“I don’t run your shop,” I ground out.

The muscle at his jaw ticked and his black eyes turned as mean as I’d ever seen them. “Three days, son. Three days.”

“I know how to read a calendar,” I replied through gritted teeth. I needed to grab Jess and get the hell out of here. Because if we didn’t leave soon I was going to sucker punch one of the Order’s most senior members and get my ass kicked by his younger brethren. I was good in a fight, but six against one were suicide odds.

“And you’re a fool if you think you can run our shop and be getting close with that girl, too. She’s too good for you. Quit being a selfish fuck and leave her alone.”

“Mind your own goddamn business.”

“I seen it before. Some of our boys thinking they can be with her kind. It don’t work out. Look at your daddy. Look what he did to your momma. He ruined her. You want that for Jessica James?”

“I’m not one of the Order.”

Repo’s stony expression abruptly cracked with a little smile that looked more bitter than amused, and he said, “Not yet.”

CHAPTER 17

“The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page.”

? Augustine of Hippo

~Jessica~

Two days. Monday and Tuesday.

Two days of impersonal text messages.

And all I kept thinking was that these were two days I’d never get back. We had limited time together, Duane and I, so two days without his company made me feel like I was being cheated, like he was reneging on his side of the deal.

Since Sunday, the most intimate of our exchanges had been via text message, as follows:

Me: Hey Red, want to get together tonight?

Him: Can’t.

Me: I miss you.

Him: You too.

That had been Tuesday around 4 p.m. Now it was Wednesday just after noon and…nothing.

Therefore, I decided to force the issue. It was early release day, so I skipped out right after the bell and I made pie.

As well I bought the ingredients for meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and collards. Enough to feed eight.

I asked Claire to drive me over to the family’s house that evening, intent on making those boys dinner, but also getting Duane alone so we could set a few things straight. If I was being clingy and overreacting, I needed to know. Because I wanted to see him every day of the thirteen months, five weeks, and three days we had left.

I wanted to see him every day, talk to him, listen to him laugh and make me laugh. I wanted to kiss him and snuggle against his delectable body. And I wanted to return the favors he’d given me. I wanted to make him feel good and treasured. All the time.

As we pulled up to the big house, I counted the cars.

Duane’s sexy machine (the Road Runner) was present, as was Cletus’s Geo Prizm. I was pretty sure the Ford truck was Billy’s, which meant the candy red Pontiac vintage muscle car was Beau’s. Four of the boys were at home.

Claire—who’d been very supportive of my show up and surprise your boyfriend’s family with dinner plan—helped me unload the groceries from her car and set them on the porch. I told her to drive away before I knocked on the door. They wouldn’t be able to turn me away if I were stranded.

Plus, I was holding a pie. This was a strategic decision. My momma once told me no one turns away a lady bearing pie. If you want to get your foot in the door, bring pie and hold it in front of you. She called this the pie effect.

Therefore, with a pile of groceries on the big porch behind me and a still warm apple pie in my hands, I knocked on the door to the family’s house.

The main structure sat on over fifteen acres backing up to the Great Smoky Mountains National Forrest. The house itself had a wide curving staircase, at least seven bedrooms, and beautiful large windows lining the back. It was a big house and had once been very grand. Over the last twenty or so years, the house, and the land surrounding it, had fallen into a state of messy disrepair.

Winston was their daddy’s name, but their momma came from an old, established Tennessee family with the last name of Oliver, very high-cotton. The house had been called Oliver House until around ten years ago. Her father, Mr. Oliver, had been a politician, a man of business and of considerable money. Bethany Oliver had married beneath her station—or so all my momma’s friends had whispered after Sunday service—by getting hitched to Darrel Winston at the very young age of sixteen.

They’d had seven kids, he was terrible, and the rest was history.

The old house had no doorbell, so I waited. Only the butterflies in my stomach keeping me company. When no one answered after a stretch, I knocked again.

After knocking for the third time with no answer, I worried. I glanced over my shoulder at the line of cars and decided to swat my worry away. Surely one of the brothers was at home. Left with very few options—either walk in uninvited or do a quick survey of the property—I decided to take my pie and go around the back. I figured walking in uninvited would be my last resort.

It took me a bit to circumnavigate the house. Machine parts littered the path. I noticed a busted, old CAT earthmover, dull yellow with patches of rust, sat behind a giant detached garage. I made a mental note to check inside the garage before I walked into the house.

Thankfully, I spotted a red head with a broad, muscular back about a hundred paces from the back of the house, standing on some sort of covered deck. I squared my shoulders and marched to the structure, seeing that either Beau or Duane were tending to a large, smoking grill.

When I was about twenty feet away, the redhead—his back still turned—said, “Do you have the sausage?”

He was Duane. My heart knew.

The butterflies in my stomach flew to my chest, made breathing a labor. I was nervous. But I was also here, and I’d committed to this ambush. I wasn’t going to shrink away now, even if dinner as bribery was the price.

But I did have to clear my throat of my nerves before responding, “No. But I have apple pie.”

Clearly startled, Duane turned fully around, his eyes moving up and down my form. He was surprised and his features were a cloudy mess of stunned relief. I felt a good bit of tension leave my bones when he finally smiled like he couldn’t help it and rushed forward.

Duane intercepted me on the second step leading to the deck and, paying no heed to the dish in my hand, wrapped his arms around my body and gave me a big, getting-down-to-business kiss. His mouth and hands felt wonderful and possessive, one slipping under my sweater and shirt to grip the bare of my back. I liked the kiss so much, I almost dropped the pie.

Too soon, but really after a full minute or more, the kiss was over and he was nuzzling my ear. We were both breathing a bit hard.

“Goodness, I missed you,” I said on a sigh, loving the texture and feel of his beard against my jaw, and his hot breath on my neck.

“I missed you, too, Jessica.” He nibbled on my ear, whispering my name like it was a dirty word—but not a curse word—a dirty word. Something erotic and scandalous. I had an odd thought then, that I liked my name on his lips more when it was whispered.

We were interrupted by a voice from behind me. “Is that pie?”

Duane stiffened a little, but didn’t relinquish his hold on me. Instead, after releasing a frustrated sounding exhale, he lifted his head from my neck. Likewise, I glanced over my shoulder and found Duane’s mirror image strolling toward us; an easy, friendly smile claiming Beau’s features.

But they weren’t really a mirror image of each other. I decided one of the main differences between Duane and Beau was that Beau’s smiles were easy, freely given; Duane’s smiles were difficult, hard won, and I’d learned to treasure each one.

“I’ll take that,” Beau said as he breezed past, grabbing the pie from my hand. As he crossed to a picnic table on the deck and placed the dish on top of it he added, “I do love apple pie.”

“Don’t eat any of that,” Duane said as we both watched Beau lean close and sniff it.

“I can’t eat it, I don’t have a fork…yet.” Beau looked around the deck like he was searching for something.

Besides the picnic table and the large smoking grill, the twenty-by-twenty-foot deck had several Adirondack chairs, a big wooden chest that I suspected was actually a cooler (likely full of beer), and an old wooden hutch painted lime green. The exposed wood ceiling was strung with white Christmas lights, which would come in handy once the sun set.

Beau walked over to the lime green hutch and dug through a few drawers. Watching his brother, Duane shook his head like he was disgusted.

“He’s looking for a fork,” he explained, his hands slipping from my body, but then—in the same movement—tucking me under his arm. “Don’t eat any of that pie. It’ll ruin your dinner.”

“I’m just going to taste it.”

Duane looked like he was going to protest again, but I cut him off with my question, “When did y’all get this deck? I don’t remember it being here.”

“Drew, Billy, and Jethro built it for Momma two years ago. She likes having dinner out here, when the weather is nice.”

Duane was still speaking about his mother in the present tense. It made my heart hurt a bit. I didn’t correct him, but I did give him a squeeze.