Damn! I knew better than to fall like this. It was supposed to be physical chemistry only. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with the biker prince.
“Situation doesn’t change Half-Pint. I’m at the ranch till this is done. Even if I wanted to run off now I can’t. Unless you prefer to call home to your Sweetwater friends?”
“Oh great!” I stepped back and threw up my hands. “The hero stays because his aunties and sister won’t allow him to leave!”
“Get on the bike smartass. We got miles to go still.”
***
We pulled into the ranch yard and I took a quick assess of the place. All buildings standing, no dead bodies littering the yard. Well, that’s impressive enough start.
Houston killed the engine and I took off my helmet and grabbed my things from the saddle bags and headed into the house.
Grams was in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner that had ended an hour ago. “You hungry dear?”
“We ate a couple hours ago on the road. Houston might come in for food though.”
“How was Sweetwater?”
“Good. A different … different world if you will. But it was nice nonetheless. Houston’s family was wonderful towards me.”
“I’m glad. And how are things with you two?” Grams asked, and I steeled myself for the lie.
“There is nothing with us. We’re just two grown adults that are friends. Can’t people of the opposite gender ever be just friends?” Of course, we proved that wasn’t the case, but Grams doesn’t need to know that.
“Just wondering if you survived without ripping each other’s throats out is all,” she put the pots in the sink.
I sighed. “Barely. I’m going to take my things upstairs. Where is everyone?”
“Your mother is working an evening shift at the hospital, Brad took off before dinner and Gramps is on the back porch.”
“How are things?”
“Brad says no more cattle came up missing. Might want to ask your regulators about that though.”
I tossed my bag in my bedroom and headed back to the enclosed porch where Grandpa sat with his evening coffee, a pamphlet sitting on his lap. He picked it up wordlessly when I walked in and handed it to me.
“What’s this Gramps?” I asked doing a quick read of the front of the pamphlet. “Capital Creation Investments?”
“Offered to buy up the land to the East a while back. Offered a fair enough price I ‘suppose. We didn’t need the money. Had no reason to sell except turn a big profit. I turned them down. Brad called them while you were gone. They came out, offered to buy again, their offer was a little lower this time but the money’s still good. They would leave us with a little under five hundred acers. A pretty damn big place for some.”
“This isn’t happening Gramps! Two-thirds of the ranch just gone! And to some developers? Grandpa tell me this isn’t happening!”
“The money would do you good child. Maybe Tate had the right idea. Still a plenty big enough spread for you and Brad to bicker over when it’s all said and done. Leave the three of you some seed money to do your own thing and your Grams wouldn’t have to worry once I’m gone. Your mother wouldn’t have to worry,” Gramps stared off into the night.
“The ranch is family Gramps! It’s named Homeland for a reason! It’s our home. For a hundred and fifty years!”
“Maybe Amelia Susanne. Maybe.”
I took the damn brochure and ran out the back porch, screen door slamming behind me as I ran across the piece of ranch yard that separated the main house and the foreman’s house. I felt zeroed in, storm clouds surrounding me, a fight rumbling deep inside my chest.
“Brad! Brad you goddamn bastard get the fuck out here now!”
“Amelia!” I heard the shouting, yet it seemed a thousand miles away. Drowned out by my own anger.
“Half-Pint!” Houston’s nickname came through the fog, but it didn’t stop me.
I cleared the few steps between the dirt sidewalk and the front door of the foreman house and banged on it with my fist. “Dammit Brad! Get your ass out here!”
My cousin opened the door, looking like he had been heading out to town. “I left town for less than three days and you call in some investment group about buying the ranch! You piece of shit! You would sell out our home? Try to force Gramps to sell out the thing that matters most to him for you to get a fucking payday!”
I never punched people, but I was going for a record, two in two days. I connected with his jaw, but he was a might stronger than Tasha had been. Brad had no problem fighting me back. He slammed me against the hard wood-plank siding of the old house and I swiftly drove a knee into his stomach.
Brad went flying backwards, and I thought for an excited second that I had been the driving force. Then I saw the hulking beast that stood behind Brad send him flying into the Texas dirt.
Oh, the hell he did!
“This is my fight! That piece of scum! He’s doing this to us! To Gramps!” I screamed and lunged toward where Brad had fallen. Two arms grabbed and tried to restrain me, but I was pulling against them easily enough that a second set was forced to grab on tight.
Brad was backing up, scooting along in the dirt and Houston was ignoring every word that came out of my mouth.
“Dammit it Callaghan!” I shouted as Houston landed a kick in Brad’s ribs that picked him off the ground and sent him a solid foot back.
I yanked at my arms and had just enough wiggle room that I was able to jostle position on her right and bring an elbow up to connect with a chin. “Fuckin’ she-devil!”
I had connected with Speedy.
Houston had Brad by the front of his shirt, arm pulled back when they heard the thunderous crack of a shotgun.
“That will be enough of this!” Gramps stood off the front of the house with his 12-gauge pump in his hands.
Speedy and Sticky dropped me, and I looked around at the spectators. Grams at the main house standing just behind Gramps and Josẽ and Tommy who came up to stand next to him when they ran from the bunkhouse.
“Drop him!” I hissed at Houston and Houston obliged, tossing Brad into the dirt.
I watched my grandparents head back inside and Brad scuttle to the truck to make a fast get away. I stalked to the front door and swiped up the crumpled brochure that had fallen during my short tussle with Brad.
“What the hell is this about?” Houston asked as the rest of the regulators fell back.
“This. Capital Creation Investments. Seems Brad called the minute we hit the highway, apparently, they have offered Gramps to buy out at least half of the ranch. Again. Houston… what if…” I couldn’t say it. What if Brad was undermining all of this? He was a real piece of work but steal from the ranch? From Gramps?
Houston looked over the brochure and handed it to Speedy. “Look into this okay?”
“Yeah boss.”
Houston drug me into the barn. Stopping in the aisle between the horses, Houston flipped on the lights and sat me down on a hay bale, crouching so we were eye level with each other, he quickly looked me over as he ran his hands over my arms, hands and ribs.
“Did he hurt you Amelia? Are you okay? I’ll swear I’ll kill him,” Houston’s rough hands in a panic was just as rough on me as Brad had been, but it brought up a ton of different feelings.
“I’m fine Houston. I’m a big girl. I went looking for the fight,” I told him and tried to push him away and instead he ran his hands under the base of my hairline and over the back of my neck. When he withdrew there was blood on his hands, and it wasn’t Brads.
“I don’t think this is fine.” If I thought I had seen Houston angry before, I was incredibly mistaken. This was the one moment I was fearful of him and it wasn’t for my safety. But I was terrified of what he might do to Brad. If I didn’t already have my assumptions about what this man was capable of, the whispers I heard in Sweetwater, the look in his eyes now only confirmed them.
I pulled my hair to the side and felt the wound.
It was barely a scratch from where I hit the side of the house. I grabbed his shaking hands tightly. “It’s just a scratch Houston. A barely there wound. You can’t hurt him over this Houston. Promise me? It will only make things worse. Don’t do things you will regret, not for me.”
Houston still shook, and he didn’t meet my eyes. I took his face in my hands and kissed his lips. Anything to break the terrifying trance he was in. I ran the tip of my tongue over his lower lip.
He moved his hands over mine. “I can’t. I can’t kiss you anymore Amelia.”
“Houston, please.”
“This makes it even harder. I can’t. I can’t do this right now. You are too damn distracting. I should be focused. I need you to be good my Amelia,” his voice was soft as I bit back the tears.
“I’ll be good. I promise,” a single tear fell from my cheek and Houston pushed my hands away from him and kissed the inside of my wrists before depositing them in her lap and standing to go.
“I’ll be in the bunkhouse or in the shed. I’ll see what I can find out about the lead.”
“I’ll bring the coffee?” I offered with a small smile.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Houston
“You going to tell her you already had suspicions?” Speedy asked as he sat up Dez’s track.
“No. She’s figuring it out on her own but as far as Amelia knows we’re just now getting it figured out too. It’s easier than fighting with her.”
“Basically, you don’t want to get caught lying to her?”
“Basically.”
“Yo leather! Need your help here. Get connected and put Brad’s number in. That signal booster you have should be able to get us in as long as you’re in a half-mile radius,” Dez came through the burners speaker.
“He lives about a couple hundred feet from here, but he’s gone now, should be home soon. He doesn’t stay gone all night,” Speedy told her.
“Good enough. I would prefer an actual bug on the phone. Any chance of that happening?”
“Not a chance,” I replied gruffly. “You sure you can do this?”
“Better shot than you got. If you’re going to be so damn helpful Callaghan,” Dez spat out sarcastically, “take a walk.”
Fine. I thought and headed for the back porch. Tommy met me outside with a couple beers.
“Hell, of a scuffle already boy. If this Brad is behind all this… could get worse for it gets better. Specially for the Lorbosh and Charlon families. Family gets messy boy,” Tommy said as he stretched out in the back-patio furniture.
“I’ll stop the cattle from being stolen and then I’m out of here. It’s not my mess to contend with.”
“Tate called in a while ago. He’s getting off the rig, day or two maybe before he can get in and ride down.”
“Yup. He should have been in two weeks ago,” I was pissed off thinking about my ignorant VP. How Tate was leaving his sister up in the house all alone, pissed and scared about losing Homeland.
“There’s the pretty little bit now,” Tommy nodded towards the sidewalk and I looked up and saw Amelia walk up with a cup of coffee in her hands.
“Thought you could help me work on that bike of Tate’s?” she smiled at me softly and handed me the coffee as I walked down to her.
“Sure thing.”
“Do you want to request a chaperone?” she nodded her head towards Tommy.
“I think we can handle things on our own.”
“Sure, about that?”
I looked her over. “I’ll never be sure, but I like to flirt with danger.”
***
Amelia insisted she was going to the herd via horseback the following morning, she saddled up Summertime and told me if I was coming with her I better tack up Half-Jack.
I was more than a little cranky after spending the night working on Tate’s bike and watching Amelia. She handed me tools and we chatted. About movies and music and she begged me to sing for her and I refused with what she called, and I quote, my “fake pissy voice”.
Amelia kept her promise to be good. She was careful not to touch me and somehow that made things worse. I wanted to kiss her, taste her, feel her skin under my fingertips. The withdrawals I was going through from her touch were hell when temptation sat just inches away. After I finally walked her back to the house, I hadn’t gotten much restful sleep.
Breakfast had been rough, staring across the kitchen table at Brad. At least the whole household figured it was over the scuff the night before and not because he was behind the rustling. That was something only my men and I had started to learn the depth of.
Brad was in over his head financially. The records Dez had been putting together on him was getting ridiculous. Brad’s new Ford cost more than three years’ salary of what he was pulling in as Homelands foreman, and he was showing high end expenses. Jewelry purchases, diamonds, weekends in fancy hotels in the city starting several months before my arrival at the ranch.
Fancy hotels where a woman named Felicity O’Dell had been staying every time he was there. Felicity O’Dell wasn’t someone that Dez could track back farther than three years. She was in suspicions of being a con woman and Dez said she was damn good at what she did. The fact she couldn’t figure out where Felicity came from was pissing Dez off and the hacker was pulling overtime on it and she was taking it personally.
This morning, Sticky and Josẽ came in from their rounds and asked what the game plan was. We still had no lead on the actual rustlers themselves, just the strong suspicion that Brad was behind it and proof that he was up to something. A year ago, I would have tied Brad to a chair and beat the truth out of him.
“We build the case and we take it to the officials,” I said at last the night before as they finished spilling over the papers and online documents.
“To the what?” Speedy asked shocked. “That’s not how we handle things!”
“It’s how we will handle things this time. We wait until Tate gets home to make final decisions.”
Amelia stopped in front of me, making him break from my thoughts, she took a drink of the canteen and tossed it to me. “This is it.”
“This is what?” I asked as Half-Jack pranced beneath me.
“This is where it will end. The Homeland. If Gramps is forced, or chooses to sell, this is where the Homeland line will be.”
“You stayed up all night looking at those plat books, didn’t you?”
“Not all night, but a little while yes. I know it’s not the end of the world but … it would be the end of mine.”
“I won’t let that happen Darlin’,” I promised her as I saw a disturbance in the ground. I dismounted and walked over and looked at the ground.
“What are you looking at?” she asked swinging down behind me.
“Tracks.”
“Tracks? What kind of tracks?”
“Kind of tracks that don’t belong to anything we are driving. Sports quads, anyone out here with one of these?”
“Not with permission,” she stared at the faint tracks. “How old?”
“Night before last maybe. I’m not sure, Sticky might be able to tell you more. I’ll call him out.”
“This is inland from our boarders. More than a half a mile from the closest property fence lines! I need to know, if Brad is behind this, I need to know.”
“I will find out. We’re working on it. I got good people on it,” I told her.
“Yeah,” she mounted up and rode off continuing her trek and chores.
I pulled my cell phone out and called Speedy with the update and the request that he get his brother’s ass down here. “Anything new come in?”
“You have been gone for four hours,” Speedy told him. “This isn’t the fuckin’ movies Callaghan.”
“Speedy,” I warned.
“No credit cards, but Brad made a call out this morning, a woman. A burner phone, best Dez could do was trace it to Laredo. Brads meeting whoever she is tonight at eleven. No location but we can track his phon
e and follow him out. Two of us will go and keep an eye on it,” Speedy reported. “And one of those people won’t be you.”
“You don’t think I’m thinking with my head on this?”
“No but I’m not a hundred percent sure you are thinking with your dick either. The Houston Callaghan I know has too short a temper and no patience when it comes to shit like this. Can’t have you blowing up, I’ll call the mother ship if I have too. Cattle and a ranch ain’t worth the bloodshed, Bastards are stepping back remember?”
“Yeah, I know. I was at the president meeting, I voted in favor of the true and narrow.”
I hung up the phone and mounted up on Half-Jack. I didn’t see Amelia in the distance, but I knew the direction she headed so I took off
I caught up with her mending a cut fence a quarter mile down. I wordlessly helped stretch the barbwire back into place, then we finished riding the line together. Amelia didn’t need to talk so I let the silence hang between us.
The skies were growing dark when I finally convinced her to head back to the ranch. We brushed the horses off and slipped them into their stalls.
“You know all I’m good at is feeding cows and riding fence lines. It’s all I’ve ever done. Gramps sells what he needs to keep afloat, the herd size we can run on what’s left. . . it won’t necessarily need me. Brad turns up innocent in all of this, he’s ranch foreman, it would need him and maybe a part-time hired hand. I’ll have to find something else to be good at. What am I going to do?”
“You could do anything you want to. Travel for a while if you want to.”
“What, jump in the truck and disappear? Drive around and crash where I fall? I can’t do that on a permanent basis like you. I need somewhere to call home at the end of the day. Besides travelling, it only sounds like something I could enjoy if … well,” she brushed her hand over Summertime’s nose.
I walked up and wrapped my arms around her tightly. “If this all goes to hell. If Homeland can’t stay being your home, then run away with me. I’ll take you all over Texas, across the country if you want. We’ll ride through the Rockies, go where it’s so cold. Not during the dead of winter though, I’ll have to be able to have my bike.”
Houston Callaghan: The Devil's Bastards MC Page 18
