died, he felt something other than rage at their loss. “Who should I ask for?”
“Skylar. Skye for short.” He couldn’t help but grin. Her name was perfect for Montana.
“I might take you up on that.”
“We need to go,” the oldest male growled, glaring at Logan.
“Right,” Skylar mumbled.
“I’m Logan Storm.” He put out his hand for her to shake, needing to see if her skin was as soft as it looked.
Skylar stared at his hand for a moment then shook it. She pulled it back instantly, as if he’d burned her, but not quick enough for Logan to miss the fact her skin had felt like silk against his callused fingers, and the perfume wafting through the open window was the sweetest scent he’d smelled in his life. He also noted, in that brief moment of contact, the knot in his chest was a distant memory. And the relief was immeasurable.
“Nice to meet you, but we really have to go.” She didn’t wait for him to answer, just threw the truck in gear without looking in her side mirror, and pulled away in a hurry, leaving Logan standing on the side of the road with no answer as to why they’d been stopped in the first place.
The younger male turned his head as they drove off and locked eyes with Logan through the rear window, leaving him with even more questions. There was rage working beneath his eyes. Logan knew the look. Saw it daily in the mirror. The kid was battling demons of his own.
_____________
“What the fuck, Skye? We’re losing our home, and you’re flirting with some drifter!” Jake bit out sharply.
I barely heard what he said. I was running numbers through my head, at a depressing rate, even as my mind kept wandering back to Logan Storm. “What?”
“Storm. You asked him out for a drink.”
I blinked, feeling guilty that during our brief encounter with the mysterious man, I had been so caught up with the way Storm’s crystalline eyes seemed to bore right into my soul, I’d forgotten for a single moment about our troubles with Chance. “I offered to buy him one for stopping. That’s hardly asking him out for drinks, Jake.”
“He seems cool,” Josh mumbled beside me. “Did you see the tattoo on his forearm? He was in the military.”
The tone in his voice made me look at him. There was awe mixed in with curiosity. Other than fighting with Jake, that was the most emotion I’d heard from him since our father died. “What kind of tattoo?”
“Who gives a fuck about his tattoo? Can we focus, please?”
“Jake, your mouth.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “We have thirty days to figure this shit out or we’re homeless.”
I swallowed down the fear threatening to overpower me. He was right, we had to figure this out and quick. “I’ll talk to Matt at the bank. We’ll get another loan.”
“He’ll just buy it again.” Josh said this with so much finality, it about killed me. He was too sharp for a fifteen-year-old. The smartest of the three of us, if truth be told. A little too guarded as well—and stealthy. He’d make a great CIA agent the way he stalked around in the shadows.
“Then I’ll go to Bozeman. He doesn’t have that much power. He may run Madison Valley, but he’s not the biggest shark in the ocean. I’ll find someone he can’t strongarm to give me a loan.”
At least I hoped I could. I wasn’t sure banks loaned money to twenty-three-year-olds without a ton of credit. Everything we had was in my father’s name, so I hadn’t built any. Thankfully, being a small, locally-owned bank, Madison Valley Bank had let us keep making payments on the existing loan without changing over the name. I wasn’t sure someone who didn’t know us would do the same.
“What about the CD?” Jake asked. “We could get student loans for school.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t enough.”
“How much do we still owe?”
It might as well have been a million dollars. “Two hundred thousand.”
“What? After twenty plus years?”
My stomach rolled with the anxiety attacking my system. I had no choice but to tell them. They needed to know everything so they could help me figure this out. “Dad put the land and house up as collateral when he bought the bar, so it’s not just the house we’ll lose if I can’t find the money.”
“Are you saying that dickweed holds the note to everything?” Josh asked. “That if we can’t pay,