“Hopefully, we can get a judge to sign off by this afternoon. Tomorrow morning at the latest. The delay would be because some of these judges out here are in the pockets of the ranchers.” I grumbled the last, knowing the fight wasn’t an easy one.
“Fuck,” Theo said. “Well, let’s get the paperwork filled out and filed, pronto. Normally I’d want to poke around without alerting them a little more first, but we can’t fuck around when Ali’s life could be in danger.”
Even though I felt the same, hearing him say the words out loud sent a jolt of panic to my wolf, and a growl volleyed out of my throat. “We need to get her the fuck out of there. I can’t believe we let her go back.”
“I know,” Theo said grimly. “I feel the same way.”
12
ALI
I’d gone away to college. To Chile. Australia. I’d been away from home for years. I thought I’d changed a lot during that time. Grown up. Become independent. Even deciding to return and work the family land, which put me back into the same bedroom I’d grown up in, I felt… different.
But after a few days with Holt and Theo, I saw everything about the Jenkins Ranch in a new way. What the place meant to me. My role as a steward of the land from one generation to the next. Keeping it just as my great-grandparents had made it for my own kids. With some additions like indoor plumbing and Internet, of course.
I wanted to be a rancher. But I didn’t want to do it alone any longer, and I wasn’t thinking of doing it with my father, not after this week. I wanted to have Holt and Theo with me. I doubted they’d be pulling calves or rustling livestock any time soon, but I wanted to see them drive up after a day protecting West Springs. To return to me at night. To share a bed with them. A life.
Yes, even have children.
All of that was new and crazy. I never expected to find The Ones—yes, plural—right in my home town. But these seemingly perfect men were at odds with my father. The man I’d looked up to and respected my entire life. While they hadn’t said I had to choose between them and my father, I felt as if I were being pulled. My father hated the lawmen, and had outright told me to stay away from them. Theo and Holt had snuck onto my land to search for meth, they were so driven to bring down the bad guys, even if it meant arresting someone close to me.
I’d ignored my father’s very clear wishes, and gone and fallen for them. Or I was definitely on my way to doing so. It had only taken a few days and a whole bunch of orgasms, but I was considering long term. And I wasn’t even thinking of their secret, the one Theo had revealed by mistake.
They were shifters. Part wolves. Wolves! Yet I still wanted them. They mentioned forever, but I was taking it one day at a time. One pleasurable day—and night—at a time.
Still, when my father learned that I was with Theo and Holt, he’d flip. Our relationship would be ruined because things were black and white with him. His enemies, or him.
Except it seemed he’d already done that. Holt and Theo had only nudged it along. I’d have liked to imagine I’d have discovered what was going on by myself since I was back to working the ranch, finding the trailer at some point. The burned out cabin. The only reason they had been hidden was the size of the property, and maybe that had been their plan all along.
I’d have felt this exact same way, except with my dad no longer on the pedestal on which most daughters placed their beloved fathers. He’d knocked himself off when he’d chosen to track and shoot wolves the year before—even further now that he was somehow caught up in meth being made on our property.
It was against the law, which was bad enough, but he’d done it on land that I was supposed to work. My safe place. My job. My life. He was putting all of that—and me—at risk!
My respect for him was gone, due to his choices, and the consequences I knew were soon to come.
They would come in part because of me. I’d told Holt and Theo he was involved, at least partially. They could arrest him on that, and I could be forced to testify against Dad for what I’d overheard. He could go to jail and I had to be okay with that.
I just didn’t know why he would allow drugs to tarnish our land and our family name. How he could get caught up in it. I wasn’t an expert on meth addicts, but I’d seen pictures, knew the signs of someone strung out on drugs. My dad didn’t show any of those signs. Was it money? We weren’t poor. Our ranch was worth several million, at least.
After the late breakfast at the diner, I’d returned home to shower and ride Daisy, remembering the guys’ concern for my safety. I’d stuck close to the stables and in sight of the near pasture, not riding anywhere near the pond or the trailer.
I’d hoped to see my father, to confront him right away, but he’d been nowhere I could find. He didn’t return until dinnertime. I was in the kitchen, pulling a meal together. When he came into the room, I stopped chopping the carrots for the beef stew. He looked haggard and panicked, running a hand through his hair.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. I set the knife on the cutting board and reached over to turn down the flame beneath the simmering pot on the stove.
“Nothing,” he grumbled, going to the coffee pot, lifting it, and studying the dregs at the bottom.
“Why is Hollaroy on our land?” I asked.
He dropped the carafe and spun around, finally looking at me. His usually calm, hard gaze was wild. “I told you, because he’s having a fight with his wife.”
I frowned. “That puts him on the couch or in the dog house, but not a brand new single-wide on our back forty.”
“Why does it matter, Alison?” he asked.
I raised my hands in frustration. “Because this is my land too!”
“I’m not dead yet.”
My stomach dropped. “So this isn’t a together thing, working the ranch like we’d talked about. It’s you, then me once you’re gone? In what, twenty years or more?”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“Like you are about the talk of meth on our land?”
“Jesus, why do you have to push?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“The meth! The trailer. Hollaroy.”
“I knew nothing about the meth until Holt and Theo came by the other day.”
His eyes widened, and his head reared back as if I’d punched him. “It’s Holt and Theo now? Oh, fuck, Alison, are you seeing one of them? Is that where you were last night?”
I wasn’t a teenager sneaking around behind her parents’ back with the cute quarterback, staying out past curfew. I was an adult. I could make my own choices, and I didn’t need my father’s approval to spend the night in a guy’s bed. I’d have liked it, but it wasn’t required any longer. Not after the choices he’d been making.
“Yes.” I didn’t clarify, or correct that I was seeing both of them.
He reached out and swiped a calendar and address book, shoving them off the counter. I jumped at his outburst.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done by being with him?” he shouted.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’ve done, Dad?” I said, my voice quiet compared to his.