Rumor had it, Bruce had been looking for something around Masterson lately.Well, they could confirm he was still there.And that truck—Cal was almost certain it had been the one to run him off the road.He’d been wrong about the green lettering.That was the only answer.
Auggie was calling his name from the porch.He pulled himself to his feet, ignoring how his knee protested.If he didn’t get toher,she’d try to get to him.And he didn’t know if she’d been hurt by her father at all.Didn’t know how long that bastard had been alone with her.
Cal just needed to get to her now.
“I’m good.Bastard just got lucky I’m not on my A game right now, that’s all.”And Cal was going to see Bruce paid for it eventually.“Did he hurt you?”
Then she was meeting him halfway, stumbling off the porch steps without her leg brace, to get to him.
Cal just acted.He wrapped his hands around her waist and just lifted her closer.He scooped her close.And just held her.His hand slipped into the wild red hair and cupped the back of her head.Hell, she had to have been terrified.
Cal had always known she was still afraid of Bruce.Deep down.From the moment he’d learned what that bastard had done to her and her sisters.He’d seen it in her extraordinary eyes that first night at her dinner table.And he had never forgotten.“It’s okay.He’s gone, baby.He’s gone.”
He could feel her shaking against him.Cal wished he could scoop her up and carry her back inside to safety.Protect her from every bad thing that would ever come her way.But he was hurting a bit too much for that right now.
Bruce Tyler was a ham-fisted asshole.He’d gotten in a few lucky punches.Cal wouldn’t deny it.
“I came out of the shower and he was justthere.In my bedroom.Looking through the desk.He was looking for something.”She was just shaking in his arms now.Clinging.Hell, she didn’t know what she was doing to him now.He wished he could track that asshole down and make sure he never hurt anyone again.Cal would do it.For her.In a heartbeat.
There wasn’tanythinghe wouldn’t do for this woman in his arms now.
“We’re going to call Claudia now.Get the cops out here.We’ll figure out what he was up to; I promise.”
“I need to call Em and Junie, tell them to keep the girls in town.I don’t want the girls to know he was here.It will scare my girls too much.”
Cal just nodded.He understood.“Let’s get inside.I’ll call my sister while you call yours.We’ll have them take the girls to Chandler’s and feed them dinner.I’ll call that cousin of yours myself to cover the bill.”And he’d call Cadell, send his brother to sit with Junie and Em.Make suretheywere safe, too.
“Did my father hurt you?”
“Got close a time or two, but I’m good.I’m indestructible, remember?”And she was still shaking in his arms.She was afraid.But Augusta Dawn Tyler would never admit that aloud.Because she had never had someone to make it allbetterfor her before.She’d always had to be the strong one.Well, she hadhimnow.
She just looked up at him.And that was when Calloway Gradyfell.Completely.
He wanted this woman forever, and would do whatever it took to make it happen.
Period.
He’d spend the rest of his life just trying to make the world a better place for the woman in his arms.“I’m okay.”
He lifted her slightly, ignoring the hurts from the wreck and from fighting with a man who outweighed him by fifty pounds, and just kissed her.Tried to show her how he felt.
34
Auggie couldn’t stop shaking.She just couldn’t.She hadn’t stopped from the moment she had seen her father right there.He’d obviously been looking for something.Everyone in town was saying Bruce waslookingfor something.Fletcher’s new fiancée Dylan had said as much.Auggie’s father had been there when Dylan and Fletcher had almost been killed.Her father had burned down the barn he and his cronies or pals or whatever they were had been using to hide drugs.
But Dylan distinctly remembered him looking for a trunk.
Auggie hadn’t heard what had happened to that trunk, or if it even still existed; all she knew was thatClaudiaknew more details.Claudia never told secrets.But that chest…Auggie had no clue anything about it.So why had her father been going through that old desk?
The only answer she had was…the money.The money that had been in it before.
That old desk had been her father’s.After the house had become hers and her sisters, Junie had stripped the desk of the old paint and redone it beautifully, with help from their cousin Kaece.Because her uncle—Kaece’s father—had made it himself when he’d been no more than a teenager.
But there had beenmemoriesassociated with that desk.Her father had liked to hit his daughters next to that desk when they’d beenbad.Junie had refinished it so she coulderasethe ghosts.That was what her sister had said.And there had been…papers…in there.Junie had packed them up years ago and shoved them into a box.They were in the basement now, Auggie thought.
Where all of the old junk and memories were locked.
She hadn’t been down there in a long, long time.Not since she and Junie and Em had moved back to the ranch after each of them had graduated high school.Auggie had lived at the ranch alone for a little while.She had never found anything in this house that would explain what Bruce wanted.
