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“I’ll walk her out,” Caroline said. Her men weren’t too happy about that. Ever since the day she was abducted and C.J. was shot, they were super overprotective of her. Shelby wouldn’t want it any other way.
“I’ll go with them,” York said. “Come on, ladies,” he added and guided them from Spencer’s as Shelby said good night to other people and headed outside.
* * * *
“What are we going to do?” Kenneth asked Bender as they watched Shelby leave. York was walking her out. That should be them right now, not any other man and not her sister’s men either.
“I don’t fucking know. I swear, she’s hiding something scary. I can tell,” Bender replied.
“Do you think the sheriff knows? I mean, the rules are strict, and she did help her sister keep a secret about Cameron and that she was running and hiding.”
“If that’s the case then Max needs to confront Shelby. It could be a means to getting her to accept us as her guardians. We would be the ones he picks,” Kenneth stated.
“I don’t like that look in her eyes, when she’s lost in thought and it’s obviously something bad. She gets tense. Looks like she might cry or pass out of something,” Bender added.
“What’s going on? What the fuck happened outside?” Sam asked as he approached.
Kenneth explained and now Sam was upset as he ran his fingers through his crew cut and then looked toward Caroline and York as they came back inside and joined the others.
“So what do you think we should do?” Sam asked.
“Well, we have two choices. We go talk to Max, or we do a little investigating ourselves,” Kenneth said to them.
“If she finds out then she’ll get pissed off,” Sam pointed out.
“She’ll get over it. Here comes Max.” Bender nodded toward the sheriff as he approached. He greeted them and then looked over his shoulder before he spoke.
“So, what the hell is going on?” Max asked them.
“You tell us, Max,” Kenneth replied. He wasn’t going to be so nice if Max knew what danger Shelby was in and didn’t share it with them. He knew that they cared for her and wanted to make her their woman.
Max raised one of his eyebrows at Kenneth. “Excuse me?”
“What he means to ask is whether or not Shelby has confided in you about her past and the possibility of any trouble she could be in?” Bender asked.
Max took a sip from his bottle of Bud and then looked around them. “She hasn’t told me anything, but the fact that she uses her mother’s mai
den name for all her documents and her paychecks from you, Kenneth.”
“Her mother’s maiden name?” Kenneth asked, learning this for the first time. Granted, he had an office assistant that handled payroll and such, but she never mentioned anything about Shelby’s name being different.
“So it’s Walters not Cummings? We all assumed that maybe they had different fathers because of how Caroline described their mother to Hunter and the guys. Shit, I didn’t even know that,” Kenneth said to him.
“This is what I know. Shelby was involved with a bad relationship with some guy. Things ended and she left him. There were no other details, no indication that he was after her or wanted her back. But obviously he scared her enough that she changed her name as precaution. It’s actually hyphenated. I didn’t push for more information at the time because she was going through enough with Caroline being abducted and then killing Cameron and of course C.J. being shot. I told her that we would get together and discuss things after everything settled down. I suppose now is as good as a time as any.”
“We think so, too. We’ve tried getting her to talk to us, but she isn’t cooperative,” Bender told Max.
“Have you considered that maybe she doesn’t the feel the same way about you guys that you feel about her?”
“No fucking way. We’ve kissed her and she’s kissed us back,” Kenneth told him.
“Well, not me,” Sam added.
“She gets all scared. She’s come straight out and said she doesn’t want us but it’s a lie.”
Max squinted his eyes and then exhaled.
“Something is definitely holding her back. Let me see what I can find out. But if she says that she’s not in any danger, there’s not much I can do.”
