Walker Pride Read online

  Chapter Seven

  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.