Bounty (Colorado Mountain #7)

by Kristen Ashley

  “I’ll take it,” I accepted instantly.

  “Gotta pay that overtime, Justice. And it’s you that has to approve it since it’s your money I’ll be payin’ him.”

  “Consider it approved.”

  “Great,” Max said. “I’ve got some time late this morning, so does he. Wanna meet him there, show him around. He wasn’t on the build when we started it so I gotta give him the lay of the land. Also gotta tell you, there’s gonna be roadblocks he’s gonna hit because he can do a lot but there’s stuff at your place that’ll be multiple-guy jobs. That said, he comes up to hitting that, he knows the job well enough he can give me a heads up and I can see if I can adjust some schedules to get guys out to your site so they can do what they gotta do to keep him moving.”

  “I’d be so appreciative,” I gushed. “Really, Max. This is awesome.”

  “You good with us being there around ten, ten thirty?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Right, we’re set. See you then.”

  “See you then, Max. And thanks again.”

  “Not a problem, Justice. Later.”

  “Later.”

  I dropped my phone to my lap and smiled at the blank wall across the vast space from my bed.

  Finally, things were looking up.

  On that thought, earlier than I’d done since I’d had to do it for press tours, I threw back the covers and shot out of bed in order to go make coffee in my garage and get a shower.

  * * * * *

  I was out on the deck, wearing my beat-up, too big but super-comfy overalls. I’d paired these with a tight, army-green tank. And my hair I’d decided not to wash was up in a massive messier-than-usual messy bun at the top of my head (meaning lots of long tendrils were hanging down and I didn’t bother to secure them).

  I was enjoying cup of coffee number three, the quiet and the view, when my phone sitting on the arm of my Adirondack chair rang (the chair I was in, painted a distressed sedate yellow, the one opposite, a mellow, deep purple—the first furniture purchase in my life and I’d done it before I’d even closed because I’d fallen in love, they rocked!).

  I looked at the screen and hesitated not even a second before taking the call.

  “Lacey!” I cried.

  “Yo, babe,” Lacey replied. “What’s shaking?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” I answered, finding myself in that moment weirdly (or perhaps not so weirdly) glad this was true.

  “So Bumfuck, Colorado is working for you,” she noted.

  “So far, mostly. Just got news the construction to finish the house will start six weeks sooner so now that mostly is even more mostly,” I shared.

  “Awesome, Jussy.”

  “How’s the tour?” I asked.

  “Insane. But good. We rocked LA last night and it was a blast. We got four days off in a few weeks, thought I’d fly out to Bumfuck and spend it with you.”

  “Oh…my…God! My great day just got better!” I yelled.

  There was happiness in her voice when she said, “Love to hear that.” Pause, then she went on and the happiness was muted. “Which makes it suck that I gotta tell you that Mav was backstage at my show last night.”

  Shit.

  “Oh, Lace,” I muttered, knowing this would not be good.

  “Yeah. He was a jackass. Then he became a loud jackass. Then Jiggy had to get security to eject him. This he did after I begged him to go that route, rather than having Mav’s ass arrested.”

  “Shit.” I was still muttering, surprised Lacey’s manager Jiggy allowed her to talk him into that. Jiggy didn’t take a lot of shit and he allowed Lacey to take less (this being zero, if he could help it). “What was Mav on about?” I asked, not really wanting to know because I had a feeling I already knew.

  “Wanted me to get you off his ass, mostly. But totally whacked, Jussy, if you can believe this, he also wanted me to corroborate that Dana is what him and his demon-from-hell mom think she is. After your dad’s money. Told me he was gonna hunt down Bianca and get that shit from her too. Considering Dana is a fuckin’ angel compared to the demon-from-hell Luna and the Satan’s spawn she produced, I told him that shit was not happening. Jus, babe, I hate to tell you this but I figure you already know. Luna’s got Mav totally brainwashed. He could be an asshole but this was off the charts. There was none of that okay Mav he could sometimes be in him. It was all her. That’s all that’s left of him.”

  She said the words and I automatically shoved them aside because I couldn’t even think of this possibility. Outside my mom, he was the only blood family I had that I was even marginally close to.

  This was because Joss’s family disapproved of her path way before I was born and never jumped on board, even if it made her (for the most part, when she hadn’t locked horns with Dad) happy.

  Because of this, Joss wasn’t super-hot on letting me in their lives when she and Dad had me, so she didn’t. I’d never really gotten to know them and the only times I did, when I was older and they saw the merits of having a relationship with me (these not being because they wanted to get to know their grandchild or niece), it had been me who’d made the decision not to get to know them.

  As for Dad’s family, they were Dad’s family. The way they were, the way they’d been for three generations, they were gypsies scattered to the wind.

  It wasn’t easy keeping in touch with a gypsy.

  Luna was nothing to me, except Mav’s mom, my dad’s second wife, and the woman who taught me the important, but difficult lessons of precisely how not to be.

  “They’re being dicks to Mr. T too,” I shared with Lacey. “And he’s this close to letting Mav fuck up his life.”

  Lace didn’t even hesitate before she advised, “Jus, you should just let Mav fuck up his life too. He’s never been cool with you. Not really. Luna’s been a downright bitch since before Mav was even born. We know people like that and they aren’t worth the effort.”

  “He’s my brother, Lace.”

  “I know that, Justice, but the terms of your father’s will were not a secret. He shared them with you a long time ago. He shared them with Mav too. Your brother is an asshole but he understands the English language.”

  I felt the slash through my heart at the reminder Dad was gone, something else I was knowingly (and unhealthily) doing my damnedest to set aside.

  Dad, gone from this earth. Ash settling into the rich Kentucky dirt where Dana and I had scattered him.

  Four months and it felt like yesterday I’d sat with him, laughing and being goofy.

  Four months and it felt like an eternity he’d been gone.

  And I felt that eternity settle in my bones. If I allowed myself to think about it, it weighed me down.

  So I didn’t think about it.

  I thought about the laughing and being goofy part.

  “This is true, but when he shared that with us, Dana was not part of that picture,” I pointed out. “And Mav was a little kid.”

  “Not that little. And Dana had been dating him for three years and married him not long after. She was married to him longer than your mom, even, and we both know Joss was the love of his life. Dana knew it too but she gave him good that came from deep in her heart. Your dad was Dana’s Joss, and I don’t give a shit she’s only five years older than you. She treated him that way without all the fighting and bullshit and star-crossed lovers crap your parents never grew up enough to sort out.”

  I stared at the river rushing past and said nothing.

  Even so, I felt a lot.

  “Sorry, Jussy,” Lacey said softly in my ear, knowing better than even my mom and dad how much I was feeling. “I love you and I’m about you and I always have been. I have zero tolerance for Mav’s bullshit because he’s not my brother and I’ve had to watch for years as he shoved it down you and your dad’s throats. Your father split his estate three ways, you, Mav and Dana, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s more generosity than Mav ever earned. But that’s what your dad wanted.
He was of sound mind when he decided that and everyone knows it, even Mav and Luna. He was also of sound mind when he knew Luna would go after it so he made it that, if any one of you contested his wishes, they’d be blocked out, disinherited, get nothing and their third would be split between the other two.”

  I drew in breath but just to stay calm. Not because I had anything to say.

  It didn’t matter, really. Lace wasn’t done talking.

  “Honestly, with that brother of yours the way he was, I would have considered entering the mindfuck that was trying to get his head straight about two seconds before he made his bed and jumped in. Another fourteen million to keep me flush until I died, that brother of yours, no skin off my nose. You’re a saint getting this far. You did what you could do. Let it go.”

  “First, Lace, I love him. He can be a douche, I know that. But he could also be cool, if he was around Dad or me long enough for the stench of Luna to drift away. So I don’t want him to make this huge a fuckup and screw up his life. And second, if I just let it go, it might be construed that I’m after half of his third.”

  “Jus, damn, girl, nearly thirty mil from your dad’s estate on top of the royalties you got coming in and that continuing in perpetuity from Johnny’s royalties, even if it’s only a third? And this isn’t even getting into what your granddad left you, which set you up for life. You don’t need another fourteen million and everybody knows it. And, sister, I’ll tell you something else you already know, you already were and that’s off your own fucking back, not Johnny’s, not Grandpa Jerry’s.”

  It was safe to say I couldn’t talk about this anymore.

  “Okay, I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry my brother fucked what I’m sure was a show that you killed, drop the mic, top that. I’m glad you’re calling because I love hearing your voice. But can that voice not be talking about this for now?”

  “Jus—”

  “Gonna try him again, Lace. He’s not taking my calls. He won’t. He keeps up with what he’s doing, it’s not like I’m going to leave what I found here and hunt him down. Did that four times in LA before I left to come out here and each of those four times was more unpleasant than the last. Try again, then I’m done and the courts can take care of him,” I promised.

  She hesitated a moment before she gave in.

  “Okay, then I’ll let it go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now we gotta talk about Bianca.”

  “Shit,” I again muttered.

  “You hear from her?”

  “No. I can’t say I’ve called much either.”

  This made me uncomfortable. I should have called. But with all that was going down with Dad dying, Dana’s grief, mine, buying the house, Mav and Luna’s antics, Joss going into a dark space because Dad was gone and she’d lost her adulthood-long partner in constantly messing up the best thing that ever happened to them, I hadn’t had time for my girl.

  I needed to make time for my girl.

  “Concentrated effort,” Lace declared. “We don’t hear from her, we ask around. We don’t hear from that, when I’m out seeing your forest oasis in a few weeks, we’ll sort a plan to straighten out her shit.”

  The upcoming visit from Lace, love.

  Straightening out Bianca’s shit, not-so-love.

  “We might have to sleep in the same bed,” I warned.

  “Slept with you more nights than any man I’ve had, won’t be a problem,” she declared.

  The memories that came from that made me smile.

  Lacey switched subjects.

  “Love for you to be on my tour.”

  “Maybe closer to the end,” I told her because that would be early next year, after Christmas in Colorado in my new (hopefully by then, fully-completed) house. “I’ll join you, hit a couple of stops.”

  Something to look forward to.

  A change of scenery at a time that was much more time than I usually gave it that I’d take it.

  “What I’m saying, babe, is love for you to be on my tour.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Lace,” I whispered.

  “All I’m gonna say. You don’t do my thing. Not sure you could put on even a single sequin and bust a move with ten dancers behind you. But you’d still kill. You always did. And it’s safe to say, lotta folks would love to have you back.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.

  “Think about it,” she urged.

  “Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.

  “Pain in my ass,” she mumbled back.

  “Lace?” I called.

  “Yep?” she answered.

  “Love you to the sole of my boots.”

  “Love you to the tip of my stiletto, Jussy. Let you go now. I’ll be in touch about dates.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “Me either, babe. ’Bye.”

  “Later, Lacey.”

  We disconnected and I put the phone down to lift my cooling coffee mug up (one of two I owned, both costing $3.99 on sale at the local grocery store, both having been chipped already as they were super-sized and being washed in a bathroom sink, not my most logical purchase).

  I sipped and stared at the river, feeling the nip in the air.

  Summer was closing, it was the end of August. The leaves would change. It’d get wet. Then it’d get snowy. Then it’s get wet again. Then it’d get warm.

  Change of scenery in one place.

  God, how had I not seen that was how life could be? Always chasing the horizon. Never realizing, if I stood still, the sun actually came right to me.

  On this thought, I heard someone’s vehicle approach and I engaged the screen on my phone to see it was ten eighteen.

  Max and his man.

  Right on!

  I pushed up from my chair, grabbed my mug and phone, and walked through the French doors that led to the private deck that jutted off the side of the house. I moved through my bedroom, in which I’d only put a big four-poster bed, two nightstands, a couple of lamps and a dresser. All new, picked for me, approved by me, ordered and arranged to be sent by the interior designer Dana used in Kentucky.

  Before I found my forest oasis, I had no furniture because I was me.

  I was a Lonesome.

  I was a gypsy.

  Until now.

  I moved out of the finished space into the skeleton of the house, a hall that led to what would be a powder room, the utility room and the garage.

  I exited this and hit the main room, thinking how strange it was that I was beginning to long for walls.

  It would never have occurred to me that I’d find myself in a place in my life where I’d yearn to be closed in.

  Yet I was.

  My step in my crocheted flat sandals (you didn’t go barefoot in my house, except if you were going to remain in the bedroom) faltered when I looked to the door.

  The door had been an early sign this space was going to be mine, it was that magnificent.

  The house was made of stone, wood and windows, but mostly windows and stone. The front door was recessed from a graceful stone arch set in another stone arch in which was set a kickass wooded arch and even the door was arched. The wood of the door was painted a distressed, fired-earth green.

  The entryway gave an impression you were about to arrive someplace cozy, snug and mountainy. Not over three thousand square feet of house but somewhere you’d sit fireside with a glass of wine or eventually be handed a stick on which to put a marshmallow so you could make a s’more.

  The door also had an arched window with what looked like antique glass, the waves distorting what lay beyond, even as you could see it.

  And what I saw was not Holden Maxwell.

  It was a wall of chest in a white T-shirt that at a glance, without having clairvoyance ever in my life (except when I was six, met Luna, saw through her fawning over me and knew she was going to be a bitch), I still somehow knew was Deke.

  I kept moving, thinking my God or no god could be so mischievous as to play with me like this
, making Deke the “travelin’ man” temp that Max would make a foreman at his company if he just stuck around.

  Bubba was a big guy too. Tate was no slouch, same with Max.

  Maybe in the mountains they made them huge.

  So maybe it was another guy.

  But as I opened the door and looked up, I saw that my God was feeling just that frisky.

  It was Deke.

  Fuck.

  He looked at me and his head twitched slightly.

  I looked at him wondering if I should have found a forest oasis in Oregon.

  “Yo,” he greeted.

  “Hey,” I pushed out.

  “Max not here yet?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  He looked beyond me, his head twitched again, then he looked again to me.

  “You’re the woman who came into Bubba’s.”

  I was also the woman he’d stood up at a dude ranch.

  I didn’t remind him of this fact.

  “Yeah, uh…Jus,” I introduced myself. Juggling phone and mug, I stuck out a hand.

  He stared at it like he’d never been offered a handshake before he finally took my hand in his, gave a firm squeeze and let it go.

  “You’re Max’s guy,” I stated.

  “Deke,” he replied.

  I nodded, my mind in a jumble.

  I lived there but I knew no one.

  Sure, days ago at Bubba’s, after Deke had left his position at the end of the bar to make a successful approach to the biker babe (I knew it was successful because they left together fifteen minutes later, not something that put an added shine on my celebration, like, at all), Bubba had introduced me to Jim-Billy. He’d also introduced me to Nadine, another regular at the bar. And last, a woman named Lauren came in and I’d found she was Tate’s wife when I was introduced to her as well.

  All nice people, but in our time, even if this time was hours and included alcohol consumption, they had not become BFFs.

  Deke, fortunately by that time, was gone.

  But at that moment in my life, I had that shell of a house and not much else. I didn’t have friends to hang with, things to go out and do. I’d bought my house but I hadn’t really started my new life.

  And now it would seem that Deke would be in that house, day in, day out, for weeks, working on it.