“Carrie Wells is here!”
My eyes widen as his do.
“Carrie is here?” he asks and she nods.
“Smoking out the front with Eddie Stevens. They just came in and got tequila. I’d have stopped the barman if she wasn’t legal.” She pulls her phone from her handbag. “We should call Rosie and Bill, or maybe the police.”
I’d leap into action myself, but he’s already on it. His hand lands on hers, stopping her as she scrolls through her contacts list.
“No need,” he says. “I’ll handle this.”
“But they’ll want to know…” she counters.
Mike shakes his head but doesn’t elaborate, and it’s the look she gives him, bewildered speculation that has me jumping in to save him the unwanted scrutiny.
“She’s staying with me,” I tell her, just like that.
Both of them stare. Pam takes a minute to find her words.
“Carrie Wells is staying with you?!”
“She’s doing some work on my land,” I elaborate. “She’s good with fencing.”
“Fencing?”
I nod. “Fencing.”
“Fencing,” Mike confirms with a grimace.
I don’t hang around any longer, prising Mike from Pam’s grip and asking him for his assistance outside.
We leave her open-mouthed as we march our way through the packed pub. I hope for some reason Pam’s losing her fucking marbles and Carrie is safe back at home where I left her, but I hear her wild laughter before we’re even out through the door.
She’s had more than one tequila, that much is certain. She sways outside the window with a cigarette in her hand, laughing along with Eddie fucking Stevens as he recounts some idiot fucking story that he probably made up on the spot.
His eyes are all over her, his tongue practically lolling as she braces herself against him for balance.
I have the strange urge to rip the bastard’s head off, but I think Mike is gunning for him even more than I am.
“What’s fucking going on here?” he asks, heading right between them to break the contact.
“Having fun,” Carrie sneers and laughs right through it. “You guys were long-gone, why should I stay home alone on a Friday fucking night?!”
Eddie is a stupid cunt, I see his challenged brain slowly turning as he registers the implication.
“You’re staying with these guys?”
She slaps his arm as she cackles. “Yeah, they’re my new fucking foster daddies. Daddy Jack and Daddy Michael.”
I reach a new personal low when my cock twitches.
A really low fucking personal low.
Daddy Jack and daddy fucking Michael. The gleam in her eyes tells me she’s not entirely joking either.
There are no words for the clusterfuck she’s bringing into our once quiet country life.
“You’re coming with us,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “I’m fucking not, Daddy Jack. Go fuck yourself.”
I grit my teeth and take a step forward, shunting Eddie out of the way as Mike takes hold of her arm. “You’re coming with us,” I repeat. “Right fucking now.”
“She’s my girl tonight,” Eddie protests, and this time it’s Mike that loses his fucking cool.
“You’re done here,” he says to the kid. “Take your drink and get back inside that fucking pub, before I tell the police you’re dealing again.”
“You fucking wouldn’t…” Eddie says, and if I wasn’t so pissed that Carrie was trashed on tequila in his company, I’d be amused at how Michael’s changing in front of my eyes.
Once upon a time he’d have defended Eddie to the ends of the earth, just as he defends all those kids whose paperwork lands on his desk.
But not anymore.
Not now Carrie Wells is involved.
“Get back inside,” Mike repeats and Eddie does.
He stubs out his cigarette and shrugs his shoulders at Carrie, and then he’s gone.
Good fucking riddance.
Carrie struggles in my grip.
“Get the fuck off me,” she screeches. “You’ve no fucking right to order me about!”
But I don’t. I don’t get off her and I don’t pander to her kicking and screaming either. I take one elbow, and Mike must have finally heeded my bastard advice about discipline, because he takes the other and together we drag her back to my car and bundle her into the backseat, be damned who sees the spectacle.
She tries to climb back out no sooner as I’ve shut her in, but I raise a finger and my voice with it.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” I tell her, and she backs away.
I climb into the driver’s seat and check out her expression in the rearview mirror. She’s scowling, her arms folded across her chest as her foot taps furiously.