by Sophie Oak
Chapter Sixteen
Christian Grady looked at the woman cowering at his feet. Actually, she wasn’t cowering as much as he would have expected. It was another annoying moment in an already annoying week in a ridiculously annoying town.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” He wasn’t sure the bitch understood English at this moment.
Lucy Carson turned her arctic-blue eyes up toward him. “Fuck off.”
Yes. She was proving to be something of a nuisance, but then this whole goddamn town was out-of-its-mind crazy. The fiasco at the sheriff’s office had proven that to Christian beyond all doubt. Luckily little Lucy hadn’t caught sight of him at the station or he might have been completely fucked.
“I’ll tell you again. I’m going to call your friend, who happens to be my wife. I’m calling her from your phone, you dumb bitch. She’s going to pick up, and I’ll explain to her that I will kill you if she doesn’t come to me. You will cry prettily and beg for your life.”
“I will say it again. Fuck you.”
Lucy, it turned out, had quite the mouth on her. Christian felt his anger swell. He hated vulgar females. Lucy had seemed a sweet, accommodating sort. When he’d taken her out to pump her for information about Hope, he’d actually thought that she was innocent. But no innocent cursed in the face of danger. No innocent spat at her abductor. Lucy was a whore. Only whores fought.
“We’ll get to that, I’m sure.” Whores always wanted a good fucking, and it was nothing less than they deserved. Christian fought his urge to slap the bitch. He held up her phone and took a picture, making sure the lighting was all right. Morning light filtered into the cabin he was holed up in, lighting every cut and bruise he’d already given Lucy. He examined the picture. A person would be able to tell who she was and that she wasn’t exactly in a happy place. It would certainly do.
“Smile for the camera.” One more should do it. He made sure to hold up a newspaper with the date on it. The Bliss Gazette was a waste of the paper it was written on, but it did the trick. Hope would know he had her friend, and that soft heart of hers wouldn’t be able to handle it. She would come to him.
And she would know what he planned to do with her.
Little Lucy fought against her bonds. She looked down at her hands, twisting them, the friction marring her skin. She’d been easy to catch, harder to hold. She’d fought like a wildcat, but he had help. It had taken all three of them to hold one small woman down after she’d figured out that her little date from a couple of days ago had gone all wrong. He guessed he should be lucky that little Lucy wasn’t as tied into the town’s gossip mill as the rest of them. As far as he could tell, she was a fairly new citizen. She’d been ridiculously open with him when she’d thought he was a lovesick swain. She came from a large family in another town. She had numerous brothers and sisters, and she’d grown up in poverty, the rest of her town looking down on the trashy family she’d come from. Oh, it had been so easy to tell her what she’d wanted to hear—that she was lovely and he didn’t care where she’d come from.
But the minute she’d realized he wasn’t what he’d said, she’d turned and become a problem.
“Do you want me to stay, boss?”
Christian sighed as he looked up at his flunkie. This man had been with him a short time. He missed Jerry. Jerry wouldn’t have asked. Jerry would have known what to do. Unfortunately, Jerry was also very close to his height and his weight, and when he’d woken and realized that his home was going up in flames and he had the chance to start again, he’d sacrificed Jerry for the greater good. For Christian’s good. Jerry’s body had been his second chance.
“No. Go out to the ranch, and be there when Hope gets my call.”
The man nodded. He was an idiot, but a useful one. Christian had picked up him and his friend outside of Duluth. They were small cons, but fairly decent at bringing in the ladies. Their Western charm had worked well, and when he’d needed them to find jobs, they’d gotten it done. They could get close to Hope. They could bring her home.
Where he would decide if she lived or died.
“Sure thing, boss.”
“You said she spent the night with them.” Christian wanted to call the words back the minute they came out of his mouth. It was a weakness, but he couldn’t help it.
“That’s what I heard.”
“No one saw her sleep with them?”
The man in his cowboy hat shook his head. “No one was in there with her. No one really knows what happened.”
But Christian had his suspicions. He waved the man out, his brain whirling with unsavory possibilities.
His employee strode out of the purloined cabin. It seemed empty enough. From what Christian understood, it was a summer place, and summer was over. The nearest neighbor was a mile away, and no one in town thought Michael McMahon gave a crap about anything but his own grief. He wouldn’t notice Christian’s little domestic drama play out.
He was alone with Lucy, and soon Hope would be here. Hope would stand before him, and he would look into her eyes. He would know the truth.
And he would be her judge and her jury, and possibly her executioner.
* * * *
Hope let the water wash over her, a light joy infusing her. Every muscle ached, but she’d slept better than she had in years. She’d cuddled down between them, their bodies heating her skin and offering a bulwark against the world outside. Their arms had wrapped around her, and she’d been encased in their unique warmth.
Now the water was warm, sluicing over her body, washing her as clean as her words the day before had washed her soul.
Trev had been right. The truth was the only way to cut through the pain, to find the path. And the truth had brought her home.
She shut off the water to the shower and heard James and Noah arguing in the bedroom about who had to make the bed and who should go and fetch the coffee. She smiled, her heart full. They were obnoxious and all hers.
She thought about breaking up their fight, but decided to concentrate on making herself presentable. If she walked out now, she would be forced to drop her robe, and then she was screwed. Literally. They were insatiable.
Twenty minutes later, she glossed her lips and walked into the bedroom. Peace. Quiet.
It wouldn’t last long.
She got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Someone had moved her clothes from the guest room. She felt a sweetness pierce her heart when she realized all three dressers had clothes in them. The boys had moved in, and they had moved fast.
The door opened, and James poked his head in. “Hope? Baby, come to breakfast. We have to eat fast this morning. Noah’s got a load of cattle to check out. We’re taking them to market in a week or two. I want to make sure they’re damn healthy before we sell them.”
She took a deep breath because she’d spent way too much time with Nell. James wanted to make sure his cows were healthy and in good shape before he slaughtered them and turned them into burgers. She shrugged. She liked burgers. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
At least she got to get dressed this morning. She’d been a little worried that they would want her running around naked at the breakfast table, but apparently the herd’s medical checkup trumped the need to see her boobs while devouring pancakes.
She stared at herself in the mirror, not quite recognizing the woman who looked back at her. She was a rancher’s wife. Well, almost. And a vet’s wife. She had better get used to working with animals, because they would dominate her life.
“Goddamn it.” James’s voice rang through the house.
Hope sighed and opened the door to the bedroom. She hoped James and Noah weren’t fighting again. She would have to get some advice from Rachel on how to handle them when they started acting like five-year-olds.
“We need to start barring the gates at night. That’s a nice car, though.” Noah stood at the front window, his brother at his side.
“It’s a dumb car for the mountains.” James peered
out the window and then whistled. “Whoa. Is that really what I think it is?”
Noah’s voice was hushed and reverent. “1969 Camaro.”
“Holy crap. That’s a beauty. Z28. You know the horsepower that has?”
Hope looked out the window, too. “It’s a car.”
Both of her men turned at her like she’d said something utterly sacrilegious.
“That is a classic muscle car,” Noah explained. “It’s eight cylinders of pure power.”
Hope wasn’t impressed. She bet it didn’t even have a CD player. Even her little piece of crap had a CD player.
The Camaro charged up the road, churning dust behind it. It stopped at the long, circular drive, and the door opened. Out of the passenger side, Cade Sinclair unfurled his long, lean body, his eyes covered with mirrored aviators. Jesse McCann got out of the driver’s side and said something to his partner that made them both smile.
“See, that just ruins everything,” James said, frowning.
“Now it’s a douchebag car,” Noah agreed.
Hope sighed. “I’m sure they’re here to give me an update on my car. Will you give them a break?”
Noah held up her small cell phone. “They could have called. Phones work here, too.”
“Not always,” James allowed. “Well, hell, let’s get this over with.”
Hope grabbed her phone and shoved it in her jeans. She could smell coffee. God, she needed coffee. She took another look at the two gorgeous mechanics walking up to the porch. Cade and Jesse were hot as hell, but James and Noah had ruined her. She sighed as she heard the door open and the men begin to speak. She decided she didn’t want in on that conversation. They would talk cars and parts, and if she was there, they might do that chest-thumping gorilla thing, and she really needed some caffeine.
She pushed through the doors to the kitchen and found it already occupied. Two cowboys stood in the middle of the room. Tall and muscular, both wore boots and jeans and Western shirts.
“Morning, ma’am,” the taller one said politely.
She smiled and nodded their way. It was odd. The man sounded Southern. She’d gotten used to flat, Western accents, but this man’s slow speech made her think of home.
“Good morning.” She would have to get used to ranch hands being all over the place.
Her cell phone rang. Hope pulled it out of her jeans and looked down. Lucy. Damn it. She hadn’t talked to Lucy in days, hadn’t explained why she’d missed their dinner plans nights before. She was sure that someone had filled Lucy in on what was going on, but it wasn’t fair to her friend to not hear it from Hope’s own mouth. She slid the bar to answer the phone and stepped away from the cowboys.
“Lucy, sweetie, I am so sorry I didn’t call. Things have been crazy here.”
“Have they, love?”
Hope froze in the middle of the kitchen, her heart threatening to stop.
That voice. The one that haunted her nightmares. Christian.
She started out the door, ready to call out to Noah and James, but a large hand stopped her.
“Don’t you think you should talk to your husband, Mrs. Grady?” The tall cowboy looked down on her with black eyes. “If you call out to those men, I’m afraid Brad and I will be forced to start shooting. Talk to the boss.”
Her hand trembled. Christian had men on the Circle G? She supposed it would be easy. James had been desperate for new hands and hadn’t had luck finding them. The minute Christian knew where she would be, he would have sent his own men in just for this occasion. Christian always had a plan.
But she couldn’t risk Noah and James. She could hear them talking to the mechanics. If she so much as called out their names, they would rush in and be facing two guns.
“Hello, Christian. Why do you have Lucy’s phone?” Hope asked, nausea churning in her gut. He was alive. She’d recognized the very viable possibility, but now the truth hit her squarely, and she was reeling from it. Christian was alive, and he was after her.
“I have Lucy’s phone because I have Lucy, dear. Talk to your friend.” There was a moment of quiet, and then Christian growled. “You talk to your fucking friend, bitch.”
A feminine voice moaned and shrieked in pain. Hope’s eyes teared up. “Lucy?”
“I’m sorry, Hope.” Lucy’s voice came over the line, the sound fragile and tortured.
He had Lucy, and Hope knew what Christian could do to a woman. “Let her go, Christian.”
“I will as soon as I have what I really want.” His voice had gone silky and smooth the way it did when he knew he had the upper hand. “As soon as you allow Jay to bring you out here to me, I will release Lucy.”
She just bet he would, but what choice did she have? Lucy was utterly innocent. Lucy was twenty-five years old, and she’d spent most of her life taking care of her eight siblings in a single-wide trailer. This was the first time Lucy had been able to be on her own, and she was so excited about it. Lucy had sacrificed, and this should be her time to have fun, not to pay for Hope’s mistakes.
“Do you honestly believe I won’t kill her?” Christian asked. “I suspect you watched me eliminate dear Elaine. She’d outlived her usefulness.” His voice went low, cajoling. “She was trying to come between us, love. You know I couldn’t allow that.”
“You killed her.”
He sighed. “I rather thought that was what made you run. Darling, you shouldn’t have had to see that. You know men are just beasts. But I’m gentle with you. Always, because you deserve it. Unless you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t. We’re going to talk about those men, Hope. Do you understand me?”
She understood him far too well. He wouldn’t like the fact that she wasn’t his pure little angel anymore. She also wasn’t going to walk to him like a lamb led to slaughter. She moved toward the sideboard. Someone, most likely Beth McNamara, had set a lovely spread. There was a fruit tray that included apples and oranges and a single, small paring knife. It wasn’t much, but she would take it.
The kitchen door banged open, and Hope nearly dropped the phone.
James stood in the doorway, an impatient look on his face. “Baby, do you want to come talk to these douchebags? They have an outrageous quote on fixing your car. You’re really better off just letting me and Noah find you a new one.”
She took a deep breath, remembering that the two men with her were armed and ready to shoot. “That sounds fine, James.”
“Who are you talking to?” James looked down at her phone.
“Lucy,” she replied, trying to sound nonchalant. “Just catching up on gossip.”
He nodded and then turned to the hands. “Shouldn’t you two be out in the east pasture with Trev?”
The one named Brad nodded, but both men were staring at James. Hope reached out and palmed the small knife, wishing she had better access to the larger ones. While Christian’s men replied to James, she slid the knife into her pocket and put the phone back to her ear.
“Lucy, I’ll see you in a bit. I have to go. I have a couple of things I need to get done this morning.”
“Yes, you do.” Christian’s voice was all threat now. “And, love, if you bring one of those men with you, I won’t hesitate to kill him.”
No, he wouldn’t. “I understand.”
She hung up.
James walked up to her, tilting her chin up. “You all right, baby?”
Damn it. The last thing she needed was a curious James. “I’m fine. I’m a little tired. Now will you go and get rid of those men so we can sit down and have breakfast? I’m starving.”
The smile that crossed his face threatened to light up the world. He winked down before brushing his lips across hers. “Will do.” He turned back to his hands. “And you two need to get to work. I’m not paying you to gawk at my woman, no matter how pretty she is.”
James walked out, and she wondered if she’d seen him for the last time. She longed to get another glimpse of Noah, too.
“Let’s go, Mrs. Grady
,” Jay said, taking her by the elbow. “We need to get going before those men come back.”
She felt the hard bite of the barrel of a gun against her side as they walked her down the steps of the back porch and hustled her toward their pickup. They had been ready for her. The truck was parked and prepared for an easy getaway.
Brad buckled her in while Jay took the wheel. Brad looked at his partner in crime. “You send me the signal when it’s all clear, and I can get out of here. I’ll run interference on this end.”
The door slammed, and Jay took off. Hope looked back as the Circle G’s main house got smaller and smaller. Tears ran down her face. She’d briefly had a future.
But it was time now to deal with her past once and for all.
Chapter Seventeen
James smiled at the two mechanics who had obviously come out to deliver the bad news in the expectation that they would be able to get a glimpse of Hope.
Hope was having none of it, and that did amazing things for his ego.
“Where’s Hope?” Noah asked, his eyes trailing back toward the kitchen door.
“Yes,” Jesse said, his eyes following Noah’s line of sight. “Where’s the luscious little Hope?”
Odd, now that he’d settled his relationship with Hope, James didn’t feel the urge to bash the man’s face in. “She’s hungry. She had a long night.”
“Yeah, she did.” Noah held up his hand and offered a high five.
James slapped at his brother’s hand in a sign of male solidarity.
“So juvenile.” Cade crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “So, the rumors are true. You’ve settled your differences. The last time we saw you two you seemed to be at odds.”
“We’re brothers,” James said. “We always figure it out. Now, Hope said she’s just going to let her men buy her a new car.”
Noah pointed out the front window toward the shiny car in the driveway. “You know they restored that beauty. Hope would look awfully nice driving around in something like that.”