Bounty

by Kristen Ashley

  “I walked out of that house, kid,” Deke reminded him. “That house bein’ your sister’s. Not me that’s gotta explain what I’m doin’ here.”

  He pulled himself up, giving himself the impression he didn’t have to look so far up to keep Deke’s gaze.

  “I’m only talkin’ to Jus,” he stated.

  “Think I covered that,” Deke told him.

  His face screwed up. “I don’t even know who you are, so I’m not sayin’ dick to you.”

  Deke heard the door open again, he tensed again, but he didn’t hear Jussy’s voice so he sought patience and kept at the kid.

  “Like I said, you are not gettin’ anywhere near your sister unless I got an understanding what you’re doin’ here and I’m down with you gettin’ to her. She’s havin’ a good night. You been shovelin’ shit at her, what I can tell from what she tells me, since you came out bawlin’. But the shit you’ve been shovelin’ since you all lost your old man is not on. And no way in fuck I’m gonna let you upset her more than you already have just showin’, no notice. You tell me what you’re doin’ here, I’ll tell her, she decides if she wants you in her space.”

  Maverick opened his mouth but Deke leaned in, the kid’s eyes widened, but his mouth shut.

  “I’m not repeating myself and I’m not negotiating. It goes like that, no choice, or you got men who’ll walk you to your car. You put up a fight, man who opened the door is a cop. He’ll have Carnal officers escorting you off the property and do not,” he leaned deeper, “fuckin’ test me. You fuck with Jussy, you resist attempts to remove you, your ass is in a goddamned cell.”

  He stared in Deke’s eyes several beats, swallowing, his Adam’s apple bobbing, then his gaze shifted to the side and his face went hard.

  Deke’s body got even tighter when he felt a light hand on his forearm.

  He looked down and saw Joss standing there.

  Her face was harder than the kid’s, brittle, the anger in her profile so intense, just looking at her Deke tasted it in his mouth.

  “Do as you’re told, son,” she said quiet, her voice as brittle as her face.

  “Not talkin’ to you at all,” he spat. “And I sure as fuck am not your son.”

  She nodded, curled her hand firmer on Deke’s forearm and pulled at it like she was telling him to step aside.

  He didn’t move.

  She did, looking over her shoulder at whoever was standing behind them.

  “The man who lives in this house doesn’t want this boy here. I think it’s time he’s shown to his car,” she said.

  Deke felt the men move and he started to move with them but Joss kept her grip fixed on him.

  He looked down at her, but before he could say shit, she did.

  “Jussy will not like you being involved in what those boys might have to do,” she said softly. “That kid’s a stubborn ass. Let your friends play that out.” She tipped her head to the drive. “You go talk to Chace. He’s in with Rod and some of the girls, got Jussy in her music room.” She got closer and went up on her toes. “And she’s watching, Deke.”

  He nodded, indicating her message was clear, but he didn’t go in.

  He looked to the folks hustling Maverick to his car and saw he was right, Tate, Ty, Decker, Twyla and Ham.

  “Fuck you!” Maverick shouted, pushing off on Tate.

  It was like the kid didn’t touch him. Tate’s body didn’t even sway.

  “Get off me, man!” Maverick yelled, scuttling away from Ty.

  “Deke, this may need the cops,” Joss warned.

  “Got Johnny in him,” Deke muttered.

  “What?” Joss asked.

  He looked down at her. “Kid’s got Johnny in him. He’s here for a reason. He’ll get his head right and we won’t need the cops.”

  Joss studied him as the situation escalated loudly in the drive.

  Then she whispered, “My Jussy girl. Always had hope for that boy. Gave that to you.” She shook her head as if this made her sad.

  “Fuck you! Fuck! Fuck all of you!” Maverick shouted. “Right! Fuck! Okay! Goddamn shit! Okay, I’ll tell you what I wanna talk to Jussy about!”

  Deke and Joss looked his way.

  The men had him pinned to the driver’s side door, not deep in his space, but he had nowhere to go but in his car.

  He was looking over the roof to Deke.

  “I…God!” he yelled angrily. “We don’t got any money, man. Froze our assets and Granddad’s royalties don’t come but every six months and they don’t…for Mom and me they aren’t…” He shook his head like he was trying to keep in the dickhead but was losing hold on it and Deke knew he lost hold when he said, “I gotta talk to my sister.”

  “You gonna hit her up for money?” Deke asked.

  “I…” He shook his head again. “No, man. I just need…I can’t lose what I was supposed to get.”

  “So you’re gonna drop the suit,” Deke surmised.

  Maverick took a few beats to answer. “I just can’t lose what I was supposed to get.”

  Deke’s voice was a warning when he repeated, “So you’re here to share you’re dropping the suit.”

  Maverick was silent and this time it lasted longer.

  Then he said, his voice a lot more calm, “Just tell her Mom doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Deke looked down at Joss. “That good enough for you?”

  She was looking up at him so he caught her mouth going slack at his question.

  “Joss, Jussy’s probably pissed as shit in there. Answer. Good enough for you?” he prompted.

  She nodded.

  He turned on his boot and prowled into the house.

  He was barely through the door before Krys was on him, holding her daughter, at his arrival clearly caught in the middle of pacing.

  She immediately demanded to know, “I gotta get my shotgun?”

  “We’re good,” he muttered, walking right by her, direct to Jussy’s music room where she was pinned in by Rod, Chace, Wood, Bubba and Shambles, all of them standing sentry at the open double doorway. But she was being kept company inside by the whole girl posse.

  The room was a big room but it was fucking crowded in there.

  Jussy was already facing the door and the second he saw her through the men, he knew he was right.

  She was pissed as shit.

  “Okay, my lover, we’ll be talking about that macho bullshit a lot after whatever the fuck is happening is no longer happening,” she declared, her face flinched weirdly comically and she looked down at Lella who was standing close to her legs. “Sorry, baby. Don’t say the F-word. It’s very bad.” She started to look at Deke but then jerked her attention back to Lella. “Or the B-S-word. That’s bad too.”

  Fuck, only Jussy could make him want to bust a gut laughing when he was this pissed.

  “Says his mom doesn’t know he’s here and he’s got money problems, babe,” Deke told her after she returned her gaze to him. “Think he’s calmed down and good to talk. You’re doin’ that on the back deck. I’ll have the boys escort him around.”

  “He can come through the house, Deke,” she retorted.

  “No. He can’t,” Deke stated.

  It was then she really looked at him and it was then he knew she got him because she lost the attitude and nodded.

  And what she got was the fact that Deke was not allowing that pissant into her house until he’d earned the right to be in her space, even in order to walk through it.

  Deke looked to Rembrandt.

  “Rod, you wanna keep Jussy company outside?”

  “Yeah, man,” he muttered and looked to his stepdaughter. “Let’s get out there and get this shit over with, darlin’.” Not missing a beat, even though he had a hand extended to Jussy, he looked to Lella. “And don’t say the S-word either, gorgeous. It’s also bad.”

  He heard some swallowed laughter that sounded amused, but nervous. He didn’t take it in. He waited until Rod took Jussy’s hand and then he move
d back to the front door.

  He went out it and stood again next to Joss, who hadn’t shifted an inch.

  “Bring him around the side of the house to the back deck,” he called. He dipped his chin and said to Joss. “You’re with me through the inside.”

  “Aye, aye, big man,” she murmured.

  “I can walk my fuckin’ self,” Maverick snapped.

  “Guess that’s right, still not gonna happen,” Ham told him.

  Deke let Twyla and the men deal with it, and once they’d both turned to the house, he took hold of Joss’s elbow. He guided her through the door and gave looks to key people as he moved through the house. They’d do what Jussy needed and Deke didn’t even know what all that was. He just knew they’d be doing it.

  He got to the back of the house where Chace was at the door. The men nodded to each other as Deke led Joss out.

  “Do you all inject extra testosterone or is this just a Colorado Mountain anomaly?” Joss joked.

  He shifted his gaze again to her.

  She took in his face.

  “Right,” she whispered. “Time for fun and laughter later.”

  She gave wide eyes to her daughter.

  Jussy wasn’t in the mood either and Deke knew it when she smiled a half smile to her mom that she didn’t mean and then looked into the dark where Maverick was being escorted on his approach to the deck.

  Jussy remained standing by a chair while Rod draped himself casually over another one opposite where Jussy was at the pit. One of his long legs over an arm, the other leg splayed in front of him, back to the corner of the chair.

  But the rock-god-on-a-throne bullshit was all a show. His attention was fastened to the kid coming up the steps and his mouth was tight.

  Maverick made his ascent glaring at Jussy the whole time, which moved Deke to her back, and close.

  The men and Twyla retreated but stood in the yard not near, not far.

  “Right, now that I did all that to get to the great Justice Lonesome, what next? You want me to jump through burning hoops?” Maverick asked snottily.

  The blood rushed to Deke’s head again as he growled, doing it beginning to move around his woman, “That’s it. You’re done.”

  She caught his hand and did it tight.

  That wouldn’t have stopped him.

  But she also said in a voice that held persuasion and deep emotion, telling him she wanted him to drop the macho bullshit and let her guide this from here on out.

  “Deke, baby. Please.”

  He halted at her side, his eyes locked to Maverick.

  He heard Justice take a deep breath, releasing his hand, before she stated, “Okay, Mav, you’ve got five minutes. You can be a douche or you can explain why you’re here. I would advise against being a douche for a full five minutes, though. Deke kinda likes me which means he definitely doesn’t like it when people do shitty things to me so I’m not sure how long I can hold him back.”

  Maverick opened his mouth but before a sound came out, Rod spoke.

  And he got more respect because Deke didn’t think the man had that pissed-off, kinda-dad, do-not-fuck-with-my-girl-or-I’ll-make-you-hurt tone in him.

  But he seriously fucking did.

  “For once in your life, son, be smart. And take that advice seriously, hear me?”

  Maverick looked to Rod, to Joss, to Deke, and finally, like it took effort, he turned his attention to Jussy.

  “It shits me to be here,” he declared.

  “You’ve kinda made that obvious,” Jussy returned.

  He shifted on his feet, a full shuffle, casting his eyes down to them, pulling his shit together, and he looked back up.

  “Mom doesn’t know, but talked to Mr. T. He says the terms are ironclad. We…I mean, I contested the will so I’ve lost everything. And he isn’t backing down on that. So I need you to…to…I need you to talk to him, Jus.”

  Jussy didn’t reply and the kid waited for it but not long enough to get his head straight, read the situation, and not give too much away or make himself seem like an even bigger dick.

  “We had three attorneys that advised—” He cut himself off then kept going, “The one we got, I, Jus, seriously, I didn’t like him from the start. And I think he just wanted to take Mom’s…I mean, my money. I talked to Mr. T, said I’d drop the suit, he says he can’t do anything to help me. He says it’s all Dad. He says it’s all legal-like and the suit was filed so I relinquished all claim and now I have to pay back the money that’s frozen in my accounts or I can go to jail. But I know Mr. T can do anything and I know, if you talked to him, he’d do anything for you. So I need you to talk to him.”

  When Jussy remained silent, the tension thick around the fire pit, his situation clear that he was not amongst friends, far from it, Maverick stupidly rushed to fill the void.

  “I…I…well, I thought on it and I don’t even mind that…that…woman gets her piece.” He shook his head and right in front of Deke’s eyes, dropped more than a decade, turning from a boy who refused to be a man right into a stupid, selfish kid. “But, even you gotta agree that…that…woman…that it’s not fair, not right that she gets a third. A third of what’s ours. Yours and mine. I mean, that’s crazy, right?”

  Finally, Jussy spoke.

  “It’s clear it hasn’t dawned on you, Mav, that the money Dad worked his ass off all his life to earn is his money. It’ll always be his money. Even after he’s gone, it’s still his. And we don’t have fuck all to say about what he wants to do with it. He’s shared explicitly what he wanted to happen with that money and it’s not for me or you or Dana or Joss or anyone who loved him with all their heart to say anything different.”

  The stubborn hit his face when he turned his eyes to Joss. “Even you gotta agree with me about her.”

  “I don’t gotta do anything, boy,” Joss said quietly. “And for the record, I don’t agree. She loved your father, loves him in a way he’s gone and that’s never gonna die. She treated him right. She believed in him. She stood by his side no matter what, and I’m glad he had that, at least with one of the three women he let into his life.”

  At her mother’s words, Deke felt Jussy’s hand brush the back of his in a searching way.

  So he twisted his wrist and closed his fingers around hers tight.

  She didn’t close hers around his the same way.

  Her grip was like a vise.

  “Come here, baby,” Rod murmured gently, pulling out of his rock star sprawl and reaching a hand to his wife.

  Joss moved to him and took his hand. Then she took a visible deep breath and stood by his side, still holding his hand but turning her gaze back to Maverick.

  But Maverick gave up on her and went back to Jussy.

  He also switched tactics.

  “I need you to talk to Mr. T, Jussy.” His tone was now whiney and wheedling. “I know…I know you’re not big on Mom but she depends on me and, sis,” he swallowed and finished on a whisper, “I’m hurting.”

  Jussy’s voice was quiet and almost gentle when she said, “I warned you, Mav.”

  He skated around that. “I just need you to talk to Mr. T.”

  “I know this hasn’t occurred to you but Mr. T cares a lot about you. He was very patient about all the shit you pulled. But if it’s out of his hands, and I can believe if he could do something he’d do it, then it’s also out of my hands.”

  “He can do anything and he will do anything you want him to do,” Maverick returned.

  “He can do anything and does do anything a Lonesome wants him to do. So when Dad asked for his will to be written a certain way, Mr. T saw to that.” Her voice turned full-on tender. “And you knew the consequences of butting up against that, Mav. Dad told you, and even if he didn’t, Mr. T did and so did I. Repeatedly. You made your decision, and if Mr. T says there’s nothing we can do about it, there just isn’t.”

  He started to take a step to her, didn’t miss Deke going alert, jolted to a halt and made do with
leaning her way.

  “Then you gotta…you and her…you gotta decide and you gotta talk to her because if the courts won’t…then you have to, Jussy,” he begged.

  Deke felt Jussy’s fingers go limp in his before they again squeezed hard and she asked disbelievingly, “Are you telling me you want me to give you your third and ask Dana for the same?”

  “It’s mine,” he stated. “Dad wanted me to have it.”

  “You keep her, don’t you?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.

  Maverick straightened. “This isn’t about her.”

  “Baby brother,” Jussy said softly, “the fuck of it, the shit that tears me apart, tore Dad apart, is that through you, it’s always been about her. I never had you. He never had you. Not without her coming in between even when she wasn’t even there.”

  “I don’t wanna talk about my mother,” he snapped.

  “And I’m not about to give Dad’s money to her,” Jussy returned. “And Dana’s a soft touch. You go to her and act all wounded, even though you’ve not once been kind to her, or even decent, she will. She’ll see Dad in you and she’ll do anything for you. So I’ll advise her and give a heads up to Mr. T so she doesn’t fall for your mother’s shit because you are not here for you. You’re here for her. And don’t,” she bit out her last, lifting her free hand, palm out her brother’s way, “deny it. Your share of Granddad’s royalties will not keep you on yachts. It’s enough to get by and well, unless your mother is going through it like she went through the divorce settlement, your child support—”

  “I said we’re not talkin’ about my mother,” Maverick hissed.

  “Then we’re not talking at all,” Jussy returned, her voice now fragile, sad, heartbroken.

  Deke used her hand to pull her closer.

  “God!” Maverick said loudly. “He’s gone and you still think you can get me away from her. Like I’m tied to her apron strings or something. Newsflash, Jus, I’m a grown man.”

  Deke bit his tongue.

  Literally.