Walker Pride (6 page)

She was still smiling. “Let’s just say I appreciate it. I hope that now that I’m here the others will learn to accept me.”

He wanted to assure her that they would, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure if it would be a lie or not.

Eric pulled into the parking lot and was surprised to find Dane and Susan standing by her car waiting.

“Did you fly here?” he quipped as he opened his door and climbed from the truck.

“You must have taken the long way. She knew a short cut.” Dane chuckled.

“I’m a city girl,” Susan said with a shrug. “I learn my way around fairly quickly. And…I’ve been here for nine months. This isn’t my first meal here.”

Eric nodded as they walked toward the building. “You still drink unsweetened tea, don’t you?”

She laughed easily and touched his arm. “I don’t eat meat either. Truly not a Southern girl.”

“You have a pair of Birkenstocks in your closet?”

She nudged him now and his blood grew hot in his veins with her flirtatious laugh.

“I own two pairs and socks to go with them.”

Bethany spun around to look at her as she walked backward across the parking lot. “You don’t seriously wear that in public do you?”

“In the comfort of my own home.”

“Whew, I thought you were going to need a fashion intervention,” she said as she turned around and walked through the door, which Dane held open for her.

“I still might,” she joked, as she too walked through the door.

Dane shook his head as he and Eric walked in. “These two are going to get along just fine aren’t they?”

Eric nodded. They were a couple of Western misfits in a town of Southern gossip. Lord knew what people were already thinking.

Eric watched Susan nibble at a salad and drink a glass of water as if the meal didn’t matter to her. She engaged in conversation, laughed a lot, and her eyes always sparkled. Dane eased around her and he wasn’t usually that laid back.

Bethany certainly wouldn’t be as talkative or excitable if Susan wasn’t with them, he was sure of that.

He was on his second beer, his burger long eaten, listening to Susan talk about a catering job at the library—and he was enthralled. There was a dimple at the corner of her mouth on the right side. She had a tiny little beauty mark on the edge of her left eye. Her ears were pierced four times, but she only wore one set of delicate silver hoops.

Eric wasn’t a man to touch others. A fine woman who was willing, that was another story. But he wasn’t a hugger or a person toucher, but she was.

She’d touched his arm in the parking lot and his head had nearly blown off from his blood pressure spiking. In the course of her nibbling on her salad, she’d touched Bethany’s shoulder and Dane’s arm. It was safer to sit across from her and just observe.

“Why Georgia? Why Macon? Why not Atlanta?”

Bethany was perched with her elbows on the table, absolutely enthralled with the conversation she was having with her new roommate.

Susan shrugged. “Atlanta is too expensive. And I needed a total change of scenery.”

Her voice dropped when she said it. There was more to moving across the country than a change of scenery and he found himself needing to know why.

The conversation shifted quickly to Bethany and her move.

“When my mom died there was nothing left for me,” she said. “I’m not sure what is here for me…”

“Your family,” Eric finally spoke.

“You and Dane are the only two who have even acknowledged me. And your mother,” she said as if it were an afterthought.

Dane nodded. “Of course she did. You can count on her to get the rest of them to come around.”

Susan leaned in over the table. “How often did you see your dad?”

Bethany pushed a French fry around with another. “I’ve been here maybe ten times. I’ve heard my father was infatuated with my mother, but you would have thought he’d have made more effort if that was the case.”

Eric set his beer on the table. “There is little effort given when it comes to your father. Sorry,” he added in case he’d hurt any feelings.

“I caught that today at your parents’ house. No one expects too much from him.”

“You pave a path for yourself. His has been paved with mistakes the entire family has had to pay for.”

“Including you.”

Eric winced when she mentioned it and he looked toward Susan, who had stopped mid drink to watch his reaction.

He wasn’t good conversation or company. “I’m going to find our waitress and settle the check.”

“Oh,” Susan said setting her drink down. “Here I need to give you money.”

“For what? Your garden and your water? I got it.”

“I wasn’t looking for a free dinner.”

“You owe me one,” he said and walked away from the table.

Bethany chuckled as she pushed her plate away. “He just asked you out on a date.”

“He did not,” Susan argued.

Dane nodded. “In his very horrible way…he did.”

“Trust me, the last thing I need is a man who is that short tempered. I have a lot on my plate right now and it sounds like he does too.”

She watched as Eric returned to the table and simply looked down at them all as if they knew that was their queue to stand.

Bethany and Dane both pushed back from the table and stood. Obviously he had control over his family. Even the members he didn’t seem to know too well.

When she looked up at him, she swore she saw panic in his eyes. What had they hit on over dinner? Something more had happened while she was fixing up trays of food for his family this afternoon.

The curious nature that had gotten her into more trouble as a child, and even as an adult, buzzed inside of her. Suddenly she wondered how he would feel if she showed up at his place tomorrow with lunch.

There was peace…finally.

Eric kicked his feet up on the coffee table and rested his aching head against the back of his chair.

Dinner had been longer and a whole lot more involved than he’d anticipated when he’d offered to feed Bethany.

But the payoff was that she wasn’t sleeping on his couch.

Actually it didn’t help to think about where she was sleeping because then his mind only wandered to Susan.

His stepmother randomly hires some woman to serve sandwiches at his grandfather’s funeral and now his head is filled with images of her face.

He dropped his feet to the floor. There were pressing issues in his life right now. The fact that his uncle had lost Eric’s home in a poker match with one of Eric’s unknown relatives should be foremost on his mind.

So why wasn’t that the pressing thought in his head?

How come all he could think about was that dimple, that beauty mark, those blue eyes, and that photo of her hands?

He looked at his watch. It was nearly eleven and his body was exhausted. Tomorrow he’d need to fix that gate in the south pasture before he moved the herd over next week. That was going to take the better part of his day, so he had no time to sit around and think about anything, but getting some sleep.

Eric stood, turned off the lamp, and walked to his bedroom. Susan’s bed had been made, he thought as he looked at his unkempt room. It had smelled of her—lilacs.

He scrubbed his hands over his face.

It had been a mistake to go with Bethany into that house. How come he hadn’t stayed in the truck with Dane?

Because he hadn’t wanted to, he realized as he undressed and fell onto the bed. He’d wanted to see where she lived—how she lived.

It was an intimate peek into a stranger’s life.

Tucking his hands under his head, he wondered if it was so bad to want to know more about someone you just met. Maybe if he pried a little into her life, he could forget the mess brewing in his own.

Eric woke the next morning to the sound of vehicles outside his house and voices. It took a moment to fully come to grips with what he was hearing. He’d certainly been in a much better place in his dreams—dreaming about Susan.

Trying to reach the commotion, he nearly fell out of bed. Realizing he had not one stich of clothing on, he found his jeans and pulled on a T-shirt as he ran through the house and out the front door in his bare feet.

There were six pickup trucks parked just beyond his front porch. His father, his brothers Dane and Gerald, and his father’s lawyer stood in a line facing three other men.

“What in the hell is going on here?” He called out from the porch.

“Trespassing is what’s going on,” his father yelled back.

“My land. Remember?” An older man in a black button up shirt said equally as loud, but he never turned his head toward Eric. Though he wore sunglasses, his stare was aimed at Eric’s father.

“My father bought this land fair and square. I have the bill of sale. I have the deed,” his father argued.

“And I have the declaration that your brother gave it to me in a poker game. Equally as fair and square.”

Eric stood nearly frozen on the porch. At that moment, he knew who the man was standing there arguing with his father.

He’d lived on that land for forty years and never had he actually been this close to Elias Morgan—his grandfather.

It hardly seemed possible that he’d never met the man and had only seen him when he was younger once when they were in town. What did it say about a man who had never even sought out his own grandson?

“You stole my family,” Elias said walking closer to Eric’s father. “You don’t get to keep everything.”

He turned his head toward Eric, but said nothing to him. Then he turned back toward Eric’s father.

“Everett, I’ll have what’s mine. All of it. You can’t keep her. And you can’t keep my land.”

Elias and the men he’d come with walked back to the two trucks they’d driven in and sped off, kicking up mud in their wake.

Eric watched his father stand still and no one spoke for a long moment.

“What did he mean, you can’t keep her?” Eric asked nearing the edge of the porch, his feet now frozen against the wooden planks.

“Go make some coffee. I’m going to call Ben and Russell. I think we need to make a plan,” his father said, pulling his phone from his pocket.

“Dad, what did he mean? You can’t keep her?”

When his father looked toward him, Eric’s heart nearly burst. There were tears in his father’s eyes.

“He wants to move your mother.”

Eric felt dizzy.

No one would disrupt his mother’s resting place. They’d have to kill him first.

Perhaps it was time for him to meet Elias face to face.

But as his father began walking toward the house, the phone to his ear calling Eric’s brother Ben, he realized he’d have to do that later—and no one could know.

Right now the men needed coffee. And he’d find something they could put in it to kick it up a notch.

~*~

Susan sat at her desk in the corner of the living room. Her computer was a vivid display of colorful spreadsheets and lists.

She’d meet with the head of the library at eleven. Then she had plans to take lunch to Eric. If that went well then she’d go to Costco on her way home and pick up the items for tomorrow’s job.

If the drop by at Eric’s didn’t go well—she didn’t want to think about that. She had a curiosity about the man and it just needed to be satisfied.

She could just ask Bethany, who still hadn’t climbed out of bed and it was nearly ten o’clock, but what fun would that be? There was a story behind the little lines on Eric Walker’s face and Susan wanted to find out what it was.

When the front door opened, she nearly fell back in her chair.

“Oh, did I scare you?” Bethany walked toward her. Her long red curls were pulled back in a ponytail and her iPhone was strapped to her arm.

“Did you go running?”

Bethany nodded, still catching her breath.

“I thought you were sleeping.”

“Heavens no. I’ve been running for nearly two hours.”

“Why?”

Bethany laughed. “You can’t even get looked at for movie roles if you don’t keep up your body. I keep healthy. Some of those girls are just skinny because they don’t eat and they live on coffee.”

“You look great.”

She smiled. “Thanks. I need to get a shower. What are you doing today?”

How much did she want to tell her? “I have a meeting in an hour, then some shopping to do. I have a corporate event to cater tomorrow. Are you free to help and learn the ropes?”

“Free as a bird.”

Bethany gave her a brilliant smile and then ran up the stairs. Susan wasn’t sure after two hours of running how you’d have enough energy to even get up the stairs let alone run them.