The Bluff (Calamity Montana)

“EARTH TO HUX.” Katie snapped her fingers in front of my face.

I blinked and shot her a scowl.

“What’s with you this week?”

“Nothing,” I muttered, spinning in my office chair so my back was to her. Then I adjusted my aching cock and wished the hard-on I’d been sporting for three days would go the fuck away.

Except every time I closed my eyes, I saw a sparkling bronze gaze. Caramel irises flecked with dark chocolate and cinnamon. I saw creamy, smooth skin the color of melted honey.

It was worse at night, when I could still feel the whisper of her sweet breath across my ear. When I craved the dig of her nails into the flesh of my back. Or the way her tight heat clenched me like a fist as she orgasmed with a cry and milked my own release.

Fucking hell.

I was rock hard.

“Hux.” Katie cleared her throat behind me.

“Yeah.” I didn’t bother turning. All I’d see was a scowl. Judging by Katie’s huff, she was losing patience.

Katie had been my friend for decades, and she knew my moods as well as I knew hers.

The two of us had gone to the same school—everyone in Calamity went to the same school. She was two years younger than I was, but since we’d lived in the same neighborhood, her parents had asked mine in fifth grade if I’d walk with her to school. We’d been friends ever since.

Katie was a little thing, standing a foot shorter than my six two, and there were times when she looked like she could fit in with this year’s Calamity Cowboys senior class. She’d been wearing the same thick, black-rimmed glasses for decades. Her light brown hair was chopped right above her shoulders, like it had always been.

There was comfort in her familiarity. She treated me the same today, yesterday, the day before, as she had when we’d been kids. I could always count on her, through thick and thin, which wasn’t something I could say about many people. Katie had been the one and only person to show up the day I’d gotten out of prison. She was one of the few people in this world I trusted completely.

“Are you okay?” she asked, concern lacing her kind voice.

I sighed and ran a hand over my face. “I’m good.”

I just couldn’t seem to get my mind off my night with Everly. What the hell had I been thinking? Hooking up with a woman in town was not what I was supposed to be doing right now.

“Is it Savannah?” she asked.

“Hmm.” Not a yes. Not a no.

“Any word from Aiden?”

I shook my head, finally turning around. If there was anything to get my mind off the mysterious and sensual woman I’d fucked three nights ago, it was my lawyer’s name. “He’s supposed to call me when he knows more.”

“Do you think they’ll assign a family services agent?”

“I hope so.” Because at this point, I wasn’t sure what else to do to get my daughter away from my bitch of an ex-wife. Not a topic I wanted to get into with Katie, so I leaned my forearms on my desk. She’d come in here for a reason. “What’s up?”

“Did you see the email about the commission piece?”

I shot a glare at the laptop closed at my side. “I hate email.”

Katie rolled her eyes and handed me the piece of paper she’d brought in. It was the email, printed out for me to read. Not only was she my friend, but she’d been working at my art gallery for years. She’d helped me build my business from the ground up.

Katie did everything at Reese Huxley Art besides paint. She acted as the receptionist in the showroom. She maintained my website and answered the emails I avoided like the plague. She kept the gallery’s books, doing her best to track whatever receipts I balled up and left on my desk.

Without her, there’d be no Reese Huxley Art.

I scanned the email, cringing at its length. The customer was requesting a custom landscape piece but without blue paint. She wanted a Montana scene with a river but without blue paint. She wanted it in the summer but without blue paint. At the end, she wrote P.S. NO BLUE in all caps.

“How am I supposed to paint a Montana summer landscape, with a goddamn river, and not use blue?”

Katie scrunched up her nose. “Should I just tell her you’re booked?”

I was booked. It wouldn’t be a lie. But money was money, and though I wasn’t hurting for it these days, I still remembered what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck, so I rarely turned it down, even if that meant I sacrificed my creative freedom. “Quote her fifty percent higher than normal if she doesn’t want blue.”

“Okay.”

Taking the paper, I wadded it into a tight sphere and tossed it into the trash can. “What else?”

“Nothing. It’s quiet.”

“It’s winter.”

We didn’t get much foot traffic in the winter, another reason I’d do this non-blue custom piece. I used the slow months to stock up on items we’d display and sell during tourist season and also to fill special orders.

“I think I might take off,” I said. “Head to the studio. You good here alone?”

“Of course.” She smiled, then spun on her ballet flats and walked out of the room, her footsteps no more than a whisper on the wooden floors.

Around my office, finished paintings wrapped in tan kraft paper leaned against the walls. My desk was littered with paper—empty coffee cups from the coffee shop, more emails Katie had printed for me to review, bills in envelopes that needed to be opened and paid.

All things I hadn’t gotten around to doing yet and doubted I would. Today, I’d come in to clean up this mess, but I just couldn’t focus. I couldn’t get Everly off my mind.

The image of her on that barstool was ingrained on my mind. The seductive and mischievous glint in her eyes. The innuendo dripping from her sultry voice. The corner of her lickable mouth turned up in open invitation. The second her tongue had darted out to wet her bottom lip, I’d been a goner.

Christ, she was sexy. I hadn’t been able to resist.

Hookups weren’t my style. Not that I was a damn monk, but usually I left town. I’d go to a neighboring place, like Prescott, where I wouldn’t risk running into a woman later at the café or coffee shop. The last thing I needed was more women spreading rumors about me around town.

Not that I gave a fuck what people thought of me. I’d been written off a long damn time ago. But I cared for Savannah’s sake.

My daughter was dealing with enough shit. The last thing she needed was for some woman I’d fucked to harass her to get my attention. Almost as worse would be for April to get wind of it and make my life even more complicated.

My ex-wife seemed to have a bead on everything I did around town. Where I ate. Where I drove. Where I slept, even if it was here at the gallery on my couch against the wall, currently littered with blank canvases. Hell. No one, especially April, needed to know that I’d let Everly drag me to her studio apartment, where I’d fucked her senseless.

I rubbed a hand over my face, shaking away the image of Everly’s coffee-colored hair falling in silky strands down her chest. Her rosy nipples peeking through the strands. Her hands braced on my chest as she rode me. Her hips circling as she moved, up and down on my cock. Her mouth parted, just a bit, as a rouge flush crept up her chest.

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, shooting out of my chair.

Enough already. It was a one-night stand, nothing more. She was just a woman with a hot body and some sexy as fuck hair.

But damn it, that had been the best sex of my life. Everly had held nothing back. Neither had I. We’d come together in a rush of mingled breaths and tangled limbs and curled toes. No inhibitions. No limits. That woman had met me beat for beat, and we’d fallen together like wild, practiced lovers.

Not that I knew anything about being in a long-term relationship. The only lover I’d taken more than once had been April and look where that had landed me.

Prison.

There weren’t many people I truly loathed in this world, but my ex topped the short list.

April and I had been foolish kids when we’d gotten married. We’d been in love—if you could call it love at that age. The minute she turned eighteen, we drove the two hours to Bozeman, the closest town of any size to Calamity, and walked into the courthouse like we owned the damn place. Then we spent a weekend in a motel—a low-budget honeymoon—before coming home to tell our families we’d gotten married.

We rented a dumpy trailer, one her parents and mine frowned upon. She worked as a clerk at the grocery store for minimum wage. I took a job doing construction with a local crew.

Things were tight, but we were able to afford rent, gas and food. That wasn’t enough for April. She didn’t like the step down in monetary status. Why she thought things would be different, I had no clue. She’d known I didn’t have any money when she’d said I do.

But she wanted more. A nicer house far away from the trailer park. A new car. New clothes. So I took the graveyard shift at a gas station.

For a year, I listened to her complain that I wasn’t doing enough by working two jobs. So I worked harder, desperate to make her happy, to make this marriage work. Then on a rare night off, she dragged me to a party with some new friends. A group of guys were playing a poker game in the garage and invited me to join in.

That night, I won three hundred dollars.

Two weeks later at another party, I brought home five hundred. April loved it. So I kept playing and playing. I found new games, some in town, but most were outside Calamity. I learned quickly how to play. How to bluff.

How to cheat.

Then came the game that destroyed my life. The game was at a guy’s house outside of town. Some fancy prick who liked to flaunt his wealth before us lesser mortals. He invited ten of us who played often to his table. Maybe if I had realized sooner that my sleight of hand worked better with a paint brush, things would have been different.

But I was too young at nineteen and too stupid—too arrogant—to think I’d get caught.

Eventually, everyone gets caught.

The rich guy called me out for cheating. He came after me and beyond that, I don’t remember much.

He hit me. I hit him. Cheating at cards wasn’t my only talent back then. I also knew how to fight.

I put him in a coma for two weeks.

He moved away from Calamity before I got out of prison, but according to the rumors, he wasn’t as bright as he’d once been.

The public defender assigned to my case pled self-defense. The judge saw right through the bullshit and sentenced me to two years. Two years that I paid without argument.

I would have fought harder for a reduced sentence if I’d known April was pregnant.

She divorced me while I was inside. The papers arrived during my first month. I didn’t fight that either.

She took every one of my possessions from that trailer to the landfill. She drained our checking account, leaving me with nothing. She told the entire town of Calamity that I’d been manipulating her for years, that she’d been afraid to leave me because of my temper.

I didn’t have much of a fucking temper and I would never hit a woman.

But April was successful in tainting my name around town. During the twenty months I spent in a cell in the state penitentiary, not a soul reached out to me. Not my parents. Not my friends.

Except Katie.

She wrote me a letter about a year into my sentence. We didn’t communicate much beyond a short note here and there, but the day I walked out with four months of parole to go before I could put it behind me, Katie was the one waiting to pick me up.

She let me crash at her place while I finished out parole. She stuck with me as I put my life together.

Katie was the one to tell me about April.

Five days after our divorce had been finalized, April had remarried a lawyer in town. Julian Tosh was twelve years her senior. And five months into my sentence, April had given birth to a baby girl.

At first, I thought April had cheated, that her daughter was this lawyer’s kid. Bullet dodged. But then the color drained from Katie’s face and I knew.

That baby was mine.

Almost two years in prison and no one had told me, not even Katie. In her defense, Katie avoided April at all costs, and April had let everyone believe that the baby was Julian’s. But as the baby grew and her features—my features—became more prominent, there was no hiding the truth.

I could have gotten over the divorce. The money. The lies. But I’d never forgive April for keeping my daughter from me.

I returned to Calamity a father, and it took me ten months before I was able to meet Savannah.

Ten. Months.

I begged April. I pleaded. And she refused me at every turn. Finally, I found a lawyer.

April’s son of a bitch husband, Julian, ran the biggest firm in Calamity, so I had to go out of town to find representation. I wasn’t able to afford much anyway. Luckily, I found Aiden.

Aiden Archer lived in Prescott, a town in the neighboring county. For ten months, every petition he filed was immediately denied.

Julian wasn’t a better lawyer than Aiden, he just had more leverage. No matter how hard Aiden pushed, there was no overcoming the facts.

I was an ex-convict. A man convicted of a violent crime.

Coincidence was the only reason I even met Savannah. If April and Julian had had their way, I wouldn’t have been allowed to lay eyes on her.

April’s mother was babysitting Savannah and took her out for a special lunch. I was walking along First Street, having come downtown to drop off my paycheck at the bank, when I spotted the most beautiful little girl through the window of the White Oak Café.

April’s mother wasn’t as sadistic as my ex-wife. She let me stand there, awestruck at Savannah, for a solid two minutes before she waved me away.

Two minutes with my daughter, with a glass window between us.

Two-minute glimpses became my reason for living.

Two minutes at the park. Two minutes on the school playground when she snuck away from her friends and teachers to say hello at the chain-link fence.

Calamity was a small town and though it was impossible to escape the sins of my past, it was worth suffering here on the off chance I could see my kid.

At first, I don’t think she even knew I was her dad. Julian had stolen my place as her father. So I stood in the wings, waiting for my two minutes, determined that even if she didn’t know exactly who I was, she’d know she was my entire world.

Eventually, Savannah learned the truth about my identity. After years of begging to see my child, a judge granted me weekend visitation. Supervised, of course. For a short, perfect time, my Saturday afternoons were spent at the park, pushing Savannah on the swings or helping her across the monkey bars.

Until April decided that visitation wasn’t healthy for Savannah. She made up some bullshit story that Savannah screamed and cried each Saturday morning, dreading our playtime in the park.

Goodbye, visitation.

That had coincided with my purchase of the gallery. April had been jealous that I was making something of my life, so she’d punished me for it.

The family services lady who’d been supervising visits hadn’t been able to change the judge’s mind. No surprise. That judge played golf with Julian every Friday.

Petitioning the court had become a dead end. And finally, it had been too much. For my sanity. For my heart. I’d settled for those two-minute windows, giving up the big fight.

I wanted to kick my own ass for that mistake. For letting Savannah down.

But it was time to step up. Savannah had been through hell lately and she needed her father.

Just like I needed her.

Savannah was sixteen years old. It was time to battle, this time until the end. No matter what. No matter the cost. I was getting my daughter.

I dug out my phone from my pocket and pulled up her name.

There were a lot of benefits to having a rebellious teenager as your child. Savannah didn’t give a shit about her mother’s or stepfather’s rules. And she didn’t give a shit what the courts had to say. She was sixteen and when she wanted to see me, she did just that.

Hey, baby girl.

It was her lunch hour so I wasn’t surprised to see three dots appear.

Hey.

A girl of many words, my Savannah.

You okay?

A thumbs-up. I hated that damn emoji. It ranked right up there with the brown smiling shit pile.

Got time to come over later?

K

Probably be in the studio.

K

I doubted April and Julian would notice Savannah sneaking over to my house. The few times they had, they’d thrown epic fits, going so far as to call the cops to haul Savannah home.

Assholes. How was I the unworthy parent when they only drove her to trouble?

In the past year, my daughter had been caught riding around Calamity and the countryside on a dirt bike, acting like it was street legal. She’d disobeyed curfew. She’d been caught vandalizing property and spray-painting trees downtown. If there was a group of rough kids within a fifty-mile radius of Calamity who Savannah hadn’t befriended, then I was Judge Judy.

It had escalated so much, she’d thrown a rock through a farmhouse window, all because the sheriff had been parked out front.

It didn’t take a genius to realize Savannah was acting out.

She must have thought if she got into enough trouble, a judge would take her away from April and Julian. Sixteen-year-old logic at its finest.

She hadn’t caused much trouble lately, though I was more worried about her than ever before.

Five months ago, at the same farmhouse where she’d thrown the rock, she’d been held at gunpoint. She’d witnessed a psychopathic stalker try to murder Duke’s woman, Lucy. Savannah had watched as Duke had shot and killed the stalker.

She’d watched a person die.

Savannah refused to talk about the farmhouse. She pretended it hadn’t happened. But I’d find her staring at a wall when she didn’t think I was looking.

Maybe she’d talk to me if we had more time together, if there wasn’t the fear of breaking the rules looming over our heads. It was time to get her out of April and Julian’s house before it was too late.

Maybe it already was.

I swiped my keys from the desk and strode out of my office. At her corner desk in the showroom, Katie sat with the phone sandwiched between her ear and shoulder.

“Correct. No blue.” She spotted me and rolled her eyes.

I waved, striding past her to the gallery’s main entrance on First. Normally, I parked in the alley because it was guaranteed parking and I liked to come and go without fanfare.

I blamed Saturday night for the reason my truck was parked out front today.

I blamed Everly.

When she’d come into the bar Saturday night, I’d lied. I’d known exactly who she was when she’d slid onto that stool. She’d been at the farmhouse with Savannah. She was Lucy’s best friend from Nashville.

Everly Christian.

I didn’t frequent Jane’s often. I preferred to stay on the fringe of Calamity society. People here didn’t like me. And I didn’t like them.

But I’d been at the gallery on Saturday, dropping off some of my latest pieces from the studio. It was dark. The snow had started to fall. And I’d just felt . . . I don’t know what I’d felt. Lonely? Bored?

Jane’s was a couple doors from the gallery. There’d only been two cars out front. With the snow, I’d figured it would be a slow night, so I’d gone in for one drink.

Then Everly had walked in and my entire body had craved hers. The hair. Those eyes. The perfect pout to her watermelon-pink lips. Fuck, but I couldn’t stop thinking about their sweet taste.

I shot a glance across the street as I opened the door to my truck. Everly’s window reflected the bright afternoon sun and the snow-covered streets.

It had been reckless and stupid, but damn, Saturday had been fun. More fun than I’d had in a while and it had everything to do with the woman I desperately needed to get off my mind.

Shoving thoughts of her aside, I drove across town to my house. The ten-block trip was slushy with streets full of melting snow. My place wasn’t much, three bedrooms with an updated kitchen and a damp, unfinished basement that leaked in the spring. But I’d bought it because of the yard. It had a huge backyard, enough space for me to set up a separate studio.

I parked in the garage and went straight to the studio. My jeans had a drop of green paint at the hem and my gray flannel shirt had some white on one of the sleeves. Most of my clothes carried evidence of my profession, so it was no use changing before I got to work.

This was where I should have come on Saturday.

The smell of oils clung to the air as I walked inside and flipped on the lights. It wasn’t much, about the size of a one-car garage, but it was plenty of space to paint. On the back wall, rows of blank canvases waited for me. I picked one up and dug through my workbench for a pencil, then settled onto the stool in front of my easel. Paint drops of all colors—crimson, marigold, butterscotch, chartreuse, sapphire and iris—flecked the wooden floor.

I began a sketch, falling into the zone. The world disappeared, leaving only me and the art behind. The pencil’s dagger tip skidded across the ecru canvas, leaving strokes of charcoal in its wake.

An elk. Maybe I’d do an elk. I began to outline the antlers, the shape of the beast’s nose, but when I dropped the pencil and leaned back, it was . . . unsatisfying. It looked like an elk but the idea of adding colors today—blah.

So I put that canvas against the wall and retrieved a fresh one. Maybe I’d start on this custom piece. I had no doubt that Katie would convince the buyer to pay the additional price for her ridiculous request.

I outlined the skyline. The trees. The grasses and meadows and bend of the river as it cut through the earth. But the rough outline did nothing for me.

Fuck.

I knew what I wanted to paint.

I’d had the image in my mind for days.

A dangerous, beautiful image. One I should ignore.

Instead, I went for my third canvas, skipping the pencil entirely, trading it for a brush, the palette and my favorite carob oil.

And I painted the image I couldn’t seem to banish from my mind.