“Here’s the thing,” he said, wheeling the big truck off the highway onto Arlington Avenue, the last public roadway before they hit Beau Lane, the private road leading up to the farm. “I know you want to have my back. I know that, darlin’, but it’s gonna get bad in there, and I need you to stay in the truck where it’s safe.”
“Safe for who?” she asked, an underbelly of anger showing beneath her calm. “Definitely not for you; not with at least three people in that house who would rather see you dead before giving up squatter’s rights to the farm. If Lynx was here, maybe; but let you go in there alone, I think the fuck not.”
Okay, so maybe there was more anger there than he thought. This wasn’t the empathic-therapy-mode Stormy, this was the ready-to-fight version.
“Plus,” she continued. “I can’t imagine it’ll be safer for me alone in the truck if yourfiancéedecides to pop up.” He glanced over at her and she was looking at him…calmly. “We go in together, just like we agreed.”
“Okay, but let me get something straight. You’re ain’t mad atme,right? You ain’t planning on shooting me in the ass as payback for all the unsavory shit I may have done to get some lovin’, right?”
She threw her head back and laughed, her humor hitting him like brilliant shards of energy, piercing him to the marrow and buoying his spirits. The pressure that had been building since he got out of bed this morning dissipated.
How was he going to hold on to this woman beyond the journey’s end, he wondered as he reached out to brush a thumb over her lips to capture the taste of her smile.
She circled her hands around his and kissed his fingers. “Concerned for you,” she said. “You want to protect me…and Merlee…and people living on the top of a mountain…and strangers…I just want to protect you, keep you safe. We do this just like we agreed. Right?”
“Well, when you put it like that, darlin’, can’t imagine how I saw it any other way.”
Stormy lowered his hand to her lap and leaned forward as the cream and yellow farmhouse came into view.
“Sienna Red,” she said, bemused, making the connection between her nickname and the brownish-red packed earth they rode up on. “Welcome home, Lucas Beaumont.”
A chill passed through him. It was as if the ghost of his grandmother had possessed Stormy. Those were his grandmother’s words said in the exact timber, cadence, and drawl she used each time she welcomed him home.
Big Country slowed the truck when the road transitioned to gray pavement. Merlee had done their grands justice in her maintenance of the two-story farmhouse. The buttercream exterior, red vaulted roofing, the sturdy porch with sage green railing that wrapped around the whole of the right side of the house, the manicured flowering pots, grass, and aged trees made the house look like it should be featured in some country living magazine.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Four generations of Beaumonts have lived in this house, and all except for the sorry sack of manhood that poses as my daddy, every generation has added their own piece to the legacy.”
“I assume Merlee had her veterinary clinic built. What did you add?”
He shut off the engine and opened his door. The heat and humidity had intensified despite the black and gray clouds churning overhead.
“Just for your own knowing,” he said, walking around and opening the door for her. “I helped build and outfit Merlee’s little animal hospital. As far as my own contribution…if you’re lucky, one day I’ll show you.”
As they walked up to the front porch, Big Country rolled his shoulders, staying loose and at the ready. Stormy’s hand hovered just inside the opening of her bag as Big Country used his key, not bothering to knock.
Opening the door wide, it banged against something and knocked it over. He wouldn’t be surprised if that was his family’s version of a swamp-rat alarm system. They obviously didn’t have the codes or the know-how to use the actual alarm system.
Unlike its exterior, the interior of the house showed blatant signs of abuse, typical of just about everything his kin put their grubby hands on. They didn’t care about the hardwood floors or the expensive rugs; grass and dirt and other shit he didn’t want to contemplate was tracked over both. Empty bottles littered just about every surface his eyes could see. The smell of cigarette smoke and unwashed bodies stole inside his nostrils, and so far, they’d only walked three feet inside the entryway.
“I’ll keep the door open,” Stormy muttered. “It smells worse than a stable.”
“That’s because something worse than animals are living here.”
The outdoor air was clean but when the humidity mixed with his family’s dissolution, the smells only seemed to fester.
As he walked around the lower level of the house—living room, dining room, kitchen, bathrooms—his anger grew. They had desecrated his grands’ home with their debauchery and slovenliness.
“It’s only superficial,” Stormy said. “With Merlee, Lynx, and Garret, we can have this cleaned up and livable in no time.”
He headed toward the back of the house where stairs divided the space between the kitchen and the family room, intending to go up there and…
He froze.
At the top of the stairwell, wearing nothing but a black silk and lace slip that barely hit the middle of her thigh, was the woman who’d birthed him.
He swallowed back his stomach’s instinct to void this morning’s breakfast.
