“We’ll get you there,” he muttered.
My heart skipped a beat.
We’d get me there?
As in me…and him? That we?
We would get me to understanding mountain man badasses?
Why would I need to do that if I didn’t have one of my own?
In other words, what the hell did that mean?
Deke turned back to his mustard and did this speaking.
Not to me.
To Mr. T.
“And got a friend on finding Bianca. Know the Nightingale crew. They’re exceptional. Wouldn’t know the outcome of a faceoff between Deck and Lee Nightingale or any of his men. Just know my boy Jacob Decker will not fuck around and he’s already on the job.”
Okay.
Uh.
How did Deke know Lee Nightingale?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Then again, trouble made a permanent home in Carnal, taking residence most recently at my forest oasis. And from what I knew, Lee Nightingale was a fan of besting trouble.
So that might have been it.
“Then I’ll need to speak to this Jacob Decker,” Mr. T said to Deke.
“I’ll get Jussy to text you his phone number,” Deke replied, slapping cheese slices on the toast, still talking. “Want Jussy at her house tomorrow. Work to do there. Joe Callahan needs to get started on his gig. And she needs to get back in that saddle. We’ll be there from seven on. She’s not leavin’ my sight so she’ll be there until I knock off at six. You want lunch or dinner with her, we sort somethin’ but she does that not leavin’ me and not in town. I want her in a contained area where she’s low on visibility, not just because of this jackoff but because she doesn’t need any type of attention while this shit is happening, which she’ll get bein’ Jussy. But mostly it’s because of this jackoff. She has eyes on her I can’t control, it’ll be after this asshole is behind bars.”
Through that, my heart skipped many beats.
Dozens.
“Agreed,” Mr. T replied and I turned surprised eyes to the phone.
Not anyone ordered Mr. T around. Not Dad during an artist’s tantrum, not Granddad during the same.
And no one took care of the Lonesomes but him.
No one.
“I’ll be at Justice’s house at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” Mr. T continued. “Justice has reported to me the state of her house and I can imagine she does not yet have a kitchen. Do you need me to bring breakfast?”
“Go to La-La Land,” Deke ordered. Having put the bologna on the sandwich, he was adding the next layer of cheese. “Get us coffees and anything out of the case. That’ll do us.”
“La-La Land?”
“On Main Street. Only coffee house we got. You can’t miss it.”
“Excellent, Mr. Hightower. I’ll see you and Justice tomorrow at eight.”
“Deke,” Deke grunted, having upended a chip bag, he was covering my sandwich and the entire plate with Bugles.
“Fine, Deke,” Mr. T semi-grunted back. Then came, “Justice, you rest. And text me Mr. Decker’s number.”
“Right, Mr. T. I’ll do that ASAP.”
“Enjoy your evening,” he bid.
“You too,” I replied, seeing Mr. T disconnect the call before turning my head and taking the mounded plate from Deke.
I sat with plate in hand, eyes tipped up, staring at Deke as he walked back to the kitchen area.
“You just bossed Mr. T,” I declared, my voice flimsy, not just due to my throat still hurting but my utter shock. “And he let you.”
“Babe,” Deke began, slapping more bologna in the skillet, “you don’t got far to look, you wanna learn how the folk in Carnal look after each other.”
With their rather dramatic history, this was true.
Once he was done with the bologna, he turned eyes to me.
“You look, you’ll find Chace is all over that,” he said quietly. “So is Tate. They’re involved with lookin’ after you, they’re good with you bein’ with me, clear your guy is not stupid. He gets that and what that means. Didn’t boss him as much as told him the way it is. Smart men don’t waste time tryin’ to prove who’s got a bigger dick by arguing over what time in the morning we meet. A decision’s made that makes sense, smart men move on and ask if they can bring breakfast.”
I was learning a lot about Deke that day.
Top of that list (for a variety of reasons) was that he was a great cuddler.
Near to the top of that list, when asked to put on a song of my dad’s, he was the perfect DJ.
And high on the scale of honorable mentions, he did not waste time on stupid shit, like proving he had a bigger dick (or one at all) by getting into it when the girls wanted to clean his trailer or staking claim in a way that would raise the hackles of Mr. T. But instead he settled a man who cared about me into the knowledge that I was being looked after.
“Jussy?” Deke called.
I shook off these thoughts and the happy feeling I got learning all this about Deke, thus getting it all for me, and focused on him.
“Thank you for—” I started softly.
That was as far as I got.
“Don’t say it,” Deke ordered.
His terse response made my head give a small jerk.
“But today, Deke, you’ve been really—”
Off went the skillet from the burner and suddenly Deke was bent over me, his face in my face, both his hands curled around the sides of my neck.
“I said, don’t say it,” he repeated, this time gently.
“I have to,” I told him.