Page 74 of Then You Happened
23
JACK
“You want to explain to me why I should believe a goddamn word you say?”
It takes every-fucking-thing inside me to keep from knocking his teeth out, but my forearm is pinned to his chest, my temper a riot of anger as he sputters in much the same way my brother did the last time he tried to extort money from me.
This is all too ironic. All too much of a clusterfuck of coincidence that I shake my head and sneer at the asshole.
His eyes are bugged. His breath is labored and stinks of the bag of Doritos he has hidden behind the counter. The sweat ring on his T-shirt that he tries to pass off as high dollar but is a knock-off grows.
“Believe the rumors they say about me, Jed. Believe them and realize this is your chance to do the right thing before I take pleasure in doing all the wrong things,” I threaten without a fucking clue as to what the town is saying about me.
This is where keeping my mouth shut has come in handy.
“I swear. It’s just . . . it was . . . an honest mistake.” Spittle flies as he sputters, and I’m so pissed it doesn’t even faze me.
“An honest mistake?” I ask with a laugh. “If it were an honest mistake, Jed, then why did you threaten to call the cops the minute I walked in here, huh?”
“I swear. If you’ll just give me a second, I can explain.”
“Maybe that’s how you should have started this conversation rather than taking a swing at me before I ever said a word.”
I fist a hand in his shirt and shove him back against the wall before I take a step back from the spineless son of a bitch.
He’s the personification of guilt. How he came out from behind the counter the minute he saw me. How, when I asked him why the Knox Ranch was being screwed, he threw a punch as if I didn’t see it coming a mile away. How he threated to call good ol’ Rusty and charge me with trespassing. How he is still claiming it was an honest mistake without so much as checking an invoice first. He knows damn well what he’s been doing.
Fucking unbelievable.
And Tate’s been dealing with all of this on her own? She’s been managing pricks like this? No wonder she hides up at the ranch.
The owner of Lone Star Feed is still standing there, probably trying to figure out how he can punch back at me and get out of this situation. His eyes dart over my shoulder to where Tate is standing at the doorway, arms crossed, back against the wall, expression completely unaffected by what she’s seeing.
The fight to get her to stay in the truck was futile, so I compromised, agreeing to let her come in so long as she stood nice and quiet while I worked.
“I’m waiting.”
I raise my eyebrows and drum my fingers on the counter beside me.
“It was an honest mistake.”
“So you’ve said.”
“We-we have a new employee and he made a mistake on your order.” His eyes flicker to Tate, to the side door where the stockroom is, and then back to me.
“Oh, so the person you’re pinning this on is back there? Should I go talk to him?” I take a step toward the stockroom, but Jed puts his hands up to stop me.
“He’s just a kid. Like I said, it was an honest mistake.”
I twist my lips and look down for a sec as if I’m actually buying the bullshit he’s spewing. When I look back to him, my eyes are hard, my face impassive.
“So, how new is he? I mean, if this has been happening for some time, you’d think, being the owner and all, that you’d have corrected it. Or at least called the customer and apologized for it.”
He blubbers for an answer he doesn’t have.
“Look, I get it.” I lower my voice, good cop now in effect. “Her old man owed you money. He hurt you and your business, maybe even your finances, so you’re getting back at him by screwing over his widow.”
He shakes his head emphatically. “I told you, it was a mistake.”
