Water?" she asked, sticking out her tongue at the bottle. "But things were just getting good."

  "I bet you haven't eaten in hours. So have a drink of water, choke down some of this jerky and trail mix, and then, if you're a good girl, I'll give you back the bottle."

  "I'm always a good girl," she muttered, pulling open the jerky and popping a chunk into her mouth.

  He smiled as she chewed sullenly on the dry meat. "I doubt that."

  She scowled at him and washed down the jerky with some water. Dani then poured some trail mix into her hand and began eating. He took the jerky from her and ate some, and held out his hand for her to pour the trail mix into. After several minutes of quiet eating, they finished the water bottle and most of the emergency rations.

  Dani stood suddenly, abandoning the sleeping bag and making her way to the door.

  "Where are you going?" he asked when she flipped on the flashlight and put on her still wet raincoat, thrusting her tiny feet into Caleb's oversized boots.

  "I've got to...use the facilities."

  "Oh," he said, then laughed. "What facilities?"

  "Very funny." She growled in frustration as she tried to push the door open.

  "Pull," he said, and she looked at him with murder in her eyes. He wanted to laugh. She was so easy to rile. She had such passion, right below that seductive surface. She finally made her way out into the night, and Caleb stared into the fire, waiting for her to return.

  The scotch gave everything a muted glow, and despite the circumstances, the ranger felt more relaxed than he had in a long time. Maybe it was the booze, but he thought it might also have to do with the company.

  He looked down at his hands, amazed at her compassion. He'd done nothing to deserve her kindness. If anything she had every reason to scorn him. He turned his hands over, surprised that he felt no pain. Sure, it was just a few splinters and some scratches, but he couldn't remember when anyone had done something so simple, so caring for him.

  When he was a child, he'd learned quickly that running home to Mommy when he'd scraped a knee was useless. She hadn't kissed his boo-bo
os like he knew mothers should. In fact, he was just as likely to get hit for disturbing her as he was to get any sympathy. Before he had turned five, he was putting Band-Aids on his own ouchies and avoiding disturbing his mom, wherever she happened to be passed out.

  Caleb took another swig of the scotch and tried to drive the memories away. He heard the creak of the door and soon Dani was huddling back under the sleeping bag, shivering heavily. "It's crazy out there," she said, and he heard the tinge of fear in her voice. "The mud is halfway up the hill already, and it's moving around us like an ocean tide."

  Caleb put his arm around her and pulled her close, helping her settle the sleeping bag around her small frame. He rubbed his hand up and down her arm to generate some heat.

  She took the bottle from him and drew deeply. "So where were we?" she asked when she'd gotten settled. "Oh yeah, you were telling me about your college years."

  Caleb gave her a wry smile. No, I wasn't. You were being a busybody. "I studied hard in college, and that didn't leave much time for girls."

  Dani snorted in disbelief. "I'm sorry, but I just can't believe that. Are you telling me a campus full of red-blooded females could ignore you? Come on, a good-looking guy like you, you must have had the chicks beating down your dorm room door."

  "Chicks?" he asked teasingly.

  "You know what I mean!" She gave him a light punch to his exposed midsection.

  "Ow!" he said with an exaggerated flinch.

  "That's right, now you better spill it, or I'll show you how hard I can really punch."

  "I guess I better talk or risk your wrath. I didn't know academics were so violent." An elbow to his ribs confirmed his new, more handsy assessment of the feisty professor. "Yes, alright, I bagged chicks in college. Of course, I got laid."

  Dani stuck her tongue out at him and dissolved into giggles. "I knew it. Is that where you started your...No Relationship Policy?"

  Caleb looked away, debating how to answer that. "It's...difficult for me to get close to people."

  "I don't know about that. You got close to me pretty easily."

  His eyebrows rose in surprise. Inebriated Dani was fun. Looser. He liked that she'd let down her tight control. Her professional front was gone, and now she seemed like a warm kitten. Soft and cuddly.

  "I meant emotionally close. Physically, yeah, no problems there. But I think it's better to keep to myself. No one gets hurt."

  "No one gets hurt?" she echoed, confusion evident in her soft voice.

  "Yeah." He grimaced, excessively rubbing his ribs where she'd poked him, half in jest.

  "Sounds like you're afraid to trust others," she said astutely.

  Caleb didn't like the serious path their conversation had started down. "I had a few friends, but no one I was especially close to. And the women...sometimes I'd let my guard down, spend a night with a girl after a party or club hopping. But I never let it get serious." He took another sip of the scotch and passed the bottle to her, hoping to distract her from this line of questioning.

  It didn't work. She took another sip then continued her analysis of his deepest psyche. "So now you hide yourself away in the woods, with only the birds and beasts to keep you company."

  "Says the woman who hangs out with frogs for a living," he countered.

  "Hey!" she protested and laughed. "My story's simple. Only Child Syndrome."

  "Clarify. I'm an only child too, but I seem to have missed the seminar on this supposed syndrome of yours."

  "Only Child Syndrome, or OCS to those of us in the know," she began, "is the result of never having a sibling to play with as a child. My parents were both older, and they both worked, and the neighborhood we lived in was mostly comprised of elderly people whose children were much older than me. Consequently, I spent a lot of time alone. Symptoms of OCS include loneliness, boredom, and self-reliance. I threw myself into my books. Eventually, I discovered science, and my love affair with biology is still going strong."

  "I see," he said with a smile. "I guess I suffered from the same symptoms, but instead of frogs I found forestry."

  "Yes, but when I got to college, I was excited to make new friends and go out. You sound like you held yourself back from the world."

  "I did," he confirmed, the smile vanishing. Almost without his noticing, she drew his story out of him. "My childhood wasn't great."

  He took a deep breath, afraid to release the secret from inside himself, but afraid to hold it in anymore. "My parents were both alcoholics. They only cared about getting drunk, and once they were drunk, their favorite pastime was fighting with each other. They'd fight for hours, screaming at each other, sometimes getting violent. I was too small to do anything about it. My mother would fly into these sadistic rages and would scratch and beat at my father until he'd belt her one, or two, or more. If I tried to intervene, I'd get a double helping."

  Caleb heard the sharp inhale of her breath, felt her small hand grip his arm tightly. "I'm sorry," she said tenderly. "You said they "were" alcoholics. Are they sober today?"

  "No, they're not sober," he said, his voice rough with emotion. "They're dead."

  Chapter 10

  Dani looked into his face and saw pain living there. "I'm sorry." It was obvious their deaths still affected him. She was sorry to have started down this road.

  She didn't want to hurt him. She missed the light-heartedness of a few moments ago but realized she wanted to know all about the ranger now that he'd opened himself up. No more shutters blocking the emotion in his eyes.

  Still, she wouldn't pressure him. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," she said, but he ignored her words.

  "One night, I think I was twelve at the time, and I was playing with a set of mismatched building blocks behind the couch while the folks tied one on. It didn't take long for the yelling to start, and I could tell my mother was spoiling for it just from her tone of voice. Brittle like ornament glass, her voice was. She started egging my father on, telling him what a waste of skin he was, telling him that we'd be better off without him."

  "He just sat there for a while, taking what she was dishing out. It was nothing new; we'd both heard it all before. But Mom didn't like that she wasn't getting a rise out of him, so she had to twist the screws a little tighter."

  Dani didn't like the look on his face, his features full of anguish. She wished she could stop him before the climax of his terrible tale, but it seemed he needed to get it all out.

  "Mom started taunting him with other men. She told him old Sam behind the liquor store counter had propositioned her, and that she had considered taking him up on the offer. Well, that got my dad's attention and earned her a slap across the face."

  "Funny thing is, she just laughed at my father. It was like she wanted him to hit her. She wouldn't shut up after that, having found the one button she could push to get his attention. She started telling him about the bartender at the local watering hole, about how good his ass looked in his tight jeans, and about how one night after my dad had passed out, she'd gone down to the bar after closing time and hooked up with the bartender."

  "My father just sat there, quiet, and I remember I stopped trying to build anything and listened. I knew that Mom was in for it, but she just wouldn't stop, and I was too scared to move. She started telling him all these filthy details about what the bartender had done to her, how he'd felt her up and squeezed her butt through her denim skirt. She told him how she'd pulled off her shirt and wasn't wearing a bra, and how he'd sucked her tits while she sat on a barstool and wrapped her legs around his waist. Then she told him that the guy had fucked her on the bar and had made her come like he never did."

  Dani was repulsed by the story, alarmed that a wife would say such things to her husband, and disgusted that a mother was willing to say such things in front of her son.

  Caleb's face was like stone, a mask of pain, and she tightened her grip on his arm, bending in to rest her head on his shoulder. "I don't even know if it was true or
if she was just trying to piss the old man off, but that was about all my dad could take. Suddenly, my mom's words cut off, and I heard a sharp bark. I leapt up from behind the couch and saw my dad standing in front of my mom, his hands wrapped around her neck. He was squeezing so tight her face was bright red."

  His voice was flat, but the agony in his eyes made Dani's insides contract. "I jumped over the back of the couch and started shoving him, trying to get him to release her, but he kicked me in my chest. I fell down, the wind knocked out of me, unable to move as he tightened his grip around her neck until her lips turned blue. Finally, her eyes closed and she lost consciousness, but he kept squeezing. And the strangest thing was her face. She just wore this great big smile the whole time."

  "At last my father released her and she fell to the floor. By now I was sobbing, balled up in a corner. I didn't know what to do, didn't think there was anything I could do. My dad just looked down at me for a few minutes, then walked to an old desk across the room. He opened one of the drawers and pulled out a gun. Without looking back, he put it to his head and pulled the trigger."

  Dani gasped, unable to believe the trauma that this poor child had experienced at the hands of the very people who were supposed to love and care for him. She wasn't surprised to see a tear slide from his eye and roll down his cheek. He dashed it away with the back of his hand and cursed quietly, then took another long pull on the scotch. She watched as the liquid drained from the bottle until there was nothing left.

  "After their deaths, I moved in with my aunt. She was older, already set in her routines. Church on Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. Other days she spent quilting or visiting with her neighbors. We mostly ignored each other."

  His stare was distant. "Her property bordered a state forest, and I spent a lot of time hiding there. If she couldn't find me, she couldn't drag me to church. She gave up after a month or so of trying, but I kept going to the forest. It was quiet. Peaceful. It soothed some of the twisted feelings I had inside me. Anger at my parents. Confusion over what they'd done. Loneliness. So much fucking loneliness, so sharp sometimes, like a million tiny slivers piercing under my skin. The forest helped. It centered me. Helped me accept the pain.”