Chapter 2
Em had been right in one regard. Calloway Grady would make gorgeous babies.
He was one of the hottest men in Masterson County, hands down.
He always had been. She had noticed that before—when she’d been all of fifteen and he’d been in his early twenties.
It had been seriously hard for a young girl to miss.
Her cheeks threatened to catch fire as she remembered that long ago, and never-to-be-mentioned crush.
That crush hadn’t lasted very long.
Fortunately, thanks to the six kids who were now dependent on her to take care of them, her desire to make more babies had waned completely.
She had babies to raise already—no denying that. Plenty of them.
Her entire focus was on her younger sisters and making certain they were happy, healthy, and safe. No matter what. No room for pretty men now.
From seven-month-old Maeya Jade, all the way up to twenty-three-year-old Juniper Katherine. They were her world. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for them. Nothing.
Her world had changed drastically back in October, with one bullet from a psychopath’s gun.
She was lucky it had been a .22. Auggie would always have the scars.
Her left side twinged like it did far too often for her to think about.
She would probably always have pain, she had been told.
A great deal of lingering weakness. And despite months of ongoing physical therapy, some paralysis from her left thigh down.
Monoplegia, they had called it. Paralysis of a single limb.
Shot by a man with a grudge against the father who had abused her. Nothing good had ever come from her father—except the eight sisters she loved so much.
Walking again hadn’t been a guarantee. She would never forget that.
She’d had a less-than-ten-percent chance of survival that day. Had two strangers, doctors visiting the town by happenstance, not rushed to her aid that day…she wouldn’t be there now.
Auggie would never forget that. She wouldn’t be there to take care of the girls now.
She was alive. She could walk. She could work.
And she could take care of her father’s younger children and keep them safe from him forever.
Protect them the way no one had protected her until she was older than January’s thirteen now.
Her aunt and uncle had stepped in and changed their world back then. Gave them futures.
She would do the same with her six youngest sisters and do her damnedest to make sure Em and Junie got their futures still, too.
Someone came running back to where she stood, watching their uninvited house guest. Her most suspicious one.
October Grace Tyler, all of six years old now, and more trouble than three of the other girls combined.
Auggie utterly adored this kid who had been cursed with the same wildly curling pumpkin hair she had.
“Mommy Aug, are you sure he’s not a bad man gonna taked you or Junie or Em away from us?” Tobi asked, in her distinctive lisp.
Auggie leaned down, until she could meet her sister eye-to-eye. “I promise Calloway is not a bad guy going to take anyone away. This is definitely Aunt Claudia’s big brother, sweetheart. He won’t hurt anybody. Ever. Or Aunt Claudia and Aunt Sage will make him go to jail.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” Auggie made a mental note to make an appointment with the new speech therapist in town to have Tobi evaluated very soon.
Tobi was delayed a year—their father just hadn’t bothered putting her in school.
They’d decided after Augusta had ‘inherited’ the girls to keep them home for the rest of the school year—to work on family bonding and catching the girls up where they had inevitable academic and social delays.
To just give their family time to heal without adding in any school drama.
They were still debating whether public school was on the menu for the next school year or not. She just didn’t think the girls were ready yet.
Auggie wanted to make sure Tobi had all the help she needed to succeed. The speech therapist was in the same practice as Auggie’s physical therapist. She was hoping they could get similar appointment times, to make it convenient.
Scheduling six kids could be an extraordinary task. Keeping up with everything they needed, and working full-time, was exhausting. But she had Junie and Em to help. Her two next sisters in age were godsends. No denying that.
“What’s a brother?” Markie asked.
Avril, their little smart aleck, had to answer from clear across the room. “It’s just a sister with a penis, Markie! A boy sister!”
“What’s a penis, Mommy?” Markie just blinked up at her, through the glasses, so serious.
Of course, that comment went over well with the heathens. Bruce Tyler’s daughters weren’t exactly civilized, after all. She snickered at the look in Calloway’s dark, dark green eyes at that question.
She wouldn’t have them any other way than what they were. She nudged Tobi, who still eyed Calloway like he was an ogre in their midst, toward the dinner table. “Go on, little sister. I’m coming.”
Tobi slipped her hand into Auggie’s free one and tugged.
She was a little clingy at times. Auggie had no way of knowing if that was a natural part of her personality, or if it was a result of the trauma Tobi had experienced when the men responsible for Auggie’s injuries had abducted the little girl.
They were in regular counseling sessions for the older four girls. That took time.
If they enrolled in public school, counseling sessions might become less frequent.
She didn’t know if that would be a good idea right now.
No matter what some idiot in town had told her she should do with the girls today.
She’d told that old busybody at the library to mind her own business.
Auggie was in charge of making the decisions for the girls.
Anyone else didn’t like it, tough. Unless they had Tyler in their name, their opinion of how she was raising the girls didn’t matter. Period.
Her cousin Gil was a godsend, too; he let her do her work on a schedule that was extremely flexible, and mobile. She did half her work each week from home. For the girls.
Calloway Grady, even with his black hair, wicked green eyes, and even more wicked smile, most definitely was not a godsend. But like it or not, she wasn’t about to send her closest friends’ older brother out into the night, after finding him unconscious alongside the road.
She was better than that.
And something about how hard it had been to rouse him really worried her. She just looked at him for a moment. His eyes were clearer than they had been. He seemed alert, if a little quiet. Now. Before…he just hadn’t acted like the Calloway she had always known. “Dinner is ready. Please, join us.”
He shot her one of those wicked grins. Auggie felt her ire rise at the expression. She would never like this man. It was just rotten luck that he was here at all.
“Don’t mind if I do. Mini-Augusta is leaking, by the way. Might want to fix that.”
Sure enough, Auggie’s shirt was drenched. Cloth diapers worked very well, but…sometimes they didn’t. “Well, accidents happen.”
She looked at her sisters, her family, as they watched her and the troll. “I’ll be right back. Get started without me.”