Page 59 of Bad Decisions & Back Roads

Thatwas the kind of relationship I wanted.The fiery love my parents had was something worth fighting to keep, even dying for.Josh found it.Even if he and Erika fought loudly, they loved each other without question.

“Why is it important that she’s a McClary?”

“They’re not bad people.Just Jimmy.”

“I never said she was bad.I know she’s not.She’s been hurt a lot.”

“Jimmy taught her how to lead with distrust when it comes to the heart.He never taught her how to be loved.”He took a sip of coffee.“Gia might not know how to accept it for herself.”

“She might think she doesn’t deserve to be loved?”

“Something like that.”Dad shrugged as if that was the end of that.

He sipped his coffee and stared.

I pushed my chair back from the table with my leg to have more space.“You’re doing it again.Judging me.”

“Did she get to you from the start?”He stared at me over his glasses again.

I swallowed hard and nodded.

“Did you wish every woman you tried to have something real with was her?”He stared into the coffee like he was reading tea leaves.“Did being with her in the biblical sense take you to places you thought impossible?”He slowly blinked as he looked up at me.

I nodded.

He compressed his lips and glared at me.“If you don’t go after her and win her once and for all, you’ll spend the rest of your life disappointed.”

He stood, put his coffee cup in the sink.“I think I’m going to go remind my wife about that time in the grocery store.Nothing makes her lose her clothes faster than a box of Fruit Loops.”

He winked at me.

I groaned and made a mental note to stay out of the big house for the next few hours.

My phone dinged with a text.My heart hammered with hope it’d be Gia, but it wasn’t.

Mark:Starting the squeeze.He’s got a plot he rents to a guy across the street to grow pot.Know he takes a cut.Let the DEA figure out where he hides the money.

ChapterTwenty

TIMOTHY

Later that morningat the Tadlock Horse Farm I wished I hadn’t offered to oversee the installation on the main house.I was an inch from strangling the new kid Deck had hired ten days ago.Sleep deprivation lowered my patience to less than ten percent.The new hire arrived forty minutes late smelling like stale beer.In the one hour since, the nineteen-year-old already asked twice if we could “call it a day early.”Apparently hunched over outside was too much hardship.

Unfortunately, hiring help around here was damn near impossible.So, instead of unleashing the lecture building behind my teeth, I focused on teaching him how to install two new air-conditioning units.

It should’ve been simple.

It wasn’t.The kid treated tools like they were decorative.He held a screwdriver with the disdain of someone who’d never been asked to use his hands for anything other than accepting participation trophies in grade school.At one point, he nearly started working without cutting power to the unit.My soul briefly left my body to go update my will.

Deck hadn’t hired an HVAC apprentice.He’d hired a future OSHA case study.

I realized we needed a different wire and straightened with a sigh that scraped my lungs raw.“Hold tight while I grab something from the truck.Don’t touch anything while I’m gone.”

Not that I needed to worry.The second I stepped away, he backed into the shade and whipped out his phone.

As I rounded the side of the house, I scrutinized the white truck parked near mine.Hudson Raynes stood with the back door open, digging through a storage box until he came up holding miniature forceps.

When he looked up and saw me, the temperature dropped about ten degrees.