Page 111 of Love’s Silver Bullet

“Precisely,” he said, all tooth-grinding edging up considerably as he avoided her gaze while he dropped in his chair. He snatched up his pen in a clear dismissal, scrawling his signature on letters his secretary at City Hall had obviously prepared. “Come back with a degree in your hand, Sheridan, and maybe I’ll consider discussing it.”

“No!” She thumped a fist on his desk, determined she would not go back to school without a commitment from Jake.

Her uncle looked up from his papers, the whites of his eyes circled in shock. “Blue smoke of Hades, I knew sending you to that suffragette school would ruin you. You sound just like my wife.”

“Thank you,” Sheridan said, curbing the squirm of a smile lest she annoy her uncle further per Aunt Libby’s advice.

“It wasn’t a compliment!” He snapped.

“I heard that, Finn McShane!” The door flew open with a loud crack to the wall as Aunt Libby marched in along with Maggie and Shaylee, with Blaze and Dash hot on their heels.

Striding right up to the front of his desk, she hooked one hand to Sheridan’s waist while she leaned in and pointed the other right in her husband’s face. “And you are in big trouble, mister.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

“What in blue blazes is going on?” Finn shouted, springing up from his chair like he’d just been bucked by a bronc.

And a filly at that.

“We are having a family meeting, Finn McShane,” Aunt Libby said with a thrust of her chin, the action as common as air, “because this is a family, sweetheart, not a dictatorship. So, where do you want to have this meeting—here in your office or in the parlour?”

“Dad-burn-it, Libby, I don’t want to have it at all—”

Ignoring his gruff tone, she glanced over her shoulder at Blaze and Dash. “Boys, will you be kind enough to bring in a few chairs from the dining room so we can all sit in comfort?”

“Blaze, Dash—halt!” Finn yelled. “Forget the blasted chairs. They’re not necessary”—he leaned in with palms splayed like before, cauterizing Aunt Libby with a threatening glare—“because we are not having a meeting!”

All the females in the room turned to burn Blaze and Dash with a look that quickly sent them on chair retrieval.

“Libby, please …” Finn’s voice had lost some of its edge, his fatigue suddenly far more pronounced than earlier. His hazel eyes bore dark circles beneath that Sheridan hadn’t noticed before as he pleaded with his wife. “You and I can talk with Sheridan, sweetheart, but this is not a family affair.”

Smile tender, Aunt Libby rounded his desk to give him a tight hug, pulling away to blink up with a sheen of moisture in her eyes. “Actually it is, Finn,” she said quietly, “because Jake is family and he needs us now more than ever before.”

“What do you mean?” he said as Dash and Blaze each brought in two chairs, lining them up in a semi-circle in front of Finn’s desk.

Sheridan perched on the edge of her chair as she beseeched her uncle with a pained look. “Aunt Libby means that Jake is suffering inside—horribly—Uncle Finn, over a past that has tormented him his whole life, which is one of the reasons he gave me for not marrying me despite being in love with me.”

“What kind of past?” Blaze asked, a criss-cross of worry lining his brow over a best friend who was more like a brother.

“Too horrible for you to even imagine, Blaze.” Tears pooled in Sheridan’s eyes as she stared at her brother. “Which is why he’s never told anyone. And he only told me as one of many reasons to convince me we could never be.” She swiped at the moisture on her face. “He asked me not to relay any details, so I won’t, but suffice it to say it was painful enough that he sobbed in my arms for a good long time.”

Blaze’s Adam’s apple jerked hard as he gave a curt nod.

“What other reasons?” Uncle Finn asked, his voice thick with emotion, drawing Sheridan’s gaze to his own. Tears instantly stung in her eyes at the hard cut of his jaw, a sure sign he was fighting his feelings for a man who may as well be a son.

Love lodged in her throat as she glanced at her uncle, tenderness welling inside because she knew how much he cared. “He’s got a whole saddlebag of them, Uncle Finn. Everything from being too old for me … to seeing me as just a little sister—”

“Ha!” Aunt Libby rolled her eyes. “Which is a bald-faced lie, and everyone in this room knows it, especially you two,” she said, pinning both Blaze and Dash with an incriminating look, “since it was both of you who bullied Jake into leading Sheridan on in the first place.”

“Wait—everyone know what?” Shaylee glanced from Aunt Libby to her brothers and back with a pinch of brows, obviously hurt that she’d been left out of family secrets.

Maggie leaned close to Shaylee’s ear. “That Jake’s in love with your sister.”

“Holy frog spit!” Shaylee shouted, her eyes practically bugging out of her head. “How do you know?”

“Because he kissed her!” Everyone in the room shouted in unison, except for Shaylee and Finn.

“Ewwww …” Shaylee slapped a hand to her eyes. “I’m too young for this.”