Chapter 3
Brock climbed up into the cab of the truck. Slamming the door behind him, he sat gripping the steering wheel and breathing in an effort to dispel the tidal wave of anger crashing through him.
What.
The.
Hell.
It was the thought that rolled through him on each seething inhale and exhale.
He’d never seen a more clear-cut case of cheating another person in all his damn life.
The amount of stuff in the back of this thing could have been loaded into a tow-behind.
And that bit about this being cheaper than a rental car?
He gripped the steering wheel until it hurt.
On the one hand, no wonder the driver was angry.
On the other, that hardly excused what he did.
The need to get back into the house and take another look at the itinerary and contract that were drying on his counter was overwhelming.
He wanted to look at what this move had cost her, and more than anything he wanted to call the person she’d booked this train wreck with and read them one hell of a riot act.
They were going to have to do a lot of hard talking if they wanted to dissuade him from proceeding with legal options.
Like he had a right.
Like they’d done this to him, or his dad. Or even his kid sister, although she had her own husband to watch out for company predators looking to make an extra buck by conning women into paying more.
Because that’s what this was. In his mind, he could see exactly what went through the moving company’s representative when little Miss Stace Malone walked into their office, a young mother with a baby on her hip, and no idea that she was about to be robbed.
They’d taken one look at her, and with every naive word that came out of her mouth, every uncertain question she’d known to ask, and all the important ones she hadn’t, she’d been their mark from that point on.
They should be sued.
It wasn’t his problem.
She wasn’t his problem.
It still pissed him off.
He started the truck up, and then noticing the sheriff standing at his window, hands on hips, looking up at him, he rolled it down. “Go on, sheriff. You’ve got your job to do. I’ll back this beast up into her driveway and help her unload.”
“Two makes the work go faster,” the sheriff offered.
“Pretty sure there’s water works going on in the privacy of her new home.”
“After what she’s just been through?” Thompson snorted. “I’d not blame her.”
“Nor do I. But nobody wants witnesses when they hit that low.”
Shaking his head at the ground, the sheriff toed at the mud. “You’re going to roll this truck clean out of its tires and be up to your axles in the mud in five minutes flat. You’ll ruin the rims.”
“Like I care what happens to this truck,” Brock growled. “I just want to get it off the road so it’s not blocking us from getting to town. I’ll call the company when I’m through and tell them they’ve got 24 hours before I have it towed.”
“You sure you don’t need me?”
“Everybody needs you, Sheriff,” Brock said, offering a crocked smile he didn’t feel, just to lighten the mood.
“It won’t take me five minutes to unload the back of this thing.
Fifteen if I put the crib together for her.
I’d rather you book that son of a bitch, so she has at least one thing less to worry about tonight. ”
The sheriff nodded. “That I can do.” He patted the door twice with his hand by way of goodbye and headed back to his squad car.
Watching in the driver’s window, he saw the trucker in the back bombarding the sheriff with either questions or demands from the moment he opened the door and got in.
By the look of him, concern for his truck seemed to have dispelled some of his anger.
It made Brock think of the moving company’s contract in his kitchen again.
If he got paid by the size of the load rather than the mile, that might explain some of his anger, but as far as he was concerned, nothing excused his actions.
He’d attacked Stace with her baby in her arms. He’d knocked them both to the ground.
He’d shaken her, drenched her in ice-cold mud and water, and there was no doubt in Brock’s mind that he would have hit her if he hadn’t pulled the man off her.
He hadn’t even cared that he was doing in public, right in front of his and Pops’ home, with them watching from the window.
It was a good thing he’d gotten out here as fast as he did. It might have been showing off to bring his gun, but he didn’t regret grabbing it on the way out the door. Shooting out the tires was overkill, but it stopped the driver from leaving with all her stuff. What little stuff she had.
He ached to know her story.
It wasn’t his business, but from what little he’d gleaned from her broken explanation to the sheriff, Stace was in sore need—
Of a Daddy, his brain interjected.
—of help, he finished sternly, as much for himself as for her.
He didn’t know a damn thing about her, although he supposed he’d be able to pick up a few things if he interviewed her.
Obviously, she wasn’t suited for the job.
She was renting her aunt’s house so, just as obviously, she didn’t want a live-in position, and having someone there at night was definitely one of the things he was looking forward to.
He loved his Pops, but from the moment Brock had made the decision to hire someone, having that person become a live-in companion so he could re-enter the dating pool had been chief among his reasons.
And from the moment of that decision’s conception, the person he’d envisioned hiring had been single, without children, older than Stace Malone—frankly, taller than she was too, and strong enough to pick his dad up off the floor in case he fell again.
No, Stace Malone was definitely not suited to the job Brock was offering, but he knew a lot of folks around town, and once they were closer to spring, there’d be a hundred of help-wanted signs in the shop windows downtown.
What little bit of “downtown” that Myrtle Creek had, especially once the spring-to-fall tourist season ended.
Everything was winding down now. People were tightening their belts, living off their summer savings.
No one would be hiring until probably spring, not even the town’s only gas station, which did a brisk business no matter what season it was.
Still, the owner, Travis, ran the business with just himself and his teenaged son and he wasn’t known to hire outside the family, no matter what the season.
This was really one of the worst times for anyone to try to move to Myrtle Creek.
But that wasn’t his problem. His problem was finding a suitable companion for his elderly father so he could leave when he needed to tend their cattle.
He’d already brought them down out of the mountain canyons to their wintering place in the ten-acre paddock out behind the house, where they had a barn to keep them warm, and bales upon bales of grass ready to supplement their grazing.
At least until the real snow came, burying this whole place under a deep blanket of white, at temperatures that wouldn’t melt until spring.
Gone were the days when he and Pops rode up into the mountains together, their numbers bolstered by hired hands, intent on driving a herd of a couple hundred head or more from paddock to grazing range, and back again.
These days their herd numbered around forty, which was just enough to supplement his tour guide income, and which, as he’d number-crunched prior to advertising for a live-in companion, was just enough to pay for that too.
He glanced out the other window, looking at the log cabin nestled among the evergreens next door.
The shades were drawn and her front door closed.
He couldn’t see any part of her, but that uncomfortable tension in his gut combined with her absence let him know just how well-aware she was of how much she’d screwed up.
Not that it was her fault.
She’d been taken advantage of by an entire company full of people he’d love to see in jail.
This wasn’t his fight, but she’d come to Myrtle Creek. On season or off, anyone living here within shouting distance of a neighbor, had someone else involved in their problems.
Catching movement from the side of his eye, he turned to watch the squad car behind him, backing up in the mud to turn around in Stace’s driveway.
He left slowly, probably looking back at them in the rearview mirror the whole time and with every intention of placing a call to Maggie once he got back at the station.
Depending on who else was there, Brock gave it until supper time before at least half of the permanent residents of Myrtle Creek knew as much as he did about Stace Malone.
Those who actually minded their own business wouldn’t get filled in until church on Sunday.
It’d been a long time since he’d driven anything as big as this.
Shifting into forward gear, he applied steadily increasing pressure on the gas until the truck began to move.
It slipped, throwing mud twice, but even with flat tires, he got it up onto the grass of his yard, horizontal to his own house before he shifted into reverse and, just as slowly as before, backed towards her porch.
The deflated tires actually helped him keep the big rig moving.
He’d be fixing ruts for a week at least, but he successfully avoided running over the apple tree his mother had Pops plant on the day he was born.
That he stopped close enough to her porch to unload directly onto it and yet without taking out her steps was also a point of pride he’d savor later on tonight. For now, though…