“Busy,” he replied, calmly.
“Busy as in your name is Busy or busy as in you’re busy?”
It felt like both a stupid question and a sensible one to ask, because all the bikers in the Kings had nicknames. Some made sense right off the bat, while others were a little more ludicrous, at least to me.
“As in, I’m busy and my name isn’t relevant to the situation.” He took another long mouthful of beer.
“And what is the situation?” I asked.
“Keeping you alive.”
I snapped my jaw closed and narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but his answer was not it.
“I might need some help later.”
“With?”
“My animals. They need cleaning out and feed?—”
“Already done.”
I raised an eyebrow and he sighed. It wasn’t just a small sigh either. It was a sigh like I was the most irritating woman he hadever come across and he wanted to squash me like a bug under his heel.
He jutted his head toward the two men over by their bikes. “Got the prospects cleaning out the shit this morning. I fed ‘em and exercised ‘em.”
“Well, not just anyone can?—”
“I can. Used to keep horses back in the day. I know what I’m doing.”
“Fine,” I bit out. “Well?—”
I wasn’t sure what to say next, but I really did not like this man. Not one bit.
He was rude, mean, and made me feel like I was inconveniencing him even though he was on my property and I hadn’t asked him for a damned thing. I had a good mind to tell him so. I wasn’t afraid of him, despite how huge he was. And he really was huge. Maybe the biggest man I had ever seen. But there was something in his eyes that made me not want to annoy him. His eyes were pretty, but they were dead inside. A coldness seeping out like he wouldn’t bat an eyelash at snapping my neck.
I decided to change the conversation.
“Where did Tex go?” I finally built up the courage to ask the real question I wanted answered. Screw this guy. I didn’t actually care about his name anyway; I was just being polite. Though Lord knows why.
The man waited a beat before replying.
“Don’t worry yourself about it, darlin’.” He held out the empty bottle to me and I took it, feeling even more frustrated. He turned around, effectively dismissing me.
“I wasn’t worrying,” I mumbled, heading back inside.
I walked through the house, unsure of what to do with my time. Any other day, there would be a million and one things to do—animals to clean out and feed, some training to do—but today it had all been done. Besides, even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to ride; not with my arm in a sling.
Instead, I went into my father’s office and looked around. I had been putting off clearing out this room for long enough, but since I was effectively put on desk duty, now seemed as good a time as any. I needed answers more than I needed comfort. Now I had to think of a way to help myself, and the only way I could do that would be by trying to follow the paper trail my parents had left behind, because there had to be a paper trail for what they had been doing all those years.
Grabbing a roll of sacks from the kitchen, I opened one up and began going through the piles of neatly organized paperwork, sorting it into trash or keep. My dad, God bless him, had been an organized man. Too organized, looking at the stacks of paid electricity bills going back fifteen years. He’d even kept old newspapers and magazines in a filing system, keeping everything in date order and neatly stacked inside the metal cabinet in the corner.
At the top of the cabinet, cardboard boxes lined the top shelf, and I began pulling them down and checking through them. Behind them was an old metal lockbox and I pulled it down. Of course it was locked, but I already knew where the key was and I ran from the room to the set of keys that I’d hung by the back door. After my parents had died, I’d been bestowed this ranch, this house, and a whole heap of keys that I had no idea what they were for. As the months had gone on, I’d figured them out, one by one, until all that remained was one singular key hanging from my truck’s keyring.
Unlocking the lockbox, I peered inside, looking at more receipts, tax returns, and a couple of envelopes of unpaid bills.
I frowned, knowing how unusual it was for my parents to have not paid a bill. It was a trait they had instilled in me since Iwas a kid—Pay your dues in money or time, never owe anyone anything or they’ll have you for life.
And then, right at the back, there was a thick brown envelope with my father’s handwriting on it that said, “for Rowan. For emergencies only.”
