At this, Jake felt Josie press closer to his back.

Jake turned narrowed eyes to Terry. “Explain to me how you can act on behalf of Davis Malone,” Jake demanded. “You’re Josie’s attorney.”

“Arnie’s Josie’s attorney. I’m not,” she returned.

“You’re at the same firm and that’s not a conflict of interest?” Jake asked.

She said nothing.

It was absolutely a conflict of interest, the bitch.

Jake was done.

“You wanna be asked to leave by the sheriff, have at it,” he muttered, turning and herding his son into Josie. His eyes found hers through the dark. “Keys out, baby,” he whispered. “Let us in.”

She stared up at him with wide eyes a moment before she nodded, turned jerkily, teetered on her heel and Jake put a hand out to steady her.

Without Jake telling him to do so, Conner crowded his dad and Josie at the door and he and his son kept crowding her until they got her in, followed her and Jake closed and locked the door behind them.

“Lights, Con,” Jake ordered as he looked down to his phone to find Coert’s number.

“Jake,” Josie whispered and he turned his attention to her, put his phone to his ear and lifted his other hand to her neck where he curled his fingers around the side and gave her a squeeze.

“Just a second, baby.”

She pressed her lips together.

Coert answered the phone. “Yo, Jake. You good?”

“I’m at Lavender House with Josie Malone and there are trespassers on the property who won’t leave even after we’ve asked repeatedly for them to do so.”

“Fuck,” Coert groaned, probably settled in for the night in front of a game.

Jake kept a hand on Josie as he leaned back to look through the window at the side of the door. He saw the cars still there, as were the shadowed bodies.

“I’d owe you one, you roust these assholes,” Jake said into the phone.

“You will and big. The Broncs are playing.”

Coert gave a shit about the Broncos because he was a transplant from Denver. Jake also knew why Coert got the fuck out of the Mile High City. There were only two reasons a man with a good job he liked in a town he loved would move across an entire country. He fucked up or a woman fucked him up.

In Coert’s situation, it was the last.

“Gotta warn you, Boston Stone is one of the assholes I’m talkin’ about,” Jake told him.

“That got me motivated,” Coert surprisingly replied then explained, “Guy’s a dick.”

“Agreed.”

“On my way,” Coert stated.

“Thanks, man,” Jake murmured.

“Later.”

“Later.”

He disconnected, looked to Josie who was staring up at him and noticed instantly she was freaked way the fuck out.

That was why his eyes moved to his son as Con got back from going through the house and turning on lights.

“On the phone with your sister. Get her to pack a bag for you, Ethan and her, get your books and haul her and Eath over here. We’re stayin’ the night with Josie.”

“Jake,” Josie whispered.

“Gotcha,” Conner said and moved toward the kitchen.

Jake looked down to his woman. “Fuck them. You’re stayin’ in your house tonight and you’re not doin’ it alone,” he declared.

She pressed her lips together before she fell forward and face planted in his chest.

He wrapped his arms around her, put his lips to the top of her hair and told her, “It’s gonna be okay, Slick.”

“He wants Lavender House,” she said into his chest.

“He’s not gonna get it,” Jake returned.

“He’s standing out there right now.”

“Coert’s gonna be here and he’ll be gone in fifteen minutes, baby.”

Her arms slid around him but the hold was loose, like she didn’t have it in her to hold tight.

Fucking Stone.

He orchestrated this, the asshole.

Jake gave her a squeeze and repeated, “It’s gonna be okay.”

Her head tipped back and she was still freaked but now fear had moved into her eyes.

He’d know why when she asked, “Do you think maybe Dad will come too?”

Fuck.

Luckily, Conner walked in just then and Jake looked to him. “Get Josie a glass of that shit in Lydie’s liquor cabinet. Fancy bottle, looks like cough syrup, smells like it. Yeah?”

“No problem,” Conner replied and walked right back to the kitchen.

“Jake?” Josie called and he looked back down to her.

“Let’s sit down,” he suggested then made this so by moving her into the family room and sitting her on the couch.

He wanted her in his lap. Better, he wanted to lie down with her, hold her close and give her what he had to give her when he had her safe in his arms.

He didn’t do that because his son might not be comfortable with it, nor Josie.

So he got her as close as he could, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and nabbing her hand.

“Right, a while back, Lydie asked me to look into things,” he stated.

She held his gaze and nodded.

“I did,” he went on.

She didn’t nod, just continued to look into his eyes.

“Your dad’s dead, baby.”

She stared at him a second, not one thing washing through her features, before she fell forward and did a face plant in his chest again.

Jake wrapped both arms around her.

Conner walked in with a snifter of purple liquid and Jake watched, his boy’s eyes locked on Josie, as his son walked directly to the coffee table, sat his ass on it, set the glass aside and reached out to curl his fingers around Josie’s knee.

Christ, he was a good kid.

“Kids on their way?” he asked his son.

“Yep,” Conner answered. “Amber’s all over it.

“Thanks, bud,” he whispered.

Conner said nothing, just jerked up his chin.

Josie leaned away, gave Conner a small smile she totally didn’t commit to and looked to Jake.

“I need to make up beds for the kids.”

“We’ll see to that when Amber and Eath get here,” he replied.

“But—”

“Take a drink, Slick, relax. We got this covered.”

Something shifted in her eyes before her lips formed the words, “You got this covered.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

She stared at him.

Conner let her go to grab her glass and he offered it to her.

Jake unwrapped one arm so she could turn and take it.

“Stuff smells crap,” Conner muttered as she lifted it to her mouth and took a sip.

It was at that, finally, when Josie smiled and it was genuine this time.

There it was.

He was right.

They had this covered.

* * * * *

“Mickey said and word was you got in there, but Jesus Christ,” Coert stated, his eyes to the front door of Lavender House.

Coert and Jake had just left Josie after Coert and one of his deputies moved the stubbornly lingering group of assholes off Josie’s property. He’d reported to the owner that he’d dealt with the situation and he’d done this with two things on his agenda. Reporting to the owner that he’d dealt with it and getting a look at Josie.

“Pure class, even rattled,” Coert noted, looked to Jake and grinned, something Jake could see since he turned on the outside lights when Coert arrived in his cruiser. “How’d you get in there?”

“She thinks I’m the shit,” Jake told him, grinning back.

Coert kept handing him crap. “So you’ve brainwashed her.”

Jake kept grinning but his grin died when he asked, “You know I like taking your shit, Coert, but gotta know. Until shit gets sorted with the will, she got a genuine threat from her uncle?”

Coert’s face also got serious. “Judge’ll have to make that decision, Jake. Until that time, assets will probably be frozen. If you mean can the old guy make her let him in or even make her let him stay, again, judge’ll have to handle that. But until the will is assessed and judgment made, if things are acrimonious, Josie’s already here so she’ll likely be ordered not to sell anything, they’ll let her stay and he might be allowed to get in and look around but other than that, he’ll be ordered to steer clear.”

“So she’s good,” Jake said.

“If she’s got her own assets to live on, yeah,” Coert confirmed.

She did. She’d told him. So that was at least one thing they didn’t have to worry about.

They still had two more.

“You know if Terry Baginski is invested in Stone Incorporated?” Jake asked.

“Lotta local folks are investors in Stone Incorporated,” Coert answered.

“I’m takin’ your non-answer as a no, you don’t know.”

“Yeah. I don’t know for certain but I wouldn’t be surprised,” Coert replied and his voice got lower when he went on, “Be less surprised she’s in on this just to piss you off.”

Jake shook his head. “Banged her between number two and number three which was a long time ago,” he pointed out. “She was the worst lay I’d ever had, bar none. Been years. I’m not her favorite person but actively tryin’ to piss me off…” he trailed off disbelievingly.

“Women do a lot of crazy shit, they get it in their minds to do it,” Coert noted and Jake thought he was not wrong, his earlier conversation with Donna being proof of that. Then Coert changed the subject to ask, “Stone after Lavender House?”

“He was,” Jake answered. “Then he got a look at Josie and decided he preferred her. She wasn’t interested, tried to be cool about lettin’ him know that, but she heard him talkin’ smack about her. She leveled him and clearly he didn’t like that much.”

Coert’s brows shot up. “No shit? This is retaliation for a crash and burn?”

“More like a detonation, but yeah. Guy’s dick is microscopic.”

At this, Coert got closer and warned, “He’s your threat, Jake. If he’s bankrolling that old asshole for a shot at Lavender House, this could get ugly. Lotta folks in this town will stand up for Lydia Malone and say it straight she was all there until the day she died. But Stone’s got the money to drag it out if that option’s to be had.”

This was not good news.

“She gave Josie to me in her will,” Jake confided and he saw Coert’s brows draw together.

“Say again?”

“Lydie,” Jake explained. “She gave Josie to me in her will.”

“Josie…the person?” Coert asked, his brows now shooting up.

“Yep,” Jake answered.

Coert stared at him a beat before he burst out laughing.

Jake let him but crossed his arms on his chest while he did it.

When Coert got it under control, he stated, “That does it. Clearly Lydia had lost it before she passed, leavin’ her girl to you.”

“Bite me,” Jake muttered good-naturedly but tensed when he saw Coert suddenly get serious.

“Thought the world of you,” he said quietly. “Your kids. Everyone knew it. You were the son she never had. The son she always wanted. Your kids the grandkids she never got outside your girl in there. Straight up, man, after you scraped off Sloane, lots of talk in this town, wondering why Lydia didn’t fix you up with her girl when she was around, seein’ as she was around often enough. Anyone who knows her would not be surprised Lydia wanted that as her final wish. You could get a hundred folks in a courtroom to say that same thing and do it under oath. I am not kidding.”

Jake could say nothing. Coert’s words about him being the son Lydie never had were stuck in his throat, making it prickle.

When Jake was silent, Coert kept speaking.

“And I only moved here fifteen years ago but think it says a fuckuva lot that I only got a decade and a half under my belt in Magdalene and the specter of Davis and Chester Malone still haunts this burg and those two little motherfuckers didn’t even live here. Just caused mayhem whenever they visited their grandparents, the kind it was hard for a lot of people to forget. Including how they took treatin’ their mom to new and unprecedented piss-poor levels.” He took in a breath and concluded, “What I’m sayin’ is, you guys hunker down, it’s all gonna work out. You need me in the meantime, call. I figure you got some pains in the ass to deal with for a while but in the end, this will go away.”

Jake nodded and murmured, “Thanks, man.”

“You still owe me,” Coert noted.

“You didn’t tape the game?” Jake asked.

“You know it sucks not seein’ live,” Coert returned.

“Hardly. You get to go home and fast forward through the commercials. Figure we livened up your night and you owe me.”

“You’d figure wrong,” Coert replied. “I want one of Tom’s omelets and I wanna eat it with you buyin’ it and bringin’ your woman along with you.”