Behind the desk, Allan stiffened.
“But I know the truth,” Colt continued. “She won’t tell anyone that you cheated on her, will she? She doesn’t want to hurt you like that. She’s not mean like that.” He leaned over Allan’s desk. “But…I am. And I’m not afraid to tell everyone how you cheated on her—repeatedly.”
Allan gave him a cold stare.
“It sure would make everyone in town look at you differently wouldn’t it? To know that you had a beautiful, smart, funny girl like Beth Ann and you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants? That you had to f**k anything moving just because you needed to feel like the big hero?” He glanced around the office, then back at Allan. “I’m sure reputation’s very important in a job like yours. How many cars you sell to the good folks of Bluebonnet?”
Allan’s face had turned a dull red again. He said nothing for a long, long moment. Then, slowly, he gave Colt a narrow-eyed gaze. “So is this all a master plan?”
“Plan?”
“Take my fiancée. Destroy my job. My reputation. This some big revenge plan because of who I am and who you are?”
Colt barked a laugh. “Fuck you. It has nothing to do with me.”
Allan tilted his head. “Liar. That’s what it is, isn’t it? You want everything that I have—everything you didn’t—and you want to destroy it because you’re jealous. Because you’ve never had what I had.”
Now the man was just talking nonsense. “All I want is for you to leave Beth Ann alone.”
“That’s what this is,” Allan repeated again, his eyes angry slits in his handsome face. “Well, I’m not going to sit here and let you walk all over me, Waggoner.” He emphasized Colt’s last name with a sneer. “You cross me and I’m going to make your family so f**king miserable they won’t be able to see straight. Your father has some outstanding warrants, you know. Needs to clean up his property or they’re going to haul his ass to jail. He can’t run a junkyard on private property. The neighbors are complaining. I’d hate for such an old man to be carted off to jail, but what can you do?”
Colt stared at Allan’s evil smile, hate seething through him.
Allan stared back, not moving.
“You leave Beth Ann alone,” Colt said slowly. “Or the next time I pound your face in, I’m going to do more than give you a few black eyes.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.” And he stalked out of the dealership.
FOURTEEN
Colt slammed into his Jeep and punched the steering wheel. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Any leverage he might have had over that smarmy ass**le was gone. His father had f**king warrants out for his arrest? The Waggoner property had always been a disaster. Had someone finally complained? The old man was going to get tossed into jail. And Colt was going to have to be the one to bail him out. Berry didn’t have the money. Marlin worked as a truck driver. He wouldn’t have the money, either. Goddamn it.
He tore onto the highway, driving back toward Bluebonnet. Marlin didn’t answer his phone. Browning was working out at an oil rig in Louisiana for the next six months. Chester was probably still in prison out in Huntsville. Two more years. Berry, then. He called his brother’s job.
“Big Burgers,” Berry said with a familiar drawl. “Can I take your order?”
Fuck his goddamn family. “What’s the deal with Dad and warrants out for his arrest?”
“So you found out about that?”
Colt gritted his teeth in frustration. “Just tell me.”
“Needs to clean up the property. I told him I’d help, but I’ve been working double shifts here at work, you know. He’s waiting for Chester to get out.”
“Chester doesn’t get out for another two years,” Colt growled.
“That’s about right,” Berry agreed.
“I’ll take care of it,” Colt gritted, and hung up the phone. He tossed it into the passenger seat, wishing he could smash it down on the road.
Damn his family. They’d been a thorn in his side his entire life. He’d known that if he came back to Bluebonnet, they’d crawl back into his life again. Lazy, poor, trashy Waggoners. His mother hadn’t been able to stand it—she’d left when he was twelve, unable to handle looking after four Waggoner boys and his father on a supermarket salary. She was tired of working so hard, she’d told his dad. Tired, and she was going to go find herself a nice sugar daddy that would take care of her. That was the last time Colt had seen her. He hadn’t wanted to be part of that family after she’d left. He’d been unable to escape being one of the Waggoner boys. The clothes that were handed down from his dad. The food stamps. The name calling from the other kids in town. The day after he graduated from high school, he’d left to join the marines. He’d never looked back.
And now, he was back and he was going to have to clean up their messes again.
Before they ruined his new life, and his relationship with Beth Ann.
He’d just have to tell her the truth, as soon as he got his father squared away.
Even when Colt was growing up, Henry Waggoner’s home had been a shithole. Colt hadn’t seen it in almost nine years, and wondered if his memories had made it worse than he’d thought.
Nope. It was just as bad as he recalled. The road was little more than potholes—the city wouldn’t maintain this far out. It was up to the residents to have gravel poured every couple of years, but anyone that lived out here couldn’t afford something like that. His Jeep bounced down the rutted dirt road. His father’s old mailbox popped into view down the road, and Colt pulled up next to it and stared out at the yard, his lip curling in disgust.
When Colt and his brothers had been boys, they’d played among the broken-down cars on cinderblocks. They’d collected aluminum cans to bring in a few extra nickels. They’d chased one another through the high weeds and made forts out of scrap metal and old, discarded tires.
Now, when Colt looked across the yard, all he saw was trash. His father owned three acres and had set his trailer back at the edge of the property, away from the junk. But the junk butted up to the trailer now. Colt parked and picked his way toward the trailer. Busted cars, bikes missing wheels, piles of piping lay scattered amid thigh-high weeds. There was a stack of tires that was easily thirty deep. An old tractor that looked as if it should have been torn apart for scraps balanced precariously on two wheels, the other side half buried in dirt and grass. Every inch of his father’s yard was covered in garbage.