Page 105 of Look at Her and Die

POSY

The court date for Taryn’s claim on the money came and went.

With enough witnesses saying he gave the ticket to Searcy of his own free will, the trial had been short and sweet.

The judge had sided with Searcy, and we walked out of the courtroom an hour and a half later with smiles on our faces.

Who didn’t have a smile was Taryn, who looked angry as hell and ready to take it out on Searcy the moment she stepped out of the courthouse.

I stepped in front of him, my anger at his audacity palpable, and said, “You even think about trying anything, and I’ll pull out every tooth from your face and make you swallow them.”

“You can’t touch me,” he snorted.

“I can, and I will.”

Taryn’s jaw clenched, and I knew he wasn’t going to let this go.

He was going to make this into a big deal, and I was going to have to kill him.

Which I would do, only with a hell of a lot more careful planning than suddenly and without pause in front of a courthouse.

Taryn gave one last glare over my shoulder then turned away, his fists clenched.

Searcy came out from around me and stood by my side while we watched him march away. “He’s not going to let that go.”

“No,” I agreed. “He’s not.”

Scottie was home, which meant that the Hodges and the Hicks were partying. And by partying, I mean getting some ranch work done as a family.

We were mucking out stalls, getting horses fed, waters changed, and mending fences—though only Kent and I were doing the fence mending.

“Are you really marrying my sister?” Kent asked, looking at me through some cheap pair of sunglasses I’d had in my truck.

I paused in my fence pulling and said, “Would that be okay with you?”

“Searcy deserves to be happy,” he admitted. “She’s spent her entire life taking care of us in one way or another. Hell, she practically raised herself.”

I knew that, so I didn’t comment.

We worked together in silence before he said, “I think I’d be okay with it.”

I grinned. “We’d have to spend a little bit more time together, but I definitely see this going toward the marriage direction.”

He nodded, then stopped what he was doing completely before saying, “You should tell her that.”

My brows rose. “I should?”

“She thinks no one loves her. She has too much baggage. First our dad, then our mom. She has me, Calliope, Koda, and Anders. But she has no one else. Until you,” he admitted. “If you love her, you should tell her. She needs to hear it.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You love her, right?”

I wasn’t going to lie to this kid. Not about his sister, who’d raised him.

“I love her,” I admitted.

“She will fight you on it,” he pointed out. “Searcy protects herself. Thinks that she has to. You should tell her that she doesn’t have to anymore. That’s your job.”

We went back to fence pulling after that.

We only stopped when it was well past dinnertime and we couldn’t see any longer without the daylight.

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