Page 5 of Wrangler

“I would, too.” She asked him again what was going to happen now that they were here. “Nothing for now. They’ve not caused any trouble with the law, so they can’t arrest them. As soon as the card hits that it’s stolen, then they’ll be arrested. Until then, we play the waiting game until they fuck up. And they will. Especially when it gets around that you and Wills are living in this house. They can’t get in, just so you know. They can’t even reach into the house to pull either of you out. It’s the magic that is surrounding all of the homes.”

“So we have to stay here all the time?” He laughed a little at the disappointment in her voice. “I don’t know if you realize this or not, but you laugh at the most inappropriate things.”

“I was just thinking that if you were to have to stay here forever, I really would be a fat cat. I’ve noticed that you stress cook.” She told him that she’d never thought of it that way as she’d never had a place where she could cook before. “Well, I want to tell you that you can do whatever you want when you need to cook. I’ll enjoy it more than anything else. Also, I know you like to cook, but we’ll need to get some staff in here too. Just because there is too much house for the two of us to maintain.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to cook every night. A staff would be wonderful too to make sure that the house…will they be faeries?” He told her that it would more than likely be. “Good. I love that they’re here. They’re very comforting to have around. I love them.”

The two of them talked about the house and the faeries while they wandered around the house. There were a lot of things going on with the home, changing things around as they entered the rooms just for them. When they got to the master suite, he was surprised that the room was as beautiful as the rest of the house. The only thing that he might well have changed was the fact that there were no blinds on the windows, something that he had missed when he’d been living with his brothers and mother.

He thought of his mother then. She had hired someone to kill off all potential mates to them so that they’d never have children. The thought of her being a grandma had made her crazy with the need to murder innocent women. If not for Nash finding his mate and keeping her safe, he did wonder if there would have been mates for them all by now. Every day with Amber, he considered himself theluckiest man on earth that his mother had failed with at least him and his two older brothers. He could only hope that from now on, they’d all find their other halves and make sure that they had as many children as they could have. He hoped that wherever she was, she was screaming her head off for the things that they were doing that were productive and fun for a change.

“Did you hear me?” Wrangler told her that he was thinking about his mother and how she’d be so pissed off about them finding their mates. “Yes, as I said, I heard of her. She’s worse than my own parents, I think.”

“I have to agree with that. What do you want to happen with your parents? Do you want them dead? Do you want them in prison? I’m up for whatever you want. I’d go to prison for you if it came to that.” She said that she just wanted them out of their lives. “I can’t agree with you more. But I do have a plan. What if we were to confront them. Show them…Hang on. I have something for you.”

He got down on both his knees and held out the ring that he’d picked out for her. He told her about the things that their father had left for them, and one of the things that he’d gotten was his great-grandma’s jewelry.

“I had it cleaned yesterday and put a rush on it.” She looked at the ring and him several times before she got down on her knees as well. “Are you proposing to me too?”

“No. But I think that in the future I’d like for us to be even in all things. This too. I’m not sure that I love you. I don’t know what love is, to be honest, but I have come to like you a great deal. I also respect you for what you’ve done for my brother and myself.” She looked thoughtful, and he waited. “I’m sure that you understand this when I say that my brother comes first over anything that you and I decide. I want him to grow up with a good family and family values. I believe that you have that and more. But more than anything, in this world, I want him to grow up with the kind of values that he needs to be successful in this world. Am I making sense?”

“You are. Very much so.” She nodded and put out her hand. “Amber Damon, would you consent to being my wife? Would you grow…well, we won’t grow old, but we will get older. Will you get older with me?”

“Yes. I believe that I will. I think, and this is just me. I think that you and I will have a good life together once we get my family out of the way so that we can live in peace.” Wrangler asked her what sort of wedding did she want. “Nothing. I mean, yes, a wedding, but we can go to the courthouse for all I care. Also, I just thought of this. With us being married, I can adopt my brother. I’m not sure how that will work, but I don’t want him to ever go back to living with our parents. They’ll kill him.”

“You’re right on that score. I believe with all my heart that is just what they’ll do.” Wrangler put the ring on her finger and was surprised that it fit her nicely. After kissing her gently on her cheek, she looked at him with the most amazing look. “What?”

“I think that I just fell in love with you, Wrangler.”

Chapter 3

William read the paper of the little town he was in and decided that they needed something to spice things up. There were four articles about the local football team going to state with a record of five and zero. He didn’t have a clue what that meant, even after reading the thing twice. There weren’t even any comics in the stupid paper but a sudoku that he didn’t understand at all.

Putting the paper aside, glad that they were giving the little paper away rather than charging for it, he leaned back in his chair and watched his wife. Christ, he’d said this before a thousand times to himself. How did he get so fucking lucky in finding her as his life partner?

“I was just thinking about something. What if we were to order out pizzas, and then after eating, we go and find our kids.” William asked Patsy why did she want to do that so soon. “Because we’re going to get caught again, and I have no desire to be locked up in the county jail with no means of getting out. We’re down to our last few hundred dollars now. If they make us pay for this room out of our cash, we’re going to be struggling to get back home with them. Or, and I just thought of this. We find someone to sell the boy to here and then we’d have more money for going home. I bet that in a town this small, there are all kinds of perverts wanting a boy for their pleasure.”

“What about Amber? You still have your sights on her prostituting herself for us? I don’t see her doing that, I don’t. We’d have to beat her pretty bad in order to make her do it even the one time. And that isn’t going to make her look desirable to anyone that wants a bit of her.” She told him she had her ways. “Good luck with that one, then. She’s more stubborn than you are at times, I think.”

“Thank you for that. And I do have something that I can hang over her head. We’ll threaten the boy. She’s stupidly loyal to him. We’ll tell her that either she does this or we’ll make Junior do it. She’d do anything for him. The sap.” William asked her about selling the boy. “We’ll still do that. So long as we do it after she gets in so deep that she won’t want to leave the profession. I can see her loving it, too. Mark my words, William, she’s going to be making us a lot of money.”

He didn’t think that his daughter, though they would make her do it anyway, he just didn’t see her doing more than she’d have to, and prostituting for them wasn’t going to be at the top of the list. He had a feeling that as broke as they’d been, his children, she’d never resorted to that once. Not even to pimp out her brother. Patsy had been right on one thing, Amber was stupidly loyal to that boy. No, he didn’t see her doing that and liking it as well. William had a feeling that she’d kill them if they tried. That’s why he was leaving that part up to Patsy. It would be her that got the shit knocked out of her this time.

It was about a year ago now that he’d tangled with Amber. He thought that by taking Junior away from her in the middle of the night, they’d be able to convince her to do just about anything they wanted. However, he didn’t count on her being a mama bear protecting him. Christ, oh mighty, she nearly tore his head off before he was able to get away. He had to have stitches in his face to make sure that he wasn’t one of them ugly people that just didn’t care what they looked like. She’d caused him to have five broken ribs too when she came up outta that bed that night.

The kids had been hiding in one of the planes that had been put out of service for a while by then. William knew where she was and that she was living good in the place. Once he figured out that they had heat and food, it pissed him off a bit. So, like any good parent, he decided that he and Patsy should have a part of the plane, and they didn’t see eye to eye about that.

But he needed money. He and Patsy liked to gamble, and buying those scratch-off tickets had put them behind a bit. So he hatched himself a plan to take the boy and then move in with Amber. She could go on cooking and cleaning up after them. They thought that was the way that it should have been. But he also knew that the boy was prime meat for some perverts, and getting the money with aplace to live was a win-win for all of them. Christ, Amber didn’t think so, apparently.

The boy had been sleeping in the back of the plane, and Amber was right smack in the middle. He’d gone in before while they were out and had drugged up all the bottled water they had. It was mind-numbing work, putting drugs in the whole case of water, but he got it done and was looking forward to being able to have himself a good night’s sleep in the belly of that monster they were living in.

Amber had come right out of her sleep with a bat in her hand and had beaten him to the point where he couldn’t move for nearly a month. She didn’t even hold back when he told her who he was, either. Just walloped on his head and shoulders like she meant to kill him. If not for the boy dragging her away, he might well have died that night, and it would have been years before anyone came across his body.

“I asked you a question.” He looked at Patsy, nearly crying out when he thought that she was coming after him with a bat. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve been groaning for the last ten minutes.”

“I was thinking about that night that Amber nearly popped my head off my shoulders.” She told him that had scared her too. “Yeah? You didn’t tell me that you were there too. Did she hit you with that thing?” William smiled, knowing that she would be pissed off by him asking her.

“You know damn good, and well, I wasn’t there, but I was barely able to get you back to our place before you keeled over. And the blood all over you. I don’t know what we would have done if not for the man at the vet’s office. He told me that he had to put nearly three hundred stitches in you.” The number got bigger every time she told the story. While he didn’t know how many they’d stitched into him, he knew it wasn’t nearly three hundred. “You were laid up for about a month after that. And they never did go back to that plane, either. Made it so we couldn’t either, didn’t they?”

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