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“No.”
“Yeah, that’ll be good.”
Asher and he spoke at the same time.
He set his jaw and turned to give his brother a stare. “She’s not leaving.”
“She said she was.”
“No.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Asher said, irritation heavy in his words.
He knew he was being ridiculous. Alaska should go, she even said she would. But he couldn’t... He couldn’t even explain why he didn’t want her to go. There was just something about her.
“It’s okay, Ezra. I appreciate you taking a chance on me. But Asher is right. If I stay, they might still come back, thinking they can take me. Or convince me to go.”
“No. I gave my word to Ford. You’ll stay.”
“It’s not safe for you. For the rest of the people here.”
“We’ll talk about this later,” he finally said as a siren got louder and then shut off, and there was a pounding on the door before the police walked in, guns drawn.
“This is a new low,” Asher muttered, throwing a dark look at Ezra before putting his hands in the air, facing the cops.
Chapter 4
Alaska couldn’t believe she had brought this kind of danger down on a good family. She also couldn’t believe how big the family was. And every single one of them was in danger because of her.
“All right. That’s it for now.” The officer clicked on his iPad and then looked up at her. “Thanks for answering our questions.”
“Sure,” she said. Once upon a time, she would have run from the police, but she hadn’t done anything wrong, and she wanted Rex out of her life. The officers had said they would put a restraining order against him, but she knew if he was on drugs, it wouldn’t make a difference. When a person was on the kind of drugs that he used, he wasn’t afraid of anything. Not a restraining order, not anything any sane person would be terrified about.
She had no idea what she was going to do or where she was going to go. She couldn’t go back to Travis, although he and Ellen had been kind to her. Maybe she could drop her babies back off. Her heart clenched as she thought of little Alice, barely two months old, and of Eugene, who was two. But she could be separated from them, and at least they would be safe.
She would also have less worries, because she wouldn’t have to try to figure out how she was going to work around them. It had been perfect here at the ranch. She could work while they were sleeping, and some of the things she needed to do she could do while they were awake.
She had thought this was her dream job. But Rex had made sure to ruin it. Although, she thought maybe Ezra was the only one whowas completely on board with her being there. One of the other brothers, Asher, had seemed to not want her at all. Not that he had been unkind, because he hadn’t. He just seemed to know the danger she represented, and while it pained her to admit it, he had been right.
“All right. If we need any more information, we’ll give you a call. I have your number.” The officer held out his hand, and after blinking and choking back her surprise, Alaska took it and shook. She wasn’t used to the police considering her to be one of the good guys.
She kind of liked that feeling.
She wanted out. Truly, but it was hard. Once a person had fallen to a certain point, pulling themselves up became difficult, if not impossible. Especially without help.
She bit her lips and checked her phone to see if her children were up. She couldn’t believe they had slept through all of this, but normally when they didn’t get a morning nap, they both slept for two or three hours in the afternoon. They were at the far end of that, but Alaska considered it the one good thing that had happened to her today: her children had taken good naps.
As she walked out of the kitchen where the police had been questioning her, her eyes met Ezra’s, as he stood by the mantel in the living room, leaning against it, his arms crossed over his chest.
Two of his brothers stood in front of him, and his sister Phoebe was also there.
His other brothers had come and gone, and a couple of his sisters had run over to check things out. Everyone had gone back to work, because as one of them said, “There’s no point in standing around waiting for the police to do their jobs when there’s work waiting.”
It was a new kind of idea to Alaska. Where she came from, everyone stared at the police until they left. And then they talked about it, good and bad, for days afterward.
The idea that work might interfere with what usually proved to be pretty good entertainment was novel.
“Do you have a minute?” Ezra said, pushing off from against the mantel as his siblings turned to see who he was talking to. Disapproval seemed written on their faces when they saw it was her.
