Resisting Samantha (Hope Parish Novels Book 10)

by Zoe Dawson

  “What? What business?”

  “The sauces you’re stocking. Braxton made the offer to you to show you that we all want to work together.”

  “What? This was your doing?”

  “I was the one who made the suggestion, and Braxton and River agreed it was a good idea.”

  “I was not aware this is a family thing.”

  “Braxton saved our flagging business two years ago. I owe that boy a great deal, but we’re in this together, sixty/forty.”

  I dropped the fillet knife and pressed my hands against the table.

  Brax hadn’t said anything about my daddy suggesting this. I will admit, I hadn’t been privy to family stuff for a long time, but I would never have imagined that Brax would have deliberately manipulated me. I could believe my daddy would. But not Brax. The sense of betrayal was a sharp cut.

  “Chase, we’d like to—”

  “I’m busy,” I cut him off without looking at him.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him stiffen. “When an olive branch is offered, it has to be accepted to make a difference, to begin to come together. But I can see you’re too bitter and unforgiving.”

  “Me? Oh, that’s good.” I turned to face him. “Just how many strings are attached?”

  “There are no—”

  “The hell there aren’t,” I growled. “I bought it all once, and was totally on board for being the golden boy, Chase Sutton, plantation owner, businessman, gentleman, marry that deb, carry on the family name, blah, blah, blah. Be everything you wanted me to be.”

  “What happened?”

  “You know what happened. I had the rug ripped out from under me. I defined myself by your standards. You and the Colonel were the role models.”

  “We all had that rug jerked from underneath us. We’re all recovering. You’d had more time to assimilate this information.”

  “Maybe so, but when it happened to me, I didn’t have anything else to fall back on. You didn’t give me that choice.”

  “You blame me.”

  “Yes! I blame you and some ancient dead guy for taking away my choices. I’m not going back to that Daddy, ever. Screw family legacy. Ours is in rubble, and no amount of flaunting Anna Kate around town, cotillions, and fancy Cadillacs are going to change a damn thing.” I stalked out of the cooler and faced him. “The Colonel was a murderer and a thief, and on top of that, he was a fucking coward.”

  My daddy’s lips thinned, and he looked sick.

  “Then we had the piece of work that was Cousin Earl, our blood, who silenced Brody Outlaw because he was going to do the right thing. Earl was so obsessed with power and reputation, he was going to murder his own niece and nephew to protect our “good” name. He had no compunction about killing Brax, either, just more of the same, and a chip off the old Colonel block! His statue should be pulled down, and Suttontowne should be renamed something else. He doesn’t deserve any of those honors or accolades.”

  And, as his descendants, neither did we. The shame and the anger backed up into a huge ball of pain clogging my throat.

  My harsh laughter rang off the rafters. “So, the Outlaws must look pretty good right now. At least you have that association going for you. You wouldn’t even let us hang out with them, but, even in the face of adversity and condemnation, all three of them built something solid, honest, and profitable.”

  My daddy’s humiliation and shame broke through the simmering anger. I jammed my hands on my hips, not proud of making him squirm, or hurting him. I knew what it meant to him, but I couldn’t go back. “This…this is who I am, and I’m sure it will be a cold day in hell before you accept that. So I’m so very sure there are strings, and plenty of them. I stopped being a puppet, long about ten years ago.”

  “You’re wrong, but I can see I’m not going to change your mind. You won’t hear me. We’ve had some setbacks, but in the end it’s about how you handle them that’s important. About being a man.”

  “I built something out of nothing with honest sweat and my own two hands, not a legacy built on blood money and terrible betrayal.” I growled. His face went white. “I live simply, and without any apology for who I am. That makes me feel damn good. I’m not the one trying to get back what I lost. I don’t want it. That’s the difference between us.” I went back into the cooler and started working on my next snapper. “Give my regards to Momma, River and Jake,” I said.

  He jammed his hat on his head, gave me one last, drilling stare, then turned and left, slamming the door shut behind him.

  I didn’t let go of my sick rage as it churned and sent adrenaline rushing into my blood, the fury threatening to explode.

  I got the fish cleaned, weighed, packaged, and packed for delivery in short order. But the anger kept eating away at me. I swore savagely, worked up over everything, and shocked at the deep well of my bitterness. I thought I had put everything into perspective, worked through the mess, but it was clear I hadn’t. My outburst shook me to my core. Ten years of unresolved resentment and bitterness dumped on my daddy’s head.

  Now he knew what I had been closed up about, what I was hiding, even from myself. The guilt swamped me all over again, thinking about how long I had sat on the knowledge that my ancestor had definitely not been the man we believed he was. Some pillar of the community. It would be laughable if it weren’t so sick and twisted.

  The journals I found had been buried, hidden, along with their terrible secret, for hundreds of years, and all the while the Outlaws had been stuck taking the fall for us.

  I clenched my jaw, stifling my emotions while I made each of my deliveries. When I drove by Outlaws, where Brax usually was this time of day, I swerved into the parking lot at the last minute.

  I got out, slamming my truck door and marched up to the building. When I entered the dim interior, I homed in on Braxton Outlaw, who was at the bar talking to Ethan.

  On top of the other turmoil of this crappy day, seeing my old friend Ethan made me cringe.

  There were some people talking off to the side, but otherwise the lunch crowd had cleared out, and the dinner crowd hadn’t started trickling in yet.

  When I snarled Brax’s name, he jerked around, tensing for battle.

  Ethan said, “I hope your insurance is paid up.”

  Braxton was a master at knowing when someone was there to kick his ass. I didn’t intend to get physical with him, but I did have a bone to pick.

  He stood and watched warily as I crossed the room. “You’re a backstabbing bastard.”

  His chin came up and his eyes narrowed. “I told River this was going to have some blowback,” he said under his breath.

  “I thought this deal was between you, me, and my sister. I didn’t know my daddy had a part in your sauces.”

  “Chase. This is a family business. River is the one who came up with the idea to market them with my name, but under your family’s label. She handles everything, and we all profit. Everything I own belongs to River and it’s the same with her. We can’t get out of family. Believe me, I know. I’ve got the tripdar skid marks to prove it.”

  “I see. So you went along with what she wanted, even if it meant I didn’t have all the information.”

  “Yes. Guilty, but, damn, huckleberry. You’re hurting her.” He jabbed me in the chest, his expression determined and fed up. “Every day you stay away. Hell, you haven’t even been by our place, not once, not even to see the boys. She told me to keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself, but goddammit, I can take about anything except River’s tears. So it’s time for you to either cut us loose for good or make peace.” His eyes went steely, he jabbed me in the chest again. “And, boy, if you’re going to cut us loose, you’re going to be the one to tell her, and you need to make sure I’m far away so I don’t beat you down,” he growled. “If I can forgive the Suttons for their offenses, maybe you can find a way to work out your own issues.”

  He was right, and it washed the anger right out of me, until there was nothing l
eft but cold, sick shame and twisting guilt. My expression must have tipped him off, and he lowered his voice, and swore softly under his breath. It wasn’t lost on me that he was caught up in my family situation because he’d married my sister and wanted to do right by her. I had to respect that.

  He shifted and tapped the bar. Ethan set up two whiskeys, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I get it. I do,” Brax continued, his voice filled with understanding, “But your daddy came by to offer you an opening. That wasn’t easy for him.”

  I looked away, swallowing hard, my fists clenching. I couldn’t sweep this all under the rug just to appease my sister. I loved her, deeply, and it just about killed me to find out that I’d hurt her. But I didn’t know how to fix this, or reconcile my own feelings in the matter.

  “I know all about anger, Chase. I lived with it in my gut for years. It’ll eat you alive unless you deal with what’s causing it. You figure it out, or you’re going to lose any connection you had to your family and your past. And you’d regret it eventually, even as fucked up as it is.”

  I stared at him, his expression fixed and controlled. Then, ruthlessly suppressing even a flicker of emotion, I turned on my heel. I froze. The people talking together in the corner were Boone Outlaw and…Samantha.

  She looked at me, her eyes pools of bottomless green, her expression haunted and tender.

  It took me a lot of years to learn how to shut down and disconnect. But I had learned the lesson well. Disconnection was a little like fishing. A good angler had to empty his mind of everything except the line, watching, waiting, listening, then reeling in the big catch, working against every slick trick the fish and all its ancestors developed to survive and stay out of the frying pan. A good angler had to focus. Focus. And it wasn’t until that fish was landed that the pain of a hundred old injuries would surface. This wasn’t much different. I had to empty my mind. I had to stay focused.

  Only this wasn’t a fish tale, and I was the one fighting for my life.

  Chapter 6

  SAMANTHA

  I watched Chase’s retreating back, and my heart just about broke. He looked so bleak. My head whipped around to Braxton Outlaw. Everyone in the bar was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Boone said, “Fuck,” softly, under his breath.

  I had originally gone to find Boone at home, but when I arrived, Verity opened the door looking frazzled, with Duel on her hip, two babies crying in the background, and a dazed look that I could only associate with a protracted lack of sleep. She told me Boone had gone down to Outlaws to talk to Brax about the softball teams Boone was organizing among the business owners of Suttontowne. The first game was going to be on Saturday. Outlaw Landscaping against Outlaws.

  When he saw the look on my face, he made a grab for me, but I wrestled my arm out of his grasp, marching up to the bar. Ethan Fairchild took one look at my face and said, “Incoming.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Brax stiffened.

  “We’re going to go a few rounds now, darlin’?”

  “Don’t darlin’ me. I’m sure that once you get home and tell River Pearl what you just said to her brother, you’re going to need all the darlin’s you’ve got. Maybe for the next decade.”

  He ran his hand over his face. “In my defense,” he said, “I’m caught in the middle, here, and my allegiance is to my wife. I was just trying to tell him how it is. I don’t sugarcoat things.”

  “Well, that’s pretty evident,” I bit out. “Freakin’ bull in a china shop,” I said under my breath. “What it sounded like to me is you’re trying to force him to handle something that’s been brewing for years. Something that’s personal, and affected him at his core, and you just heaped a pile of guilt and shame right on his head. Oh, I could just…just kick you.”

  “So it’s true. You’re sweet on him.”

  I stiffened. I had just spent most of my morning trying to duck for cover while the Sutton women tried to get me to admit that very thing. I wasn’t going to say anything. “Chase is a decent man, hardworking and decent.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Oh, dammit, mind your own business.”

  As I turned and walked out, I heard Boone say, “Yup, she’s got it bad for ol’ Chase.”

  Ethan said, “Ha, mind our own business? She does realize this is a small town.”

  I let the door slam on my way out. They were as bad as gossiping old biddies!

  It was the first time I cursed Suttontowne for being small.

  ***

  My car steered its way over to the bayou, and before I knew it, I was searching for Sutton Bait and Tackle. The road was better maintained than I expected, but Chase did have a brisk business, and I suspected road maintenance was something he did for convenience.

  The bayou was so lush and teeming with life out here, and I realized how isolated I had been in town. I caught glimpses of the channel that opened up and flowed past Imogene’s. Passing an open area that looked like it had once been a small village, I noticed damaged structures, some of the boards sticking up out of the ground like broken bones, covered in moss and vines. A shiver traveled down my spine, even in the moist heat. I couldn’t help wondering if this had been the fishing village Imogene allegedly destroyed.

  Farther down the road, I saw the sign, beautifully carved and stuck into the ground. Sutton Bait and Tackle. I turned off and followed the dirt and gravel road up to a makeshift crushed-shell parking lot.

  I got out of my car and looked around. There was no one here, but Chase did say he was closed on Mondays. I looked out to the swamp, the channel as straight as an arrow. The bottle brown water beyond his beautiful shop barely rippled until I saw movement, then something splashed into the water, dark, slender and reptilian.

  Gator.

  An apex predator.

  It was the hunter, and rarely the hunted.

  I turned toward the structure I’d first glimpsed when I drove up, giving it a more comprehensive look. It was larger than I thought, and definitely nicer. Not that I expected a ramshackle shack or anything, just not so polished. But this structure was constructed of neat, tidy logs and glass. A wide porch led up to the shop area. Beside and not far from the house was a dock with several boats tied up, and at the very end a seaplane. I had no idea Chase was a pilot.

  As I approached the stairs, I heard a crack, like an ax going into wood. I changed directions and followed the sound behind the house. Chase was there, stripped to the waist, his dark skin gleaming and his shoulder muscles bunching as he brought an axe head down onto a wedge of wood.

  I inhaled a deep breath of the aromas of fish, wood, and sweaty man. He was lost in his misery, his face impassive, his mouth taut. My body reacted to the power he exuded, all those muscles in stark relief, the trim waist and broad shoulders, the sexy way he braced himself with his heavy thighs. I had to take a deep breath. My husband had been quite fit—he had to be to perform the duties and the requirements of his physically demanding job—but Jeff pumped iron and trained to achieve his goals.

  It was clear Chase’s rippling muscles had been honed to male perfection by manual labor. Honest, backbreaking labor.

  It was blazingly hot and sunny, the sky now a vibrant bowl of pure blue above the dense growth of trees on the far bank, an abundance of oak and willow, with palmettos, their wispy fronds fanning like long-fingered hands.

  The axe came down again, driving the wedge deeper, a cracking sound rending the air. His biceps bulging, his skin burnished and glistening, he turned the handle in his hand, then, with a fierce, chopping swing, he split the trunk in half.

  He leaned on the handle, his chest heaving, sweat running in rivulets down his back, soaking into the waistband of his pants. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my shorts, my own emptiness compounding as I watched him, far too aware of the tight lines of pain around his mouth. I must have made a sound, or he saw me out of the corner of his eye. He straightened and turned.

  I met his
tormented gaze, my chest teeming with a host of feelings. I watched him across the short expanse between us, loneliness rising up in me with a desolating force. I didn’t even know I had been feeling it until I looked at him. I could so easily get into a host of trouble with this man. So easily. Wrenched by that thought, I clenched my out-of-sight hands, my throat so tight I could barely speak.

  He bent his head and stared down at the trunk, his profile rigid, the muscles along his jaw tense. I crossed the space. “It looks like you got yourself one heck of a sunburn there. You need some ointment on that right away, and a shirt. I swear, I thought bayou men had more sense than God gave a goat.” My voice wobbled, but I kept my eyes on him.

  He was well aware I chose to give him time to assimilate what had happened between him and his daddy and Brax.

  There was a long. strained pause. Then he said, “You want to take off?” He chuckled softly, his face smoothing out.

  Blinking rapidly to will away the burning in my eyes, I waited for the moment to pass. There was a solemn intensity in his expression, something that made my heart accelerate. “Where?”

  He stared at me, his gaze darkening, and the muscles along his jaw tensed. “Just fly with me, sugar,” he commanded, his voice quiet.

  Letting my breath go in a rush, I closed my eyes, a thousand feelings speeding through me. And every one of them was tied to Chase Sutton. I’d never done anything spontaneous in my life. Didn’t skinny dip, didn’t backpack across Europe, didn’t close my eyes and pick a nail color. Waiting for the awful fullness in my chest to ease, I swallowed and said, “Okay.”

  He dropped his gaze, then, after a brief pause, he looked back at me. The corner of his mouth lifted in a faint smile, but his voice was uneven when he spoke. “Lock your car and get in the plane. The door is open. I’ll be right there.”

  “Don’t forget a shirt.” A hint of amusement glinted in his eyes, and his expression relaxed a little.

  “And sunburn ointment?”