Page 14 of Brother In Arms

Chapter 5

Rush

It’d taken me a couple of days to finish repairing the fence and that was with me working my ass off to do it almost double time compared to what it would have normally taken me. I was in the main barn, stacking the bales of fresh straw that’d come in when she found me again. It’d been a few days since I’d last seen her up close but it’d never been hard picking her figure out at a distance. It was even nicer up close. What wasn’t as nice was the mouth or the rich bitch attitude Bailey had on her.

Like now, her greeting was a sharp, "What are you doing?"

“Stacking these bales, puttin’ ‘em away, what’s it look like I’m doing?”

“That’s not your job!” she snapped, “That’s the delivery company’s job. I pay them for that, though to tell you the truth I’m not sure what I’m paying you for right now… Jesus!”

“Whoa, easy, slow down,” I put down the hay hooks I was using and said, “Looks like your delivery guys got one over on the FNG, I didn’t know.”

“FNG?” she echoed.

“Fucking New Guy,” I supplied and she covered her face with her hands and shook her head.

“This isn’t the dude ranch you came from! You can’t talk like that where clients could potentially hear you!”

I raised my eyebrows amused and said “Darlin’, I’m pretty sure you know exactly who and what you hired on the day that you did it, and I’m tellin’ you,” I stepped into her personal space and dropped my voice real low so only she could hear, “if you wanna ride my dick again, all you have to do is ask. I’m not real fond of you ridin’ it any other way.”

She looked up at me stricken and a little horrified before the blush of her embarrassment had a chance to set in, which was a boner killer right there. Never quite had that reaction after I’d fucked a woman. Couldn’t say I much liked it. I stepped back and picked up the hooks and marched past her to the jumbled pile of bales the delivery company had just dropped in the middle of the barn haphazardly. I hooked a fresh one and walked it over to the neat stack against the wall I was making.

“I am your boss,” she was sputtering, “you can’t, you won’t, talk to me that way or I’ll fire your ass!”

Twice in one day, that’d be cute. I was surprised by how much I wanted this job. It was an opportunity to get back some of what I’d lost back when I’d had to go to prison. I hadn’t told her about how I’d been released early, partially for good behavior and partially due to overcrowding. By the same token, in my eyes and the eyes of the state of Arizona, I’d done my bid… even if a bunch of folks didn’t think it was fair. She hadn’t needed to know all of that. Probably wouldn’t have hired me if she’d known, so I’d kept my mouth shut. I’d wanted this fucking job, wanted it bad and now here it was the first week and I stood a chance of losing it because the little rich bitch didn’t think I could hack it.

No, because I was letting her get to me, and by extension, letting my mouth get ahead of me… Fuck.

No, again. I could eat some fuckin’ crow here. I opened my mouth to apologize, as much as I didn’t want to, because I really genuinely liked this place and the people left in it… present company excluded at the moment.

I never got the chance to say anything, though, because a ruckus went up outside. Bailey whipped around to face the barn doors and we both froze, listening for a moment.

“Bailey, wait!” I called out but she was closer and already striding that direction. I put down the hay hooks and picked up the baseball bat I’d been keeping around and handy while I worked. The other employees of the farm had been talking, and I’d been pretty much accepted as one of them already, once they saw I wasn’t afraid to work, so I’d heard the stories.

Men coming to their homes, local thugs, threatening them with deportation or violence if they went back to Blue Hills. Some of them had taken the threats seriously, some of ‘em didn’t, then there were guys like Renaldo who knew what loyalty was and whose whole lives revolved around this place. I liked the guy. He’d been born and raised here, a boy of seven kids born to immigrant parents who worked the fields. He’d somehow gotten into horses and had won the genetic lottery being a little dude. It made him perfect for the position of jockey and he was a fearless motherfucker.

I’d liked him instantly, when I figured out he was calling me the gringo because that’s what all his people called me. I also liked it that he took a hard line when any of them said something even remotely disrespectful behind Bailey’s back. He was always quick to remind them that her being Jefe was the only thing keeping the lot of ‘em employed, didn’t matter if they thought her becoming Jefe had turned her into a bitch.

So it was no surprise that he ended up being the primary target for any strong arm tactics to get people to move on from here. What was surprising was that they would do it in the middle of broad daylight, at the farm. I went out into chaos boiling over. Strong arm local thugs holding Bailey and the rest of the guys left working late, aside with sticks and batons. No guns that I could see, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any in play. I had mine, but I never brought it out unless I was ready to kill a motherfucker, which we weren’t quite to that point yet, especially considering Bailey was on her cell, and likely with the police while a couple of these assholes were whoopin’ the shit out of Renaldo.

I counted five, and I liked my odds with the bat. Still, it was time to nut up or shut up, and I was all about the former. Adrenaline rushed through my veins as I waded in and cracked one of the fuckers kicking Renaldo who was down on the ground. I took one of his attackers out, bashing him in the side of the knee with a stroke that damn sure broke something. His buddy rounded on me just in time to get the blunt end of my bat in his guts.

His other buddies tried to come to the rescue, one of ‘em jumping on my back, an arm across my throat trying to ride me into the dirt. I heard Bailey screaming and yelling and my presence and willingness to go to bat, had woken a couple of the other farmhands up out of their stupor. They started to throw down with me, keeping the other two occupied enough for me to take care of the one trying to choke me out.

I flung him over my shoulders and slammed him into the ground. It helped that I hadn’t had a shirt on. It was too fuckin’ hot in the barn, which wasn’t air conditioned like the stables, but that was a whole different story for another time. Once I had the happy bastard on his back he scrambled to his feet. He had a pair of brass knuckles and he made a big show of sliding ‘em onto his hand. I quirked an eyebrow like really dude?

Bailey screamed something at me like look out, and the dude snarled at her, “Shut up, bitch!”

I told him, “Hey, she ain’t your mamma, boy.”

It was just the spur to his flank that he needed, because he snarled and lunged. I cracked him right in the fucking face with the bat. I know I broke the fucker’s jaw and I know that he lost teeth because at least three of them went flying. The one I’d gut checked scrambled to his feet and yelled, “Fuck man, he’s a Sacred Heart!” and my club’s reputation, as always around these parts, preceded us because the three of them jumped into one of the two pickups left in the driveway and took off without their unconscious buddies.

Renaldo groaned, and there was no way in hell it was a fair fight. He was just a little guy and these bastards were my size or better. The two farmhands knelt next to him where he groaned in the dirt and we waited for the distant sirens to get here.

Of course, first thing the cops did was put me in cuffs. I looked to Bailey as they led me past her to sit me down in the back of their patrol car and growled at her, “That’s what you hired me for.”

She blinked, bewildered while cops and medics swarmed around the farm’s drive and I waited for her to either get me out of this situation or to throw me under the bus. Wasn’t more than ten minutes before one of the boys in blue, er, brown as was the sheriff’s office’s uniform, was opening up the back of the patrol car saying, “You do realize you hired a felon, right Ms. Berling?”

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