toward him. “Get your shit together now. Or I will run you into town, and you can hang out in the drunk tank for the next seventy-two hours. How would you like that?”
“You can’t do that. I have school tomorrow,” the boy sneered.
“You could just be truant then. We’ll see how well that goes over with the school.” Masterson public schools had a zero-tolerance truancy policy that was strictly enforced. Every parent knew that. Jail wouldn’t be an excuse.
The boy continued to kick and fight. Joel continued to hold him. He could do this all night if he had to.
Phoebe Tyler saw the lights and knew something was going on. Something that shouldn’t be. She didn’t even bother trying to listen, as she’d lost the ability to distinguish most sounds when she’d been six years old. She wasn’t fully hearing-impaired and could speak, but there was a lot she missed. Especially without the hearing aid currently sitting on her bedside table. She’d tried to sleep with it in before, but it just didn’t happen.
A fact a lot of her siblings took advantage of. Especially the younger ones. They’d better not be up wandering the house. Not this late.
She was the oldest of eight, and she didn’t take that role lightly. Her father busted his butt trying to turn a profit on the small ranch that had been in their family for generations. But it wasn’t easy. Especially since her mother had passed two years earlier in a car wreck that had two of her siblings injured. Leaving a mountain of debt bigger than the mountain that she could see from her window. The loss of their mother left the day-to-day care of the ranch house, and her youngest siblings, up to her.
Well, up to her and her sisters, Pip, Perci, and Pandora. The girls had their own responsibilities, though. Pip was doing her best to build a horse ranch out of their small stable of cutting horses. A few more years, and she’d be able to sell off some of the horses she’d bred and trained herself. Perci helped Phoebe with her Angora goat herd when needed—and worked extra twelve-hour shifts as a nurse at the county hospital whenever she could. Perci made a point of taking every bit of overtime she could get. Pan spent most of her time helping their father and Phoebe. When she could, Pan did virtual-assistant work and cleaned houses for some of their cousins and uncles. Phoebe’s responsibilities around the house made it impossible for her to have a full-time job. She supplemented what her sisters brought in with her goats. She sold the mohair yarn she created herself. Money was tight, but they were holding on.
In her spare time, Phoebe tended her little drove. After she had finished with that, she would sit at her loom and weave blankets from the yarn she kept back for that purpose. When those sold, she’d bring in a few hundred dollars each.
Every penny their branch of the Tylers could bring in helped their family of nine survive.
If something was wrong with one of the children, it was Phoebe’s job to take care of them. She didn’t bother with a robe or slippers. She grabbed the hearing aid sitting on her night table and slipped it in. With the device, she had close to sixty percent of hearing in her left ear.
Phoebe hurried down the stairs.
Joel caught the door opening again as he held the idiot teenager aloft and lectured. Another woman stepped out. He looked at her long enough to figure out if she was the mother or not. She looked like all the rest of the females but smaller, slighter. A little older. Maybe, but not much. She wore small, thin pajamas that did little to hide the fact that she was all woman. Hell, Joel would far rather be looking at her than dealing with this kid.
She took one look at what was happening and jumped right into the fray. By smacking at Joel and lecturing him.
Joel couldn’t defend himself and the boy from the small tornado attacking him—not without seriously hurting her—so he dropped the boy heedlessly to the ground and grabbed the woman by her arms. He tried to turn her to face him more fully, but she was mighty resistant.
“Stop. Lady, I said stop, unless you want to be arrested for assaulting an officer.”
She had one little finger pointing in his face, but she wasn’t looking at him. No, now her