Page 16 of Weston

“I’m man enough.”He still believed that if she’d not cut him off, they’d have a lot of kids running around.Not that he wanted to be responsible for them, but her telling him that he wasn’t man enough to impregnate her had made him meaner than a one-dollar bill.Thinking on that, he couldn’t remember if he was saying it right or not.But he was mean to her.Then Rogen stepped in.

Christ, he wished all the time he’d started with her dying off.But she was just too clever for him.He couldn’t get into her house, where her stuff was hidden away, like her social security number or stuff like that.He didn’t even know her birthday.She had kept herself alive by being a mean bitch.Now, here they were in this town and it was like everyone was against him.

He couldn’t take a shit without anyone telling on him.He couldn’t even sneak in a little drinking while in this little town.Not to mention, there wasn’t a bar he could hang out in.The place had four pizza shops and nobody to bring him one when he was in jail either.What kind of podunk town had four pizza shops and not nary a person to deliver things to him?

That got him to thinking about a business that he could run.If he was out, he’d be lining up people with cars to deliver things to others around town.Not just pizza, though, that’s all he’d be using them for, but other things, like groceries and the like.

He could see it now.It’d be called Danny’s Drivers, or DD for short.He’d have him a fleet of them, too, just driving around this little town, making people’s lives a good deal better because they could get the things that they wanted without having to pay for it.He didn’t know how he’d make it work.Just knowing that he had to have cars was hard enough for him to think through, but he could make it work somehow.

Danny knew that he’d never get things that he thought up to work.He was just too lazy.It didn’t bother him that he was.In fact, he felt like it was something that a great many people aspired to.Being lazy was a form of working; it was difficult not to do anything all the time and have people do things for you, like his wife.She’d work all day, and if he asked her real nice like, she’d bring him a beer to drink before dinner.Sandy was a sap.

It only just occurred to him that she was indeed a sap.He’d knock her around a bit, get what he wanted, and she’d go off crying to her family.Not that he liked that, but she’d not do a damned thing about it, and that would make him very happy when she’d come around whining again, and he’d backhand her.

She didn’t know that he was slightly afraid of her.She was stronger than him and worked out a bit while on the job.Sandy was also a big fucking cat that could rip his throat out without a second thought.Being as smart as he knew her to be, he thought that he was lucky that she’d never unsheathed her claws around him, killing him with just a swipe of them.

Danny had tried once to sell her off to some circus.It turned out that the circus keeper, whatever they called the men who had them, was a shifter himself.And he had threatened to tell on him shouldhe try that stunt again.It was difficult to make any money off of anyone anymore, he thought.Christ, it was like they were all on the same phone service the way they just knew one another’s business.

The more he bitched to himself about his wife, the more he wished that he’d killed her off when he’d had the chance.At the beginning of their getting together, it had been a thrill to him, knowing that she had money and worked during the day all day long.It left him to pursue his own fun.However, she was never forthcoming with any cash for him.Not even enough for him to go to the bar and hang out with his fellow lazy men.And there were a lot of them.

“Danny, your attorney is here.Do you want to meet with him?”He asked the man if he had on a fancy suit or a cheap one.“How the hell do I know something like that?You want to meet with him or not?I have better things to do than to figure crap out for you.”

“I’ll see him.”After going to the back of his cell so the door was unlocked, he was free to get out and see the attorney.He didn’t know if Sandy had gotten one for him because she felt sorry for him or not, but he wanted to make sure that his outshined hers.It was the least she could do because he was in jail because of her.

Once he was locked to the table and ready for the attorney, he looked around, wondering if all those cop shows he watched were right in that the mirrors were two-way suckers so they could watch him.He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he was going to test that out.Flipping off the person on the other side, if there was one, he waited to see if they’d come after him or not.Nothing happened, but some old broad came into the room and said she was his court-appointed attorney.

“You’re a girl.”She told him that she was a woman, actually.“There’s been a mistake.I don’t want a woman attorney.No offense or anything, but women are just too stupid to be good at attorney works.”

“Well, aren’t you just a peach?And I wouldn’t want you as a client either, though here we are stuck with each other.I’ve been appointed by the judge, and that’s the only person that can break us up.I have a feeling that we’re going to be great friends by the end of this.”He could hear something off in her voice that said she really didn’t believe that, but she was sitting down now, and he didn’t like it.“My name is Suzy Lancaster, and I have some paperwork that you need to sign off on.”

By the time he was signing off on the third thing, he’d lost interest in it.She had him signing stuff about her being his attorney, which he didn’t like, but like she explained to him, was all there was.But he did perk up when she mentioned insurance.

“You said my wife is suing me on account of me having a life insurance policy on her?That ain’t right.I need that in the event something untoward happens to her.”He’d heard Lancaster—there was no way he was going to call her Suzy—say untoward a couple of times now and decided he liked it.He was going to use it all the time if he could.“A husband has a right to have insurance on his wife so that when she keels over, he’s got himself something to live on.”

“She said you’d say that, but she’s not going to be making the payments on it anymore.That would make it so that you would have to.”Lancaster huffed.“Unless you have some kind of millions lying about to pay these policies off, then they’ll be null and void anyway.”

By the time he was back in his cell, he’d felt beat up.Not that she ever touched him, but with all the things that she’d been saying to him, his mind felt like it had been wrung out to dry in a storm, and it wasn’t feeling too good.All she’d had to have done was just tell him what he was signing instead of her explaining everything to him like he was a simpleton.After a few documents, he just tuned her out.If he was honest with himself, he didn’t care so long as he was going to get out of jail soon enough so that he could find Sandy and make her pay for him missing out on opportunities like he was.Damned woman, he was going to have to knock her around a bit too.

Chapter 8

Weston stood in the shower, holding onto the walls as the water sprayed down his body.It had been a hell of a week so far, and it was only Tuesday.Wondering how he was going to be able to do this full-time, he nearly screamed when someone touched him from behind.Turning, he pulled Rogen into his arms and held her.

“I don’t know why they’d have you tell the family that he died.It wasn’t as if he was related to any of you.”He told her what he’d been told from the police station.“Oh.Well, I suppose when you put it like that, I guess it was all right for you to break the news to me, then I tell them.That’s the way it happened anyway.”

Danny had been in his cell when a water main broke in the ceiling.He’d not been hurt, and there was very little water in his cell at that time.But he’d freaked out when his toilet had been flushed, and the water came up out of it, knocking him back.He’d been killed when he slipped on the wet floor and hit his head on the bed in his cell.It was a terrible accident that was going to cost the city in compensation for his family if they asked for it.

“Danny didn’t have any family but Sandy.His parents died when he was just a child, and he had no brothers or sisters.”He asked about cousins or anyone.“Not that I’m aware of.As far as I remember, no one showed up at the wedding that they had, and since then, I’ve never heard of anyone coming around.It’s just as well he’s gone.I’m assuming that there would have been a long-assed trial for him.”

“The feds are handling anything that might come from this accident.I’m going to let them, too.I’m only temporary here, and that’s how they want to run it.I’m very all right with them taking that part over.”She agreed and laid her head on his chest.“I have a long day today as well.I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“I understand.I do, as well.We’ve broken ground for the fire station house, so we’re working on getting the ground prepped for the foundation.After that, we have the foundation for the school to prep as well.I don’t know how that’s going to work.The school and the station are several blocks apart, but we were asked to do it, and I’m going to try my best to get it finished up in time for school next fall.”

As they finished up their shower and got dressed, the two of them headed down to breakfast.They’d been working so hard, the two of them, that they were missing each other.Once this thing with the Feds was over and he could get things going on a normal workweek, he was going to take his lovely mate out to dinner and perhaps a nice hotel for the two of them to enjoy a night away from everything going on in their lives.

By the time he got to his offices, Belinda was already there.He loved having her around, and now that she was back to work, too, he had a lot of things for her to do.She’d taken some time off when she’d realized that Danny had indeed killed her family and then how they’d died.He wasn’t sure that he’d be able to function again after all that.But she was determined.She told him not to let him get her down.He had to wonder if she’d heard about his death.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”She’d put up her hand when he tried to explain what had happened to the man in the jail.“I’m going to hope that he suffered slightly before dying, and that will be the end of my thoughts on him.He is nothing to me, and I don’t want to talk about him again.”

“All right.I can understand that.”They got right to work, and by the time lunch rolled around, he was on his way to having the first bit of free time that he’d had since taking over the position of mayor of his little town.

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