The Marriage Auction: Book One(87)

I exhaled through my nostrils, frustration still running through my veins, and pointed out the window. “I’m not the one you need to apologize to. Close all that up.” I pointed to the stove and the bacon she was frying along with the potatoes that were sizzling next to them. Ma liked to make me a welcome home breakfast after traveling. She enjoyed taking care of all her children, including nosing into their business every chance she got. Today she got a whole helluva lot more than she’d bargained for.

I started to head out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the master. “I’m getting dressed, and you and me are going to the McAllister farm so you can apologize to her. Face to face. Maybe later in the week you can woo us with your cooking prowess.” I spread my arm out toward the kitchen where she’d been cooking up a solid farm breakfast.

Ma nodded and twisted her fingers together. “Yes. I will. I’m…sorry, son. I’m embarrassed at how I responded. You’re right. I should have gotten to know the girl without history swaying my judgment. I’ll talk to her. Make things right.”

“You better try hard, Ma. Dakota is not going anywhere,” I warned.

Not anytime soon, I reminded myself. Not ever if I can help it.



Ma hauled herself into the passenger side of my truck like a true country girl as I stomped down the porch stairs in my shitkickers. I walked around the cab and hopped into the truck. The keys were already in it, because we didn’t have to worry about car thieves like the city folk did. There was a lot to be said about being way the hell outside of the city limits, away from any riffraff. Not that Sandee didn’t have the same ol’ bar brawls or stupid teens joyriding in tractors or tipping cows for shits and giggles. Those kinds of shenanigans would always make a small town interesting, but we didn’t get much in the way of true crimes around these parts.

I drove my truck down our lane, and once I reached the end, turned right and right again into the entrance for the McAllister farm. It was practically a U-turn. Taking it slow, we rolled down the gravel lane that led to the McAllister barn. I knew we’d attract some attention, but I didn’t care. There was no way in hell I was leaving things shitty between the two most important women in my life.

“Oh, no. I can already see Everett up ahead.” She lifted her chin down the road. “Looks like he’s hitting the Jack again,” Ma mumbled as we slowly approached from down the lane. Even from this distance we could see him swaying where he stood. He dropped something and then out of nowhere reached out and grabbed Dakota, spinning her around like a top and dragging her to the ground.

Ma gasped at the same time as I spewed, “The fuck!” I smashed my foot on the gas, kicking up rocks in my wake, the back of my truck fishtailing with my efforts.

I watched as Dakota ambled up and pointed at the drunken bastard. When he grabbed her around the throat and slammed her into the barn, not once, but twice, I winced and raged, gripping the steering wheel as tightly as possible, needing to get to her immediately. Her golden-strawberry hair flew in the breeze as McAllister violently punched his own daughter in the face. I laid on my horn as loud as possible to get his attention. It screeched, echoing off the land making it sound even more imposing.

It didn’t work. He didn’t stop.

I was helpless. Even as I pressed my foot to the pedal, it wasn’t fast enough. Hatred, vile and putrid, sizzled in the air around me. All I could think was what I was going to do to the disgusting pig once I got my hands on him.

Ma screamed out the window as I watched horrified as McAllister punched my wife in the face a second time. She kicked out as I came to a screeching halt and flung myself out of the vehicle.

“Get the fuck off her!” I yelled as loud as I could, shifting my bulk to a dead run. My heart beat double-time. Sweat misted at my hairline and the back of my neck. Flames could have been flickering off my back at this point and I wouldn’t have known. I had one thing in mind.

Destroy him.

Protect her.

I watched her eyes roll back into her head the second my hands clenched around Everett McAllister’s scrawny shoulders. I ripped him off her and tossed him to the ground like he was scum beneath my boot. And when I looked into his sneering face, my vision blanked, and I saw nothing but red.

Red as the pressure in my entire body went nuclear as the vision of him hitting my wife repeated on a disgusting movie loop through my mind.

Red as his face turned, under my hold, while I cut off his air.

Red as the blood that poured out his mouth and nose as I punched him over and over until all I saw was wet meat.

Blood-red meat where his face used to be.

It took three men to get me off Everett McAllister, my knuckles tinged a sickening pink, some of them split and bleeding at the edges that’d broken against his face.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I lost it. Knew that all that mattered was giving back the agony this man had doled out for years to his family and mine. To make him pay for what he’d done. Flitting through my memory was the town talk about Carol killing herself because she’d been the victim of his violence her entire life. Leaving her girls behind with this waste of space because she no longer had anything left to give. Nothing left to live for. Broken in every way possible.

That man took away Dakota’s mother. He’d put their family farm in dire straits while he gambled and drank away their legacy. None of that could compare to the fact that he’d laid his hands on my wife. No one laid a hand on a woman in my presence and walked away from it.