Page 79

My phone pinged, and I pulled it out of my pocket, not surprised to see that the text was from Reese.

“It’s Reese,” I told Cole. “She’s worried about you and wants to know if you’re okay. She wants to know what treatment you’re getting. She’s a nurse practitioner.”

Cole smirked. “I have to say that I’ve never had a woman worry about me before.”

I shrugged. “It’s who she is. She worries about everyone but herself.”

“Tell her I’m going home tomorrow and that I’m fine,” he suggested. “Let her know you’ll be home soon. The nurse is going to give me some pain drugs, and that will knock me out. You don’t need to stay here and babysit me.”

I typed a message back to Reese and put my phone back into my pocket as I said, “You’re my family, Cole. I’m not here to babysit you.”

“Go home to your woman, Devon,” Cole replied. “She needs you more than I do.”

After this man had literally taken a bullet for Reese and stopped Kline from killing her more than once, he was always going to be family to me. Whether he wanted family or not.

I wished I had been there for Reese myself, but we’d still been searching the grounds near Cole’s house when he and Reese had flown out the front door.

I hadn’t known that Kline had found her, and I didn’t know that Cole was here.

During Kline’s rant and assault of Reese, he’d mentioned that he’d finally decided to follow her lead detective from Spokane to try to get information about where she was hiding.

Although Reese was under an assumed identity, Ralph was not.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

My mother’s place was on the way into town from the highway.

Kline had just happened to see Reese as she was walking through the field closer to the road.

The bastard had stalked her to the property border before he’d snatched her.

“I’m so fucking glad that asshole is dead,” I said, hating that one moment of vulnerability had led to Reese being found.

Ralph had shot Kline just in time.

If he hadn’t, the bastard would have gotten another shot off from the porch that could have killed Reese or Cole.

“I’m with you on that,” Cole answered. “If I’d gotten a single second of opportunity, he would have been dead. But he never took the gun off Reese. He made her restrain my hands and legs before he tied her up. I couldn’t risk her getting shot if I jumped him.”

“Reese said you could have just called the police and not gotten involved,” I mused.

He shot me a disbelieving look. “I might be an asshole, but I wasn’t going to watch some lunatic beating on a female. I didn’t know she was your woman at the time, but that shit is never going to fly with me. There are certain times when I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. That’s one of the few things that sets me off.”

I was damn glad that Cole had a few triggers.

He’d always been pretty cool and distant when we’d spoken before, but there was obviously still a decent human inside Cole’s body. The decent side was apparently just harder to find in my cousin than it was in most people.

“You here for good now?” I questioned him.

He shook his head. “I was just here for a few days to do a final inspection of the work on the houses and the horse facilities. I didn’t plan to get shot.”

“Did you call Asher?”

“Nah,” he said nonchalantly. “He’d lose his shit, even though it’s just a flesh wound, and he’s out of the country on business. There’s nothing he can do. I’ll be out of the hospital tomorrow. My jet is at the airport. I’ll probably fly home sooner than I’d planned.”

I shook my head. “Not happening. I’ll be here tomorrow to pick you up. Everybody is going to want to see you, especially my mother. You have family here to take care of you. Be nice to Mom. She cares about you and Asher. She’s excited that you’re both coming home.”

He shrugged. “I have no reason not to be nice to her. I don’t have any hard feelings toward Millie.”