Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
BOOKER
A s soon as Reece had left, of course, I’d turned on the camera to watch her sweetly talking to Bullet as she fed the horses the snacks she thought she was hiding.
It was the favorite part of my day, watching her clucking around like a mother hen as she looked after her charges. I couldn’t wait until she was doing it with our own kids. Reece was going to be an incredible mother, and for once in my life, I could see a future with a couple of rugrats tearing around the ranch while we chased after them.
I was already smiling as I turned to the camera, but the sight I found there had me freezing in my seat. My good hand gripped the arm of my chair so tightly that the plastic creaked beneath my fingers. Then I surged out of my seat, striding for the door.
“Val!” I shouted, and she was immediately on alert at my side. “With me.”
This guy had to have been dropped on the head as a kid. He couldn’t be so stupid that he thought coming here and threatening my girl was a good idea.
By the time I made it to the barn doors, I could hear him telling her to go home with him. I didn’t doubt her for a second. I knew Reece’s heart, and this guy wasn’t even a memory in it. He was just a lesson from the past that would one day be forgotten.
“I’ve got a much better idea, baby,” the idiot actually dared to say.
Every semblance of restraint I had inside me snapped at the sound of his words.
“No one calls her baby but me,” I growled, lurching forward for him.
There was no way he was ever touching her again. He came here thinking he could threaten her, that he could hurt my girl, and I’d let him just walk away.
The yip of surprise he gave as I hauled his body over the top of the stable had me growling in satisfaction. His stupid little stick clattered to the ground as I threw him in the dirt at my feet.
“You’ve no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to this,” I told him, a sneer coming to my lips.
Camden started crawling backward, scurrying toward the door like he thought he had a chance to escape.
“You can’t do this,” he hurried out. “Don’t you know who my father is?”
“I seem to remember you mentioning…No, wait. I don’t actually care.” I reached down and picked him up by the collar again as Camden scrambled to his feet. “How many times did you hit her?”
All the blood drained from his face as dear old Camden realized what was about to go down.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he went with. “I never?—”
“Don’t waste your final breath on a lie, Cammy boy. You’re not that smart, are you? You keep your files on your laptop. You confess in places you don’t even check for cameras. I have every word recorded.”
I nodded over to the stable as Camden shook his head, his eyes darting about the barn as he desperately searched for a way out. For something that could save him.
I didn’t know who this guy thought I was. Obviously, he was walking out of here. I wasn’t going to sully the beautiful future I had ahead of me with the woman he hadn’t been smart enough to appreciate. That didn’t mean my fist wasn’t meeting his face before I sent him on his way though.
“Here’s what’s happening now, Camden,” I said slowly to make sure that he was actually listening. I stalked forward, slowly herding him out of the barn and away from Reece. “You’re going to get back in your piece of shit car, and you’re going to head back to whatever cesspit you crawled out of. I have a man in the city who’s going to keep an eye on you. He’s already digging into your past and pulling up all your dirty little secrets for me. I’m going to put those with what I already have, and I’m going to send them to your father. If you’re quick enough, you might get home and cover up some of the worst of it, but I doubt you’re smart enough to pull it off.”
Camden started shaking his head. His hand went into his pocket, and he pulled out his car keys with shaky hands. Whatever this guy was into, it wasn’t good. But it worked in our favor that he was scared of Daddy more.
“Daddy’s going to put you on a leash, Camden. He can’t afford to have an embarrassment like you running around in public. And do you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to thank me for letting him do that. For not finding a pretty little spot on the ranch where no one would find you and burying you there. If I never see your face again, the matter ends there. But if you dare to even breathe in this woman’s direction again, you won’t like what I do next. Do you hear me?”
For a moment, it was almost like Camden found his balls as he gritted his teeth and actually hissed at me.
The dude was crazier than I’d first thought.
“You won’t get away with this,” he finally said, pulling his quivering shoulders back as he pretended to be a man. “I will ruin you. I don’t need to be in this backwater town to do it. Are you really ready to throw everything away for her ?”
Camden jutted his chin in Reece’s direction, looking at her like she was trash, and I swear to god my heart leaped for joy when he did.
Because I’d just been waiting for an excuse.
My fist plowed into Camden’s nose, which gave a satisfying crunch, and he sank to the floor, clutching his face and crying.
“I seem to remember telling you that you weren’t allowed to breathe in her direction, Camden. This isn’t a good sign for how your future’s about to go if you can’t even get that bit right.” I tsked like I was talking to a child, and Val took that as her sign to let him know what she thought of the whole situation as well.
Hunching down, teeth bared, Val crept closer, snapping her jaws at the man who was crying on the ground. It totally went against her nature. She was usually so empathetic when she saw someone in pain. But apparently even Val could tell that this guy was no good, and she was ready to protect her own.
I squatted down, running a hand over Val’s head as I met Camden’s watery gaze.
“This is the part where you run away, Cammy boy,” I mocked.
Thankfully, he found his common sense at that moment as Camden scrambled back to his feet with a sob and sprinted for the barn doors. Val darted forward, snapping at his heels and then barking as she came to a stop in the door, watching him running for the driveway.
“Good girl,” I told her, fussing her ears when I reached her side. “We don’t know what you’d catch if you put something like that in your mouth.”
I heard Reece snort out a laugh, and I turned back to face her to make sure she was all right. Finding her bent over and clutching her sides as she laughed wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting.
“Oh my god, I think he actually peed himself,” she said, pointing at a wet patch on the barn floor that definitely hadn’t been there before.
I wrinkled my nose in disgust, knowing I’d have to clean that up because there was no way I was adding insult to injury and letting Reece do it.
She came to my side then, tipping up onto her toes as she kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you,” she murmured, her hands clasping my shoulders as she laid her head against my chest. “Do you think he’s actually gone?”
“Yeah, for now at least.”
Even Camden wasn’t stupid enough to not eventually figure out that we hadn’t sent anything to his father and that we didn’t actually have anything to send. Hopefully, he’d be so busy trying to cover up his tracks that it would at least buy us enough time for my father’s guy to find something.
“I used to hope that he’d leave me alone when he found someone else to torment, but I don’t think I’m as okay with that as I thought I was,” Reece admitted. “I can’t stand the thought of him doing what he did to me to some other woman who thought she could trust him.”
“I know what you mean,” I told her as we both walked out of the barn to head back into the house.
My adrenaline was dropping, and the throbbing in my arm was working in time with the pounding that had started up in my head again.
“Do you really have a guy in the city?” Reece asked, her face wrinkling in an adorable frown as we walked up the porch steps.
“My father does. Xander set it up. He’s confident we should have something by the end of the week.”
I didn’t miss the relief on her face. Part of me was actually intrigued about what this guy had been up to that he was so worried about. He didn’t seem like he had enough smarts to be into anything that illegal.
But I’d grown up in the same world he had, and I had a feeling that the threat of being cut off would be enough to make Camden feel like the world was about to end.
We just needed to find something that was big enough to cause a scandal.
Reece didn’t look so confident, but surely the fact that Camden had beaten up his girlfriend would be scandal enough. I’d just prefer that we didn’t have to involve Reece and that my father’s guy could find something worse.
I wasn’t so sure what it said about me that I was hoping this guy was out there ruining someone else’s life as well.
I hated seeing her like this. Doubting herself and worrying about a guy who should have had the sense to leave her alone. I was here now, and there was no way I’d let him hurt her ever again.
“I need a favor from you,” I told her as I steered us through the house toward the stairs.
Reece looked up at me with her beautiful blue eyes, and I fought the need to push her against the wall and kiss her senseless right there.
“You see, Xander tells me that if I’m going to recover, then I should be in bed. I can’t remember what the second part of those instructions was. Head injury, remember.” I pointed at my stitches and then shrugged in the universal what can you do motion. “So, for the interests of my health, I think you should accompany me upstairs and help me figure out how to stay in bed all day long .”
She chuckled, but at least it had the smile back on her face.
“Well, if it’s in the interests of your health, I don’t see how I can refuse,” she said, backing up to the stairs with a telling smile on her face. “Now, what could we do that could keep you distracted?” She tapped a finger against her lips as she pretended to think and then, before I could say anything, she turned and darted up the stairs with a giggle.
I was powerless but to chase her.
Just like I hoped to for the rest of my life.
Because if there was one thing I was willing to dedicate my life to, it was giving this woman every little thing she could ever desire, inside and outside of the bedroom.