Courage Read online

  That meant someone was in the house.

  Someone who probably didn't belong in the house.

  Briefly, I considered the idea that it might be one of Kellen's friends. But Kellen's friends didn't go anywhere without their rides and there were no cars or trucks parked out front. So, that theory seemed unlikely. And if it wasn't one of Kellen's friends in the shower, I had to assume someone had broken in and helped themselves to our bathroom. Which wasn't as unusual as it sounds. Even though we're out in the middle of nowhere, quite a few drifters stop by looking for work or needing help with a flat tire or a broken down car. They've been known to help themselves to stuff when nobody's around, like tools, or dogs, or cars, even coming inside to empty the freezer. Maybe a little late, I decided that Kellen and I needed to reconsider our open-window policy.

  Making a detour back down the hall, I headed across the family room for the gun cabinet and pulled out the shotgun. Not that we have guns around to shoot people. They're for hunting. The shotgun's for birds…and rattlers. If you live on the plains, a shotgun is one of the best ways to convince a rattlesnake it's time to move on.

  But right now, I was glad my father was a hunter. And glad he'd made me take that hunter safety class. Because if you're gonna have a conversation with an intruder, it's nice to have a gun for backup.

  I loaded two rounds into the chambers.

  With the shotgun gripped at my side, I tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom door and almost jumped out of my T-shirt when the water turned off suddenly.

  "Who's there?" called a young male voice in a strange accent.

  I don't know how he'd heard me sneaking up on him with the water running like that. But the sound of his voice startled me. And I didn't want to be startled. Because I was the one with the gun and I wanted to be the one in control. "My name's Lorissa Burns," I called out. "What're you doing in my house? And what're you doing in my bathroom?"

  "Lorissa," he murmured, sounding surprisingly calm. "That's a nice name."

  I pulled the gun up a notch. "Glad you think so. Now maybe you should come outta there and introduce yourself before this gun goes off accidentally and blows your hide full of holes."

  "You have a gun?" he asked, not like he was afraid but more like he was interested.

  "Sure as hellfire and hobbits," I answered loud and clear.

  "Like Annie Oakley?" he asked.

  I got the feeling he wasn't taking all of this very seriously. "Just like Annie Oakley," I told him. "Except my gun's bigger. With a full load of shot."

  "Alright," he called. "I'll come out as soon as I'm dry. Just…don't be alarmed when you see me."

  I lifted the barrel another notch. "Don't you come outta there with no clothes on," I warned him. My voice squeaked a little more than I wanted it to.

  A soft rumble of laughter echoed in the bathroom. "Don't worry. I have some clothes in here with me. That's not the problem."

  I jerked my chin upward. "Then what's the problem?"

  "My face," he answered quietly…and a little ominously. "I-I don't want you to be shocked."

  So, I didn't know what to make of that but I took him at his word and braced myself for whatever shocking thing I might see next. But despite the warning, I wasn't prepared for what I saw when he opened the door.

  Have you ever seen Phantom of the Opera? The one with Gerard Butler? Because the boy who opened the bathroom door looked pretty much like that…except a lot younger. And a little more modernly dressed. He was wearing Kellen's faded overalls over a remarkably fashionable black leather vest. The contrast was interesting. It was like American Gothic meets Milan Runway. On his feet were a pair of Kellen's old black sneakers.

  But the right side of his face was an ugly mass of melted skin. No eyelashes. No eyebrow. And his eye didn't close properly, which gave him a crazed look. The hair on the side of his head was gone too, just a little blond stubble lifting from his scalp above his deformed ear. The rest of his hair had been hacked off short to match the length of the sad stubble.

  But…

  But if you could look past all that and focus on the other side of his face, you could tell that he had once been a nice looking boy. A nice looking boy with ice blue eyes and dirty blond hair. And a leanly sculpted jaw. And a mouth that looked like it was used to smiling. Only, it was hard not to fixate on the mutilated side of his face. It was just so…hideous.

  "I did warn you," he said a little defiantly.

  "I've…seen worse," I managed to choke out, which was a total lie. I'd never seen anything that bad before. Not even in movies. Not even in horror films.

  "Really?" he challenged me, tilting his head slightly. "Do you work at a morgue?"

  "No," I answered, sucking my lips between my teeth and locking my self-conscious gaze on the blue tattoo inked onto the side of his neck. The tat looked a little bit like a wing. Or maybe a tasseled flag whipped by the wind. "But once a month I volunteer with my church down at the hospital."

  "Then you need to work on your poker face," he suggested.

  I thought I caught a trace of a smile on his lips but I couldn't tell for sure because of the way his mouth stretched downward on one side. "Poker face?" I questioned him.

  He pointed a long, thick-knuckled finger at my face. "Judging by your expression, I guess I look pretty bad."

  "You look terrible," I agreed awkwardly. What could I say? I wouldn't have mentioned it if I'd had the choice. I know how to be tactful when I need to. He was the one who was insisting on talking about it.

  The boy's gaze drifted from my face to the barrel of the shotgun. "Well, if you use that gun on me, it probably won't improve my looks," he said with a snort of sarcasm.

  It was the glint of amusement in his eyes that made me question my strong-arm tactics. That brief flash of humor made him seem safe…and strong. Incredibly strong. How could you endure all that he'd been through and make a joke about it…while somebody held a gun on you? But maybe he didn't really think I'd use it. And maybe he was right.

  And while we stood there staring each other down and sizing each other up, I heard a vehicle pull up out in front of the house. Kellen to the rescue…I hoped. But with Kellen, you never really know what you're gonna get.

  The front door banged open and footsteps headed in our direction. I kept my eyes—and my gun—leveled on the boy. I figured I could back up Kellen while he escorted the intruder outside. But my big brother took one look at what was going down in the hallway and waded right into our little standoff.

  "Good work!" he shouted, throwing his arms out to his sides like I was the most exasperating person in the world. "Scare off the new hand on his first day."

  "I wasn't scared," the boy corrected him mildly.

  But Kellen was on a roll and he wasn't gonna let any extra commentary slow him down. He dragged his fingers back through his long brown hair and glared at me. "Weren't you listening when I called?"

  "You were breaking up," I told him flatly, heading down the hall to restore the gun to its proper resting place in the family room. "Hired hand?"

  "His name's Courage," Kellen announced. "Courage, meet my crazy-ass sister, Lorissa."

  "Courage?" I echoed, stopping in my tracks and turning back to the scene in the hallway. "That's…a little unusual."

  Kellen rolled his eyes. "Correction. Meet my tactless, crazy-ass sister."

  I sent Courage a tight smile. "Excuse us," I said, and grabbed Kellen's elbow as I yanked him into the family room. With the gun unloaded and safely back in the cabinet on the other side of the room, I crossed my arms over my chest and turned to face my brother. "Hired hand?"

  He put up a brave front. It's not like Kellen to admit he's done anything wrong. "What?" he demanded.

  I leaned close. "How are we gonna pay him?" I hissed, which was a dang good question. Our ranch operated on a shoestring budget and Dad hadn't left us any money for a hand.

  Kellen gave me one of his expansive shrugs. "The guy said he'd work for food
."

  "You can't do that," I exclaimed.

  "Why not?" he shot back.

  "Why not?" I sputtered. "Because it's called taking advantage of someone when they're down on their luck."

  "It's better than letting the same someone starve to death," he claimed, glaring at me like I was the bad guy.

  I huffed out a sigh.

  "Where's your Christian charity?" he challenged me scornfully. I say scornfully, because Kellen wouldn't be caught dead in a church. He thinks religion is ridiculous. And he likes to beat me up about it every chance he gets.

  "Don't you go questioning my Christianity or my charity," I growled, jabbing a finger in his chest. "That's not the point. The point is that you brought this guy in to do your work. So you could take the summer off."

  "Hey," Kellen countered. "I never claimed to be hard working. I'm just smart. And smart people find other people to do their work for them. That's why you're fixing dinner."

  "You volunteered me to cook dinner for you guys?" I exclaimed, my hands on my hips.

  "No," he answered. "I volunteered you to make dinner for him. I'm on my way out to meet up with the rest of the guys for practice."

  "You're gonna leave me alone with him?" I whispered, starting to panic. "But we don't know anything about him."

  "Then get to know him," Kellen suggested all calm and rationally like he hadn't invited a complete stranger into our home. "I gave him the guest room, by the way. And some of my old clothes. Because you wouldn't believe what he was wearing."

  "The guest room?" I moaned. So, not only was I going to have dinner with the stranger. I was also going to spend the night with him. "What time will you be home?"

  "Not much later than midnight," he lied.

  At least I assumed he was lying because he does that a lot. Not about important stuff but just about everything else.

  Then he added, "Just a FYI; he might not be very smart."

  "Why do you say that?" I asked.

  "Because he didn't know how to turn on the faucets in the shower. I had to show him before I left for Limon."

  "That doesn't mean he isn't smart," I argued, feeling a little offended for the sake of the boy.

  "Okay, then. He might not be very clean."

  I rolled my eyes because this is what Kellen is like. "I don't think he's not smart or not clean but what if he's a…"

  "What?" Kellen asked when my voice trailed away.

  "You know. What if he's a bad person or something? What if he's one of those guys the police are looking for?"

  "What guys?"

  "You know, the two guys the police have been asking around about, up in Limon. Officer Wilson says the FBI wants them."

  Kellen snorted. "Courage is too young to be in trouble with the FBI."

  "I don't know," I muttered. "I think the guys they're looking for are pretty young. And nice looking, according to the police sketches. You know Breanna at school?"

  "Yeah?"

  "She says if she finds one, she's not turning him in. She's keeping him."

  Kellen lowered his voice to a whisper. "I hate to point out the obvious, Lori, but the new hand isn't exactly good looking."

  "That's another thing," I whispered back. "How'd he get those terrible burns? How does anyone get burns like that? Maybe he's in a gang. The kind of gang that gets into fights with other gangs. I don't want to be alone with someone like that."

  Kellen clucked his tongue and played the Christian card again. "Here's your God-given chance to save someone who might be heading down the wrong path in life and you're backing away from it."

  He had a point. It just wasn't a very good one. Christians don't go looking for trouble. They don't wander into dark alleys at night, not without a good reason. They don't go walking into a lion's den. Well, some of them do, but it hasn't happened in a long time. "Yeah, but what if he's…not safe."

  "You mean the sorta person who might take an advantage of a pretty young girl?"

  "Maybe," I said tentatively.

  "Well, you have nothing to worry about then, do you?" he said as he started back across the room.

  So, yeah. He was probably right about that. I'm not ugly but I'm a long, long way from pretty. I'm plain. Decidedly plain. Plain as paper. Plain as peas. Canned peas. Even Kellen's probably prettier than I am. I suppose my hair is my best feature, a long straight fall of shining copper. But after that, everything goes downhill. From my wide mouth to my lily-white skin. From my pale red eyelashes to my watery green eyes. And don't get me started on my freckles. Only people who don't have freckles think they're cute.

  But Kellen didn't have to be so blunt about it.

  "I left the fence posts in the back of the truck," Kellen threw back at me as he stepped from the family room and headed for the front door. "Get Courage to help you unload them in the morning."

  I followed him from the house with a whole bunch of arguments on the tip of my tongue. But they never got said. Not that it would've made any difference if I had said them. Kellen was leaving and there was nothing I could do about it. As far as he was concerned, he'd done his part in finding me a hand to help run the ranch.

  I was still scowling as he pulled away in his car, leaving me alone with the strange boy. And as I stood on the porch and watched the dust settle back down onto the yard in front of the house, I felt the boy's presence off to my left and a little behind me. He must have followed us onto the porch, though I hadn't seen or heard him. But I knew he was there. Maybe I felt his warmth. I don't know. But whatever it was, I felt the boy's presence like he was somebody more significant than some random gang member with half his face burned away.

  He wasn't significant enough for the dogs to get excited about, though. Not one of those disinterested hounds reacted to his being there, even though he wasn't one of the family, even though none of them had seen him before today. Evidently, the dogs had accepted him as easily as Kellen had.

  Apparently, I was the only hold out.

  "What did he mean by that?" Courage asked in his unusual accent.

  "By what?" I asked, turning to look up at him and noticing for the first time that he was pretty tall for his age. Our age, actually. Because I assumed he wasn't much older than me.

  "Why did your brother say you have nothing to worry about?"

  "You heard that?"

  "I have good ears," he answered. "Well, one of them's still good."

  "He meant that I'm not pretty."

  "That wasn't very nice," he murmured, his gaze locking on my eyes in a way that made me feel unsettled.

  "Not very nice but true," I sighed.

  His ice blue gaze was warm on my face. "You're wrong," he said. "Your brother's wrong too."

  "You think so?" I countered, surprised that he would stick up for me like that.

  "I think you're the prettiest lass I've ever seen," he said.

  I frowned as I searched his eyes, wondering why he would say something like that. Something that was so obviously untrue. And wondering what kind of game he was playing. And why. But he appeared to be dead serious. So, I snuffed out a sigh of disbelief. Turning back to the house, I muttered, "What rock have you been hiding under?"

  His voice was so low that I didn't catch his answer. Not clearly, anyhow. But it sounded like, "Funny you should ask."

  Chapter Two

  At the rear of the house where the kitchen windows face the eastern sky, I started banging the pots and pans around, annoyed that Kellen had left me alone with the stranger. A stranger who might be dangerous. A stranger who might slit my throat for laughs. A stranger who might get attacked by rival gang members at any moment. "So, tell me about yourself," I said as my frying pan hit the stovetop with a clang. "Where are you from?"

  There was a very noticeable silence before he finally spoke. "I take it you aren't very happy to have me here."

  Surprised by his blunt words, I spun around to face him but didn't get a chance to say anything before he cut in.

  "Back bef
ore my accident, girls were always nice to me," he continued. "Even the ones who weren't particularly nice people. I always suspected it had more to do with my looks than my personality or anything else I had going for me. And I always wondered if they'd like me so much if I wasn't so…"

  "Nice looking?" I filled in for him.

  "Aye," he answered in a low growl, turning and heading for the front door. "So, now I guess I know the answer to that question."

  "Where are you going?" I called before he could get out of the room.

  "Away," he answered. "Tell your brother he can find someone else to do his work for him."

  "Wait," I said. "You heard that too? You heard our entire conversation in the family room?"

  The strong line of his shoulders was stiff as I watched his back. "Pretty much. Like I said before, one good ear."

  "Well, I'm sorry," I offered as an apology. "I'm sorry you heard all that. And I'm sorry if I made you feel less than welcome."

  He turned back in my direction, a stony look on his face.

  I could hardly believe the next words that came out of my mouth because I really wasn't feeling them. But I did feel bad that he'd overheard my conversation with Kellen. "Don't leave," I said. "At least, not now. Let me make you dinner. Then you can decide."

  He wrapped the fingers of one hand around the arm hanging at his side. "You're not angry that I'm here?"

  "I'm not mad at you," I told him honestly. "I'm just angry with Kellen. For leaving me alone with…someone I don't know. And for taking advantage of you."

  "Nobody's taking advantage of me," he muttered, looking offended, like he wasn't the sort of guy that anyone ever took advantage of and he wanted to make that point perfectly clear.

  I sighed and opened the freezer door, digging around for a package of ground beef. "You could probably walk down the road to the next ranch and get a job that pays a monthly wage as well as three meals a day," I pointed out.