23. Ridge
RIDGE
The guy was obviously a smarmy douchebag, with his small-dick Escalade and his slicked-back hair, but he first approached Audrey without aggression, and Holden and I sat in the cab of my truck, alert but not alarmed.
“What a dick,” Holden said, clicking his Zippo. “She can do so much better.”
“Like you?” I asked, my gaze still on Audrey, talking to her ex.
“Maybe.” Click… click… flare. “Or like us.”
Holden’s gaze was locked onto the lighter’s flame.
“Will you stop that? You’re making me nervous.”
The kiss I’d shared with Audrey in the workshop still dominated my thoughts, the feel of her soft-as-silk lips opening for my tongue enough to make my dick hard all over again.
I’d wanted her more than I’d wanted anything for a long time. Still did.
Then Graham had walked in, and I’d been able to see from the look on his face that he was pissed.
He’d been right all along: this was going to get messy, and not for any of the reasons he’d imagined when we’d agreed to hunt Audrey Sterling.
“See what I mean?” Holden’s voice had grown tense while I’d been daydreaming about Audrey, and I leaned forward in the truck, parked behind the branches of an overgrown shrub. “This is how he always is.”
Annoyance was written all over Dean Ashcroft’s face.
And I had to give Audrey credit. The guy must have been intimidating for her — her was at least six inches taller and outweighed her by sixty pounds — but she held her ground, her face a mask of calm as she spoke to him.
I reached for the handle on the door of the truck.
Graham hadn’t had to tell me twice to follow Audrey to her meetup with Dean. Audrey would be pissed if she found out — I didn’t know her well, but I knew that much — but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
Now I was glad I was here, bearing witness to the intimidation that was obviously part and parcel of Audrey’s interactions with her ex-husband.
She turned toward the Escalade and opened the back door. I expected her to emerge with her daughter, but after a couple of minutes, she shut the door and resumed talking to Dean.
And that was when things went south.
Dean took a step toward her, crowding her up against the Escalade. His expression turned angry as she talked, clearly trying to explain something (her summer living arrangements?).
Then her expression changed, her eyes spitting fire as she stared up at him, firing off something I couldn’t hear, something that made Dean take another step toward her.
He grabbed her arm and twisted, hauling her around to the back of the Escalade.
Holden and I didn’t need to discuss getting out of the car. We hit the pavement in under five seconds and started running.
By the time we reached the Escalade, Audrey was hidden by Dean’s bulk, standing between us and her.
When I got closer I saw that her back was pressed up against the rear of the car.
And Dean had his hand around her neck, pinning her in place.
“I assume you want to keep that hand.” The words were out of my mouth before I had time to consider them.
Dean Ashcroft looked over his shoulder. “Mind your own damn business.”
“This is our business,” Holden said.
“Fuck off.” Dean swiveled his head, returning his attention to Audrey, still pinned to the car, her eyes wild with fear.
Swinging on him was instinctual.
I heard the snap of his teeth when my fist made contact with his jaw and hoped Ella couldn’t see from the back seat.
He stumbled backward, releasing his hold on Audrey’s neck, and Audrey staggered sideways, trying to stay on her feet.
“Let’s go.” Holden hustled her to the side of the car.
He made a human shield of himself while Audrey opened the back door of the Escalade. I had only the vaguest of impressions of her daughter: a blonde braid and little arms wrapped around Audrey’s neck, legs wrapped around Audrey’s waist.
Then Dean got to his feet and charged at me.
I took him down with a series of punches to the face that had him staggering backward toward the trees parked at the parameter of the donut shop parking lot.
He stumbled over the curb and went down on his back, his head saved from the concrete by the dirt in the ornamental beds around the donut shop.
I waited, making sure he was down before stepping closer. “That was me being polite. Remember that.”
I headed back to Audrey’s car where she was buckling Ella into a booster seat in the back. Holden stood by, his eyes on Dean, who was staggering to his feet at the other end of the parking lot.
When she straightened, I saw that her hands were shaking.
“Get back to the ranch,” I said.
“He’ll follow me.” We’d hunted her in the tunnels, and this was the first time I’d heard her scared.
“He’s not going anywhere,” I said.
“Go,” Holden said. “We’ve got you.”
She nodded and got in the car.
“I didn’t say bye to Daddy!” Ella said from the back seat.
“I know, honey. I’m sorry. We’ll call him later, okay?” Audrey shut the door and started her car.
Holden had his eyes on Dean, getting into the Escalade slowly enough that I wasn’t worried about him following Audrey.
Still, I didn’t breathe easy until Audrey was out of sight.
Dean backed up the Escalade in a screech of tires and barreled toward Holden and me in the parking lot. We didn’t move a muscle when he came to a stop just a few inches away.
He rolled down his window. His eye was already swelling.
Lip too.
“You don’t know it yet,” he said, “but you’re fucked.”
“Keep your hands to yourself and we don’t have a problem,” Holden said.
“She’s my wife,” he screamed.
His face was red, and a piece of his slicked-back hair had come loose and fallen over his forehead.
“Seems to me you lose the privilege of using that word when you put your hands on a woman,” I said.
I wanted to remind him about the divorce, remind him Audrey wasn’t married to him anymore, but for Audrey’s sake, I didn’t want him to know how much we knew about her.
Didn’t want him to know we knew her at all.
So far we hadn’t said anything that would make him think we were anything more than a couple of nosy passersby who decided to get into someone’s business.
He pointed a finger at me. “You’re going to be sorry you stuck your nose in my business.”
He rolled up his window and screeched out of the parking lot.
I stood there with Holden, watching him go.
“You knew this would be messy,” I said to Holden.
“You saying you wish we hadn’t hunted her?” Holden asked. “You wish someone else was living at the ranch with us for the summer?”
I wasn’t in the habit of lying — Audrey Sterling was messy with a capital M, and I still wanted more of her — so I kept quiet and headed back for the truck.
“Knew it!” Holden called after me.
I flipped him off and got in the truck.