Page 95 of Wrangled Up

He stopped in his tracks. Water ran off the brim of his hat but his eyes beneath were nothing but fire. Fire and love.

He leaned in and planted a hard kiss on Claire’s lips. “You know you are. We’re a team. But you’ve gotta stay inside in case there’s trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Tucker started towing her toward the house again. He fished in his pocket for his keys and unlocked the door, which had never been locked before his relatives started their crap.

Christian opened the door and they bundled their fighting woman inside. “We don’t know what kind of trouble yet. But you’re not going to be part of it.”

Tucker closed the door in her face, but not before Christian got a good look at the determined wrath on her pixie features.

“She ain’t gonna stay put. She’ll run out the back,” Christian said.

“Probably, but hopefully her anger will keep her from thinking straight for a few minutes. Let’s go.” Tucker jumped off the porch steps in one bound.

Christian followed and they stormed toward the barn. One sweep of the inside told them that the horses here hadn’t been tampered with. Only those in the corral and the alpacas.

“Come out, you lowlife bastard,” Tucker bellowed.

“This might be a good time to tell you that I caught Dale here the other day.”

“What?” Tucker spun, fists clenched and jaw locked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Well, I…roughed him up a little and sent him on his way.”And tried to blackmail him as Claire did with Darcy.

Tucker seemed to sense there was more. He opened his mouth to speak, but a cracking noise from the back of the barn distracted him.Smoke and the acrid scent of gasoline drifted to Christian.

“Fuck—my horses.” The choked way Tucker ground this out sent Christian running. He hurled himself into the dim recesses of the barn. Tucker followed, and they started wildly opening stall doors and slapping thousand-pound animals to get them to run out.

Fire licked up the rear wall, very close to the place where Tucker’s favorite riding horse was kept. “I’ll get Rapid Fire,” Christian called, running.

Something whizzed past his ear. Every hair on his body stood up, but it took a moment for him to register what had happened.

Until a second shot was fired.

He jerked around to see Dale through the open rear door of the bar, a rifle at his shoulder and sights trained on Christian.

“Tucker, get down. Get out,” he roared and hurtled on toward the stalls to free the rest of the horses.

“He’s got a gun.” Tucker’s statement was really a question. Christian could only imagine the shock Tucker was feeling that his ownfamily member would resort to this over money.

One misplaced bullet…

Claire.He frantically looked around but thankfully didn’t see her. With any luck, she would remain in the house like a good girl, but it was as unlikely as talking Dale down from this skyscraper he’d built.

“Jesus, boy, what are you thinkin’?” Tucker raged. He gave Christian a fleeting look and a jerk of his head to remain out of the line of fire. Then he spun and sprinted out of the front doors.

Sneaking around the side, Christian guessed. Tucker wasn’t armed though. Did he plan to disarm his cousin with nothing more than a pocketknife?

The fire was spreading. About ten more horses were trapped behind a wall of flame. The old wood went up like a dry Christmas tree.

Smoke choked him, and he coughed violently, leaning over at the waist. Another shot whizzed through the barn, from back to front. If someone walked by that door…

“Jesus, Claire. Please don’t come out of the house.” He fumbled for his phone, thinking to text her, but it was too late. Her high-pitched shriek resounded from just outside the barn.

“Get in the house,” Tucker roared from somewhere near the back. The bellow gave up Tucker’s position and intention of sneaking around and stopping Dale.

The horses pawed at the stalls and reared, their massive bodies making the wood tremble.

---