“Jack’s at the ranch,” I explained. “We’re ridin’ out now.”
Hawkeye didn’t ask whether he was invited. “Good. I was starting to think the kid inherited several hundred acres and forgot California continued south of San Jose.”
Ghost was in the private motorcycle garage beside the clubhouse, wiping grease from his hands after adjusting something near the engine of his bike. He lifted his head as we stepped outside, taking in our determined expressions and Judge’s tablet before he tossed the rag onto a scarred wooden bench.
“We buyin’ a ranch?” Ghost asked, pulling his keys from the back pocket of his jeans. As our sergeant at arms and a former SEAL, he had a gift for sounding casual while already preparing for trouble.
“Making an offer,” Judge corrected. “Try to keep up.”
Ghost gave him a lazy look. “Same thing after you start talkin’.”
Hawkeye swung one leg over his bike, the faintest curve touching his mouth. “Judge could talk a man into selling both kidneys, then bill him for explaining dialysis.”
I secured my helmet and looked between them, letting the humor run because they were brothers who had stood beside me through blood and the kind of work that stripped lies off a man fast.
No family functioned without a little bullshit, which was why Hawkeye could needle me and Judge could sit on whateverjoke he’d been carrying around lately without either of them forgetting why we were riding out.
“We’re not threatening the kid or leaning on him with the patch.” I kick-started my engine. “We explain that a sale to a developer creates problems nobody wants. Then we make a fair offer that saves him years of repairs, taxes, and headaches.”
Hawkeye glanced toward Judge, then back at me. “And if he says no?”
“Then we secure the ridge another way.” The thought of Otis’s land ending up with anyone who saw it as acreage and not history was enough to piss me off before the conversation started. “But he won’t after Judge walks him through the numbers.”
Judge put on his helmet. “This conversation is going to be considerably more interesting than you think.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You enjoying yourself with something I should know?”
“Not yet.”
We rode out through the south, leaving the compound’s controlled perimeter for the narrow road toward the Rutledge property. I’d taken this same route at sixteen on a dirt bike held together by stubbornness.
The weathered Rutledge sign came into view less than ten minutes later. Otis’s truck was gone, but a blue SUV stood near the farmhouse with the rear hatch open and boxes stacked on the wraparound porch. I parked beside it and shut down, but before I could say a word, a raised male voice carried from beyond the house.
The female reply was softer but edged with enough steel that every man around me went still. “You need to leave before the sheriff gets here.”
The purpose of our visit vanished. Another man shouted something we couldn’t make out, followed by the metallicscrape of equipment shifting against concrete, and I was already moving before the echo cleared.
We crossed the yard without a word because years of working together stripped the need for spoken commands. I went straight over the low rise, taking the route that would draw eyes to me first if anyone looked up and decided to make a worse choice than trespassing on Otis’s land. Hawkeye drifted left toward the stacked hay bales, Ghost peeled right beneath the oaks, and Judge stayed far enough back to watch our six.
Three men stood outside the far barn in a loose half circle, their bodies angled toward the woman standing between them and the path back to the house. A compact track loader sat halfway inside the barn behind them, its bucket lowered onto the concrete. The decals had been peeled from the side panels, and the identification plate beneath the cab had been pried away recently enough that bright scratches flashed in the fading light.
The woman holding Otis’s twelve-gauge couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but she’d planted her boots apart and settled the stock against her shoulder exactly how she should. Her finger stayed straight along the trigger guard, her hands trembled just enough to prove she understood the danger, and the barrel never wavered from the largest man’s chest. That steadiness should have been the only thing I noticed, but it wasn’t.
Faded jeans cupped a full, round ass before narrowing around strong thighs, while a cream T-shirt hugged the lush swell of her tits and a waist small enough that my hands would nearly span it. One of Otis’s flannels was tied around her hips, and a thick chestnut braid fell past the sweet flare of her ass.
My cock went hard so fast the denim of my jeans turned painful. My mind supplied a list of filthy things I wanted to do with those curves while I had that braid wrapped around my fist.I wanted her thighs spread around my hips, her soft body pinned beneath mine, and her mouth swollen from my kisses.
Then one of the men shifted, and she turned her head far enough for me to see her face.
The lust got worse, but something else hit beneath it, deeper than simple hunger. She had fair skin flushed pink with anger and fear, a delicate nose, and a mouth that should have been soft under mine instead of compressed into a determined line. Her eyes were an impossible blue, wide beneath dark lashes, and the courage burning through the fear in them landed somewhere behind my ribs with the kind of certainty a man didn’t debate unless he enjoyed lying to himself.
The future settled into place with the quiet finality of a weapon locking into battery. I didn’t question the impulse. Not when there was a recognition so deep my body treated it as fact. This woman belonged to me, and eventually she’d understand that meant I belonged entirely to her too.
I didn’t know her name yet and didn’t give a fuck about the timing, because every protective instinct I possessed had already narrowed down to the men in front of her and the fear they’d put in her eyes. There was a cold metallic taste in my mouth that always came before violence. The idea of one of them putting a hand on her made my fingers tighten with the need to break bones.
The blond one spread his hands like a reasonable man, though his gaze kept darting toward the loader. “Your grandpa let us use the barn whenever we needed it. We’ve been keeping equipment here for years. He knew all about it.”
“My grandfather kept records for bags of nails.” Her voice was steady, but her chest rose and fell too fast beneath that tight shirt. “He didn’t secretly lend his barn to men who remove serial plates from stolen machinery.”
