Chapter Nine
Brooke couldn’t imagine getting back to Zeke’s ranch before he woke up. She’d have to explain taking his truck, where she’d gone, what she’d been doing.
Or you could tell him to butt out.
She snorted. Yeah, that’d work. Well, she’d just have to lie. As much as she didn’t like the idea, telling him she’d been out doing errands wasn’t a full lie.
She just had to know the facts before she could proceed. And he’d want to proceed with no facts. She needed data. He just went on instinct. This was too . . . big for that. Too personal. Too hers.
This whole morning had been nothing but instinct, and it was already a disaster.
When she turned into the drive of Zeke’s ranch, she slowed his truck along the drive because someone was in front of the house. Someone was outside, playing fetch with the dog.
At first, Brooke could make out the shape of what was a woman with dark hair. Something a little too close to hot twisting jealousy poked her right in the chest. That was ridiculous. Zeke had made it clear he hadn’t been seeing anyone.
Not that it mattered.
Something she could fully assure herself of when she finally got close enough to recognize the woman as Zeke’s sister. Maybe she was there to take Viola back? Brooke hadn’t left the dog outside this morning. That meant Zeke was awake, but still inside, and . . .
Now she’d have to explain her disappearance to both of them. That was what she got for going on instinct and running out of the house this morning. If she’d really thought it through, planned it out, been careful, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
Data, examination and the careful drawing of conclusions was always the answer. Go figure, proximity to Zeke once again left her making all the wrong choices.
She parked the truck and got out, forcing herself to smile at Carlyle. “Good morning.”
“Hey. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d check in on Viola.”
She gestured at the prancing dog. Brooke frowned though. There was no car, no truck. How had Carlyle gotten here?
“How’s she working out for you?”
Carlyle asked as Viola eagerly put her head under Brooke’s hand in greeting.
“She’s great,”
Brooke replied with feeling. She gave Viola a pat. She did really enjoy having the dog around, not that she could let herself get used to it.
“Good.”
Carlyle nodded and an awkward silence followed while Carlyle fidgeted. Stepping from side to side, rocking back on her heels, decidedly not leaving or saying anything else.
Until she finally blurted, “I don’t know why my brother would call me out here, because he knows I can’t keep my mouth shut. What’s the deal with you two?”
Brooke blinked. “Deal?”
“Yeah, like it’s all tense and weird between you two, or was before. Is it because you two knew each other before? When he was doing his secret spy stuff. That’s how he got a forensic whatever you are to come out here so quick when they found . . .”
She paused and wrinkled her nose. “I never know what to call it, considering it was my fiancé’s parents.”
Right, because the connections here in Sunrise and Bent County were complex and complicated. Luckily, Brooke didn’t have to respond to whatever Carlyle was trying to get at because a very old not-in-good-shape car roared up the drive.
Brooke startled, but she noticed Carlyle didn’t so much as blink. Brooke might have grabbed for Carlyle, suggested they run, because clearly this was danger come calling, except she quickly realized Zeke was the driver.
Uh-oh.
The car squealed to a stop a little ways behind his truck, and he was out almost before the entire vehicle had stopped. He marched over to them, pointing at Carlyle, and, for a second, Brooke figured that was who he was mad at.
“Leave,”
he said between clenched teeth to his sister, handing her off the keys he’d had in his hand.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t mad at Carlyle. She didn’t know why he was mad like this at her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him mad like this. Usually he was a controlled kind of mad. Icy.
This was . . . not ice.
Carlyle held up her hands in mock surrender and maybe she was trying not to grin, but Brooke didn’t think she was trying that hard.
“And miss the show?”
she asked Zeke.
He made a noise, close to a growl, which had Carlyle laughing and snatching the keys from him before moving for the old car. She paused next to Brooke though. “Oh, Brooke, he’s got it bad. I hope you twist the knife.”
Brooke wasn’t sure she understood Carlyle’s meaning, but then again, she wasn’t sure Carlyle understood what was really going on here.
And it didn’t matter, because now she had to deal with angry Zeke, which didn’t seem fair. “I cannot fathom why you’re this angry,”
Brooke said, trying to sound bored and calm. “I just borrowed your truck for a quick errand.”
“An errand or a secret?”
he demanded.
She wasn’t sure how he could see through her so easily, and she might have felt guilty, except he’d been somewhere.
“Where were you?”
“Well, once I realized my truck was gone, I borrowed one of my brother’s cars and drove to your rental, because I figured you were headed out to deal with your brother very purposefully without me.”
It hadn’t even occurred to her to go talk to Royal until she had more information. Until she had the facts.
“You didn’t go there at all, did you?”
He seemed so hurt by that, when it wasn’t like she’d lied to him and told him she had or was going to. That was just some assumption he’d made.
“No,”
she replied. “I just had an errand to run.”
She wasn’t going to explain herself. She didn’t have to. She wasn’t in danger anymore. Not from the thing he thought she was anyway. And before she introduced any new possibilities, she had to know . . .
She had to know. So she could protect herself first and, if after that, she needed his help, maybe she’d ask for it. But she’d have the data first, damn it. No more instincts for her. Those had only led her astray.
And she could ask for his help, she could accept his help, but she could not depend on him again. On anyone again. Things went best when she only depended on herself.
The man in front of her, case in point. Standing there looking like . . . like she’d never seen him. Because this was a bit like a man . . . holding on by a thread. When he had always, always, been in complete and utter control.
She didn’t like it, but it did make her feel sorry for him. It made her want to soothe.
“Zeke.”
She moved forward, not quite sure what she was going to do, just following that need inside her. One she’d just seconds ago been telling herself she wouldn’t listen to.
But Zeke shook his head, a nonverbal stay back. Because he was getting himself under control or trying to.
“What was your brother in jail for?”
he asked quietly and calmly.
The question made little sense in the grand scheme of things. What was he getting at? What could that have to do with anything?
Since she couldn’t fathom where he was going with this, she hedged. Because she knew if she tried to defend Royal, it would only make him look more guilty. “A few different charges.”
“List them, Brooke.”
She didn’t have to. She didn’t. But she just . . . couldn’t stop herself. “Do you remember the child trafficking case in the Sons that North Star was part of stopping? You would have been too new to be on the team that dealt with it, but I think you were with North Star by then.”
“South Dakota, right? Shay and Cody Wyatt leading the charge?”
She nodded. She didn’t know much about it herself. She just remembered Betty Wagner, North Star’s resident doctor and one of Brooke’s close friends at North Star, being pretty shaken up by the findings.
“What does that have to do with your brother’s jail time, Brooke?”
“Royal was arrested just a little before that. On a murder charge. There was a fight with another Sons’s member, and the other man died. The other man who’d been hurting those girls. But the Sons knew how to pick and choose who it got out of legal trouble. How to make sure the ones they saw as traitors saw the inside of a cell.”
“You’re saying a member of the Sons of the Badlands was arrested and it wasn’t fair? The gang member was innocent?”
She hated how ridiculous he made it sound, because her brother had been a member of the Sons at that point. She knew how na?ve it sounded to believe he was in there to try and stop some of the things they’d seen growing up, yet she couldn’t help but hope her brother’s motivations had been at least partly honorable.
And if she was wrong . . . well, so be it.
This was why she hadn’t wanted to tell Zeke about it. Because she knew how it sounded. She also knew her brother, or tried to tell herself she did. He could find his own trouble, certainly, but he wasn’t a murderer.
She wouldn’t let herself believe he was a murderer as long as there was no concrete proof. She knew the case, thanks to her North Star connections at the time. It had been stacked against Royal from the start, with the help of too many people who’d ended up having Sons ties.
“Why do you think Granger agreed to help me with the funds to hire a lawyer?”
she asked Zeke instead. Because everyone respected Granger, but some of the younger guys had looked up to him like a father figure.
Just like she had.
“He has a soft spot for you.”
Brooke rolled her eyes. Granger had a soft spot for any of the people who came into North Star because they had been some kind of victim of the Sons of the Badlands. But he was also a stickler for right and wrong. “Because he knew as well as I did that Royal was in jail for trying to stop something. And I know you won’t believe that—”
“Did Granger believe it?”
“Yes. After he looked through the case, he came to believe it.”
Maybe she’d always wondered if he’d said that just to make her feel better, but she wasn’t about to admit that to Zeke.
“Then I believe it.”
She let out a long breath, not quite sure how that just took all the wind out of her sails. Never in a million years had she expected it to be that easy, but she should have known. For all of them, Granger MacMillan had been and maybe even still was a kind of hero figure. No one wanted to think about him being wrong.
“I don’t know how Royal feels about the charge, the trial, his jail time. I don’t know what he’d say if I asked about it. I only know that all the evidence pointed to Royal protecting one of those girls. But the Sons was stronger back then, had more hands in legal pockets. And the legal system was eager to have any of them behind bars—rightfully so. I’ve always just been grateful the Sons got him arrested rather than kill him.”
Brooke shuddered to think about how easily that psychotic cult leader could have just ended Royal’s life and that’s all she would have ever known. A life cut short.
She’d never know if Royal alive was their father’s sad attempt to protect him, or if there was more to it. It didn’t matter.
Royal was alive, and now he was here. Talking about the danger she might be in from their father. Talking to Zeke apparently. “Why did you ask me that?”
“He told me to look up why he was in jail.”
Brooke didn’t understand why her brother would do that, but that was nothing new. The men in her life continued to be obnoxious, ridiculous mysteries.
“Brooke, how am I going to protect you if you run off and never tell me the truth?”
he asked, sounding pained. Hurt. Not mad at all. Just exasperated, like she was making things hard on him.
That made her feel small, and a bit like running away for good. “I’m not your burden, Zeke.”
She wouldn’t be anyone’s burden ever again. “If Royal has been the one following me, I don’t need protecting the way I thought I did.”
Zeke was going about this all wrong. He knew that. He knew how touchy she was about burdens, even if she didn’t. “You’ll never be a burden to me, Brooke.”
And it was scary just how true that was. “Wanting to protect you is no burden.”
“You don’t need to,”
she said, refusing to believe him. Clearly. “Royal is not a threat to me, and it appears there are no other threats at the moment,”
she returned. As if choosing each word carefully. As if placating a small child who didn’t understand complex thoughts.
Zeke didn’t groan out loud, though he considered it. But he’d gotten his blazing anger under control. Or close, anyway.
Royal had been the one to say she wasn’t safe this morning. Maybe she believed she was safe now, and maybe he should let her believe that, but . . . something didn’t add up. Because she had been somewhere.
“Where did you go this morning, Brooke?”
She didn’t look away from him. She didn’t try to lie—he would have seen through that easily enough. She just shook her head. “It’s none of your business.”
He nodded, that tenuous grasp on control barely holding on by a thread. She was right. It was none of his business. She didn’t want him to keep her safe. She didn’t want to be safe. Fine.
“It’s not some personal insult, Zeke. It’s just not about you.”
She didn’t say that with any bite. No imperious looks. She was trying to be reasonable.
“Must be nice,”
he muttered, because he didn’t know how to divorce her from anything he was feeling, doing. He didn’t know how to look at her and say anything was not about her.
She reached out, touched his arm. “Zeke.”
He knew she was going to try to soothe or comfort him. And, no. He wasn’t letting her do that thing she did. Where she smoothed everything over because she hated people to be upset. Where she tried to make everything okay because she’d been failed by so many adults growing up she thought it was her sworn duty to make sure everyone around her was okay. Down to the bones she excavated everywhere she went.
But when she looked up at him with those sympathetic blue eyes, when she touched his arm like she could brush away this conflicting, painful fight inside him, he found he didn’t want to be happy. He didn’t want to be soothed, and he didn’t want her to feel like that was her responsibility.
But he did want something.
Her. And he kept stepping away from that. For her own good and for his. But maybe . . . There was no good. Only messy pain she couldn’t fix with a soothing touch or his name said in soft, compassionate tones.
Maybe there was only breaking down that wall. That’s how he’d dealt with this conflict inside him last time. Burned it all down. So . . .
“To hell with it,”
he muttered. None of his business. Wrong person, wrong time, wrong everything, and still he’d spent the past four years haunted by the memory of a woman he’d set aside.
Because of this. The way she broke down his walls, defenses. Crumbled his control without even trying. He curled his hand around her head and pulled her in, crashing his mouth to hers.
She didn’t even have the good sense to stiffen or to push him away. She melted to him on some sigh that seemed to say finally. Or maybe that was just him.
Finally. Finally. Finally. Four years had been too long without the taste of her, the feel of her, just her. And wasn’t that what made everything these past few days so difficult? He knew she was in trouble, but all he wanted was her.
The kiss was everything it had always been. That wild heat. That sweet comfort. Mixed up in one perfect package that had never made any sense to him. Because she felt like coming home, when he’d never had one of those in the first place. Never wanted one.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and it could have easily been four years ago. When they were together. When he’d been stupid enough to think he could control what was happening. When the idea of a girlfriend had been kind of novel, with the potential to be exactly what he wanted.
And nothing he didn’t.
Remembering that lack of control she brought out in him had him easing back. He hadn’t meant to kiss her. He hadn’t meant to get angry. He hadn’t meant any of this, and she was the only person in his whole life who’d ever mixed him up this way.
She blinked at him, arms still looped around his neck, eyes cloudy with desire and confusion and hell. There’d been no point to this, he supposed, but wasn’t about to say that.
“It’s the same,”
he said, his voice rough but certain. Because he wouldn’t let her deny that like she did with the truth. No talk of burdens, because this had never been a burden.
It had been a wrecking ball.
“It’s damn well the same, and I’m tired of pretending like it’s not.”
With that, he turned and stalked away. Because he couldn’t just stand there and keep pretending, and that’s what she wanted. To pretend everything was fine, to pretend that kiss didn’t mean anything—that he didn’t mean anything.
And, hell, he was used to that, wasn’t he?