Beard Necessities: Winston Brothers Book #7

by Penny Reid

  Our bodies fit just right, and she was warm and soft. We hadn’t kissed like I’d wanted all day and my fingers flexed at the feel of her swaying in perfect time with me. Restless, I placed a kiss on her upper arm near her shoulder, her glowing skin bathed in starlight.

  Her full lips distracted me. They may have been painted red now, but I was intimately familiar with their real color. Maybe slow dancing isn’t such a genius idea.

  “Hey,” she whispered, bringing me back to now and the obvious curiosity in her eyes. “What’s on your mind?”

  I slid my hands to her back, needing more of her in my arms even as I struggled to think of an appropriate topic of conversation not related to the colors of her body. “How was your week?”

  “How was my week? That’s what you were thinking about?”

  I held her tighter, torturing myself with her generous curves beneath too many layers of clothes. “Tell me about your week.”

  “It was pretty good, all things considered.” Scarlet relaxed against me, though her tone belied confusion. Resting her temple against my jaw, her breath tickled my neck. “I got some work done. Then Jethro, Ashley, and I took the kids to a cashmere goat farm just outside of Radda.”

  “A cashmere goat farm?” I smirked despite the way my blood continued to pump through my veins, thick and hot. “Knowing Jet and Ash, yarn must’ve been involved.”

  “It was. But the children also got a chance to feed the goats.”

  I nodded, asking inanely, “Did you feed the goats?”

  Scarlet paused, slanting her chin back as her eyes returned to mine. She searched my face, like this might be a trick question.

  “I did,” she finally admitted. “We fed them corn; they ate it out of our hands. It tickled a little.”

  “That’s not hard to believe.”

  “What? That it tickled?”

  “No. That you had them eating out of the palm of your hand.”

  Her eyes moved between mine, pale silver by the light of the moon, and a slow, spreading smile claimed her features.

  She chuckled, shaking her head and laying her cheek on my chest. “Oh, you’re cute.”

  “I’m cute?” It was not the word I was hoping for.

  “Very. And for the record, I like this version of Billy Winston. A lot. He’s fun.”

  Now I was grinning again. “Good to know.”

  “By the way”—her arms slipped from my neck to encircle my chest—“how was your week?”

  “Fine, mostly,” I answered honestly, deciding talk of my week would definitely dampen the fire at the base of my spine. “I had a ton of phone calls, trying to fit everyone in before we left.”

  “How’s the senate race stuff?”

  She couldn’t have picked a less sexy topic. “We’re just in the early planning phases right now,” I said, feeling my body settle. “Fundraising, organizing the community groups. It’ll ramp up after the first of the year, if I decide to actually do it.”

  “You haven’t decided?”

  “No.”

  Scarlet leaned back again, inspecting me. “You look irritated about something, sound irritated too.”

  “You picked up on that?”

  “I did. What’s wrong?”

  I felt my lips flatten. “I have to fire the campaign liaison the party sent. He’s a pain in my ass, but it can wait until I get back.”

  “He’s a pain? How so?” She sounded truly interested.

  “He keeps seeing problems where none exist.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he’s irritated I have a beard. Wants me to shave it off.”

  Her frown was immediate and severe. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Please tell me you’re not shaving your beard.” Her arms squeezed me and a spark of something glimmered in her eyes. It looked akin to possessiveness. “In fact, promise me.”

  I smiled. “I didn’t know you liked my beard so much.”

  “Of course I do. Gives me a reason to touch your face.” As though to demonstrate the truth of her statement, she lightly scratched her nails through it. “I like to pet it. What else is a problem that doesn’t actually exist?”

  I pressed her hand to my cheek for a second before bringing her fingers to my lips for a quick kiss, and I answered her question without thinking, “He also says he can’t get me elected unless I’m married.”

  Scarlet stopped swaying. In fact, she just full stopped. It took me a moment to realize what I’d said. When I did, my chest tightened uncomfortably, the dull ache throbbing outward reminding me how much this woman controlled every aspect of my physiology.

  “Scarlet—”

  “Is that so?” she whispered, her hand sliding from my face. “Does it make any difference who the woman is? Or will anyone do?”

  “Like I said, I’m firing this guy when I get back. He’s full of shit.” I stared at her intently, wanting to make sure she saw and understood that I was serious.

  But her eyes narrowed, seemed to focus inward, like this information gave her plenty to consider. “I guess—” she started, stopped, licked her lips, then gave me back her gaze. “You know what they’ve been calling me in the news?”

  I was unable to control the sternness of my frown or my flare of temper. I’d read the news. I knew they’d been calling her Devil’s Daughter.

  “They shouldn’t be calling you that. Those people are garbage.”

  She managed a weak smile, her arms falling away as I continued to hold her. “Billy.”

  “Scarlet.”

  “Have you thought about this?”

  “About what?” I ground out. Even though I knew exactly what she was about to say, I hoped she’d decide not to say it.

  “Do you really think you could win a senate race if you and I were together?” Some of my fury must’ve been visible on my face because she was quick to add, “I mean, publicly. If we were together publicly.”

  Careful to keep the volume of my voice low, I asked, “What other way is there to be together, Scarlet?”

  She stared at me, her gaze searching, her lips parted like the words were on the tip of her tongue.

  “Nope. No way.” I shook my head. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Billy. If being with me publicly means—”

  Still shaking my head, I captured Scarlet’s fingers and pulled her back into the main dining room, through it, and out the door. We were going to talk about this, but I wasn’t doing it with hushed voices on the balcony of a restaurant.

  Like we were some kind of secret.

  Chapter Twenty

  *Claire*

  “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

  Ernest Hemingway

  I marched into the hotel room, turned when I reached the approximate center of it, and faced a livid Billy Winston. “I’m not saying it would be forever. I’m just saying—”

  “Don’t.” He prowled back and forth in front of me, his eyes flashing fire.

  Perhaps a different approach would be prudent.

  “Don’t you think you’ve already given up enough for me?” I placed my fists on my hips. “In what universe am I going to allow you to throw your senate race—everything you’ve worked for—just so we can go out to dinner in public? We can order in! What is the downside of holding off? Just until-until—” I wracked my brain, attempting to estimate an appropriate timeframe we’d need to wait.

  Not next year, the senate race would still be going on.

  The year after? But only if my record label agreed to soften their image of Claire McClure. If not, then I’d finish my last two contractually obligated albums for them and look for a different label. So, three years? Four? No. Not four. By then he’d have a reelection campaign.

  “Until when?” He stopped pacing. “How long this time? I’m finished putting us on hold. And your name shouldn’t be printed in the same newspaper as your father’s. Your names shouldn’t even
be spoken together, he has nothing to do with you.”

  “My love, it’s not just him, or that they’re calling me Devil’s Daughter. It’s my record label. They’ve painted me as the vixen of country music—never mind that I sing bluegrass—but even if my father weren’t in the news, taking our relationship public makes no sense for your career.”

  “I haven’t decided to run for the senate seat.”

  “That’s ludicrous.” I lifted a warning finger. “Don’t you dare end your candidacy because of me.”

  He paused, considering me. Some of his fury faded. “What if it weren’t because of you? What if I had to end it for a different reason?”

  Unbelievable. “Oh yeah? Like what?” Crossing my arms, I glared at him. He drove me crazy. Cletus was right about Billy vying for the Most Honorable Martyr award.

  “Like—” His stare searching before turning inward. “What if I were in jail?”

  “In jail? For what?”

  “I need to tell you something.” Billy’s gaze cut back to mine and held. I did not like the look in his eyes.

  A fissure of alarm had me closing the distance between us and reaching for his hand. “What? What is it?”

  He’d dropped his eyes to where our fingers were tangled and his Adam’s apple moved like he was struggling to swallow. “I did something. I don’t regret it, but it was illegal. And when I get back to Tennessee, I might be arrested for it if I don’t turn myself in first.”

  He sounded so stark, so resigned, like he’d already accepted his fate. This whole time we’d been reconnecting, finding our way back to each other, had this been weighing on him?

  Lifting his palm level with my chest, I pressed it between both of mine, my heart suddenly going haywire. “What happened? What did you do?”

  Billy glanced around the room and then tugged me over to the couch, sitting us next to each other. Once we were settled, he held my hand, cradling it, studying it, as though this might be the last time he saw it, or me.

  “You’re scaring me,” I blurted, staring at his grim profile, fighting the urge to climb in his lap or handcuff us together. Note to self, always bring handcuffs.

  “I am scary.” The slant of his lips told me he was frustrated, but not with me.

  “No. You’re not.” Now he was really scaring me. “Just tell me what happened. We’ll figure it out.”

  The night your—Razor, the night Razor attacked Roscoe and I found them . . . I cut his hands.”

  He blinked once and then lifted his eyes to mine, his blue eyes steady as they braced and inspected me for my reaction.

  Meanwhile, I was confused and could do little more than stare at him and repeat his words over and over again in my mind, searching for the meaning. I cut his hands. I cut his hands. I cut his hands.

  “Whose hands?”

  “Razor’s.”

  I reared back, my grip on him tightening instinctively. “You did what?”

  “When I heard the gunshots that night, I turned my car around and drove back to the diner.” Again, as Billy spoke, he sounded so calm, resigned to some mysterious fate. “I walked in, Razor was standing over Simone, knife raised. I knocked him out, and then I put ice on Roscoe and Simone, that’s the end of the official story.”

  “Okay?”

  “The FBI hasn’t released the fact that sometime between me knocking out Razor and the ambulance arriving, his hands were cut open. Scarlet, I sliced his tendons in half, straight through the palm. Your father will never be able to pick up or hold anything ever again.”

  Originating at the base of my skull, a shiver raced down my spine and I flinched, struggling to understand the jumble of emotions vying for first place.

  “I don’t regret it,” he said quietly, fiercely in the face of my continued silence. “After what he did to you, after what he did to me, I don’t regret it. But I didn’t do it for you. I did it for myself. And I’d do it again.”

  Tears flooded and stung my eyes and nose as I looked at him. My dear Billy, with the voice of an angel and the heart of a lion. The sweet boy who’d brought me hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls in the winter, who’d changed my bandages and snuck me into his house so I wouldn’t sleep in the cold. He’d been the first person to ask about my hopes and dreams, to make me believe in possibility. And he’d been the only person I trusted to hold me, keeping watch and the monsters at bay.

  My love. The strongest and best man I’d ever known. What had life done to him?

  Throwing my arms around his neck, I clambered onto his lap. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “Shh. Don’t be sorry.” His arms came around me, held me tight as I straddled his hips. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

  But I did. I’d exposed him to my father, I’d shown Billy my scars, and he’d been beaten because of me. I couldn’t imagine the kind of festering anger he carried. I couldn’t believe his resentment hadn’t already swallowed him whole.

  And in all of this, I didn’t understand myself or what I was feeling. My weary heart both rejoiced and mourned. I’d lived my whole life terrified of my father. Reason told me he was in jail and could never hurt me or anyone else again. Reason told me the double panic rooms in my house—both in Green Valley and in Nashville—were absurd. Reason told me to live my life without constantly looking over my shoulder for his shape in the shadows. Nightmares don’t care about reason.

  Now he could and would never hold a knife again. My solace in this fact was palpable, a corporeal thing. And yet, at what cost? I despised that my father had inspired such a level of hatred in Billy that he’d committed this violent act. Maybe Billy was broken, maybe not. At the very least, his soul was wounded and that was unacceptable.

  I was a mess of horrified relief and grief, uncertain how to feel or what to feel first. But one thing was for certain, there was no way in hell Billy would be going to jail for this. No way. No. Fucking. Way.

  “What can I do to make this right?” I cried against his neck, wishing I could take this burden from him, wishing I could make it all go away.

  “Nothing.” His fingers threaded into my hair, stroking it and then stroking my back. “Everything is right.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He placed a kiss on my neck, speaking against my skin, “I don’t know.”

  “You are not going to jail for this.” I held him with all my strength.

  “We’ll see.”

  Abruptly, I leaned away, gripping his shoulders and capturing his eyes. “No. We will not see. You will not go to jail for this. You will not. You will not turn yourself in. We could—we’ll travel forever. Move to a country with no extradition treaty with the US.”

  His mouth slanted with a weary smile, but his eyes warmed as they trailed over my face. “And live off what?”

  “I can work anywhere.” I shrugged. “And I’ll fly back to the States for the promotional stuff. I’ll be your sugar momma.”

  His hands slid down my back until they rested just above my bottom. “No. No, I don’t want that. I’d miss my family. They might not need me as much anymore, but I still need them just the same.”

  “But, Billy—” Desperation built a mountain in my chest, painful and tight. “Do the police have enough evidence to charge you?”

  “The FBI is running the investigation and, no. I don’t think so, no. It’s his word against my silence.”

  “But why be silent? Why not just say you didn’t do it?”

  His weary smile grew. “I’m not going to lie.”

  I fisted my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, frustration building a new mountain next to desperation, but hot like a volcano. “Yes. You will lie. You will say you didn’t do it and then it’ll be his word against your word, not your silence.”

  Billy lowered his forehead to my shoulder.

  “Please. Please. Lie. Lie and be done with it.”

  “I’m tired, Scarlet,” he whispered. “I’m so tired.”

  My chest ached,
I ached. I firmed my lip and voice before my chin could give a betraying wobble or my throat could clog with emotion. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling, blinking to stop new tears.

  Of course he was tired. He’d been shouldering so many burdens all alone for so many years. No wonder his family had seen fit to meddle. Billy needed a respite, an oasis, a safe place. He needed to be protected. And rescued.

  “Okay, okay.” Pushing my fingers into the short hairs at the back of his neck, I massaged him, touched him. “We’ll talk later. But tonight, for now, you let it go. Let me handle it.”

  He sighed like the breath came from his bones. His hands slid lower and pressed me forward, inadvertently hiking my dress up in the process. I didn’t care.

  All I cared about was showing him how much I loved him, and needed him, and how essential he was to me. Because now that we’d found each other, I was never letting him go.

  Billy slept.

  We’d kissed. He’d removed his jacket, shoes, socks, belt, dress shirt, and tie. So many layers of clothes. Then we’d cuddled and kissed. Eventually, he’d slept, curled around me, his exhales falling against my shoulder.

  Meanwhile, I channeled my inner Cletus and plotted.

  Ben had told me a few times that I didn’t understand the difference between right and wrong like other folks. Perhaps my childhood was the issue, how I’d been raised, an intrinsic distrust of the law. My brain prioritized honor and justice over lawfulness. Laws varied depending on the place and time, required documentation, due process, and interpretation. You couldn’t count on the law to serve justice.

  Honor didn’t need to be explained. It just was. Within most people existed honorable impulses, whether they listened to those impulses or not. Honor was the reason the majority of folks rooted for the underdog and never questioned why.

  What Billy had done wasn’t lawful, but it was justice, and now he refused to lie out of some insane sense of honor, a sense of honor I didn’t share. Not in this case.

  I’ll lie for him. I’ll save him.

  Over the course of my life, when possible, numbing myself had always been preferable to suffocating on fear. Fear, as an emotion, fascinated me, my relationship with it a pendulum. To survive, fear was essential. To truly live, fear was detrimental. But over these last few weeks with Billy I’d come to realize that if I feared what I couldn’t control, then I would fear everything.