Free Outlaw Cowboy by Nicole Helm Page A

given her food and money. She was still making him feel like it wasn’t enough. He was risking everything just by having her here—Tyler certainly would consider Delia Rogers a “person he used to associate with”—and she was acting as though he weren’t doing enough.
    â€œWhat are you trying to do, Delia? What do you want from me?”
    She didn’t blink, didn’t move from that bottom stair. Still and wide-eyed, she didn’t respond. He wanted to shake her. Except that was a lie. If he touched her shoulders, the last thing he’d want to do with his hands would be shake her.
    â€œI guess I don’t know.”
    â€œThen go back to the cabin. Figure how to get the hell out of my hair, and leave me alone. Got it?”
    She lifted her chin and finally moved off the stair, her expression regal and icy. The too-thin woman in the too-thin coat. Why did he have to notice shit like that?
    She sailed past him and out the door, the kind of silent fuming that could never be good. His assessment proved accurate when she turned abruptly, so he had to come to a skidding halt or run right over her.
    It was tempting.
    â€œI want to help. I’m going crazy in that place, and I need to think. I need something to do to help me think.”
    â€œNot my problem, sweetheart.” He tried to walk around her, but she grabbed his arm. He glared, and she stared at her hand clutched to his forearm as if she wasn’t quite sure how it got there.
    Slowly, her gaze traveled up to meet his, but she took her time. He wasn’t sure what she was doing, or what she was about, and he knew that the smart thing would be to jerk his arm away and drive to the farthest part of Shaw to get as much distance from her as possible.
    Instead, he met her gaze.
    â€œDo you hate me?” she asked on a whisper, and he knew it cost her something to ask that.
    Hate her? Was she screwy in the head?
    â€œI only want to help. To be of some use .” Her fingers clutched reflexively tighter before she seemed to force herself to release him. “It seems as though you need help, based on the way you’re stomping about, always in a foul mood. It only stands to reason, I’m that horrible to have in your sight you won’t even accept help from me?”
    â€œThat’s the only possible reason?” He shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have hinted there might be a second, far more dangerous reason for treating her like he couldn’t stand to be around her. She was the worst kind of temptation. The visceral kind, the kind he’d never been any good at resisting.
    Except, by some miracle, when it came to her.
    So. He wasn’t going to touch her, kiss her, sleep with her. He wasn’t going to give into the relentlessness of this shitty day. Not with Delia. In some strange way, she seemed like the last sacred thing. If he touched her, what virtue did he have left?
    It’s in you.
    Yeah, well, he was here, and the woman who’d uttered those words to a five-year-old wasn’t. So.
    So.
    He started walking. “First up, we check the feed.” The chances of Tyler stopping by today were slim, since Caleb hadn’t given him an answer. Besides, Caleb would see and hear anyone coming onto Shaw before they got to them. Help would be nice, and he wasn’t risking anything as long as he was careful.
    â€œI thought cows just ate grass.”
    He flung an arm to encompass the vastness of snow. “We have to feed them until there’s enough grass. Slowly, over the next few weeks, the grass will come back, and we’ll feed them less as they graze more on their own.”
    He stomped toward the barn where they kept the feed, Delia managing to match him stride for frustrated stride.
    Still, the walk across the slushy snow, which had turned muddy from sun and the many trips between house and barn, did what it always did. It seeped into his clothes, his skin, his