Which was usually no good.
“Well, if it isn’t Bailey Bennett,” Austin grinned, his eyes trailing over my body in a very possessive, uncomfortable way.
“Austin,” I nodded, scooting past him to clock in.
His hand skimmed my ass as I passed, and I spun, glaring harshly at him. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
With a huff of laughter, his eyes turned darker. “I thought you were giving it up to everyone nowadays. At least, that’s the word around town after you let that Parker fucker grope you against his truck.”
“If I believed everything they said around town, I would think those rumors about you assaulting Josie Nash were true. And if I believed that, I’d also have to assume that the only way you got out of that was because your daddy pulled his sway on the town council and somehow got the charges dropped.”
He moved so quickly that I hardly had time to flinch. In an instant, he was in front of me, pressing me against the wall, caging me in with his hands on either side of my head as he leered over me.
“I’d be careful what kind of gossip you spread around town. You never know, one of these days, that gossip may be about you.”
“It already is,” I hissed.
A door squeaked from the garage, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the devil in front of me. One wrong move, and it could mean my life.
“Austin, get the fuck away from her. She has work to do.”
Wyatt’s tone was so calm and unaffected that I nearly yelled at him for allowing his psycho brother anywhere near me. But as it was, his brother backed off with nothing more than a smirk and something dangerous in his eyes that promised so much more if I didn’t get out of there right now.
Skirting past Wyatt, I pulled my coveralls off the hook and took a moment to breathe, still reeling from the threat in Austin’s words.
The garage door opened again, and I hustled to pull on my coveralls and forget the unfortunate encounter.
“If you were smart, you’d stay away from Austin,” Wyatt accused.
“He was atyourgarage. It’s kind of hard to stay away from him when he’s the one who confronted me.”
I jerked my arms through the sleeves and zipped up, marching over to my station when Wyatt suddenly grabbed me by the arm andspun me around. The fierceness on his face was one I had never seen before, only heard about.
And for the first time, a skitter of fear shot down my spine.
“If he comes in here, stay the fuck away from him.”
And on that terrifying note, he stalked away and left me a shaking mess.
7
LIAM
I hoistedthe old wood up over my shoulder and carried it over to the truck, tossing it into the back. Taking a rag out of my pocket, I wiped away the sweat and heat from my face, glad the day was almost over.
When we were operating as a ranch, the hours of the day lasted from sunup to sundown. But times had changed. Our finances hadn’t allowed us to continue as we once had, and now we were nothing more than a destination vacation spot. An attraction to see how the wild west operated, when in reality, they didn’t even get that anymore.
“I’ll take care of this,” Jeff motioned to the truck. “Don’t you have a date to prepare for?”
The vast landscape of mountain peaks rising as high as the sky once held a very different meaning to me. Now…there was almost something sad about our changing surroundings.
“Earth to Liam?” Jeff waved his hand in front of my face, laughing at me. “Man, you really are stuck on Bailey. I thought maybe you would chicken out, but you really are infatuated with her.”
“I’m not infatuated,” I lied, slamming the tailgate shut.
“Sure. That’s why you were staring off into the distance at the mountains.”
“For your information, I was thinking about the ranch. Or, what’s left of it.”
