Page 57 of Risking it for the Cowboy

Her nape prickled. “No…”

Bang! Bang! Bang! pounded the front door. Artex’s thundering bark tore the soundwaves as he bolted to the gate and ran along the privacy fencing.

“Charlize!” Jason’s voice snarled.

She was going to be sick. How was he here? She’d seen him taken to the ground last night. She’d heard the officers arresting him.

“Momma,” Daisy whimpered on a thread. “Why’s he here? I thought he went to jail.”

And the glint in Thaddeus’s eyes turned to daggers. He swung toward the house like a bulldog.

Chapter Seventeen

Jail? What the…

“Charlize!” thundered that voice. “You can’t keep me from my girl! I swear to God you better open this fucking door and tell me who the hell’s truck this is in your driveway!”

T.R. snagged Daisy down from the ladder as Charlize dragged Daisy to her belly and bundled her head in her arms as if she could block out the angry ranting and incessant barking simply by covering her ears.

Jason Thompson.

The prick was about to eat some dirt if he didn’t watch his mouth around the girl when … He gripped Charlie’s ashen face, angling her toward him, took in fear.

Just like two weeks ago. She was terrified that morning, and I accused her of cheating on a man…

Daisy hadn’t just been coming home from a sleepover. His fingers sifting into the base of her sunshine hair.

“Who is he?” he rumbled darkly, dipping his head and leveling his eyes with hers, needing to know the full truth in his bones before he blazed to the front door and put the man in his place.

Charlize’s lips tremored with something she didn’t want to admit, but a fight lit in her gorgeous jade eyes as she lifted her chin.

“You can’t be here,” she breathed.

“Too late.” Naw, not this time. This was the same shit she’d pulled then.

She panicked. “You have to go; you have to—”

“His. Name.”

She froze at his icy demand and the demons that taunted the edge of his words and, Christ, he willed his tone to gentle because he didn’t want her scared of him, too, even if she’d have every right to be if she knew what he was capable of.

She inhaled deeply, exhaled, then breathed. “Daisy’s dad. My ex. He’s the one who called that … morning. Jason.”

He’d remembered all too well that blood-curdling sickness that had assaulted him that morning when he’d passed Jason while leaving here, wondering why that asshole was close by.

She’d kicked him out that morning because of this jealous asshole who tormented her.

I’m done chasing cute boys in a band. Well, Jason didn’t get to have any say in Charlie’s life anymore if he was an ex. He’d clearly been as shitty of a husband as he’d been a business partner to T.R. How in the hell did someone wield that much control over another unless he’d taught her to be … scared of him.

“But the police took him away last night,” Daisy continued, looking up at her mom while Charlie’s arms torqued around her and the banging and barking continued. “I saw them.”

Cops? Okay, there’d clearly been more to Charlie’s bad night besides Daisy almost being trampled.

“Get her up to her room,” T.R. growled. “I’ll go have a chat with him.”

His eyes traveled over her face, to the age that seemed to suddenly linger on her otherwise unblemished skin. There was no reason such secrets ought to lurk within her eyes. What was she hiding?

“You don’t have to fight this battle, Thaddeus,” she said.