She wasn’t cute. She was f**king cute.
Through his grin, he muttered, “Bye, baby.”
He disconnected, turned and his body gave an involuntary start, a reaction he showed and couldn’t bury, an unusual occurrence.
This was because, first, he’d forgotten Silas Goodknight was even there.
And second, Silas Goodknight was smiling at him huge.
“Right!” Silas stated smartly and put his mug on the island with more force than needed. “That’s that. I’ll expect you and Faye over for dinner next Saturday night. Be there at six. Sondra likes flowers, pink ones. Just tell Holly, Holly’ll know what to do. Or tell Faye, she’ll know what to do too. Other than that, bring you and a big appetite. Sondra may bitch about me takin’ care of myself but that don’t mean when company comes, she don’t like to show off.”
As Chace processed going from Silas’s surprise visit the reason for which was to tell him he didn’t want Chace dating his daughter to Silas asking Chace and Faye to dinner, Silas moved toward the front door.
With no other choice, Chace followed him.
They were outside, Chace at the top of the steps opening his mouth to give his farewell or say something else altogether, Silas at the bottom when Silas turned, locked eyes with Chace and beat him to speaking.
“Don’t know the path you’re on to the man you want to be. Do know that in any man’s life, the journey includes dark places we find ourselves in where we don’t wanna be. I get that you were in a dark place. I get you were there for a good while. I also know you made your way out. I don’t understand why you don’t think you’ve found the light and I won’t ask. You already told me you won’t share. I get that too. I probably wouldn’t either. But I know from the way you spoke about my daughter, the look on her face when she was talkin’ to me and Sondra about you last weekend, what she told us you were doin’ for that boy she took to lookin’ after and what I heard just now on the phone, you’ve already found that man. You just haven’t realized it yet.”
As Chace stood in the cold in his jeans, shirt, sweater and socks staring down the stairs, Silas lifted a hand and finished, “See you next weekend.”
Then he sauntered down Chace’s walk to his Wrangler.
Chace watched him give another short wave through the windshield before he did a three-point turn and drove down Chace’s lane.
Chace continued to stare after him as the Wrangler turned left and motored toward Carnal.
Then he grinned and muttered, “Fuck me,” before he turned on his foot and walked back into his house.
* * * * *
As Chace drove up the drive to Tate Jackson’s house in the hills, he noted Tate had the company that Chace suggested he have. Deke’s beat up pickup truck. Wood’s Ford F-150. Ty’s Landcruiser. And a Cherokee Chace couldn’t place but he suspected it was Holden Maxwell’s considering Chace suggested Max get a call.
Deke Hightower was a drifter but he had a strict path that he drifted between. Carnal to Sturgis. He lived simple. Beat up pickup. Harley. Roof over his head. Jeans on his ass. Food in his belly. And beer at Bubba’s or the All American Roadhouse in Sturgis, whisky if he felt like living it up. He took odd jobs along the way in order to facilitate this life. The man was rough, monosyllabic and enormous in height and breadth. This hid the fact that he was smart as a whip. But he didn’t try to hide the fact that he was loyal. He had Tate’s back when Tate and Laurie were getting to know each other and all that went down with that. He had Ty’s back during his drama.
Coal “Wood” Blackwood owned a share of the family run garage in town. They specialized in Harleys. His father started it, built it up and now anyone that lived in a two hundred and fifty mile radius who had the funds to get their bike worked on at their garage brought it to Pop and Wood’s. Wood’s father, Pop, was a devoted Harley man who saddled Wood with a biker’s son biker name that surprisingly Wood, considering he was also a biker, refused to answer to and everyone called him Wood unless they wanted his fist in their groin. Rumor had it he’d spent his teenage years and early twenties spreading this message wide and now no one called him anything else. Not even “Mr. Blackwood”.
Chace parked, walked up the steps and down Tate’s deck to the door while taking in the conifers all around dusted with snow.
Tate was a mountain man to Chace’s plains man. Tate got his quiet and peace from being surrounded by nothing but trees.
Even before the shit that went down with him, Chace liked the openness of the plains, the vistas panoramic, the opportunities to make a surprise approach nonexistent.
Tate liked seclusion. You had to know where you were going to find Tate’s house. If you happened on it by accident or design, he had the firepower and willingness to use it in order to encourage you to explain why you’d wandered his way and get you to move on if he didn’t like your answers.
Chace hit the door and opened it without a knock because he saw the men sitting around the dining room table just inside. The owner of the Cherokee was who Chace expected, Holden Maxwell. Not a local, he owned a construction company in Gnaw Bone. However, he was a friend of Ty’s and his wife was an attorney. She was the attorney who acted as Ty’s attorney so he, like everyone, was not unaware of what had gone down. Although not intimately involved, he still had ties.
“Beer?” Tate asked as Chace closed the door.
“Yep,” Chace answered
Greetings were exchanged by chin, eyes or words as Chace took his seat at the table and Tate put a beer in front of him.
As Tate reseated himself, Chace asked, “The women?”
His eyes went to Ty who answered.
“Lexie and me moved into a huge-ass house last week. Furniture we got filled about a sixteenth of it. We also got a f**kload of money in the bank, courtesy of the State of California. This means Lexie, Laurie and Maggie are shoppin’ for furniture. It also means, by tonight, I’ll have to hire an architect to add onto my already huge-ass house because we’ll have more furniture than we can fit in the f**kin’ place.”