Chapter 4
I was too young when I learned my first lesson about men—but that’s how the world is.
My ma wasn’t in, so he offered me a coin to please him, but it wasn’t an offer.
In the end I had a coin pressed to my palm and knowledge I couldn’t give back.
I held the coin tight in my palm like the weight of it would overtake the weight of what had happened.
I wanted to learn to hold a coin so tightly in my hand that my payment couldn’t be taken from me. I wanted to at least hold that.
He texted Austin as soon as Jessie drove away, because he wasn’t going to stand there looking after her with longing or something.
He did not long for her.
His brother responded immediately. Just dropped Millie off at the library. Taking Emma to the park.
Well, an opportunity to see his niece was always welcome.
If he was going to get a lecture, he might as well do it while a baby was giggling in the background.
He might not be able to see a future with a wife and kids for him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like kids.
It was a particularly special thing to see his brother be a dad, to see Austin have something so …
he was tempted to call it normal, but that made it sound common, and it was anything but.
They were the product of a home that had been broken multiple times during the course of their childhood. Flynn didn’t take love, marriage, or family for granted.
It was one reason he wanted to steer clear of them himself.
But Austin deserved the world, and thank God, he’d gotten it.
Meet you there.
Flynn started to walk down the block past the historic shops, heading to the little square that contained a gazebo, a stretch of green grass, and a small play structure. He knew that Emma would be on the swings the entire time they were there.
As he saw Austin approaching from the opposite direction, he couldn’t help but smile. His big, burly brother had a baby strapped in a front pack on his chest, a white cowboy hat on his head.
He could remember feeling so lost when their dad died. He’d been fifteen, and Austin and Carson were the adults left to care for him most of the time.
He could still remember his mom, in her fancy kitchen with the bright white countertops and tall, dark cabinets.
She couldn’t even reach the second shelf.
Those cabinets were for looks; they weren’t for use.
The way she’d made him a hot chocolate and stood on the other side of the island while he sat there, feeling certain he would do something to mess up the pristine space.
Like maybe the Wilder in him would leave an impression on the chairs that couldn’t be erased.
He could still remember her look of … sadness, concern, worry.
You don’t want to leave your dad’s, do you?
Worried, he’d realized later, that he’d say he did want to leave the ranch, that he wanted to come live with her.
He’d never lived with her full time. It had always been sporadic, joint custody with no real schedule.
He’d tried, for a time, to see if anything he did affected her willingness to have him around.
If he was extra good, would he get a Christmas invite?
If he was naughty, would he be left out of the Fourth of July barbecue?
But there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to his mother’s decisions.
Nothing he did—good or bad—changed the situation with his mom at all.
No, I want to stay at the ranch.
He really had. He couldn’t imagine losing his dad and then losing the place he called home on top of it, trying to live in that house where he always felt he might break something.
Then Cassidy got dropped on their doorstep at Christmastime, and suddenly, he had someone to care for too.
Austin, though, was the reason they’d all made it. Austin was his hero, even if he’d never actually said those words to his oldest brother.
He deserved the world.
Flynn lifted his hand and waved, but Austin did not wave back, which was how he knew he was in some kind of trouble.
Austin didn’t wait for them to get close before he shouted, “Really?”
He closed the distance between him and his older brother before he said anything. “What did you hear?”
“Cassidy said that you took Jessie Jane Hancock home.”
He met Austin’s judgmental gaze. “I did.”
“Why?”
“You ask the right questions. It’s not what you think.
And you know what, Austin, if it was, it wouldn’t be any of your business.
You are a married man, a New York Times best-selling author with a movie in the works, and you don’t need to be up in my sex life.
You’ve corrected the historical record in your book.
You can let your issue with the Hancocks go. ”
Austin appeared to be going over the list of things that Flynn had just said to see whether he could dispute any of them.
Flynn knew that Austin was sort of uncomfortable with the level of success he was enjoying from the book he’d written about their ancestor Austin Wilder’s life and death.
He and his wife, Millie, the town librarian, had discovered that Butch Hancock and the sheriff of that era had colluded to frame the Wilders for murders they hadn’t committed.
Austin’s brothers were tried and convicted and hanged publicly. Austin himself was shot in the street.
Flynn’s older brother had always suspected that their ancestor hadn’t been a murderer.
That their family had never been as bad as they’d been accused of being.
Outlaws, certainly, but not coldblooded murderers.
It had eaten at him because he blamed the town’s unfair treatment of them on that historical lie.
His brother hated the Hancock family, not just because Butch Hancock had set up Austin Wilder and his gang, but because the Hancocks had gone on to profit off a tall-tale version of it.
Austin had disproved the lie, but his brother was the kind of man to hold a grudge. Not just against the man who had betrayed his five-times great-grandfather, but against his descendants. Which included Jessie Jane.
“What are you doing, if you’re not hooking up with her?”
“Pretending to hook up with her.”
“Again, why?”
“Hey, Bug,” Flynn said, looking at his niece and tapping the end of her nose with his finger. She giggled in her sweet baby way. “Let me swing my niece.”
“Fine,” Austin said, beginning to unstrap the front pack. He worked Emma out of the device and handed her to Flynn. Flynn carried her on his hip, then put her in the little bucket swing, pulling it just slightly and letting it sway while she laughed and laughed.
“What’s the deal?”
“We’re going to pretend to date. As a little PR stunt to help her campaign for mayor.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Austin said. “She’s running for mayor, and you’re helping her?”
“Yes, I am. Because otherwise Danielle will run unopposed. And you know what, I’m kind of tired of the family that hates me being in charge of the place I live.”
Austin let out a long sigh. “I get that, I guess.”
“I’d have thought you’d be into defeating Danielle no matter what. Not only has she been a pain in my butt, but she was responsible for hurting your wife.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, but she liberated Millie from that asshole she was planning to marry instead of me, so I can’t say I’m mad mad about it.”
“Sure, but Danielle is in a position of power in our community, and Millie’s ex is our first man.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, when you put it like that. But don’t pretend this isn’t a little about you taking petty revenge on your family.”
“Sure.”
“It’s going to piss your mom off.”
“Yep,” he said, grinning. “It will also piss off her husband, and their other son, the one they actually love. So I guess if you want to call that petty, go right ahead. I personally … I’m just going to go ahead and call it justice.
And that’s why Jessie’s doing it. Justice for all of us.
You felt driven to clear the record about Austin Wilder, while she feels driven to change the whole power structure of this town. ”
Maybe he was overstating it, maybe he was giving a little too much credence to the purity of Jessie’s motives, but hell, anything was better than the continued reign of his maternal family.
And repeating their motives back to Austin, he believed that there was good in Jessie’s plans even if he didn’t have a personal stake in the election.
It was more than just poking at his family, though that was a nice bonus.
It was the potential to shift the whole vibe of this place.
He liked that idea. Because the town had been divided into the good guys and the bad guys for way too long.
It was about time the outlaws had a say in how things ran.
In truth, as founding families, the Wilders and the Hancocks had always had a certain amount of power on the city council, but it was a formality more than a reality.
Because their outlaw reputation had hung over the families the whole time.
They hadn’t bothered to participate for years, not until Austin had agreed to help Millie get funding for Gold Rush Days in exchange for some information he needed for his book.
That had ended in the two of them getting married, and Austin changing the historical record forever.
“You opened the door, big brother. She wants to walk through it. I respect that.”
Austin looked uneasy. “It’s just … her family …”
He raised his brows. “Are you really discriminating against people who get treated the same way we do?”
“I’m not. It’s just … William Hancock is a glorified con man.”
“I think he prefers carnie.”
“Whatever. You know what he’s like. And you know what West is like.”
“He’s an asshole. Hell, come to that, Jessie kind of is too. I don’t know if she can win. But you know, she’s pretty damned convincing. Even though I really don’t like her, she brought me around to her way of thinking in about fifteen minutes flat.”