Chapter 12
MOLLY
Instead of taking me back to bed like I assumed–and hoped–Colt drove us into town to meet his brother, Trig, at the local diner for breakfast, leaving my car in his driveway.
Since I only had the dirty scrubs from the day before, we went to my apartment first. On the ride to the diner, I asked about his family.
“You said you have eight siblings. Is Trig older or younger?”
Colt had one hand set casually on the steering wheel, the other resting on my left thigh. I could feel the heat of his palm through my pants.
“He’s the oldest. Besides Zeb being away at college, we all live in Devil’s Ditch. My house is on the family ranch, but it’s big enough where we all have places, like I mentioned.”
“It’s so different here,” I commented, watching the snow covered prairie go by. “My childhood home had a palm tree in the front yard. I didn’t see snow until I went away to college.”
“Oh? California?”
“Florida.”
“I got a new bike for Christmas one year and couldn’t ride it for five months,” he commented, smiling.
“I can imagine. The snow last week was insane.”
Colt parked beside a few other pickups in the restaurant’s lot.
“Is it just Trig?”
“Trig and his new wife, Ellie. Lance Mann was her father. My sister Lainey and brother Buck are the two who run the ranch along with my parents, so I doubt they’ll be here.
The others have other jobs. Cam’s a vet, for example.
Shep’s the one who towed your car to my place. Like I said, Zeb’s away at school.”
I looked down at myself, dressed in jeans and a gray turtleneck and pink puffy coat. It wasn’t what I would have worn if I’d known we were meeting a bunch of his family. “Um, this is pretty quick.”
He cut the engine and turned to me. “What is?”
“Us. Meeting family.”
“We’re close. Besides, I want them to meet my girl.”
My girl.
He’d said that before. Used the word forever. While I was falling hard and fast for a man I knew barely anything about besides his abilities in bed and that he liked good coffee, it was dangerous.
If it’d only been… hell, not even a day, then how invested would I feel in him after a week? A month? Liking his family, too?
“Colt,” I whispered.
“What is it, pretty girl?” His thumb slid back and forth across my thigh.
“This is moving really fast.”
“Damned right, it is.”
“Don’t you want to get to know me some more, like date, before I meet your family?” I paused, panicked. “Your parents aren’t in there, are they?”
He didn’t seem fazed by my hesitations. “Nah, doubtful. But they’d understand what’s between us. Pops knew Ma was the one for him at a wedding. Did I mention that Trig met Ellie last week and they’re married now?”
No, he did not. “Last week? That’s crazy!”
He shrugged. Today, he had on a dark blue plaid flannel and jeans. Stetson on the console between us. How could he be so… confident about us? About me? If he knew the extent of my troubles, he’d probably run away. No, I knew he would when he learned the full extent of Missy’s madness.
“I saw you at the rodeo and that was it,” he explained. “I crooked my finger and you came to me.”
I blushed, remembering how bold I’d been. He was right, I’d been right there with him. Always seemed to be.
I glanced down and watched his thumb move. “It’s just… I’m not close with my family.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Holidays. We talk on the phone then.”
“They still in that place with the palm tree out front?” He grinned.
“Yeah, no. They, um… moved.” They’d had to get a new house because Missy burned it down.
All their belongings, everything, gone. Because Dad wouldn’t let her bring a guy home for dinner one night.
She’d been seventeen and the guy had been a drug dealer she’d met when she pretty much dropped out of twelfth grade.
When she’d showed up with the twenty-five year old anyway, Dad had called the cops and had him arrested for statutory rape.
That hadn’t gone over well. At all. Missy lost her shit and decided that no one was going to come to dinner ever again.
I’d been at a friend’s sleepover and when I came home, found the street blocked with emergency vehicles and only a smoking shell of a house.
My parents had been in their pajamas out front, black soot and ash on them.
Investigators discovered the fire started from the battery of my mom’s electric car, but we all knew it had been Missy.
When I graduated and went off to college in Maryland a few months later, I rarely returned.
They couldn’t blame me and they’d been forced to cut her from their life and put a restraining order on Missy after all that.
“You said you had a sister. You’re not close, either?”
I didn’t want to tell him anything about Missy because I tried so fucking hard to outrun her and her craziness.
I’d had to enable her through medical school and residency so she didn’t fuck with it all.
But after, I’d stopped. And she’d been relentless in messing with my life.
That was why I was here in Devil’s Ditch and not Cheyenne. “No. Definitely not.”
His hand came up and stroked my cheek. “I’ve got enough family for both of us then. Come on, they’re gonna love you.”
When he climbed out of the truck and came around the hood to open my door, his feet crunching in the compacted snow, I had a moment to wonder if that was a good thing or not. No one was really safe from Missy, not even a county sheriff or her own family.
Getting too close to them meant I was the one who could be putting them in danger.
When he took my hand to help me down from his huge truck, I had to wonder if it was finally time to stop running and stick. Because I liked looking at Colt. Liked fucking Colt. I just plain liked him.