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When her pout didn’t disappear, I leaned forward again, my hand pulling her arms down from their position of defense. “I love you, Kit. We all do. I’m just asking that you trust we know what is best for you—for us as a family. We Barretts need to stick together more now than ever. We can’t let anyone in and risk getting hurt. Understand?”
“You guys don’t trust anyone. You are always hovering as if I’m going to get kidnapped or something.”
Our father had always shielded Kit from the family business while she was growing up. He expected his sons involved in all aspects, but my father came from an old-school background where you cherish your women and protect them from danger. My mother knew what earned the food on the table, and I’m pretty sure Kit did as well. But after the accident, it was as if Kit was blind to what Rye, Jay, and I still did for money… and for revenge.
I couldn’t exactly argue with that statement. We did protect her, and we took every precaution we could. My brothers and I knew Cook Blackstone was ruthless and would do anything it took to get at us.
Letting out a loud sigh, I picked up a marker and began to color on Kit’s poster. As I filled in a leaf on a tree, I pictured the new life my brothers and I had been working on coming closer to fruition, and it gave me my next words.
“I promise you things are going to be great for all of us. When we move, you’ll be safer and we won’t have tohoveras much. But until we leave, you really need to stay inside.”
She began to color again, but I still heard her sigh. “But what am I supposed to do until then? You expect me just to sit here all day and color?”
“No, of course not. You do an amazing job keeping our home.” Realizing that sounded as if we only considered her as some sort of maid, I shook my head. “Jay bought you a lot of books, right? Ones to help with our life change? Aren’t you busy studying some of the skills we’ll need in our new home?”
“Yes, and I’ve read about canning and stuff, but that isn’t enough. I also knit and sew, but those things I do by myself. It’s more fun to learn new things with someone else, and Goldie knows so much. But now you all are trying to keep me away from making a friend.”
We weren’t doing that… well, okay, maybe we were, but we had our reasons. A woman like Goldie was not a good influence on our innocent sister.
“Once we’ve settled into the cabin on Barrett’s Mountain again, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to make lots of new friends in the small town at the base,” Rye offered in the calm and soft voice he only used with Kit.
“Friends you approve of, you mean,” she said, surprising me a bit with her words. Kit wasn’t one to argue… ever.
“It’s important to all of us that you are happy. And, well, we will be moving away. I don’t want you becoming attached to someone who is not really a friend,” Jay chimed in.
When her lips tightened, I forged ahead. “You love to watch things grow, right? You’ve always wanted a garden?”
At her nod, I smiled.
“Well, I promise you’ll have a huge one when we move. Kit, it really is going to be wonderful, and we are tying up loose ends now to make it all happen. But we’ll be leaving soon and heading back to the mountain where we all belong.”
“Sooner than we first planned,” Jay added.
Her gaze met mine, and she finally gave me a small smile then smiled at the rest of our brothers. “I know, but I also know you’re wrong about Goldie. She’s a good person. She’s kind and doesn’t treat me like some… some child. She has a lovely garden and knows so much about plants. Goldie says they offer healing powers for common ailments. Did you know she makes tea from flowers she grows herself?”
I didn’t particularly give a shit where the damn tea came from. The only thing I cared about was learning my sister evidently had had more interaction with the woman than I’d believed. We were so close to leaving this hell behind us, and I didn’t want anything or anyone to put Kit’s life at risk. She couldn’t be out in public right now. It wasn’t safe. Cook would be hunting down Barrett blood even more now that we’d sent him a message using fire as our voice.
Plus, Goldie was not the type of woman to be trusted. I’d seen her eyes flash, her cheeks flush as she defended her little store. Hell, I’d not seen a single sign of submission in that gorgeous body of hers, but rather the spirit of a fighter.
Fighters could never be trusted.
It would be easy enough to silence her. Those plump lips would serve her far better wrapped around my cock as I drove it into her throat. That corset had done little to disguise her generous breasts, and I could easily picture the mixture of pain and pleasure crossing her face as her nipples were pulled, twisted, sucked, and bitten. She had the perfect hips to hold onto while plunging my cock to the hilt inside her cunt or her tight little ass. On her knees before us or spread beneath us—rather than fighting us— was exactly where the witch needed to be. Biting back a groan at the vision, I forced myself back to reality.
I didn’t have the luxury of thinking such things. My brothers and I had a move to arrange undetected by our enemies, a new way of life to begin, and a sweet, innocent sister to protect.
Kit didn’t need to know why we made the request to stay away and remain indoors; she just needed to obey. Putting the marker down, I tried not to overanalyze why I’d chosen a green one—one whose color reminded me of a pair of emerald eyes. Standing, I laid my hand on Kit’s shoulder. It was my honor to love her, but it was also my job to protect her.
“I don’t want to see you taken advantage of. Stay away from the store, and stay away from that woman. I mean it, Kit.”
4
Goldie
As the tiny bell chimed above the door, I looked up to see who’d walked in.
“Kit, you’ve come back.” The young woman timidly crossed the threshold and approached the counter where I’d been doing some paperwork.
“I needed to speak with you,” Kit said.
