Destry Read online

  “What’s your name?” I asked in a gruff voice.

  “Wesley Longstone Junior,” he said with his nose in the air.

  Austin snickered but I pushed on. “How long have you been with Amelia?” I asked through gritted teeth, dreading the next words that came from his mouth. She’d lied to me; she had a fucking fiancée!

  “Eight years or so,” he said smugly, taking a stance that under normal circumstances would have been threatening, but this guy was as skinny as a twig and didn’t look like the type to get his suit dirty trading blows.

  “Fuckin’ kidding me,” Austin roared. Braxton had stayed silent through the entire exchange, simply standing by me in the event I needed him. I dropped my arms by my side and clenched my fists. Not one to show weakness, I turned to my right and walked off toward the barn without a sound. I could hear their voices as I went, but I didn’t care enough to stop. The boys would deal with the jackass. I needed to find a way to break through the searing pain in my chest.

  I pushed into Gypsy’s stall and sunk down onto the straw that lined the floor. I dropped my head into my hands and pulled my knee up leaning my elbow on it.

  What felt like a few moments later, Gypsy came over and nudged me with her head. She huffed at me so I rubbed her nose and pulled myself up. Being completely comfortable with each other, I passed up the saddle, threw my leg over her and took the reins. Before I knew it, we were flying across the green grass with the wind blowing past us, her muscles stretching out as we rode for nowhere.

  Why didn’t I realize this? She’d never spoken of her past; she never admitted anything about where she had come from? Why the fuck hadn’t I been suspicious about how easily she just agreed to stay? Who does that? Someone with a fucked up secret, that’s who.

  “I’m such a fucking dumbass!” I cursed out loud, my voice lost in the wind. Gypsy knew what I needed and kept on pushing.

  I had never felt this way about anyone before, not even with my ex. I saw a life with her. I saw us together for as long as I could imagine. I saw her completely owning the heart that she had now completely destroyed. I pulled back on the reigns and slowed Gypsy down, eventually bringing her to a stop by the water. After I hopped down off her, I tied her to the closest tree and paced back and forth, finally letting my rage and hurt get the better of me. I punched the tree I had stopped near.

  “Fuck! Mother of fuck!” I yelled when I realized I’d just done some damage to my hand. “Fucking why?” I sunk down against the old elm “Why her? Of all the girls, why’d I have to go and fall for a lying city girl? Again.”

  “Because you’re a glutton for punishment and you didn’t have the good sense to fucking learn a lesson the first time.”

  I pulled my car into my street after hours of non-stop driving; I wanted this over with as quickly as possible. I knew it was going to take a good few days to have everything taken care of, but I wanted to get it all moving so I could get back to Luling and my cowboy. I checked my phone again as I pulled into the drive of the oppressive house I had once called home, still nothing; I hadn’t heard from Destry for hours.

  I turned the car off and shot out a quick message letting him know I’d made it okay. I pushed out of the car and walked up the pathway toward the front door, noticing not a flower was out of place. Stepping through the front door, I could feel it almost instantly: the suffocating feeling I’d been living with all my life. I’d left that feeling behind two weeks ago and I intended to leave it behind for good this time. I wasn’t ever coming back here once my finances were sorted out.

  I slipped the house keys off my keyring and put them in the basket by the door. I then climbed the stairs and packed all my belongings into three suitcases and a box before lugging them down to my car. I wasn’t at all surprised to find Wesley wasn’t there, seeing as he would be at the office until almost dusk. I was glad I’d been able to get all of that done while he wasn’t there. I didn’t have anything I wanted to say to the piece-of-shit scumbag. I picked up my phone again to check for a reply. When I had gone to town to get my car, I had picked up a new cell phone but kept my old number. Just as I was about to pocket it, it started to ring.

  “Mother,” I answered with the simple word that didn’t describe her at all.

  “Amelia, darling. Juliet just called me and told me she’d seen you driving through town. Is it true? Have you come to your senses and come back to dear Wesley?”

  “I’m in town. I’m just here to collect my things,” I told her matter-of-factly.

  “Don’t be rash. Your sister is terribly sorry for what happened,” she said with a slight slur to her voice. Some things never changed; it was three in the afternoon and she was well on her way to being wasted.

  “Rash?” I breathed. “I’m far from being rash, Mother,” I snipped at her.

  “Dinner tonight with Daddy and me at the house. 7pm. Don’t be late.” With that, she hung up and the line went dead. I’d like to have said I wasn’t planning on going but I had a few things I wanted to say to them before I left again, and dinner was as good a time as any.

  I drove down the road and booked into a hotel, and then made a few phone calls to start closing down my joint bank accounts. Before I knew it, I was walking up the front steps of my parents’ elaborate home. Our long time butler answered the door as I lifted my hand to knock. Lord knew you didn’t ever enter your childhood home without a formal introduction.

  “Amelia, darling. Oh, you couldn’t find the time to make yourself look somewhat respectable?” Mother curled her nose up when she took in my jeans, sweater and pointed-toe boots.

  “Nice to see you too, Mother,” I said sarcastically. The look on her face was absolutely priceless. I hadn’t spoken out of line since the day I had told my parents I didn’t want to marry a man I didn’t love.

  “Well, I never. You not only look a fright, but I see you’ve lost all your well taught manners too.” She tipped back the near empty martini glass in her hand and turned to walk toward the dining room.

  I rolled my eyes and groaned. Tonight was going to be a long-assed night but I sure as hell wasn’t going to find my manners. My dear parents were about to meet the real Amelia. The one who had almost drowned and lost herself under their rules and etiquette.

  “Amelia, darling.” My father walked into the room fully dressed in suit and tie. Mother turned her nose up and held her empty glass out to be taken and refilled by the help.

  “Daddy.” I nodded and sat at my usual seat at the table noticing with relief there were only three place settings, meaning no Nikki.

  “I’m glad to see you’ve come to your senses.” Daddy nodded with approval and picked up his scotch.

  “I’m not staying,” I told them defiantly. Daddy’s head whipped up and he pinned me with a glare that would make grown men quiver in there designer shoes.

  “I’m certain I misheard you, Amelia,” he snapped. Like hell he did. I wasn’t going to be the prim and proper little girl anymore.

  “No, you didn’t. I’m not staying. I’m just in town to collect my belongings and cash in my inheritance,” I said with pride. I had been trained to do as I was told for as long as I could remember, but that want inside of me was finally coming to the surface and I was being nobody’s doormat anymore. When my grandfather had passed, he’d left me some money. I knew it was there; I’d just never had the need to touch it before now. He was a hard man to understand, my grandfather, but we’d had a bond like I hadn’t had with Daddy. Had he been here now, he would have stood by my decision. I knew that much. Daddy was a signature to the money. I still wasn’t sure how that had happened or why, but I was going to find out and put a stop to it.

  “Surely, you can see past one small discretion and secure your marriage. Wesley is a fine young man of good standing.”

  “Wesley is a sleazy scumbag who can jack off with sandpaper,” I said chirpily. My sass was now at the forefront, and I planned on getting my point across.

  “Amelia! I sh
all not tolerate any of this disrespectful behavior from you,” he demanded. Mother simply sat drinking her martini. Typical, don’t speak unless spoken to. I could finally see her for who she really was. A shallow shell of a person.

  “Disrespectful? You want to know what’s disrespectful? Screwing your sister’s fiancé six ways from Sunday on her Egyptian sheets! That’s damn disrespectful.” I laughed harshly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Amelia.” He really wasn’t grasping my point here, so I decided to be blunt and straight to the point.

  “I never wanted to marry that asshat. I was only agreeable because it was expected, and now I don’t give a flying fuck what is expected of me. I’m happy now, Daddy, and if you aren’t okay with that, then that’s on you.” Both my parents gasped loudly at my sudden use of the English language and all the colorful words I’d spurted.

  Daddy smiled cruelly and hit me with his nasty words. “That country hick did this to you. But rest assured, by now he won’t be waiting for you.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” It suddenly registered that he shouldn’t know about any country anybody, and he was clearly referring to Destry.

  “Oh, that’s right, darling. Wesley paid your cowboy a little visit this morning. He went out there to talk some sense into you, but fortunately you weren’t there so he’s filled this character in on your current engagement and responsibilities.”

  My stomach dropped and my head became light and fuzzy. Wesley had been out to the ranch after I left? I hadn’t told Destry about my past, but I’d sworn to myself he would know all of it when I went back.

  “Now, you have no choice. You have to come back to Wesley. He’ll be the only one willing to marry you.” I’d never had real respect for my father after growing up and seeing how he treated people, but this was disgusting behavior at its finest. “You will go home now and unpack your belongings. You will ignore the child Wesley and your sister have created, and you will go about living as the perfect wife.” He sat back and downed the last mouthful of his scotch. “It wouldn’t look good for us if he moved from one sister to the other.”

  Child? What? My sister was pregnant? By my ex fiancé? Holy fuck no!

  “Like fuck I will!” I yelled, blood was roaring in my ears; I was furious. The fact he thought I would just look past that disgusted me. Simply, the fact that he was demanding I live that life, made me want to slap him. “Go and play Barbie with your precious whore of a daughter. I’m done here.”

  I stood and pushed my chair back roughly. Not even a few strides from the table he bellowed, “You walk out of this house and you can kiss your inheritance goodbye, young lady. You’ll be cut off.”

  I stopped, spun around and looked at him like the trash he was. “Go to hell! I don’t want your money or anything else from any of you. Keep your shallow worthless wife, money hungry skank of a daughter and the piece-of-shit that knocked her up. Y’all deserve each other.” With that, I spun on my heel and walked to the door noticing the butler trying to hide a smirk. I walked out of my childhood home and slammed the door behind me.

  How dare they! Loving parents hadn’t raised me; that much I was already at peace with, but what just went down was more than even I could accept. I pulled my cell phone out of my back pocket and scrolled down to Destry’s number. My finger hovered over the screen for a second before I pushed down and pulled the phone up to my ear.

  I just hoped I could salvage any damage Wesley has caused. I was going to wring that asshole’s neck if I ever saw him again.

  I slid into my car with my cell still pressed to my ear and nothing. It rang out. I hit call again, and this time it went directly to voicemail. “Destry, call me back please. I need to speak with you,” I left a short message and slid my phone into my back pocket.

  “Shit,” I cursed under my breath.

  I put my car into drive and sped off out of the perfectly paved driveway, heading back to Luling. I wished I’d had time to do a big burnout across their manicured lawn or at least run down a few of the prized rose bushes that lined the property, but I wasn’t waiting any longer. Destry was the only thing on my mind at that moment. He was without a doubt more important to me than hanging around to tell the lowlife people who wanted to control me, just what I thought of them. As far as my finances went, I had whatever was in my purse and I would have to stop and drain my cards at the closest ATM. That’d have to get me through until I could get a lawyer and find out what I needed to do to release the hefty inheritance my grandfather had left me.

  I drove as fast as I could, all the while gripping my steering wheel until my knuckles were white. My stomach was in knots and I had a feeling I’d just screwed up the only good thing I’d found in my life, by not being open and honest.

  “You’re an idiot, Amelia!” I cursed myself. I pulled into a gas station and filled my car up then used the ATM to withdraw the last of my accessible money. That plus the five-thousand dollars wasn’t going to get me far. I would have to be very careful with it and most likely find a job somewhere and fast. That was the least of my concern though. I jumped back into my car and threw my purse onto the passenger’s seat then sped off down the interstate, praying to God, I had what it took to fix this.

  I looked at my cell again and deleted the twelve more missed calls. “You’re the cliché bitch who just had his balls ripped off and handed to him, right now.” Austin laughed from beside me with a pointed look at my busted up hand.

  “Well, I’ve been fucking a chick who is engaged, so I’m kinda pissed,” I hissed at him.

  “I knew you were banging her!” he said with far too much excitement.

  With a roll of my eyes, I told him, “You didn’t have to come. I could have brought myself in.”

  “D, you can barely hold your cell when you check it every five minutes.” He was such a smartass.

  “She keeps calling. I’m not answering it. She knows she’s been caught in her bullshit lies. I told her not to lie to me,” I said in a hushed whisper.

  “You sure she was lying?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. I scrunched my face up and stared at him like he’d lost his damn mind. One too many kicks to the head I thought. “Just sayin’, brother. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  Before I could tell him to give it a rest, the doctor came out and called my name. I shuffled over to him and walked into the double doors.

  I was bone-ass tired. My hand hurt like a bitch and now I was sitting in a hospital so Ellie would shut up about my hand that wasn’t even broken.

  Could it be true? Was I jumping to hasty conclusions without knowing the facts? Fuck Austin and his Doctor Phil bullshit. I didn’t even listen to the doctor as he spoke; my mind was focused completely on the images of Amelia floating around in my head along with the words ‘she is my fiancée. What the fuck was I meant to do?

  The doc checked me out and did unnecessary x-rays just to tell me what I already knew. My hand wasn’t broken, just ripped up and bruised. The nurse came in and pulled the pieces of embedded bark out of it, and then cleaned me up and applied some shit smelling cream and a bandage before sending us on our way.

  “What’re you going to do when she shows back up?” Austin asked me from behind the wheel on the way back to the ranch.

  “I doubt she will. We’ve seen the last of Amelia. She got caught. I’ll be surprised if she shows her face around here again.” Even though she’d hurt me, the idea of never seeing her again was like salt in a wound. I couldn’t deal with that so I threw up my walls and stared out the window, blocking out all thoughts of her.

  “She’ll be back,” Austin said vehemently. Austin liked her. I understood that, and maybe it was just concern for me, but he was completely invested in his assumption that she was coming back. Me, however, I wasn’t so sure.

  I ignored him and pulled my hat down over my face, closing my eyes and building that all too familiar fortress around my heart.

  “What the fuck?” Austin hissed. I looked up t
o find an enormous Winnebago parked in front of the house. “Who the hell is driving that thing?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” We pulled up beside the massive camper and got out of Austin’s truck. We both checked out the big hunk of metal as we passed it before making our way upstairs and inside. It occurred to me before, when I heard Grams and Gramps’ voices, that they’d planned on buying one, but I hadn’t thought they meant this soon. Something wasn’t quite right with the picture in front of me. Before I made it to the dining room, Gramps met me in the hallway.

  “Walk with me, boy.” He nodded to the front door and I followed after him. “We need to have a talk you and me.”

  Something was definitely up. “Everything okay, gramps?” I asked when we reached the barn. Gypsy poked her head out of her stall and neighed when Gramps picked up a carrot and fed it to her.

  “Pull up a seat. We’ll be here a while,” Gramps instructed, and then did exactly that.

  The moment us kids moved in with Gramps and Grams, we lived a regimented life. We woke at the same time; we did our chores; we did our homework; we ate dinner at the same time and then we worked the same times every day. To some, it would be hell, but to us, it had given us something to focus on while our world changed so drastically. When Gramps said we needed to talk, I knew it was serious. I took a seat on the bale of hay opposite him, and suddenly, exhaustion hit me. His eyes bounced to my bandaged hand and he shook his head slightly.

  “Where’s the pretty girl?”

  “She left town.” His eyes narrowed in at me and I knew I couldn’t lie to this man.

  “She went back to the city to finalize some things.”

  “Well, she will be moving in at the perfect time then.”

  “She won’t be coming back Gramps. She has a fiancé back in the city, who I didn’t know about.” Just saying that word made me ill. The girl, who had barged into my life, turned it on its tail and completely overtaken my heart, had a fucking fiancé. I dropped my head into my hands, flinching at the contact with my bandaged hand, and sighed deeply. Every time I closed my eyes, images of her flooded my mind. I remembered the way she tasted, the sweet noises she made when I was balls deep in her, and the look that would take over her eyes when I knew she was thinking about us. The way she glistened with sweat when she worked, the way her hair shone in the moonlight and the way her laugh made me want to fall to my knees and worship her for the rest of his life were memories difficult to escape. They were now just painful memories.