If Julian Lodge didn’t already know that, she would eat her Jimmy Choos. But she played along, letting a horrified look cross her face. “Prison?”
“Yes, girl. I done a nice bit of time and for some pretty ugly crimes. That Julian fellow might be open-minded when it comes to you sleeping with both boys, but how is he going to feel about a criminal’s son watching over his daughter?”
Wolf’s job was security for Dani and Chloe. He also watched over Finn when Julian was worried about one of his cases. It was obvious to Shelley that Robert Meyer hadn’t really done his homework. He’d looked up Julian Lodge and seen exactly what Julian had wanted him to see—an upscale businessman with a beautiful wife and daughter. It was the image Julian presented to reporters. The last thing the very private Julian would want was newspaper stories about his ménage lifestyle.
On the surface, Julian might look like the type of man who would be horrified to discover his seemingly steady bodyguard actually had a dark past. Many businessmen in his position would immediately fire the bodyguard and find someone more suitable.
Julian Lodge would just shoot Robert Meyer and consider the world a better place.
She managed to sniffle a little. “What are you saying? You’re going to tell Julian?”
“I’m just saying that a man like that would probably rather fire a problem than deal with it. I don’t think it would look too good for Leo and Wolf if I showed up on Julian’s doorstep. Or if I started talking to the papers. Tell me something, is that bitch still crazy?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Their momma. What kind of medication does Leo have her doped up on so she could meet with these people?”
“These people” all seemed to accept Cassidy for who she was. Maybe if Shelley had been around “these people,” she wouldn’t have stayed in a terrible marriage for as long as she had.
God, she had so much more in common with her almost mother-in-law than she’d dreamed of. And she owed her so much. She was just starting to realize that. She’d thought, in the beginning, that Cassidy was someone she had to put up with. Maybe Cassidy was someone she could learn a whole lot from.
“He doesn’t have her on any medication.”
Robert snorted, a wholly nasty sound. “Now I know you’re lying. She was crazy when I married her. And I still hear the rumors all over the county. Everyone still talks about her. She was lucky no one took those kids from her. Everyone knew how loony she was. She’s the biggest joke around.”
Shelley wanted to slap the son of a bitch, but she’d already decided on her plan of action. It required a little more acting. “What do you want from us?”
“To stop me from going to Lodge or from going to the newspapers and making you the laughingstock of the country? Wouldn’t that be a good story? Woman sleeps with two brothers. You don’t want everyone calling you a whore, do you?”
Once they got a look at her men, most women would just high-five her. And she really didn’t care who called her what, but she liked her privacy. “No, I don’t. What do you want to keep quiet?”
She could only imagine what Leo had threatened him with. And he was damn lucky he hadn’t gone to Wolf. Wolf wouldn’t have talked. Wolf would have shot first.
“I’m thinking ten thousand would keep me pretty quiet.”
Not for long, though, Shelley supposed. It wasn’t her first incident with blackmailers. Her first husband had used her decorating business to gain entry into high-powered officials’ homes so he could bug them and use what he found out to drain the politicians and businessmen dry.
So she was pretty sure Robert Meyer would take his ten grand, spend it, and show back up in Dallas looking for more.
Unless she proved to him that it just wasn’t worth his while. She sniffled again and placed her hand over her mouth as though she was trying not to cry.
“You can take care of this, Shelley,” he said, standing far too close to her. “You can just go and get me a check and then you don’t have to see me again.”
She managed to nod and step away. “I have a checkbook in my purse.”
She stepped around him, keeping her eyes on the floor so he didn’t see the burning hatred she was pretty sure was in her eyes. She stepped back into the house and immediately ran into Rachel Harper.
“Hey, I’m so sorry about the whole Cassidy thing. She’s really sweet. She just kind of has this thing about aliens. I promise to have tooth whitening mouthwash waiting for you.”
She wasn’t even thinking about that right now. She was only thinking about the fact that if she didn’t explain to that fucker what the real situation was, he might show up at her Beeting Ceremony, and apparently that meant a lot to Cassidy. She wasn’t about to allow her crazy, prove-you’re-not-an-alien-queen party to be interrupted by a douche lord. “Do you have a gun?”
Rachel’s eyes went wide and then her mouth turned down. “Of course not. That would probably be silly.”
“Because I need a gun and I don’t carry one.”
Rachel looked back up, her eyes assessing. “Is this one of those ‘make fun of the country people’ things?”
Shelley wasn’t sure what she meant so the truth was all she could offer. “No, this is one of those ‘I need to shoot someone’ things.”
Her mouth curled up in a happy smile. “Oh, thank god. Yeah, it’s in my purse. Do you know how to use it? Who are we shooting? Because I’ve got one in the car, too. If we can wait a couple of minutes, I can call Marie and we can get the whole crew out here.”
“Crew?”
Rachel nodded. “The ‘I Shot a Son of a Bitch’ club. We meet every second Tuesday. I do take it we’re shooting a son of a bitch. Wait. We’re not shooting Wolf, right? I don’t know the other one so I could probably shoot him.”
“No. We’re not shooting my men. We’re shooting their no-good, blackmailing, criminal, nasty-ass father who looked at my boobs the whole time he was threatening to ruin my life.”
Rachel got her purse from the bar. “Oh, we can totally shoot him. Should I call the crew to hide the body or are we going to go with self-defense?”
The strawberry blonde, who looked to be about four months pregnant, pulled a nice-sized revolver out of what looked to be her baby bag. She blushed a little as she wiped off the handle. “Sorry. Paige’s diaper rash cream comes open sometimes. Here you go.”
Luckily, Wolf had been taking her to the shooting range. She snapped the safety off, checked the bullets, and was ready to go. “And I’m not actually going to hit him. I just want to be sure he won’t come back.”
Rachel followed her to the door. “I’m just saying that killing is usually the way to go. They don’t normally come back no matter what Nell says about restless spirits and killing bringing about bad karma.”
Shelley took a deep breath. She really hoped she didn’t actually shoot the man. Something told her it would be bad to have to get married in the Bliss County jail, but she was willing to take that risk.
She threw open the door and he was still standing there, a smug smile on his face. He was deeply unhandsome, his character somehow showing through the lines and planes of his body.
“You got my money, girl?”
Shelley took great delight in aiming that revolver right at his head. “I got everything I’m ever going to give you right here.”
He gasped and backed up, his hands coming up. “Now, we should talk about this.”
“Oh, I am so done talking with you, but I will make a few things plain.”
He went an unnatural shade of red. “You don’t want your nice friend there to call the police on you, do you?” He pointed behind her, indicating Rachel.
“Oh, she’s just going to shoot you. I told her she should totally kill you and we could make up a really good story about it. Lexi’s in the back, isn’t she? She’s a writer. She can make something up really fast. And there are about a million places to bury your body up on my mountain.” She looked ou
t over the yard. “Hey, Max! Rye! Come on over here, babies. We might need you to carry some shit for us!”
Robert Meyer was sweating, his feet shuffling. “You don’t want to shoot me.”
“Oh, I totally want to shoot you. And if you ever come near my family again, I will. And you should be glad I’m the one delivering this message and not Julian Lodge. I have no doubt in my mind that Julian knows more about you than my husbands do, and he won’t hesitate to take you out if you threaten any member of his family. And trust me, he considers my husbands family.”
“Hey.” One of the twin cowboys from the truck came walking up. He pointed to Robert. “You’re that motherfucker from Trio this morning. I thought for sure the shrink and I had scared you away.”
Rachel stared at her husband, one hand on her hip. “What the hell were you doing at Trio? I thought I smelled Zane’s wing sauce on you!”
The big cowboy shook his head, going a little pale. “No, baby. I was getting myself shrunk. I was talking to that Leo guy about all the things that are wrong with me. I know I have mental problems.”
“You liar.” Rachel held her hand out. “I’m going to need that gun back, Shelley.”
But she hadn’t made her point yet. “In a minute.”
She planted her feet the way Wolf had taught her, took careful aim at a place to his left, and fired.
There was a loud scream and Robert Meyer covered his faced and dropped to his knees, though not before Shelley saw the front of his pants suddenly stain and turn wet.
Yes, she’d made her point.
“You told me you had oatmeal at Stella’s.” The other twin didn’t seem at all bothered that she’d nearly killed a man. He was only concerned with yelling at his brother. “Goddamn it, Max.”
Max held his ground. “Well, it’s not fair that you get to eat fried foods and I don’t. I don’t understand why I got the bad cholesterol DNA. It should have been you.”
“Please don’t kill me.” For a man who had apparently spent a lot of time committing crimes, Robert Meyer seemed really scared of guns.
“That’s up to you.” Shelley took a couple of steps his way, standing over him. “If you come near me or mine again, I’ll shoot you and I won’t miss next time. Am I understood? The next time you threaten my life, I’ll take yours. And if you think you can go to the papers, think again. Julian will just buy them and shut the fuckers down. Now get out of here.”
He got shakily to his feet and managed to run down the stairs and across the yard.
“And I hate oatmeal, Rye. It tastes like cardboard even when I put a cup of sugar in it,” Max was yelling.
“And I hate the thought of you having a heart attack.” Rachel was getting right up in her husband’s face. “So I’ll just shoot you now and put myself out of my misery.”
She sounded really serious. Shelley watched as her nemesis ran into the woods and disappeared. Maybe he would get eaten by a bear and all her troubles would be solved.
That man had hurt her mother-in-law. She didn’t need to hear the story to know. It was plain that this was a man who enjoyed hurting others. He would have loved hurting his wife. He was a man who likely would have enjoyed hurting his kids.
They would have been vulnerable, small and easy to hurt. A man like Robert Meyer would have felt powerful having small kids to torture.
Unless someone had fought back. Unless someone had loved her children so much, she found the strength to break out of her cycle.
She was so going to eat that beet. She would eat it down and thank her mother-in-law for the chance to enjoy it.
“Shelley, I need my gun. My dumbass husband wants to die,” Rachel said.
“I don’t want to die,” Max shot back. “I just wanted to eat something tasty. You’ve fed me salad for two weeks. I’m wasting away. A man needs meat.”
The door to the house flew open and most of the garden party was suddenly on the porch.
“We thought we heard gunfire.” Callie looked down at the revolver in Shelley’s hand.
“No one’s dead,” Shelley explained. “Though I think Rachel might kill one of her husbands.” It was time to help out her new friend. She walked up to Rachel, handing her back her gun. She was pretty sure the blonde wouldn’t actually kill her wing-loving hubby. “I have a great cookbook. It’s low-salt and low-cholesterol versions of comfort foods. Wolf used to eat like a five-year-old. It gave him high blood pressure. Trust me. After not being able to eat anything but salad and fruit for a couple of weeks, those recipes seemed heavenly to him. He never even realized that his new mashed potatoes were cauliflower.”
Rachel turned back to her. “Really?”
She pulled the last ace in her deck. “And I lost five pounds.”
A smile hit the blonde’s face. “That’s sounds perfect. And if you ever decide to kill your son of a bitch, we’ll help you hide the body.”
“Rachel, I’ve already had one body in the back of my truck today because Max had to do a favor for Jen. I just got it detailed,” Rye complained.
The Harpers were an interesting family.
But she needed to focus on her own. As the Harpers started to argue about whether or not Rye’s precious truck should be used in criminal activity, Shelley turned back to Callie Hollister-Wright. She seemed like a woman in the know.
“Hey, can we talk about Cassidy?”
Callie’s eyes widened. “Sure. You’re not going to shoot her, right?”
“Not at all, but I would like to understand her better. After all, she’s going to be my momma after I prove to her I’m not using her boys to propagate an alien race.”
Callie smiled and led her back to the bar. A good stiff drink was definitely called for.
Chapter Thirteen:
Rafe
Rafe moved through the door with only the slightest trepidation. He’d left the crazy crew behind with his daughter, but the insanity of the day wasn’t anywhere close to being over. After all, it was his first real foray into breaking and entering, but, then, he had the law on his side—or rather at his back. Cam was right behind him.
“Where do you think he would have left it?” Cam asked.
“I suspect it should be somewhere on his desk.” Rafe looked around the small cabin. The walls were covered in fishing equipment and photographs, each lovingly framed.
“I’ll take a look through his desk.” Laura pushed her way in. She had vigorously protested the whole breaking and entering idea. “I don’t see why we can’t just print out another form.”
He’d been over this. Zane had been explicit about why they needed the original letter of intent Hiram had signed a few months back. Unfortunately he’d also been called back to Trio. After a long argument in which the group had explained that the world would end if he didn’t get that letter, Rafe had given in. “It’s because the town seal is on the document.”
“All right, we can get a new seal,” Laura suggested.
“Stef is the only one with a seal stamper. Hiram claims a moose ate his so Stef, as the county’s chief engineer, has the only one left,” Rafe explained. They were a very small government. Hell, before 1993, there hadn’t even been a mayor’s office. Hiram had just taken care of things. It hadn’t been until the nineties that they gave in and actually formed a city government.
God, he knew way too much about Bliss politics already.
“What a cluster fuck. So Hiram named a successor and we have to find the paperwork?” Cam had been a little slow on the uptake since he’d been called home from work. He’d hung up before Rafe could explain why they needed him, so he’d come charging in expecting something was wrong with Sierra. He’d actually had his lights and siren going.
Cam needed to chill.
“No, Hiram was supposed to appoint a deputy mayor, but he left the name off. They were all in discussion about who it would be. Apparently Hi never made decisions without taking everything into account.”
Cam picked up on the conversation. “And w
e’re going to find the document and forge your name, thereby stealing all the political power in the town and setting ourselves up as the first family of Bliss. Does the mayor get a mansion?”
Laura rolled her eyes. “Look around you, babe. This is it.”
Hiram’s cabin was small, but well built. There was absolutely nothing about the place that screamed political power. It was kind of a temple devoted to fishing and hunting.
“And we’re only going to find the document,” Rafe insisted. “I’m not going to be the mayor.”
Cam turned. “Why not? It seems like a pretty sweet gig if you ask me.”
“It seems like a pain in my ass.” He’d been to more than one town hall meeting. And despite what Zane thought, there would eventually be elections.
Although Hiram never faced one. No one ever ran against him. He was utterly beloved.
Rafe looked around the cozy little cabin and wondered if Hiram ever regretted his decision to not leave Bliss.
“I’m just saying that it would be helpful to have someone a little more friendly to law enforcement in the mayor’s office. Hiram was a total radical.”
“Hiram was not a radical,” Laura argued. “He just felt like Nate shouldn’t write tickets every time he wanted to upgrade something at the station house. He was scaring off the tourists.”
“Well, then he should open up the town’s pocketbook. We needed that fridge. The old one was from the sixties. Hiram tried to tell Nate that the sixties was the height of refrigeration technology. Though at least he wasn’t a hypocrite.” Cam put a hand on Hiram’s white, had-to-be-fifty-years-old Frigidaire. “If Rafe was the mayor, we could upgrade the bed in the overnight room. I swear that mattress is so lumpy my back aches for days.”
“I wouldn’t write you a blank check, Cam.” He would be careful with the town funds. He would more likely spend the money on training the citizens in fire containment and prevention. Bliss was surrounded by national forest land and the threat of wildfires was always around. Yes, he would allocate funds to the volunteer firefighters.