Gabe appeared in the doorway in his cowboy hat. I caught his beautiful eyes, and we shared a knowing glance. We were almost late because he wanted to fool around.
“That skirt’s way too short,” he commented.
“She looks lovely,” said Meggie.
He stepped up to the table. “Why’s it so cold in here?”
“Upstairs pipes are frozen. Half the house isn’t getting heat. I’ve got the fire going day and night. Please think more about my offer to park your trailer on my land. I don’t like Avery being out in the middle of that farm with all of the media and the crime these days.”
I was itching to show her what Tessa shared with the boys and learn if she knew anything about it. Gabe seemed put off by the entire notion of an inheritance.
“Don’t forget the file with your information from your old school. Tell them that’s all I have right now. They can call Joel if they have any doubts about your identity. Okiedokie?”
Deliah scuffed her boots out the front door. “I can’t find it.”
Meggie stood and rubbed the back of her neck. “I set it on your bed last night. It didn’t get up and run away. I’ll be darned if they don’t let you start today. If I find the folder hidden in your room, there will be consequences.”
We arrived in the school parking lot as the empty buses paraded by. “Somebody has to sign me in,” Deliah announced.
“Fine. I’ll go in,” Gabe said.
“I want Avery to go in,” she replied in a nervy tone. “I need her to stay with me all day.”
Gabe leaned forward and glanced at her. “So she can do your homework and peel your apple at lunch?”
“We’ll all go in,” I said as I placed my hand on his knee to quiet his teasing. I hadn’t imagined setting foot in a school so soon after leaving my own. The queasiness set in faster than I expected.
A group of girls stopped at the entrance after Gabe held the door for them. They stared at him and blushed before scurrying inside.
“You realize you do that everywhere,” I said of his effect on females of all ages. He ignored me and tore a poster off the wall inside the lobby.
My skin crawled when I got a look at the red circle with a line through it. Around the boarder were faces and picket signs. Gabe held the crumpled paper to my nose, and I stepped back to focus.
“Don’t they need my permission?” I was aghast. “I don’t have any affiliation with those people!” My photo was in the corner.
“What does it matter—these are probably all over the goddang world by now. It’s not like I care if you land on one side or the other. It’s that the lieutenant thinks it’s all my doing.”
“Maybe Avery should make a real commercial for HalRem. That’ll show them good. We could all be in it,” Deliah suggested. “She could get a talent agent and be a real actress.”
While Gabe showed his identification at the front desk, I read the digital newsfeed. “There’s a semi-formal this weekend.”
“Dances are lame,” Deliah and Gabe said at the exact same time.
When we arrived at the principal’s office, she planted her feet. “I changed my mind. I want to be homeschooled.”
“Like heck you do. Who in their right mind would volunteer to teach you?”
“You’ll be fine,” I said.
Gabe held the door and motioned for her to enter. I was so glad it wasn’t me.
“This is how it always is. Lieutenant never takes his kids to their first day.” Gabe pulled a Tootsie Pop out of his pocket and offered it to his sister. She huffed and rolled her eyes. “You got plenty of arrows in your quiver. Don’t sweat it.”
The door across the room flew open and so did my mouth. A girl walked straight to our seats and stood in front of Gabe. She was the girl with short black hair I met on campus before the protest. I wondered why she was visiting the middle school.
“A fracker-face slumming with country bumpkins. Don’t you people go to prestigious private schools?” She took his hat off the seat where he set it.
I flattened my back against my chair. Gabe lifted his head calmly as if he didn’t care that she was hovering over him, demanding his attention. “Get out of my face,” he said without making eye contact. He grabbed the hat out of her hand and stretched his legs past her and crossed his ankles. Deliah slid to the edge of her seat and watched.
“You know each other?” I asked.
Gabe groaned.
The girl looked to me and creased her eyes in question. “Wow. We meet again. So it is true. When you said your boyfriend worked in oil, you weren’t kidding. I thought the press fabricated the damsel and the entitled driller fairytale.”
“So what’s your problem with my boyfriend?” I looked her straight in the eye. I had plenty of experience with girls like her.
“Don’t hold back,” Gabe snickered. He continued to ignore her as he slid his hand behind me and into my back pocket.
“Seriously? You’ve got to be a fool to hang with these earth-raping vermin.”
“Screw you.” Gabe stood up fast and got in her face. He ran his hand over his short hair.
I touched his arm as the principal’s door opened.
“You must be Miss Remington. I’m the principal, Mrs. Merriweather,” she said. “Come in and have a seat.”
Deliah walked quickly to the woman who was frowning at our exchange. She glared over her shoulder at her brother as if to thank him for making her first impression notable. I nudged Gabe’s elbow to follow her and thankfully he did. But not before he tossed the crinkled poster over his shoulder and made it into the wastebasket.
“Rachel, it’s not in my locker,” a girl spoke behind me. “I must have left it at home.”
I turned to face the voice.
“Hi. I know you,” she said curiously observing me. “I’ve seen you all over the news and the papers, and everyone talks about you.”
“I’m Avery.” I tried to ignore the eye daggers I was getting in my back as I studied the face of the smallest girl I’d ever met. She was as tall as my waist.
“Do you go to school here? Do you know Rachel? She’s my sister,” she said.
“I’m dropping off a friend. She’s in there,” I told her and pointed to the principal’s door.
The girl’s eyes spread wide. “Yikes. Maybe I can help her.”
I almost laughed. “She’s not in any trouble yet. She’s new here, and the principal wanted to meet her. She’ll be in the eighth grade.”
The small girl’s shoulders slumped. “That’s my grade. I left my math workbook at home.”
“Okay. Enough of this,” Rachel interrupted. “I don’t want you yakking with Avery or any of them.”
“My name’s Shelly. I can talk to whomever I want. I may be small, but nobody bosses me.” She sat down and dangled her feet. “I’ll wait for your friend so I can show her around. We get a new kid every day. My mom calls me the ambassador. This is a big school. I know every corner of it.”
Shelly’s sister grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the chair. “You’re not waiting around here. You’ll be late, and I don’t have time to wait for you if you get detention after school.”
I cleared my throat. “Because you have an important cause to rally?” I couldn’t help myself.
Shelly laughed.
“Such a shame," said Rachel. "I thought we hit it off on campus. At best, I hoped you weren’t one of those insecure girls who bares her bra in the bathroom mirror to take selfies. But come to find out, it’s worse—you’re a pushover for a tight ass in faded Wranglers.”
Shelly waved to me before she disappeared into the hall.
“I don’t know much about you, but it looks like you sold your soul to the dark side,” Rachel continued.
“Why don’t you go shove your head in a bucket of black paint and choke,” Gabe told her as he exited the office. “If I find you or your clan anywhere near Av’ry again, you’ll be sorry.” He took my hand and led me out. Deliah snatched her ba
g and followed.
We headed to the front door after we dropped his sister at her homeroom. Shelly was sitting in the front row and waved. She got right up to greet Deliah. I had a feeling they were made for each other.
Gabe ran his knuckles along the walls of lockers as we headed out.
“This place is horrible. She’s going to have to tough it out,” I said.
He stopped and draped his arm over my shoulder. “You told her it would be alright.”
“I lied so she wouldn’t run away. You know what it’s like. Boys will chase her. Girls will tease her.”
“Marked up foreheads.” He ran a finger above my eyebrows and into my hair to pull it away from my face.
“See, you know what I’m talking about.”
“Wrong. I went to a boy’s school. You never told me what happened to you last summer. I’ll get it out of you somehow.” He started walking. “If a boy dares to look at her sideways, I’ll dig his eyes out with an ice cream scoop.”
“That just made me lose my appetite for ice cream for the rest of my life. I’m so glad I don’t have an older brother.”
* * *
“You need to schedule me in,” Gabe said. He held open the truck door outside his trailer the next weekend. He climbed in after me and then turned on the wipers to clear the frost.
“We can always come back. Deliah’s dance isn’t until later. I promised I’d help her pick out a dress at Molly’s. Don’t forget we need to go out to the Laundromat tonight. I have nothing clean to wear.”
“We haven’t spent any free time together since you started taking that online course and Meggie suckered you into watching Emmie. You’re always tired.”
“You work a lot too, though Meggie said you’re lucky you’re not doing two weeks on, two weeks off like most guys. You know we could spend some time together if we go as chaperones tonight.”
“You’d have to hogtie me to get me within a mile of that dance.”
I rolled my eyes. “That would defeat the purpose of dancing. At least we have our nights.”
“That’s why you’re always tired.” He flashed a toothy grin. It was fast, but it was stunning. “We should stay right here and not wear any of our dirty clothes, how about it?” He unbuckled the seat belt and pushed me down. “I love you in these cowboy boots and nothing else.”
“Gabe, it’s freezing outside. You can wait a few hours.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“I promised Deliah. Molly said you guys have to meet with a lawyer. You need to figure out how to get your charges dropped. It’s serious. You’ll have a permanent record.”
He unzipped my jacket with his teeth. “Naw, it’ll wait.”
I blew my breath into his hair and gave in to his hand running up my side. The scent of shampoo and licorice made me wither. “It’s really…oh god…cold. I finally got all dressed and warm.”
Gabe slipped his hands into my hair. Then he pressed his lips to mine and kissed me until my head hit the door. At least he wasn’t thinking about work or his father.
Meggie was indignant when we walked into her kitchen to collect Deliah. I stood behind Gabe and held onto his arms while my aunt and his father had a shouting match in the living room. I had a clear shot of their argument in front of the fireplace. My aunt’s fists were balled on her hips. Mr. Halden stood unruffled as usual. The first floor was broiling.
“It’s the blueprints,” Deliah told us as she was about to run down the basement stairs with a box of Pop-Tarts. “They’ve been doing this for an hour. Nobody made us lunch.”
I held my breath. Gabe took a step toward his sister and blocked the exit. “Hold up. What blueprints? What us?”
“The new mansion,” I told him.
“He’s rebuilding in Texas. She’s screaming at him that she’s never going to live there. He’s arguing that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Blah blah blah.”
“You knew about this?” Gabe asked me in sort of a humored tone.
Meggie yelled, “Leave, Joel. Just leave. This is my home. It will always be mine.”
“Margareta, you need to calm down. Then we can discuss this,” he replied.
“You betcha I need to calm down. You never hear what I have to say. You don’t know when to stop! I’m going to live right here for the rest of my life.”
Deliah covered her ears when Emmeline shrieked in the baby monitor on the counter. All of the red warning lights lit up at once. Meggie tore up the stairs, and Mr. Halden grabbed his coat and stormed out the front door.
“I saw the designs in the office. I really didn’t know what they were for,” I whispered.
“This is so embarrassing!” Deliah ran downstairs.
Gabe and I looked at one another and shrugged.
“Mona Deliah, get your coat,” Gabe shouted down the stairs. “We’re leaving before he starts in on me.”
Caleb emerged from the basement looking as if he just woke up. His shirt was unbuttoned and he was barefoot. “You looking for me, legs? Did you finally come to your senses?”
“They’re fighting. We’re here to get Deliah,” I said quietly as he ran his hand into his shirt and rubbed his shoulder and neck.
“She’s got a girlfriend down there. They’ve been pestering me for hours.”
I glared at his unshaved jaw.
“She’s having a sleepover?” I replied and turned to Gabe. “No wonder she’s embarrassed. See if they both want to go to Molly’s to hang out.”
“Fine, I’ll get her,” he said and walked off to find his sister.
“Legs, can you make me some coffee? My head is pounding from listening to their nauseating pop music.” Caleb reached around me to grab a mug off Meggie’s counter. “Plumb forgot we had a meeting.”
I stared into his hazel eyes, thankful he was respecting my space.
“You’re looking less speckled.” He grabbed my hand and set the mug on my palm. He drew his fingers up my arm, into my sleeve and examined my skin. “I made you tremble.”
I pulled my arm away, and the mug dropped out of my grip and broke into pieces on the floor. So much for valuing my space.
“Caleb, really? Why can’t you flirt with someone who actually likes you?”
Gabe hurried up the basement steps and stomped toward the back door. He didn’t even look on the ground. Caleb slid the broken mug out of the way using his bare foot.
“Get your coat. We’re leaving now.”
“Aren’t the girls coming with us?” I asked.
He walked out.
Caleb picked up the remnants of the mug and dropped them in the garbage. I grabbed Meggie’s cordless vacuum and handed it to him. He laughed and tried to push it back into my hand. A knock at the back door stopped me in my tracks. I listened to see if Gabe was playing games.
“Dang, I thought that little kid in the basement looked mighty familiar. She’s welcome. You’re not,” Caleb said to the unidentified person. “You gotta be dumber than dirt coming here.” He laughed. “Where’d you park your broomstick?”
I inched closer to listen.
“Nice to see you too, asshat!” she yelled. I was pretty sure the screen door slammed in her face, whoever she was. She didn’t sound like a reporter.
“She’s as friendly as a thorny rose bush. Were we expecting the wicked witch of the Midwest?” He returned to me and brushed his cheek against mine to whisper. “I’ll go load my shotgun.”
Rachel was standing in Meggie’s kitchen when I turned around.
“You’re playing musical beds with the Haldens?” she said smugly. “Don’t you have any dignity?”
“I’ll get your sister,” I told her when I figured out Deliah invited Shelly over. Part of me was happy that she made a new friend. But the fact that she was related to the devil—that part was unfortunate.
“You could do better,” Rachel continued as I took the first step into the basement. “They’re just a bunch of pretty faces with washboard abs.”
I stepped back into the kitchen and caught her setting pamphlets on the table.
“Is that jealously or rejection I hear? You must’ve been dumped recently.”
“I don’t think you realize what this family is doing to people out here. Contaminating water, destroying air quality. I could give you an education that would blow your mind.” She emphasized her last three words and dug a hand into her bag. “Read these and you’ll see.”
“It’s none of your business what I do or what they do. They don’t run the company.”
She took a step toward me as if I would take her serious. “They willingly work in oil production. They’re making this earth uninhabitable. They eat food bought with money made in oil. They drive trucks owned by oil. Should I continue?”
My breath hitched when Gabe snuck back into the kitchen and set a snowy cowboy boot on the seat of one of Meggie’s chairs. “Who the hell let you in?”
“My sister’s here,” Rachel pointed out. “Go get her and save your breath.”
“You better hope the lieutenant don’t catch you in here. You know how much damage you did to my truck? You wanna know what he does to radical snakes like you? Oh, that’s right. You already know,” Gabe replied.
“Don’t forget Josh’s truck,” I said under my breath.
“Is that a threat?” she said snidely.
“Check under her fingernails,” Caleb called from the basement steps. “Check ’em for black paint. There’s probably ten gallons of high gloss in her trunk.”
I stepped up to the table, set my hand down flat on one of her leaflets, and pushed it over to Caleb’s reach.
“I can’t believe you shot the paint,” I said. “That’s so juvenile.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets. “He obliterated a car with a snow shovel. You’re calling me juvenile? Boy, could I give you stories,” she said.
“She’s the devil’s spawn. Fledgling menace,” said Caleb. He puffed his chest. When he got a look at what was under my hand, he snatched it up. “How many times you been arrested for disrupting the peace or trespassing on HalRem property?”
Gabe grabbed the pamphlet from Caleb and tore it in half before he waved it in Rachel’s face. “Why don’t you give it up already? This is hogwash. You know HalRem recycles wastewater, and we don’t put well pads on residential land, because we don’t have to.”
Stubborn Truth (The Stubborn Series Book 3) Page 11