Conner’s voice was alert when he asked, “Why?”
“Josie’s there and so’s her uncle.”
Josie had been a part of their lives for a lot longer than she’d physically been part of their lives. This was because Lydie had shared liberally with not only Jake but his kids and not only about Josie but also in her frank but gentle way about herself. His kids didn’t get it all but they got the jist.
And Jake knew Conner got the jist when he said, “On my way.”
“Stick to her like glue until I get there. I’m on my way.”
“Got it.”
“Later.”
“Bye, Dad.”
He disconnected, kept his phone in his hand in case Josie called and drove fast.
There were four cars in the curve of the lane in front of Lavender House when he arrived. After Jake parked and got out he noted a wicked wind had blown up. It bit into him the instant he opened his door.
He didn’t feel it.
Instead, he saw the shadowy figures standing outside the front door to the house. Five of them. When he got closer, he saw it was Conner facing off against Stone, Lydie’s son and Terry Baginski. He was pleased to see that Con had Josie behind him.
Jake made a mental note to put in fucking motion sensor lights the next fucking day as he prowled to the group.
“The cavalry arrives.” He heard Terry say sarcastically as he moved to his woman and his son.
“What’s goin’ on here?” he asked, his eyes scanning Josie’s pale face as best he could in the light and not liking what he saw.
“They want in,” Conner answered him. “Josie doesn’t want them in so they aren’t goin’ in.”
Jake took his place beside his son and turned his eyes to Stone, the old man standing next to him and Terry.
To control his temper, he couldn’t look at Stone or Lydie’s son. So he focused on Terry.
“Josie doesn’t want you in, time for you to leave,” he stated.
“We have things to discuss,” Terry replied.
“If that’s the case, call Josie, make a meeting,” Jake returned.
“That’s hardly necessary when we’re all right here,” she shot back.
“It’s Sunday night, Terry,” Jake reminded her. “Whatever this is, it can happen at a decent hour on a workday.”
“What this is is that Lydia Malone made a highly unusual bequest in her will that unfortunately demonstrated she was not of her right mind when she wrote it. This would be proved true as she also didn’t include her son in any of her rather substantial behests,” Stone announced.
Jake didn’t even look at him.
He narrowed his eyes on Terry. “You share the terms of the will and Lydie’s assets with Boston Stone?”
“Davis Malone, as the only direct living descendent of Lydia Malone, is entitled to know the particulars of his mother’s situation and last requests,” she answered.
“I didn’t ask that,” Jake ground out. “I asked if you shared the terms of Lydie’s will and her assets with Boston Stone who is not a relative.”
She didn’t reply.
That meant she did.
“At the reading of the will, you mentioned Stone,” Jake went on. “Now, you’re colluding with him.”
“I’m hardly colluding with him,” she snapped. “There’s nothing to collude about.”
“So this isn’t a play to get Lavender House sold so Malone can pocket the profits and Stone can doze it or make it into a hotel or whatever the hell he wants to do with it?” Jake pressed.
“I obviously can’t know what Mr. Malone will do should he inherit Lavender House,” she lied through her teeth.
Jake scowled at her. “Don’t know shit about this but it seems a conflict of interest. You got a stake in Stone Incorporated?”
She didn’t get the chance to answer. Lydie’s fuckwad son decided to enter the conversation.
“This is bullshit, barred from my childhood home.”
Even as he felt Josie press close to his back, Jake turned his attention to the man and saw he was old, he was weak, he’d clearly lived a rough life that Jake knew was of his own making and he looked mean as a snake.
“You never lived here,” Jake returned.
“Right, then, barred from my mother’s childhood home,” Davis amended.
“Yeah, and if Lydie was here, she’d be right next to Josie doin’ that and you know it,” Jake told him something he absolutely fucking knew.
“Unfortunately, my mother died before we could make amends,” Davis spewed his bullshit.
“Seein’ as you had about sixty years to do that and you didn’t, I’m guessin’ amends couldn’t be made,” Jake fired back.
“This is ridiculous,” Terry snapped. “It’s freezing out here. We can discuss this inside.”
Jake turned his attention to her. “We’re not discussing this inside. Josie’ll discuss this with you at the meeting you’re gonna arrange. Now, you’re gonna leave or I’m gonna call Coert and he’ll ask you to leave.”
“It’s hardly necessary calling the sheriff, Spear,” Stone noted and Jake finally looked at him.
And his voice changed significantly when he addressed him.
“You got your panties in a bunch when Josie leveled you, you teamed up with Terry and you found this guy in order to fuck with her because you’re so goddamned small, you weren’t man enough to take that direct hit and move on. You think you got a stake in this, but you don’t. All you did was set yourself up to take another direct hit.”
“It’s hardly the behavior of a lucid woman to settle a human being on another human being in her will,” Stone returned.
“’Fraid I’m gonna have to disagree with you seein’ as for Josie and me, that worked out all right, so Lydie knew exactly what she was doin’ and that’s all kinds of lucid.”
“That’s absurd,” Stone clipped.
“You can think that if you want, but it’s still true.”
“Fuck me, all this yammering,” Davis Malone snapped and Jake looked at him to see his eyes aimed at Josie. “Girl, just open the goddamned door.”
Jake didn’t let Josie speak and instead ordered, “Go, all of you.”
“An arrangement can be made,” Terry put in. “Mr. Malone is willing to be reasonable and negotiate a fair division of assets once Lavender House is sold.”
At this, Jake felt Josie press closer to his back.
Jake turned narrowed eyes to Terry. “Explain to me how you can act on behalf of Davis Malone,” Jake demanded. “You’re Josie’s attorney.”
“Arnie’s Josie’s attorney. I’m not,” she returned.
“You’re at the same firm and that’s not a conflict of interest?” Jake asked.
She said nothing.
It was absolutely a conflict of interest, the bitch.
Jake was done.
“You wanna be asked to leave by the sheriff, have at it,” he muttered, turning and herding his son into Josie. His eyes found hers through the dark. “Keys out, baby,” he whispered. “Let us in.”
She stared up at him with wide eyes a moment before she nodded, turned jerkily, teetered on her heel and Jake put a hand out to steady her.
Without Jake telling him to do so, Conner crowded his dad and Josie at the door and he and his son kept crowding her until they got her in, followed her and Jake closed and locked the door behind them.
“Lights, Con,” Jake ordered as he looked down to his phone to find Coert’s number.
“Jake,” Josie whispered and he turned his attention to her, put his phone to his ear and lifted his other hand to her neck where he curled his fingers around the side and gave her a squeeze.
“Just a second, baby.”
She pressed her lips together.
Coert answered the phone. “Yo, Jake. You good?”
“I’m at Lavender House with Josie Malone and there are trespassers on the property who won’t leave even after we’ve asked repeatedly for them to do so.
”
“Fuck,” Coert groaned, probably settled in for the night in front of a game.
Jake kept a hand on Josie as he leaned back to look through the window at the side of the door. He saw the cars still there, as were the shadowed bodies.
“I’d owe you one, you roust these assholes,” Jake said into the phone.
“You will and big. The Broncs are playing.”
Coert gave a shit about the Broncos because he was a transplant from Denver. Jake also knew why Coert got the fuck out of the Mile High City. There were only two reasons a man with a good job he liked in a town he loved would move across an entire country. He fucked up or a woman fucked him up.
In Coert’s situation, it was the last.
“Gotta warn you, Boston Stone is one of the assholes I’m talkin’ about,” Jake told him.
“That got me motivated,” Coert surprisingly replied then explained, “Guy’s a dick.”
“Agreed.”
“On my way,” Coert stated.
“Thanks, man,” Jake murmured.
“Later.”
“Later.”
He disconnected, looked to Josie who was staring up at him and noticed instantly she was freaked way the fuck out.
That was why his eyes moved to his son as Con got back from going through the house and turning on lights.
“On the phone with your sister. Get her to pack a bag for you, Ethan and her, get your books and haul her and Eath over here. We’re stayin’ the night with Josie.”
“Jake,” Josie whispered.
“Gotcha,” Conner said and moved toward the kitchen.
Jake looked down to his woman. “Fuck them. You’re stayin’ in your house tonight and you’re not doin’ it alone,” he declared.
She pressed her lips together before she fell forward and face planted in his chest.
He wrapped his arms around her, put his lips to the top of her hair and told her, “It’s gonna be okay, Slick.”
“He wants Lavender House,” she said into his chest.
“He’s not gonna get it,” Jake returned.
“He’s standing out there right now.”
“Coert’s gonna be here and he’ll be gone in fifteen minutes, baby.”
Her arms slid around him but the hold was loose, like she didn’t have it in her to hold tight.
Fucking Stone.
He orchestrated this, the asshole.
Jake gave her a squeeze and repeated, “It’s gonna be okay.”
Her head tipped back and she was still freaked but now fear had moved into her eyes.
He’d know why when she asked, “Do you think maybe Dad will come too?”
Fuck.
Luckily, Conner walked in just then and Jake looked to him. “Get Josie a glass of that shit in Lydie’s liquor cabinet. Fancy bottle, looks like cough syrup, smells like it. Yeah?”
“No problem,” Conner replied and walked right back to the kitchen.
“Jake?” Josie called and he looked back down to her.
“Let’s sit down,” he suggested then made this so by moving her into the family room and sitting her on the couch.
He wanted her in his lap. Better, he wanted to lie down with her, hold her close and give her what he had to give her when he had her safe in his arms.
He didn’t do that because his son might not be comfortable with it, nor Josie.
So he got her as close as he could, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and nabbing her hand.
“Right, a while back, Lydie asked me to look into things,” he stated.
She held his gaze and nodded.
“I did,” he went on.
She didn’t nod, just continued to look into his eyes.
“Your dad’s dead, baby.”
She stared at him a second, not one thing washing through her features, before she fell forward and did a face plant in his chest again.
Jake wrapped both arms around her.
Conner walked in with a snifter of purple liquid and Jake watched, his boy’s eyes locked on Josie, as his son walked directly to the coffee table, sat his ass on it, set the glass aside and reached out to curl his fingers around Josie’s knee.
Christ, he was a good kid.
“Kids on their way?” he asked his son.
“Yep,” Conner answered. “Amber’s all over it.
“Thanks, bud,” he whispered.
Conner said nothing, just jerked up his chin.
Josie leaned away, gave Conner a small smile she totally didn’t commit to and looked to Jake.
“I need to make up beds for the kids.”
“We’ll see to that when Amber and Eath get here,” he replied.
“But—”
“Take a drink, Slick, relax. We got this covered.”
Something shifted in her eyes before her lips formed the words, “You got this covered.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed.
She stared at him.
Conner let her go to grab her glass and he offered it to her.
Jake unwrapped one arm so she could turn and take it.
“Stuff smells crap,” Conner muttered as she lifted it to her mouth and took a sip.
It was at that, finally, when Josie smiled and it was genuine this time.
There it was.
He was right.
They had this covered.
* * * * *
“Mickey said and word was you got in there, but Jesus Christ,” Coert stated, his eyes to the front door of Lavender House.
Coert and Jake had just left Josie after Coert and one of his deputies moved the stubbornly lingering group of assholes off Josie’s property. He’d reported to the owner that he’d dealt with the situation and he’d done this with two things on his agenda. Reporting to the owner that he’d dealt with it and getting a look at Josie.
“Pure class, even rattled,” Coert noted, looked to Jake and grinned, something Jake could see since he turned on the outside lights when Coert arrived in his cruiser. “How’d you get in there?”
“She thinks I’m the shit,” Jake told him, grinning back.
Coert kept handing him crap. “So you’ve brainwashed her.”
Jake kept grinning but his grin died when he asked, “You know I like taking your shit, Coert, but gotta know. Until shit gets sorted with the will, she got a genuine threat from her uncle?”
Coert’s face also got serious. “Judge’ll have to make that decision, Jake. Until that time, assets will probably be frozen. If you mean can the old guy make her let him in or even make her let him stay, again, judge’ll have to handle that. But until the will is assessed and judgment made, if things are acrimonious, Josie’s already here so she’ll likely be ordered not to sell anything, they’ll let her stay and he might be allowed to get in and look around but other than that, he’ll be ordered to steer clear.”
“So she’s good,” Jake said.
“If she’s got her own assets to live on, yeah,” Coert confirmed.
She did. She’d told him. So that was at least one thing they didn’t have to worry about.
They still had two more.
“You know if Terry Baginski is invested in Stone Incorporated?” Jake asked.
“Lotta local folks are investors in Stone Incorporated,” Coert answered.
“I’m takin’ your non-answer as a no, you don’t know.”
“Yeah. I don’t know for certain but I wouldn’t be surprised,” Coert replied and his voice got lower when he went on, “Be less surprised she’s in on this just to piss you off.”
Jake shook his head. “Banged her between number two and number three which was a long time ago,” he pointed out. “She was the worst lay I’d ever had, bar none. Been years. I’m not her favorite person but actively tryin’ to piss me off…” he trailed off disbelievingly.
“Women do a lot of crazy shit, they get it in their minds to do it,” Coert noted and Jake thought he was not wrong, his earlier conversation with Donna being proof of that. Then
Coert changed the subject to ask, “Stone after Lavender House?”
“He was,” Jake answered. “Then he got a look at Josie and decided he preferred her. She wasn’t interested, tried to be cool about lettin’ him know that, but she heard him talkin’ smack about her. She leveled him and clearly he didn’t like that much.”
Coert’s brows shot up. “No shit? This is retaliation for a crash and burn?”
“More like a detonation, but yeah. Guy’s dick is microscopic.”
At this, Coert got closer and warned, “He’s your threat, Jake. If he’s bankrolling that old asshole for a shot at Lavender House, this could get ugly. Lotta folks in this town will stand up for Lydia Malone and say it straight she was all there until the day she died. But Stone’s got the money to drag it out if that option’s to be had.”
This was not good news.
“She gave Josie to me in her will,” Jake confided and he saw Coert’s brows draw together.
“Say again?”
“Lydie,” Jake explained. “She gave Josie to me in her will.”
“Josie…the person?” Coert asked, his brows now shooting up.
“Yep,” Jake answered.
Coert stared at him a beat before he burst out laughing.
Jake let him but crossed his arms on his chest while he did it.
When Coert got it under control, he stated, “That does it. Clearly Lydia had lost it before she passed, leavin’ her girl to you.”
“Bite me,” Jake muttered good-naturedly but tensed when he saw Coert suddenly get serious.
“Thought the world of you,” he said quietly. “Your kids. Everyone knew it. You were the son she never had. The son she always wanted. Your kids the grandkids she never got outside your girl in there. Straight up, man, after you scraped off Sloane, lots of talk in this town, wondering why Lydia didn’t fix you up with her girl when she was around, seein’ as she was around often enough. Anyone who knows her would not be surprised Lydia wanted that as her final wish. You could get a hundred folks in a courtroom to say that same thing and do it under oath. I am not kidding.”
Jake could say nothing. Coert’s words about him being the son Lydie never had were stuck in his throat, making it prickle.
When Jake was silent, Coert kept speaking.
“And I only moved here fifteen years ago but think it says a fuckuva lot that I only got a decade and a half under my belt in Magdalene and the specter of Davis and Chester Malone still haunts this burg and those two little motherfuckers didn’t even live here. Just caused mayhem whenever they visited their grandparents, the kind it was hard for a lot of people to forget. Including how they took treatin’ their mom to new and unprecedented piss-poor levels.” He took in a breath and concluded, “What I’m sayin’ is, you guys hunker down, it’s all gonna work out. You need me in the meantime, call. I figure you got some pains in the ass to deal with for a while but in the end, this will go away.”