“I didn’t have anything to offer her before. I don’t know how much I have to offer her now. I fucking don’t know. Goddamn Noah has to come back and fuck everything up. Now I have some timetable, and I don’t like that.”
Trev laughed out loud. “You and Bo should get together some time.” He sobered up. “Thank your brother. Bo thanks me every day. If I hadn’t come along, he and Beth would both be alone. Sometimes we need that third part to get the machine moving. But you try it your way. I think it will all work out in the end. Are you going to kick his ass to the curb or are you going to make him watch?”
James had the definite feeling that Trev was, once again, butting in. He’d thought about not allowing Noah back on the ranch. But Trev just put that idea in his head. Probably because he thought proximity would bring him and Noah closer.
But James just wanted a little revenge.
“Can I use your playroom?” James had known that they would get along when the first thing Trev had set up in the guesthouse had been a playroom complete with everything a Dom needed to torture a little sub.
“Of course.” Trev pushed off the fence. “I’ll go get our two new hands set up.”
“I’m going to have a little session with Red.” Getting his ass kicked by a mean old horse just might take the edge off. He wanted to let Hope know he could handle her, not scare the crap out of her.
“Your funeral, man.” But Trev was smiling as he walked away. He looked like a man who had done everything he had planned.
Trev was going to be damn disappointed because he wasn’t making up with his brother.
He wasn’t.
Chapter Ten
By the time James drove up, Hope knew more about Sasquatch than any woman should know. The “squatchers” were nice enough, if utterly obsessed.
“You know from a biological standpoint, it’s really hard to believe that there’s a whole species of superpredator out there and the only real evidence we have is a video filmed in the sixties and some prints.”
Hope slapped at Noah’s arm. “Stop baiting them.”
Noah’s green eyes rolled. “Well, I do have a doctorate. Do they have doctorates?”
“Look, Doc, I dropped out of college to squatch. I am an expert on the big guy. He’s real, and just because you don’t believe in him doesn’t mean he won’t take your head off one day,” Trey, the leader of this intrepid group of squatchers, said. He was a thin man who obviously didn’t believe in a razor. Unfortunately, unlike his favored mythical beast, Trey didn’t grow a beard well. It was kind of in patches across his face.
“I have a master’s in philosophy,” a bright-eyed girl who couldn’t be more than twenty-two said. Like her brethren, she could be mistaken for a really sweet-looking homeless person.
“I graduated with a degree in English,” another young man admitted. “It was this or work at fast food. I don’t really like hydrogenated oils.”
“And you, Dr. Bennett, need to keep an open mind,” Nell said, giving him a little frown. She was in her element, holding court in front of her little tent. She’d invited the Bigfoot hunters to give her bread a try and then plied them all with her organic apple cider. They had been sitting around for an hour talking about mythical creatures. Noah had sat on the ground beside Hope, a mug of cider in his hand. It hadn’t been too long until he’d managed to get his head in her lap, an arm wrapped possessively around her legs.
It occurred to Hope that this whole festival thing was like a temporary commune for supernatural geeks. She bet a whole bunch of these people had Star Trek costumes somewhere in their closets.
“And you’re all wrong. Sasquatch isn’t from this plane. He probably wandered in from another plane. My own mother fell through a door from her plane. She was a faery, but she really liked it here.” Nell sat back in her chair, knitting as she spoke.
Henry merely looked on indulgently as his wife explained her native origins.
Trey leaned over, his voice low. “That lady is crazy, but she makes really good bread.”
James honked his horn.
Hope stood, forcing Noah to stand as well. They said good-bye and started to walk toward the truck.
“At least he doesn’t have a gun.” Noah walked beside her. He tried to reach down and hold her hand.
That seemed like waving a red flag in front of a bull. She took a step away. “Noah, we should talk. When we get back, I think we need to talk about what’s going on between us.”
And she would have to decide just how much to tell them about her past. In the hours she’d spent with Nell and Henry and Rachel, she’d decided that she would have to tell them about her problem with alcohol. It wasn’t fair to hide it from them if she was going to have even a short, meaningless relationship with one of them.
“Damn straight we’re going to talk. I told you I wasn’t going to hide this.” Noah kept walking beside her. She could see the tight line of his jaw.
James got out and walked around the truck, opening the passenger side door for her.
“Are you going to make me walk back to the ranch?” Noah asked.
James simply closed the door behind Hope and walked right past his brother to the driver’s side.
“James, you can’t make him walk. This is ridiculous.” Hope started to open the door, but the lock clicked into place. “Damn it, James.”
James gunned the engine. “He knows what to do.”
There was a thump, and when Hope looked back, Noah was in the truck bed. He tapped on the glass. Hope reached back and slid the small window open.
Noah pressed his face in. “Jamie, I swear to god, if you kill me, I will haunt your ass for the rest of time.”
James grinned as he took off, proving his truck had a serious engine.
“Asshole!” Noah screamed, his hand clutching the window, his body sliding as the truck moved.
“You’re trying to hurt him,” Hope accused.
“Nah, he’s had worse. He was the worst truck surfer in the county. Max really did damn near kill him that time he stopped because there was a bunny in the road. Saved the bunny, nearly decapitated Noah.”
“I was younger then and way stupider,” Noah yelled. He seemed to have found his balance. He’d managed to sit back up.
“Well, you were younger.” James stopped at the stop sign, gleefully applying the brakes.
“Can we talk about this?” Hope asked. “I don’t want to come between the two of you.”
She did. She really, really did, but not like this.
“We’ll talk, baby. We’ll talk when we get to the ranch,” James replied.
“Don’t trust him, Hope,” Noah interjected. “That’s his ‘I got a plan’ voice. His previous plans included bow hunting a bear, setting off fireworks as a way of getting the herd to move, and don’t forget tractor wars. Who ended up in the hospital every damn time you had a plan, Jamie?”
“I can’t help it that I was faster than you.”
“Well, you weren’t this time, were you, brother?”
James gunned it, his foot hitting the floor.
Hope crossed her arms across her chest and thought about calling Doc Burke. He carried a tranquilizer gun with his med kit. She’d like to shoot them both. James slammed on the brakes as the light turned yellow, and a small bit of white fabric flew past the windshield.
“Oh, my god. Were those my panties?” Hope asked, horror dawning.
The Farley brothers were standing in front of the Trading Post, their arms filled with bags of stuff they were probably planning to use in an attempt to bring about the apocalypse. But they were way more fascinated by the pair of feminine delicates that landed in one of the bags.