King's Country (Oil Kings #4) - Marie Johnston Page 0,19

craw.

“Of course I do, but that’s not for months yet.”

“Then what is she doing here? Don’t you have a girlfriend who would be upset?”

“No. I offered.” I skipped the girlfriend part.

“She has to know.” Grams’s derisive snort almost had me looking back to make sure Bristol couldn’t hear the way Grams talked about her. “She’s here making sure you stay single, or she’s trying to marry you and get at least half.”

Keeping my voice low, I hissed, “She doesn’t know about the trust. You know we kept it in the family.”

I wouldn’t hurt her that way. Knowing all my brothers had married before they were twenty-nine to keep her family penniless would hurt her more than how the rest of the town treated her. Their marriages had all turned out to be true love, and maybe I’d hoped it would work out for me too, but unlike them, I didn’t feel the pull to marry just because.

Grams shook her head. “She has to know. She wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“I found her in the pasture, wrapped in barbed wire and freezing to death. She could’ve died. Are you saying she planned that?”

Grams had the grace to blanch. “How’d you locate her?”

I pointed to Daisy. “She didn’t even have her phone, Grams. It was life or death.”

“That may be, but I wouldn’t put some kind of scheming past a Cartwright.”

“You mean like selling land you suspected had oil in it, keeping the rights, then profiting two different ways on it?”

Grams’s expression hardened. “Keeping mineral rights is common practice.”

“The Cartwrights were your best friends.”

“Then they shouldn’t have told the whole town we were heartless crooks.”

“Kinda sounds like you were.”

“You forget that the quarter of land they’ve been living on right next to yours used to be in your father’s family, until they conned Gentry’s dad out of it.”

“Maybe, but that was before Bristol’s time. That was even before her dad’s time.” It was no wonder Danny Cartwright had turned out like he had. He’d grown up nursed with resentment and bitterness.

“She’s still a Cartwright. Who’s doing all her work?”

“I am. I offered.” I skipped the part where Bristol had insisted she’d pay me back, including Tucker’s and Kiernan’s pay. I wouldn’t accept it. I could cover the cost. She couldn’t.

“Hmph. Have you told your father yet?”

I clamped my lips shut. I hadn’t told any of my family. A knowing gleam entered her eyes.

“If it’s not a big deal, then why don’t you call him? Tell him you’ve got the daughter of the man who got his wife—my daughter—killed staying with you.” Her voice shook by the time she was done talking.

“Dad is old enough to keep the two separate.” I hoped he was, since I should’ve been old enough to do the same years ago. “Bristol’s not her father.”

“You need to take this seriously, Dawson. If not for your mother, then for me. Do you remember how I sat in your room all night with you for two months after the funeral? Gentry trying to juggle his job at the company and taking over your mother’s duties. Four scared and grieving boys. You seem to have forgotten what I’ve sacrificed. What I’ve lost.”

I’d clung to Grams during that time. The most maternal this woman had been her entire life and she’d done it for me, for the rest of the family, so Dad could get some sleep while she soothed my nightmares. “I haven’t forgotten,” I murmured.

“Then tell your father what you’re doing.” Grams went to the driver’s side of her vehicle. “Or I will.”

She hopped in and pulled away. I was left standing with Daisy at my side. I waited until her taillights disappeared before I went inside.

Bristol was nowhere to be seen. I went to the bedroom but she wasn’t there.

“Bristol?”

An object clattered from the hallway. The office door was open.

Inside, Bristol was balancing on her good leg and picking up a picture frame.

“I’m sorry. When you didn’t come in, I got restless.”

The picture was a family photo. The last one we’d taken before Mama died. I kept it on my desk.

I went around the simple rectangular desk Mama had hauled from Billings and assembled in one afternoon and pulled open a drawer. Deep in the back was a framed photo I hadn’t had the heart to throw or pack away.

I held it out.

Bristol accepted it and gasped. The picture was of Mama and Bristol when she was six. Mama had put pigtails in Bristol’s hair and asked me to take