“That’s not happening,” Mike stated.

“I don’t need your permission for that either,” Debbie snapped.

“Actually, you do,” Dusty replied.

“What are you going to do? Tie her up in the basement and stand guard with one of Darrin’s shotguns?” Debbie threw at Dusty.

“If I have to,” Dusty tossed back meaning all four words literally.

Christ.

“Why do you have to make everything a pain in the ass?” Debbie asked.

“Why do you have to think that everything’s a pain in your ass simply because you aren’t getting your way?” Dusty asked back.

Debbie’s eyes narrowed, her mouth twisted and the look on her face made Mike brace.

“Darrin’s dead, Dusty. You can’t take care of his weak wife and his two boys to crawl up his ass and try to convince him you’re sugar and spice.”

There it was. The straw and the camel’s back broke.

Dusty went flying down the stairs. Mike caught her at the waist and pulled her back to his front, keeping one arm around her waist tight and wrapping his other one around her chest.

“Go,” Mike growled at Debbie.

“You can’t order me away from my own home,” Debbie bit back.

“He just did,” Dusty pointed out. “And by the way, this ceased being your ‘own home’ the minute you brought developers to the front door conniving to sell it.”

Debbie took them in, lip curled, bitterness not even close to being hidden. Then her eyes focused on Mike.

“God, sick,” she whispered. “Did you use me to get to her because you had a thing for her when she was twelve?”

Mike’s body got tight. Dusty strained to get out of his hold.

Colt moved forward declaring, “Think with that you’re done.”

Her eyes sliced to him. “I haven’t even started.”

“Your prerogative but right now, regardless of the legal hold you got on a quarter of this land, your behavior can be construed as intimidation, threats and harassment,” Colt returned. “You want me to start construing it that way to the point I feel as an officer of the law I need to do somethin’ about it, you keep standin’ there diggin’ your hole. You wanna cut your losses now so you can fight another day, you get in your rental and leave them be.”

Debbie held Colt’s eyes then hers moved through the men standing in the front yard of her childhood home and finally they settled on Mike and Dusty. They stayed there while her face worked.

Then, having spewed what venom she had, she turned and walked away.

Motionless, five men and Dusty watched her go.

When her car was halfway down the lane, Mike called to the men, “Give me a minute.”

He got chin jerks and the men drifted away.

He turned Dusty in his arms and tipped his chin down to see her eyes were already on him.

“Where’s Rhonda?” he asked.

“Grocery,” she answered.

“She gets home, you sit on her. No calls. No visits. From anybody,” he ordered.

She stared at him closely for a moment then she nodded.

“Okay. Now where are we with your Dad?” Her eyes slid away. Shit. “Procrastinating,” he muttered.

“Mike –”

“Call your Dad.”

“Babe –”

He gave her a squeeze. “Call…” He squeezed harder. “Your…” He dipped his face close to hers. “Dad.”

“Oh all right,” she mumbled.

Then he watched something shear through her face, something that was difficult to witness before she dropped her chin and did a face plant in his chest.

“This is about me,” she whispered.

She had it half right.

Mike bent his neck and pressed his cheek to the hair at the side of her head.

“This is about you and me,” she went on.

There she had it.

“I knew it, when she saw us after the funeral, lost it, the way she lost it. I knew it. And I knew it because it was way worse than ever before.” She heaved a sigh. “She always hated me. Now she’s latched onto a reason that’s real and she’s never gonna let it go. And she doesn’t care what collateral damage she creates.”

“That reason isn’t real, Dusty.”

She turned her head slightly and Mike didn’t lift his so her face was less than an inch away. His gut got tight at the pain stark in her eyes.

She wanted to love her sister and she didn’t understand bitterness. She got on with life. Hell, she’d even been molested by Denny Lowe, survived, dealt with it and put it behind her. She did not get Debbie. But she felt the pain of losing a sister every time this shit happened.

“She’s seventeen or she’s forty, Mike, you’re the type of guy a girl does not want to lose. Not even the memory of what had been. We’ve tarnished what she’s held golden for years.”

“If she wasn’t such a bitch, honey, she’d have something more than money to fill that hole I left that she clearly never filled. That’s on her. Do not take any of this shit on you. She was f**kin’ seventeen when I broke it off with her. She holds onto that, onto me, thinkin’ she can lay claim when decades have passed and she doesn’t even live in the same goddamn state, you gotta get that…is…whacked.”

He watched her eyes work then her mouth moved then he got a partial smile before he got a soft, “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

She sighed again.

Then he watched her brows lift and she said, “Your, uh…Violet is married to Joe Callahan?”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“Didn’t he marry his high school girlfriend and then she –?”

Mike cut her off with another, “Yeah.”

“Whoa,” she breathed. “Shit like that breaks a man.”

“He was broken all right. Vi fixed him.”

“Clearly quite a woman,” she muttered.

“I had a fifteen year lesson to settle for nothin’ less,” Mike muttered back.

Her face grew suddenly soft and something sweet flashed in her eyes.

And the pain was gone.

Mike grinned.

She continued, “Darrin told me Alec Colton and February Owens finally pulled their fingers out.”

“That would be Alec and February Colton who have a son named Jack so, yeah to that too.”

“That’s cool,” she whispered. “Finally.”

She was not wrong about that. Still, he didn’t know the particulars so he couldn’t do the math but he was thinking he waited for Dusty longer than Colt waited to have February.