Cooper’s eyes flitted from one side of the room to the other. He didn’t move off the cot he’d been sitting on as he answered.
“Yeah, I was.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Because I’m trying to learn Spanish,” Cooper deadpanned. Declan almost laughed. He’d sure walked into that one.
“No. I mean, why are you trying to learn Spanish? Is it something you’ve been wanting to do for a while now or something you tried on a whim?” Cooper straightened. He crossed his arms over his chest, defensive. Declan sighed. “Cooper, I left a beautiful woman at my house and in my bed to go to the lot before hours to check your car and now I’m here. The case against you is already as damning as damning can be. Lydia Cartwright swears up and down that you are the man who attacked her. Answering me now, about a CD in your car, isn’t going to do any more harm. Not answering will only make me grouchier than I already am.”
Cooper seemed to weigh his options.
“A beautiful woman,” he said. Declan thought he was repeating him and then realized it was an answer.
“A beautiful woman is why you’re trying to learn Spanish?”
Cooper nodded.
“Her name is Inez. She works at Waypoint as one of the bartenders.” He sighed deeply. It deflated him. “It was love at first sight for me. Dark hair, dark eyes, and this laugh thing she does when she’s brushing drunk guys off. Most beautiful woman I ever saw.”
“Have you asked her out?” Declan prodded when the man trailed off.
“Yeah,” Cooper exclaimed with sudden vigor. “I sure did! And do you know what she said? ‘Ask me in Spanish and then we’ll talk.’ Can you believe that?” Even though his voice was raised in frustration, it was clear he wasn’t angry at the bartender. In fact, when he spoke again it was akin to being impressed. “Nothing worth having is ever easy, though, is it? I ordered the CD since I like driving around a lot. Was hoping to go back this coming weekend and show off but...” Cooper’s face fell. Any and all feeling he’d had went with it. He didn’t bother finishing his thought.
Sympathy started to sprout in Declan’s chest. A seed that had always been there, watered by Cooper’s story.
One that was growing now.
“Cooper Mann, come over here and look me in the eye,” he barked, a little more forcefully than he meant.
But it did the trick.
Cooper hopped up and came to the bars. Through them he met Declan’s stare.
“Why would you try to kidnap Lydia Cartwright if you were so worried about learning Spanish to ask out the most beautiful woman in the world this weekend?”
Cooper might have been nervous and he might have been scared, but he answered with a steady voice.
“I wouldn’t.”
And, by God, if Declan didn’t believe him.
* * *
THERE WAS A package of Pop-Tarts on the kitchen counter with a sticky note stuck to it. Declan said he was sorry for leaving, but he’d gotten her car to his house and he’d call her later.
Remi was both let down and touched.
She changed back into her clothes, pocketed the pastries and decided it was time to go to Heartland.
While Jonah had promised to keep the pregnancy under wraps until she told Josh and their father, she remembered how bad Jonah had been at keeping secrets when they were younger. He had too much honor when it came to their father. He snitched quicker than Josh could gallop between the stables and Heartland’s outer fence.
Which was pretty damn quick.
Remi still hadn’t completely forgiven him for blabbing about the belly button piercing she’d gotten with her friend Molly in high school.
That fallout had lasted a good while.
At least now she couldn’t be grounded.
There were clouds in the sky and the air was cold. Remi pulled up beside Josh’s truck and could see her father’s and Jonah’s off to the side of the house. She decided dawdling wasn’t going to make anything easier.
She took a deep breath, pushed out into the cold, and didn’t make it two steps into the house before Jonah appeared.
“I told him you stayed at Molly’s,” he hurried in greeting. “I didn’t know how you wanted to handle everything with the, you know, so I kind of panicked.”
Despite her earlier annoyance, Remi laughed.
“Afraid he’ll find out I was bunking with Declan?” she asked, lowering her voice. “Do you think he’d be worried I’d, I don’t know, gotten pregnant?”
She gave him a look that showed she was teasing.
Jonah rolled his eyes but smiled.
“Listen, I’m just trying to keep the peace before you break it. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Remi started up the stairs.
“I blame whoever I want for whatever I want,” she said, grinning. “Don’t you forget that, Jonah Bruce.”
Remi bounded up the stairs to the sound of Jonah being annoyed and locked herself in her room. One thing that had been a surprise for her about pregnancy so far was how energetic she was during some parts of the day. Like now she felt as if she’d already had an entire cup of coffee on top of eight hours of sound sleep. She knew these moments didn’t always stick. Exhaustion and fatigue were always waiting around the corner, ready to strike. That had been her mother’s only major symptom when she’d been pregnant. Remi hoped it would be the same for her going forward.
Then again, she wasn’t holding her breath for that.
Remi took her prenatal vitamins, ate the Pop-Tarts on her bed and then went to take a nice, long shower. Her mind wandered to days when she was younger and her biggest concern was trying to keep her grades up and then right over to seeing the man in the suit shoot Sam.
She left the shower in a less good mood than when she’d gotten in.
Jonah and Josh were in the living room. One was reading, the other on his laptop.
“It’s a rare sight to see you two inside,” she noted. Jonah snorted. Josh was more direct. He always was, despite being the youngest. He had more of their mother in him than the rest of them.
“Until we get the ranch back to how it was, there will be a lot more downtime than what you remembered from when you last called this place home,” he said, close to sneering. It made Remi’s adrenaline spike in a flash of anger.
“This is my home as much as it is yours. Just because I left doesn’t mean I didn’t grow up here, same as you.”
Josh pushed his laptop onto the couch cushion next to him.
“And just because you’re visiting for the holidays doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten how happy you were to leave in the first place. And how often you don’t visit when it’s not the holidays.”
Guilt stabbed Remi quickly in the chest. Her anger overcompensated. She dropped her voice low, seething.
“And how often will you visit after you’ve skipped town with your one true love?”
Josh looked like a deer in the headlights. When he recovered, his expression matched her mood. He turned it on Jonah.
“You told her?”
Jonah abandoned his book.
“That her is our sister,” Jonah defended. “Wouldn’t you rather me tell her than Dad?”
Josh didn’t have to chew on that question long. But that didn’t mean he was ready to roll over. He whipped his head around to her so fast Remi was surprised it didn’t pop right off.
“If you tell Dad so help me—”
“So help you what?” Remi interrupted. “Are you threatening me, baby brother? What you and the other two Hudson men keep seeming to forget is that before ‘my betrayal of house and home’ I got to see you grow up, too.” She laughed. It was unkind. “I saw you try to fight Marlin Crosby. Operative word, try.”
Josh’s face changed to the color of her cherry bomb lipstick.
“Mar
lin Crosby cheated,” he said, frustration at the humiliating fight ringing clear through every word. “He rushed me when I was talking to you two!”
Remi took several steps forward, putting her into the same orbit as her brothers. Men might have been sitting a few feet from her, but all she saw were the little boys who used to annoy her to no end. Little boys playing at being adults while she had already graduated.
“He hit you from behind because you were too busy telling us, and everyone else watching, how you were going to beat him up. He didn’t win because he cheated. He won because your mouth is bigger than your brain!”
That did it. That activated her younger brother like flipping a switch. He jumped up, face as red as ever, and she reacted by squaring her shoulders, ready to wrestle like they had done when they were kids.
“Whoa there!” Jonah was faster than either one of them. He put his body between them and hands out on Josh’s chest.
Remi was ready to knock both of them silly, absolutely done with their talk of her abandoning her family because she had had the audacity to live her own life, but the sound of boots against hardwood silenced them all.
Gale Hudson filled the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. He must have come in through the back door and they hadn’t heard him because, in hindsight, Remi realized they’d been yelling awfully loud.
“I can’t ground you like I used to,” their father started, voice always booming. “But I can sure enough make life harder for the lot of you if you don’t stop your bellyaching. You hear me?”
All three Hudson children took a breath and relaxed their tensed muscles.
“Yes sir,” they sang in a chorus.
Their father nodded, satisfied.
“Good. No one should be fighting this close to Christmas, if nothing else. What is it that your mom used to say about it?”
“Fighting on Christmas will only get you the present of shame,” Jonah recalled. However, there was still some kick in Josh.
“She meant that about Christmas Day, not the rest of them.”
“Well, then, I’m making an amendment,” their father said. “No fighting during December.”
This time it was Remi who decided to try her luck.
“Can I add ‘no guilting your children for their life choices’ to the list?”
“Remi,” Jonah whispered in warning.
Their father, however, surprised them. He chuckled.
“Your mom used to say you reminded her of herself, but there’s a lot of times I hear my stubbornness come out of your mouth.” His expression softened. “Instead of you all yelling, why don’t we make an early lunch and eat together? It’s been a while.”
And just like that all the tension left the room.
“Brunch,” Remi said, following him into the kitchen.
“What?”
“It’s called brunch. A meal between breakfast and lunch.”
“Sounds like nonsense to me.”
Remi laughed and soon the four of them were moving around the kitchen, preparing whatever food was in the fridge. It was nice. Their father started to complain about a horse they were boarding whose owner wouldn’t stop calling him, while Josh pointed out that that was probably because she had a crush on him. Remi and Jonah were paired up to the side of the refrigerator and cringed at the news that someone had a crush on their dad when Josh slid a plated sandwich to her. It was and had been her favorite since she was a kid. A peace offering in the form of turkey, jalapeños, cheese and wheat bread.
Remi hesitated. Not because of the surprising offer but because she couldn’t accept it. She didn’t know a lot about pregnancy yet, but she did know she couldn’t eat sandwich meat.
Jonah bumped her shoulder, a questioning look on his face.
She pointed to her stomach and shook her head.
He pointed to his plate. Leftover chicken potpie. His favorite.
Remi nodded.
If Jonah had accepted her pregnancy this fast, what was stopping her from giving the other two Hudson men the same chance to do the same?
Because old wounds don’t heal just like that.
Remi might have gotten lucky with Jonah but that didn’t guarantee it would be as easy with the others. So, she decided to keep stalling a little while longer. At least she could wait until she had a full stomach.
Her and Johan were in the middle of switching meals when an odd sound filled the house.
The doorbell.
For a moment they all looked at one another as if to say, We’re all here so who is using the bell? Everyone who frequented the ranch knew to knock because their dad hated the bell.
Except for Declan. He had no idea.
“I’ll get it,” Remi said, hurrying past the boys before they could answer it. Remi’s phone was in her back pocket. She brought it out to check to see if she had a missed call or text from the man.
She hadn’t.
And it wasn’t him at the door, either.
Remi opened the door wide as soon as she saw the angry tears and stitches across the woman’s face.
“Lydia?”
The last time Remi had seen the woman was right before she and Declan had left the hospital. The doctors had said she was being discharged but probably not until that afternoon. Jonah had told her he’d pick her up from the hospital himself when that happened.
Now there she was on their doorstep, wearing a blouse with blood on it and jeans that had a tear. It must have been the same outfit she’d been wearing when she was attacked by Cooper Mann.
It was a jarring sight. Made even more so by the fact that the woman didn’t seem bothered by any of it.
“Hi there, Remi,” she greeted in return. “Do you think I could come inside?”
“Oh, yeah, of course.” Remi might have been thrown off her game, but she hadn’t lost her manners. She stepped aside, waving Lydia into their home.
“Jonah is in the kitchen,” she said, already moving that way. Lydia shook her head.
“I’m not here for Jonah,” she said.
“Oh?”
Lydia smiled.
It should have been a red flag.
It should have been a lot of things.
What it wasn’t was enough to make Remi use the phone in her hand to call for help.
Instead she listened, intently, for the reason.
“I’m here for you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lydia struck out before Remi could move a muscle.
The hit landed against her chest, just below the collarbone. It hurt. Remi staggered backward from the force and surprise. She didn’t have a chance to catch herself. Her backside hit the hardwood just as her periphery was filled with the bulk of her father and Jonah.
They hadn’t seen the hit.
Remi heard her father say her name just as Jonah called out to Lydia. Neither had a chance to finish their thoughts or get answers in return.
Lydia pulled out a gun and aimed it at the men.
Remi reacted on reflex.
From her angle on the floor she couldn’t do much, but she was close enough to do something. She brought her fist up and paid the woman in kind for the hit she’d been given. But Remi could only get as high as her stomach from where she was on the ground.
It did the job well enough.
A gunshot exploded inside the house, pushing pain through Remi’s ears at the sound just as fear rang through her heart, but Lydia gasped for different reasons.
She hadn’t counted on the hit to the stomach, just as Remi hadn’t counted on the hit to the chest.
Lydia stumbled but didn’t fall. She kept the gun but lost her aim.
Remi took advantage of the distraction. She pushed up off the ground and right into the woman. Lydia completely lost her footing this time. Like a rag doll,
the woman fell back and out onto the front porch.
Then Remi did the only thing her adrenaline and slightly good sense would let her do.
She slammed the door shut and threw the dead bolt.
The sound of Lydia cursing became the soundtrack behind the next important, life-altering thing in Remi’s world. She turned, heart in her throat, and hoped to every god there ever was that none of her family had been shot.
Her father was rushing over to her. Josh and Jonah watched wide-eyed from the doorway.
No one was bleeding, no one was on the ground.
It was a relief that didn’t last long.
“Get away from there,” her father grunted out, grabbing her wrist. Another explosion went off as Lydia shot through the door. It barely missed them as her father slung Remi around and pushed her to the stairs. Remi didn’t hesitate in running up them, out of line of the door.
“Stay low, boys,” he yelled over his shoulder.
Remi hit the landing as another gunshot went off. It was followed by two more. She spun on her heel, but her father pushed her farther onto the second floor.
“There’s a gun in my room,” he said. Remi would have marveled at how calm he was being if not for the directive he gave her as he pulled her along with him to the bedroom at the end of the hall. “Call for help, Remi. Do it now.”
Remi went for her phone only to have her stomach drop. Just as she had done with her phone after being hit by Lydia.
“I—I don’t have it.” She heard it then. In her voice. A waver of terror, strengthened by adrenaline and confusion.
They ran into the master bedroom and made a U-turn to the closet.
“That’s okay.” He was using his soothing voice. The one she’d once heard when she’d accidentally cut her hand with a knife and needed stitches. He’d brought her nerves down simply by the cadence of his voice.
Whether or not he agreed with her leaving town, there was a comfort in knowing that, with just the sound of his voice, her father could make her feel better.
Last Stand Sheriff Page 10
