Boyd_McCullough’s Jamboree_Erotic Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  Joseph didn’t know what to say. He was sickened by what Ross was implying and saying. He’d wanted to kill that girl. What had she ever done to him, to anyone, that would cause so much hatred from him? Nothing in this world could he think of to have warranted such behavior. Standing up, he told his son that he’d come by to see him perhaps tomorrow. But not to expect anything from him.

  “You’ll be here tomorrow? Good. And you’ll see about a decent meal, right? And real silverware. If I have to stay here for much longer, Dad, I’m going to need some special treatment. I’m not cut out for jail. And don’t try that shit that you’ve done before. I’m not going to jail for this for very long. You have to see it isn’t my fault what happened out there. It’s all on their shoulders, Reilly and the truckers. This isn’t my fault at all.” He just hung up the phone and turned his back on him.

  He could have told him that no one was cut out for jail, that was the reason for it. And it should be hard on a person. Maybe that would keep them from coming back. But with his son, he knew that he’d only say it wasn’t his fault, or again, blame it all on someone else. That poor girl. Joseph had done her wrong as well, he knew that now.

  Joseph was tempted to just pretend that he didn’t have a son. Just turn his back on him and not return. But he couldn’t, not any more than he could have done it to his wife if she had needed him. He had his driver take him home. He needed to talk to Evelyn and perhaps take a long shower. Joseph felt dirty, like he’d been bathed in something nasty. Nasty words, that is. And all from a person that he’d helped create and had turned out to be a monster.

  Evelyn was sitting in the sun room when he returned home. He knew that she’d been watching the news—there were spent tissues all around her lap, as well as tear stains on her cheeks. She had taken this very hard, harder than he had. He’d asked her not to do that, watch what people were saying about their son. But like him, she was hoping for some kind of miracle that would say that they had the wrong person. That their son hadn’t committed these horrific crimes.

  “He did this, didn’t he, Joey? He killed all those people and now he’s going to prison.” She was the only person in the world who called him that. And he loved her for it. “Our son, who we tried our best to not ruin like others of our wealth did to their children, turned into a monstrous being. Someone that has no feelings for anyone but how things will affect him.”

  “Ross told me that he was disappointed that the young woman wasn’t in the car when he hit her car into traffic. He told me that had she been killed like so many others had, then I could simply blame it all on her and no one would know the difference.” Evelyn nodded and reached for his hand. He held it tightly in his own. “He wants me to get him off. Said he’d be the best son there ever was. And he wants a decent meal with real silverware.”

  “Oh Joey, what are we going to do? He’s been so horrible his whole life, and even when we made him pay for his crimes, he never learned a lesson from any of it. He has no remorse at all for what he’s done. But this, this is well beyond anything that he’s ever done. He’s never killed anyone, do you think?” Joseph said that he didn’t know nor what they were to do. “You’re not going to pay for him an attorney, for one thing. I don’t think I could bring myself to know that we paid for this mess and he might get off because of us. Please, tell me that we won’t do this.”

  “I won’t, honey. I promise you that I won’t hire anyone or do another thing for him.” He’d not thought of the fact that he might get off, and was glad that she’d brought it up. “I’m not going to go back there after tomorrow either. He’s on his own. A grown man that has messed up badly and people were killed. I’m going to wash my hands of him. But I will—I’d like to go and tell this woman, Reilly Pratt, how very sorry I am that he’s done this to her.”

  “If you’d not mind, I’d like to go with you if I can. My heart just breaks for what he’s done to her. And we’ll help her out anyway that she needs as well. I heard from one of the doctors at the hospital that her father was in a bad accident himself before this all came about.” Joseph told her that he’d fallen through a banister. “That poor man. And Reilly. Yes, we’ll help her out with his bills and such. Not a payoff, but something to tell her how sorry we are that this happened.”

  Sitting down at his desk a bit later, he looked up what he could find on the woman and her father. She had had some rough ways in the past, he could see. But instead of letting her dad—who could have afforded to help her pay off the debt that came to her—help her, she was making all the payments to the bank on her own, monthly and on time. He also found out that his son was correct on her being the best at the research firm that he used. Her name was on each of the reports that he’d used in court.

  Even though he was retired now, Joseph did on occasion take a case or two. It kept him up on things. But most importantly, it got him out and moving about. He wasn’t going to be one of the lawyers who late in their lives realized that they’d gotten lazy and fat while retired. Not him. He was going to go to his maker fit as a fiddle, if he could. Smiling at his own joke, Joseph made a call to a good friend of his, just to find out what he knew about all this with the young woman and what he could do to help her. Reilly was paying for a house that wasn’t in her name, nor had it ever been. He wanted to know why.

  Chapter 5

  The house was absolutely perfect. And the way that the furniture seemed to call to him made him want to kick off his shoes and sit in the easy chair in the living room and enjoy a good book. And the library was magnificent.

  It had oak shelves, long lines of books of every genre, old and new. He enjoyed looking at the titles as much as he did the rest of the room. The woman that had owned this home had an eclectic taste in books and things, just as he had his whole life. There was just too much to read for a person to pick one kind of books they liked.

  “I would love to live here. Spend the rest of my days never leaving this house and being happy.” Boyd told Reilly that he agreed with her. “I don’t know what this place is going for, but if we can afford it, then I will do something to help with paying for it. I don’t even care what it is.”

  She had said if we can afford it, and Boyd felt his heart fill at her words. They toured the rest of the house, finding that the master bedroom was on the same floor as the others. There were plenty of bathrooms to accommodate the four bedrooms and large walk-in closets. Even the coverlets on the beds and the colors of the rooms were things that he might have picked out on his own.

  “I think the kitchen is perfect, don’t you?” Reilly said the house was. “Yes, well, of course it is. It’s like the woman that lived here knew we were going to come here and see it.”

  He’d never been one that was mushy about things, but there were things in the house that reminded him of his parents’ home. The comfort of it, too, was something that he enjoyed. As they made their way to the back yard, all he could do was stare at the large in-ground pool with a pool house. The boat house that was sitting out over the river that ran down the back of the land. He even loved that there were trees everywhere that were going to be spectacular in the spring and summer.

  “Okay, I don’t think I want to see anymore. Let’s go and find out the price so that we can buy it. You think it’s going to be expensive?” He told Reilly that he had no idea, but it would be worth it to ask. “All right. I’m too excited. You talk, and I’ll be quiet. I don’t want to mess it up by being too excited about this.”

  “I don’t think I can be trusted not to beg her to sell it to us.” He was having such a good time. And the fact that he was going to pay any price she wanted for the house, just to see Reilly this happy forever, only made him feel like he was getting the best deal for any price. “All right. I think I’m composed.”

  As soon as they walked into the kitchen where Mrs. Winston was, they sat at the table with her. She just smiled at them, like she knew that they were going to make an offer. And Boyd did something that he’d never
done before—he let his heart rule his mouth.

  “We’ll take it. No matter the price.” When both her and Reilly laughed, he felt his face heat in embarrassment. But he wasn’t upset with his blurt of words; in fact, he was happy to have been able to say it aloud. “Seriously, I don’t know what the price is—we should have asked—but we love everything about the home. Including the library and fireplace, which is all we really talked about having.”

  “I need to tell you something before I tell you the price. My mother was a kind woman, generous to a fault. And she loved life and what she could get out of it more than she did working. To her, a day spent here at home with the things that she loved was a day well spent.” Reilly told her that she thought it showed. “Yes, I think she would have liked you two very much. She was a wonderful woman, as I said, but she was also set in her ways, and now, with you two here, I can see the wisdom in her words. The house is yours for one dollar.”

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” She repeated it to him with a large smile. “I don’t understand. A dollar is very low, even if it wasn’t fully furnished, it’s very low. Don’t you think so too?”

  “Not to my mother it wasn’t. In her will she said that she wanted us to put the house on the market, and to sell it to someone that would love the house, and the things in it, as much as she did. You said that you loved both. Nor did you ask how much we were selling it for.” Reilly asked about what previous buyers were told. “Most people come here with the assumption that it’s going to be well over their budget and that they want to haggle us down. We were told to do neither. When someone asked the price without saying how much they loved it, they were disqualified in buying it. If they haggled, they were again taken out of the ability to buy it. You did nothing but tell me you wanted the house, and as I said, you have decided to take the house and the contents, no questions asked. That was the sort of couple that she wanted to buy her home. Someone that would continue to make it what she’d started, and bring up children here that would, perhaps, someday do the same.”

  “This is just what we were looking for. It’s perfect.” Mrs. Winston said that she thought so as well. “But you have no desire to live here? With your mother’s things?”

  “No. I have some of her things that she gave to me, as do my brothers. And the house is much too large for someone my age anyway. I loved this house my entire life. When she stipulated in her will what she wanted done, we were so happy at what she had done, we took turns coming here to wait on people to come by and see it. Today, I knew it was going to be a perfect day because it would have been her birthday.”

  Boyd wasn’t sure what to say, and when someone knocked at the back door, Mrs. Winston got up to let the person in. Boyd looked at Reilly, who was still looking unsure. He was as well. There had to be a catch or something. But when the gentleman introduced himself as Mr. Gable, the estate planner for Serenity Armstrong, he told them the same thing that Mrs. Winston had. The house was only one dollar, and that as soon as he paid, the deed would be turned over to him.

  Even reading the paperwork, Boyd could see that the forms were cut and dried. It said that he bought the house as is, and that they would pay one dollar for the house. Asking if his brother could come and have a look at the contract, he was told that it was fine. Taking out his cell so as not to confuse the people with him, he asked Larson to come over to their new home and look over the contract. He said that he was nearby and would be there in less than five minutes. Boyd thought it was the longest five minutes of his life.

  “This is perfectly legal.” Boyd shook his head, thinking that this had to be wrong somehow when Larson finished reading it over. “It is. If you pay him, the deed and house will be yours. This tells you what the yearly taxes are and the land that comes with it. And before I got here, I had Lauren run a check on the house when you told me you were buying it, and according to her, there are fifty-five acres. And with the deed, it says that as well. You’re getting one hell of a deal, and you should take it.”

  He didn’t even have a dollar on him, and they all laughed when Reilly had to go out to the car and get her purse so that she could put her change with his. Together they managed to scrape up one dollar and eight cents. When he signed off on the deed with Reilly, so did Mr. Gable, and in less time than it took them to roam the house, they were homeowners.

  When Mr. Gable left the paperwork with Larson to be filed, Mrs. Winston left as well. She gave them the keys to the house, some of the paperwork on the furnishings, as well as the combination to the large safe in the basement. It was a place that they’d not even looked at when they’d been looking around. Larson asked them how they’d managed to get a home like this for so cheap.

  Reilly told him what they were told and how they were the only ones that had passed the test. When she got to the part about the library and the fireplace, Larson asked to be shown around. The house and all that was inside was theirs. Boyd was still having a hard time wrapping his mind around that. They were homeowners of a ready to move into home.

  Showing him around the house, Boyd heard from Lauren. Not only did she find out that the will was correct in what was told to them, but it had been sitting on the market for sixteen months. He asked her what else she’d been able to find about the place.

  There are no liens against the place. The taxes are all paid up until today. I’m assuming that they already contacted someone to have your name put on the records as owner too. And when I checked with the offices downtown, yours and Reilly’s names were on pending paperwork as owners. As I told Larson, you have fifty-five acres, as well as a rental property in the back, but someone is living in the house that faces a street a couple of miles away. At any time you can ask them to move, but you have to give them six months’ notice. If I were you, I’d leave them there. It’s a nice income, and there has never been any issues with them as tenants. Boyd told her that he was having a hard time believing any of this. Well, bucko, it’s been your day for having what you thought impossible possible, huh? Anyway, I think you should know that the family knows that you bought a house and got yourself a mate, and are on their way to you as we speak. I didn’t tell them, Larson did, damn it. I so wanted to be the one to do it.

  When his parents showed up, they had boxes of ornaments. He was so glad for them that he was leaving to get a tree when another vehicle filled with his family showed up. He and Reilly were apparently staying the night in their new home too, as someone had gone to his house to get an overnight bag, and had brought some of the things that Reilly had too. Just as he was getting his car out of the mess of cars of his family, Colin showed up with not only a large tree, but an outdoor blow up Santa for the yard. Before he knew it, they were ordering food to be brought to them and having a party.

  Things were moving very fast, so fast that he had to find a place to just have quiet. Standing on the back deck, looking out over the yard, he thought of his day and wondered why his head hadn’t exploded or something. Hawk came out of the woods in front of him and Boyd laughed.

  “Do you ever do anything conventionally?” Hawk just grinned at him and sat down on one of the chairs that hadn’t been covered in snow. Boyd sat in the other one, and was glad for Hawk being the quiet one in the family. “I have a house and a mate. Something that I never thought of having again.”

  “The house is nice. I knew Mrs. Armstrong when she was alive. I would come by when she called and sometimes when she didn’t. A very nice woman, if a little on the daffy side.” He asked him how daffy. “Not like crazy daffy. She was just living life to the fullest, and damn, she could really play a good game of chess with me.”

  “I’m overwhelmed.” He said he could see that. “Hawk, that only leaves you now. How do you feel about that?”

  He sat there quietly, and Boyd was in no rush to hear his answer. Hawk and he had been close at one time. Not that they weren’t now, but when they were kids, Hawk had stood up for him when bullies would come around. And because Boyd was so sm
art, there were a lot of bullies when he’d been a kid.

  “I suppose when she gets here, if she’s out there, I’m going to make a fool of myself and be the mushy type.” Boyd didn’t laugh or comment. He wasn’t sure if Hawk was kidding or not. “What am I going to do? I don’t have any idea. But the way that my life has been going, I’d say that she’s going to be one of those kinds of women that want to go shopping all the time. We’ll have a frou-frou house that I’ll hate, but I’ll be so much in love with her that I won’t care all that much.”

  “She might be just like you. Hard assed and militant.” Hawk just smiled but said nothing more. “Reilly is my mate, and I know nothing about her. I suppose that I’ll learn—we’ve plenty of time for that—but it’s strange to me that this house came to us and we both love everything about it.” Hawk told him that it happened like that sometimes, he supposed. “I guess.”

  “Reilly’s in a spot of trouble. I know, so you know that Lauren does as well.” He asked him if she was going to be hurt. “Not by the thing that she has going on in her personal life, but she’s paying for a home that she doesn’t own, nor did she ever live in it. I could tell you what happened, mostly how it really happened, but she should tell you.”

  “I can wait on her to tell me then. So long as it doesn’t cause her any pain.” He said that it was draining her financially. “I’ll look into that then. Whatever it is, we can work something out.”

  “Good. She’ll tell you, I’m sure, but let her, okay? Also, this thing with her boss. That isn’t going to hurt her either, but it will Ross Dander. I’ve heard through the grapevine that his father, Joseph Dander, isn’t paying for an attorney. He’s washing his hands of him. From what I’ve heard, he should have done it long ago.”

  “I’ve heard only what the news is saying about this. And of course what Reilly has said. It doesn’t sound to me like he’s got a full basket of nuts in his head.” Hawk said that was a good way to put it. “Do you know if she’s going to be charged with anything? Last I heard Ross was telling everyone it was her fault.”