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Hey, if it makes my job easier...
After checking out the freezer, with their help, we sit down at the table and eat cereal with Grady. The girls are full of suggestions for the day ahead—which all include Bruce.
Grady lays down the law and tells them they can make two visits per day, and only with both of us present, if they’ll stop pestering him right now.
“Okay, okay!” they grudgingly agree.
Later, Faulk drops by to see the footage from last night. He disappears downstairs with Grady while I try not to think about it.
He says it’ll be a while before he hears back from his people on how or what we’re going to do.
Not cool.
It’s disappointing, sure, but I get that we can’t just rush in guns blazing. I’d already made a snap decision the night I took off with Bruce, and if it wasn’t for Grady, who knows what would’ve happened to us.
That afternoon, I can sense him getting restless, like he’s spent just too much time cooped up at home and out of his element.
“Go on to the bar,” I tell him, sliding my fingers lightly over his hairy, inked forearm before I even realize it. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on them. Absolutely no Bruce time without you. Pinky swear?”
He snorts as I hold up my little finger and then grasps it with his.
By the time we’re done giving it a good shake, we’re both laughing.
I’m sure he sees I’m redder than a radioactive cranberry when I snatch my hand back, too.
He leaves us with the house to ourselves and an easy dinner hours later.
The girls decide they want a lasagna their great aunt left behind, so yay for Grady not worrying about me poisoning his girls while he’s gone.
This little routine, easy and strangely natural, sets the pattern for the next week or so.
The girls and I find plenty of projects to stay busy—and marvelously Bruce-free—while Grady spends afternoons and early evenings at the bar.
He’s always home in time to put them to bed, and he keeps me updated on the latest news from Faulk.
It’s a quiet, peaceful break in the storm.
And I’d be a fool to trust it one freaking bit.
Every day that passes leaves me wound up, wondering and waiting for the next shoe to drop like a karate kick to my head.
10
Tiger Lilies (Grady)
The rest of the guys are already at Weston’s garage when I pull in.
Willow stayed home with the girls and thinks I’m just checking on her truck. No denying she’s the best make-believe nanny a man could hope for.
Truthfully, I’m after an update on her ride, but I’m also ready for a strategy jam with every major badass who calls this town home.
Faulk with his emerald-green eyes flashing and focused. He’s only slightly smaller than me and bowed up like an angry porcupine in a flannel shirt, leaning against one of Weston’s half-constructed cars for the next demo derby. My friend is busy shooting the shit with another man I recognize like the back of my hand.
Ridge Barnet isn’t far behind him, a tough-as-nails heart behind his movie-star perfect face and otherworldly blue eyes. I think the nod we always greet each other with means something more now that he’s a daddy, one more thing we have in common.
Drake Larkin straggles in with me, parking his police cruiser off to the side. He’s a country boy to the bone with his dirty blond hair and rogue blue eyes, and probably a shoe-in to be sheriff whenever old Rodney Wallace decides to hang it up. Nobody better I’d rather have at this church session.
Then there’s my nephew. Weston McKnight looks a lot like I did when I was over ten years younger, except with lighter hair and a set of dark-blue eyes set in his head like storm clouds. He’s damn near dripping grease and oil from black streaks across his arms.
Sometimes I wonder about him, coming back from overseas just a few years ago. He enlisted young and saw some shit, barely made it home in one piece.
And even if he still greets me every time with that shit-eating family grin, I think there’s a few shadows behind his face.
A boy like him should be dating, hitting the range or hiking the trails, not playing workaholic. But all he really does is hang out in his garage like a loner when he’s not picking up part-time shifts at my bar, taking every local repair job and broken-down outsider he can tow to his place.
Sure, he’s building himself a good living, but what the hell happened to a young dude having fun?
No time for that today, though.
Not with a mess of trouble caused by fuckwits who like to make their coin off butchering beautiful, rare animals.
I’m just hoping Faulkner—who always winds up being the mastermind in these situations—lays down a plan we can get moving on ASAP.
