Outlaw Cowboy by Nicole Helm

wasn’t that crazy. But the surface was always hiding something, and he couldn’t be seen anywhere near the Pioneer Spirit or someone with Rose Rogers’s reputation. If Delia’s was bad, Rose’s was lethal.
    Her eyebrows drew together, and she toyed with the zipper fraying off her jacket. It was rare that she let her confusion or nerves show, but here they were. Delia didn’t know what to do, and she needed his help.
    But he couldn’t risk any more helping her, because…
    â€œI have to know,” Delia said in a quiet, unsure voice. “It’s been so long, and…” She trailed off, swallowing whatever the rest of the words were before she fixed him with a glare, dropping her hands to her sides. “You have to help me. This is your fault. You have to help me.”
    â€œHow is it my—” But he stopped abruptly, because he might not understand how or why, but something about the night he’d saved her from her father had separated her from her sisters.
    â€œMan up, Caleb. Make this right.”
    â€œAnd if I don’t?” Can’t? When have I ever made anything right?
    â€œYou will.”
    Her certainty in him was so strange, so foreign, she almost made him want to help her. To be able to. If anyone in his world deserved help, it was Delia. Fuck, how he wished she’d go to someone else—someone who deserved to be asked.
    Someone who didn’t want to run. Who didn’t want to touch her and get her naked and in his bed—or maybe who did, and could. A man who would know how to give her something. It didn’t take a genius or good person to see Delia needed something to go in her favor.
    But what on earth did he have to offer that wouldn’t undermine everything he needed to do with his life in the next three months?
    * * *
    Delia was so tired of being close to tears. Of having to fight for kindness. But she’d be damned if she was going to stop when Rose was at the end of this particular fight.
    â€œYou will help me. You owe me.” If she said it enough, it would be true. If she said it enough, Caleb’s overactive conscience would get the better of him.
    â€œI can’t go to Pioneer Spirit, Delia.” Each word was grave, weighted, as though he was a doctor breaking the news that someone was dead.
    It almost felt as if he was, but she kept fighting, because hell—lost causes were her best fight, weren’t they? “Why can’t you? It isn’t as if you never go to town. You have to pass it to go to Felicity’s or Bozeman or—”
    â€œIt isn’t about location,” he ground out. There was a humming silence that followed. It took every last ounce of effort and determination to cut off the next demand. “I can’t be seen going into or out of a bar. I can’t have my truck parked anywhere near a bar. It’d get back to Mel, and as much as getting a message to your sister seems easy from your side of things, it’s all kinds of complicated on mine. So, unless I happen to pass her on the street, it ain’t happening.”
    Delia snorted. “Right, like Mel thinks you’ve never been to a—” She stopped on a dime when she put it all together. Caleb’s straight and narrow wasn’t just not hanging out with the wrong people and not helping himself to a five-fingered discount now and again. He wasn’t drinking.
    At all.
    He felt like he couldn’t risk being seen at a bar for even a few seconds. Or is that just the excuse he’s going to use not to have to help me?
    But Caleb looked about as happy to have shared that information as his father had looked horizontal on the ground.
    â€œI can’t help.” Flat. Final, and if she wasn’t totally fooling herself, sorry.
    She wished sorry meant shit.
    â€œBut…”
    She wouldn’t allow her hope to sprout. Hope wasn’t a thing with feathers like that worthless poem