Rachel muttered softly, “One minute with that mutton-chopped horn-dog. Give me one minute.”
Teresa smiled at Rachel’s ready defense of her friend. Looking over Rachel’s shoulder, Teresa smiled as Angel and Joaquin walked up, curious looks on their faces.
“Thanks, Allen. Stay where you are for right now. I’ll call you back, I promise. No, that won’t be necessary. You’re supposed to be a peace officer, remember?” More garbled words on his end and then she hung up.
Joaquin gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. “Hey, sugar. Did you meet Ash’s sisters yet? They’re all supposed to be here by now.”
Rachel looked like she practically swallowed her tongue before letting out a choked laugh. Teresa rolled her eyes as it dawned on them. What a comedy of errors. Only it wasn’t so funny.
“Who?” Teresa asked, biting her lip, looking at Joaquin and Angel.
“Ash’s sisters all rolled into town today. He was supposed to meet them here this evening. What’s going on?”
“One of the Divine Creek ranch hands did a fair amount of talebearing today and set some things in motion that he should have stayed out of. We need to talk to Ash.”
Chapter Twenty
Ash smiled when Teresa, Joaquin, Angel, and Rachel walked over to his table, and he stood up. After the introductions were made, he noticed the way Rachel and Teresa scrutinized Debbie, Dana, Donna, and Denae.
Rachel looked at Teresa and said cryptically, “She probably never got close enough to notice.”
Teresa looked at Ash and his sisters and said, “It’s about as obvious as it can be, isn’t it?”
He barely heard her over the music, and when he asked her to repeat herself, Angel gestured for them all to come out into the foyer where they could hear each other.
“Now, what were you saying?”
“There has been a tremendous misunderstanding, Ash,” Teresa began.
Ash felt a knot form in his chest, thinking of Juliana and her news. “What kind of misunderstanding?”
“When Juliana came to you this afternoon, did you give her a chance to explain her news before she left?”
He thought for a second. “No. I already knew what she had to say, and I didn’t want to hear it from her lips. I told her it was okay, that we must not have felt the same way about each other.”
At the horrified look in Teresa’s eyes, he felt the knot in his chest swell to painful proportions.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because Randall saw her at Rudy’s with another guy. A sheriff’s patrol or something from Tillman. He offered her a ring, and she got all excited and happy and accepted it from him. She told him yes. He saw the whole thing and overheard part of it.”
Ash thought Teresa looked like she was about to start cussing. Normally, she was such a sweet, placid person, but there was fire in her eyes as she stared at him now. Whatever it was, it was really bad.
“Stupid man. Randall heard enough to take the whole thing out of context and probably couldn’t wait to get back to tell you. Isn’t he the one who hooked up with that crazy woman, Brenda? He probably couldn’t wait to get back and slip the knife in and turn it a few times after you barred his free supply of pussy from the Divine Creek Ranch. What he saw, he misconstrued, you big, dumb…freaking redneck.”
“Well, now, wait just a second. There’s no need for name calling,” said his overprotective sister Debbie. Ash put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head. He didn’t take offense at Teresa’s words, because he had a feeling she was about to prove the truth in them.
“What did he get wrong?” one of his sisters, Dana, asked sympathetically. Dana was the peacemaker in the bunch.
Teresa continued, “Juliana came to you today, hoping for a strong shoulder to lean on. The ring that all this confusion centers around belonged to her grandmother, Lila. It was her inheritance. And the man who offered it to her was her cousin, Allen Jacobs, the sheriff in Tillman.”
“Oh, fuck.” Ash groaned, hating the sinking feeling in his gut. “Her cousin.”
“But there is more, Ash,” Teresa began, and the sympathetic gleam of unshed tears in her eyes flat out scared him. “I talked with Allen a few minutes ago, and he told me what she said to him at lunch. Juliana wanted you to know she loved you, and she felt silly for waiting so long to tell you.”
The stricken look on Juliana’s face and his response to her words raced through his mind. “She told me, and I turned it around on her. I…oh fuck, what I said! I insulted her for telling me she loved me. I thought she meant something completely different.”
Spunky little Donna put her fists on her hips and demanded, “Dumbass, how do you misunderstand when someone tells you they love you?” The four Peterson women rounded on him, all talking at once. None of them were over five and a half feet tall, all their heads tilted up at him, fussing at him at the same time, their sandy blonde curls bobbing animatedly, their matching piercing, turquoise-blue eyes drilling him angrily as they gave him the dressing down he so richly deserved.
Joaquin and Angel guided the group out the front door, and thankfully, there weren’t any customers approaching from the parking lot.
“That poor girl!” His baby sister, Denae, hauled off and kicked him with the pointed toe of her little cowgirl boot.
“Ow!”
Teresa spoke up again, once the sisters had finished giving him hell as he rubbed his shin. “There’s more, Ash. Not only did you reject her love when she offered it, you sent her away telling her you already knew her news and that she didn’t have a commitment from you and that you were fine with whatever she did, right?” she said as she ticked each point off on her fingers.
He cringed when he heard his words paraphrased but basically regurgitated for him. “Yeah, I suppose that’s what I said, or something like it.”
“I want you to think about what you told her, based on your assumptions, when I tell you what her news actually was.”
* * * *
Eli could hear the women fussing all the way from outside. He went to the door and was met by an unusual sight. The women with Ash were yelling at him, and then one kicked Ash in the shin. There was more talk, and since Rachel and Teresa seemed perfectly safe, he didn’t join them but merely observed from inside.
Teresa looked thoroughly pissed with Ash as she spoke in an irate tone, though Eli couldn’t hear her actual words. She must’ve dropped one hell of a bomb because there was a moment of stunned silence. All eyes got big, all jaws dropped. Then the women, who all bore a striking resemblance to Ash in coloring, went completely apeshit on him, right there on the sidewalk. Screaming, punching, kicking, and cursing at him. The tallest one actually whapped the big cowboy upside his head before they all started crying.
Eli noted that Rachel looked as though she wanted to egg the girls on, to beat on Ash some more. She happened to glance up and see him standing at the glass door and blew him an air kiss. He grinned back at her. Life would be so boring without passionate women.
Ash acted like he deserved the ineffectual beating he was getting and rubbed his face with his hands as one sister pointed her finger at him then jerked her thumb at his truck, her eyes blazing. It was easy to read her lips and the condemnation on her face as she said, “Just wait ’til I tell Mom.”
Then, in a change of mood only a woman could have managed, they all hugged him sympathetically and nodded at him as he spoke to each one, hugged Teresa and Rachel, shook hands with the guys, and then headed to his truck. Eli held the door open as they all came back inside the club, talking quietly.
Rachel hugged him and said, “You’re not going to believe this.”
* * * *
Ash climbed in his truck, opened the console, and fished around for a notepad and something to write with. He punched in the phone number Teresa had given him and prepared to have his ass handed to him. The line connected, and a male voice answered.
“Allen Jacobs.” Concise and professional, expect
ing the person calling to get to the point.
“Sheriff Jacobs, this is Ash Peterson.”
“You sorry, motherfucking son of a bitch!”
Ash let him go on for about a minute.
When Jacobs showed signs of tapering off, Ash interrupted. “Yeah, you’ve never met a sorrier son of a bitch.”
Allen paused before speaking again. “The only reason you would know how to reach me is if Teresa gave you my number. The only reason I can think of for you to call me is that you’re planning on doing some heavy-duty groveling in the near future. What the fuck are you doing out with four women after sending my cousin away brokenhearted? This had better be good.”
“The women in question are my sisters,” he replied as he pulled the diamond ring from his pocket where he’d hidden it that morning. “They’re here because they all wanted to meet your cousin. They planned to surprise Juliana with a bridal shower.”
He’d planned to propose to her that evening and bring her to The Pony so his sisters could meet her. He’d ruined it all though, listening to the gossip of someone he should’ve known better than to trust, instead of allowing her a chance to explain the precious reality to him.
“Bridal shower?”
“Yes, before my head took its vacation up my ass, I had planned on proposing to Juliana when I saw her this evening. Now it turns out Juliana showed up at the club and saw me with them, thinking I was out partying.”
“Teresa told you everything?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you imagine how Juliana must have felt?” Jacobs asked in a grating tone.
Ash opened his mouth, and his breath left him as he remembered the way she’d placed her little forehead on his arm and reached out to touch him and how he’d rejected her. He’d done that to the woman who was carrying his baby. His heart froze when he realized she was on the road somewhere alone right now. And knowing her, she was probably driving straight through the night to wherever she was headed.
“No, sir. I can’t.” Nothing he could say would make it sound any better.
“Are you going to her?”
“Yes, Sheriff, if you’ll let me. I need you to tell me where she is.”
“That depends. What are you going to do when you get to her?”
“Grovel. Beg her to marry me. Take responsibility for the baby she carries. And then do a little more listening than talking.”
Jacob’s voice carried the barest hint of good humor. “Teresa tells me you’re a good man, not normally prone to such stupidity. I trust what she tells me. You got a pen?”
Allen gave him directions to get to the family Gulf Coast getaway house in Rockport, northeast of Corpus Christi. Ash thanked him, checked his watch, and jumped out of the truck and hurried back into the club. His sisters came all that way, and he couldn’t leave without letting them know where he was headed.
Twenty minutes later, he was gassing up at the station on the corner. It was nearly ten o’clock, and she had at least three hours head start on him. If he drove straight through, he could be there by four the next morning.
He was still deeply troubled, but a hopeful thought made his chin tremble. He whispered in a shaky voice, “I’m gonna be a daddy.”
* * * *
Ash cursed a blue streak as he set the phone down in his console. Part of him felt like he deserved all of this as he looked out into the black desolation of the country road he was stranded on. He was so caught up in worrying about Juliana he hadn’t noticed the warning signs of a failing generator. And of course, by the time he figured out what was going on, he was in the middle of nowhere and his phone had zero signal. Perfection made even better because he’d checked his map and decided to try a shortcut on a country road.
He had no option but to walk to the nearest town at two o’clock in the morning. His choices were to walk fifteen miles back to the tiny town of Ashburn or walk twenty miles ahead to the even tinier town of Wilton on roads that zigged back and forth around cotton and maize fields. No way was he stopping at some lone farmhouse, probably scaring the daylights out of the rural occupants or getting chased by their dogs. He opted to head back to the larger town after setting out his mobile flasher units so that anyone coming along wouldn’t accidentally slam into his big truck.
Three miles down the road, he wished he’d taken the time to go home and change into more comfortable boots, but then he hadn’t known he’d be hoofing it in the middle of the night.
Six miles down the road, he groaned as he was pelted by rain drops. His slicker was in the truck.
Ten miles down the road, rain drops pummeled him from the side as the frigid wind blew them straight at him. They gathered and funneled down his chest and back, warming only slightly as they ran into the crack of his ass.
It was indeed possible to be a damn sight sorrier about everything that had happened in the last twelve hours as he realized he’d left his phone in the truck. He couldn’t even check it as he progressed, to see if he could get a signal.
“You’re a damned son of a bitch, Ash Peterson, and you deserve every single bit of what is happening to you right now, and you know it,” he muttered as he drew his icy-cold jacket collar to his throat, trying to keep the rain from running down his neck into his shirt.
He cursed again when he remembered he was wearing the new black felt cowboy hat sweet little Dana had given him for Christmas. It was probably ruined, but at least it was keeping the rain off his head.
Twelve miles down the road, a stray dog came up snarling from a drainage ditch, startling the shit out of him before biting him in the ankle. Lucky for him, he’d been wearing boots. It took a few minutes to scare the dog off so he wouldn’t follow him, and by then, he could see the lights of Ashburn in the distance, far off.
Five minutes later, he came to the first of three half-full, low water crossings. Thirty minutes later after crossing the third one, he stopped in disgust and hopped around one footed on the asphalt to dump the water out of his three hundred dollar cowboy boots, believing that God must have a really wicked sense of humor.
By the time he walked into Ashburn, it was seven o’clock. He’d been saved the last half mile of the walk because an old farmer had come along and offered him a ride. Due to his drenched, muddy state, he declined the invitation to ride inside, opting instead to ride on the tailgate, getting thoroughly chilled by the early morning wind in the process.
The farmer pulled the truck to the side of the road, outside the local garage. He told Ash he could probably expect the local mechanic to show up at the coffee shop across the street about seven-thirty or eight…or maybe nine.
Ash was numb as he nodded to the waitress when he slid into the seat of the corner booth of the coffee shop. Smiling in sympathy at his disheveled state, she brought him a menu and a steaming hot cup of coffee.
Ash explained his situation, and she told him she would keep an eye out for his guy and took his order. Ash vowed silently that he would make sure his appreciation was reflected in the tip he was leaving her as he took his first sip of the strong, steaming hot coffee. She deserved at least that much for allowing him to come in, looking the way he did.
Chapter Twenty-One
Juliana cranked open the fresh can of coffee before going hunting for a filter in the pantry. When the coffeemaker was gurgling and hissing, she unlocked and opened the sliding door that looked out onto the canal and pulled closed the screen door so the clean, cool gulf breeze could blow through the stuffy house.
She found the skillet in the cabinet and made herself breakfast, opting for breakfast tacos since that’s what she’d been in the mood for when she’d stopped at the grocery store on the way out of Divine. She fried hash browns with onions and once they were browned, poured the beaten eggs into the skillet with them.
Even though there was a chill in the air, Juliana decided to eat out on the back deck. After wrapping up in a thick blanket, she took her coffee and breakfast outside. The cool, cleansing breeze made
her feel better. She pulled the cover off of a deck chair and took a seat then put her steaming coffee cup on the deck railing and looked out over the gulf.
It smelled like rain on the breeze, but Juliana didn’t feel any as she snuggled down into the blanket and wolfed down her breakfast. She’d just laid the plate on the deck and lifted her coffee mug to her lips when she heard the inquisitive meow of a cat. A split second later, a huge, charcoal-grey tomcat with brilliant green eyes made an appearance on the railing, beside her chair.
“Well, hello to you, too, big boy,” she said softly.
He meowed loudly in response to her in a gravelly, old tom cat voice then began to purr loudly when she reached out a tentative hand for him to sniff. He smelled the food on her fingers and licked them before turning his attention to her plate on the deck. After he’d licked it clean, he meowed before plopping heavily into her lap.
“Whoa, dude! Who’s been feeding you?” she asked as she scratched his head, trying hard to ignore the shudder that went through her stomach at his landing and the slightly nauseated feeling that followed. “Evidently the whole neighborhood.”
Obviously a lover and a fighter, the hefty tomcat meowed noisily again then brushed her on the cheek with the side of his head, showing her his ragged left ear, probably damaged in a fight with another tomcat.
He brushed against her other cheek with the other side of his head before licking her chin. He turned on her lap in circles, “making biscuits” as he purred and pushed her blanket around with his big paws until he had a nice, comfortable nest which he curled up in. He meowed in that gravelly, rough voice one more time before resting his head over her hand so she could scratch his chin. He purred in appreciation when she complied.
Box Set: The Divine Creek Ranch Collection, Volume 2 [Book 4 - Rosemary's Double Delight (MFM), Book 5 - Spurs and Heels (MF)] (Siren Publishing Romance Collection) Page 38