“Good girl.”
Her breath caught, and my cock responded with a hard pulse that made me glad Jacqueline was tucked close enough to hide most of the evidence from everyone except the woman responsible for it. I knew she felt it because her fingers tightened in my cut and the pink in her face deepened even more.
I kept her there while the sirens grew louder, surveying the yard with the immediate threat contained. A white work truck stood beyond the far corner of the barn, KESSLER HAULING printed across both doors in cracked black lettering, and the name struck something in my memory from one of the regional crime summaries that crossed my desk each week. I had a feeling the sheriff would be able to shed more light on it.
But the compact loader inside the barn confirmed this was more organized than three opportunistic assholes trespassing on an empty ranch. Its decals had been stripped, the manufacturer’s plate pried away, and someone had partially ground through the stamped serial number before our arrival interrupted the work.
“This wasn’t just trespassing,” I concluded.
Judge followed my line of sight, his earlier humor fading beneath the colder focus that made him dangerous. “No. They were using the barn as a stash site.”
“Stripping them here,” Hawkeye added, increasing the pressure on the blond man’s arm. “How many machines have you run through this property?”
“Fuck you,” the man ground out.
“Now that was uncalled for.” Hawkeye glanced at me. “He seems reluctant to participate.”
Hawkeye wouldn’t make a move without my permission. Unfortunately, we needed the asshole lucid. “Keep him breathing and able to answer Raines.”
“Plenty of room between those requirements,” Hawkeye replied, but he eased the pressure just enough for the guy to be useful without being merciful.
Jacqueline stared at the altered loader, and anger slowly replaced the relief in her expression. Her lips pressed into a thin line as she absorbed what had been done inside her grandfather’s barn in the weeks after his stroke and subsequent death. She took one step toward the open doors, and I went with her, sliding my hand from her waist to the base of her spine to guide her around the man with the broken wrist without allowing more than an inch of space between us.
She looked up at me, and something in her eyes told me she needed a minute to herself. So I reluctantly released her, watching as she walked to the barn and stopped several feet from the loader to study the fresh gouge carved through the old concrete floor. Her fingertips rose to the weathered doorframe, brushing wood Otis had likely cut and hung himself, and grief softened her face before determination hardened it again. She was looking at a violation committed against something she considered already hers.
Judge saw it too. He adjusted the tablet beneath his arm, more out of habit than intent, but I stopped him before a single word of the sales discussion that brought us there could escape.
“Put it away,” I told him quietly.
His gaze moved to me. “The offer?”
“The ranch isn’t for sale.”
Judge glanced toward Jacqueline, then back at me, and this time there was no lawyer’s game in his expression. Just a brother measuring the decision and already understanding. “She hasn’t said that.”
“She doesn’t need to.”
I watched Jacqueline inspect the damage, her shoulders squared despite the grief still lingering around her mouth. “She drove eight hours with half her life packed into that SUV, walked onto this property alone, and stood in front of those three fuckers with Otis’s shotgun. She’s not here to sell.”
That ended it. Judge locked the tablet and slid it beneath his arm, the planned offer dead because the plan no longer fit the woman standing in front of us.
Hawkeye looked at my hand resting against Jacqueline’s lower back, then met my eyes with dry understanding already settling into place. “Not gonna buy the land?”
I shook my head. “I want the ranch side of the ridge secured tonight.”
“Done.”
Ghost looked toward the tree line, already reassessing approaches, blind spots, and whatever ugly shit might still be hiding in the folds of the property. His gaze touched Jacqueline before settling on me, and this time he didn’t make the joke I knew was sitting on his tongue. He simply inclined his head, brother to brother, accepting what had changed because the club would move with me when it mattered.
“We’ll lock it down,” he replied.
The first sheriff’s cruiser appeared on the distant rise, red and blue lights flashing between the valley oaks as it followed the narrow road toward the barn. Jacqueline turned toward the sound, then moved over to stand beside me. Her body brushed mine before settling closer, the unconscious trust in that small movement hitting almost as hard as the first sight of her had.
I had ridden onto the property intending to buy Otis’s land and close the final weakness in the club’s perimeter, but by the time Sheriff Raines started down the ridge, the ranch was no longer a gap to acquire. It was Jacqueline’s home, and every acreof it had become protected ground. Anyone who came for this ranch—or the woman standing beneath my hand—would have to survive me first.
4
JACQUELINE
