“Well, this is going to rock everyone’s world a bit, but this is Dakota McAllister-Goodall… My wife.” His words held pride, not regret, which I had no time at all to ponder.
His mother took a step back until her body pressed against the counter where she braced herself in support.
I closed my eyes and took a full breath, letting it out while trying to calm my nerves.
“Your wife?” she croaked.
He nodded, squeezed me in a side hug, and kissed my temple. “Yeah.” His tone was gentle, almost…loving.
“Dakota?” she reiterated, even though she damn well knew my name.
“Mmm-hmm,” he murmured into my hairline.
“As in, Dakota McAllister who lives next door and runs the entire McAllister farm?” she added unnecessarily.
He grinned and then looked down at me. “See, sweetness? Everyone knows you’re the real boss around that farm.”
Before I could comment on the very unusual but rather astute comment about the goings-on at my family’s farm, Sutton’s mother lifted her hand to her forehead.
“Is it hot in here?” She touched her brow and then both of her cheeks. “It is hot in here,” she amended, then went over to the deep farm-style sink and ran the water, wetting her hands. Then she lifted a wet hand to the back of her neck and then her cheeks.
“You okay, Ma?” Sutton let me go to tend to his mother.
I crossed my arms over my chest and rubbed at my arms, suddenly cold without his embrace to keep me warm or grounded. I felt like I could fly away at any moment and wished I had the ability to do that very thing so I could disappear.
“And you said this woman is your wife? What on earth do you mean, son?” She waved a hand at her reddening face.
“Dakota and I hooked up in Vegas on my business trip. It was love at first sight,” he lied smoothly. “It just sorta happened, and we got hitched. Now we’re home, and here we are. ”
“Love at first sight?” she breathed, her tone one hundred percent disbelief. “How could that be? She’s a…a McAllister?”
McAllister may as well have well been the name “Satan” for how much disgust was implied in that one word.
“I’m gonna…” I pointed to the room. “Get dressed, and go over to my, uh, farm, and check on things. You be with your mom,” I stated and disappeared down the hallway as fast as my feet could take me.
I sprang into action the second I was out of sight, ripping open my suitcase and tugging on a pair of jeans and socks. I yanked off Sutton’s shirt and tossed it on the bed before putting on a tank that had a bralette inside of it and grabbing one of my favorite green plaid button-downs to throw over it. Then I shoved my feet into a well-worn pair of boots and hit the hallway.
I dashed past the kitchen as I heard words from his mother’s mouth I could never unhear.
“How could you marry a woman from the ugliest family this state has ever seen? You’ve broken my heart, Sutton. You better find a way to fix this!” she cried, her words pleading and muffled through the tears she now shed.
Her words continued to wound as I made my way out of my new home.
Ugliest family.
I’d never thought of myself as ugly before. Mostly I considered myself average in the beauty department. Definitely not my entire family though. My sister Savannah was coveted by men. Her flaming, dark-red hair was the stuff our ancestors from Ireland had gifted our genetic line. Even my mother, Carol, and my grandmother, Amberlynn, had been true beauties. Everyone said so. Which meant she was talking about me.
I was the ugly one.
And that was fine because I’d found that the ugliest people were that way on the inside, not the outside. And I wasn’t here to impress Sutton’s mother. I was here to save my family’s land, and that’s what I was doing.
I stormed off at a dead run, cutting across the land horizontally, hopped the fence that separated our farms, and kept on until I got to the barn. There I bent in half, pressing a hand against the very wood my beloved grandaddy had built, and vomited. I purged everything left in my stomach as the acid of her words continued to needle my gut painfully.
“What the hell you doing here? You said you’d be gone for weeks, maybe even months, not mere days?” My father’s slurred voice seared through the haze and hatred of Linda Goodall’s words.
I lifted my head and wiped the back of my hand against my shirt sleeve, not caring that I smelled of vomit. My life had gone to shit. I might as well muck out some stalls and add to the stench.
“Yeah, well, I’m back. And I’ve already wired the money I said I’d get into the accounts. We should be okay at least for a little bit.” I didn’t want him to know that Savannah’s deposit was sitting in another account waiting to be used by me when I had some time to look at the books. Nor would he get the first payment of money I’d scored when I married Sutton two nights ago.
My father tipped his bottle of Jack back, and I watched the amber liquid slosh as it slid down his gullet.
“Pa, it’s seven in the morning. Maybe you could take a load off the booze. Help out a bit around here?” I scowled as I went to move around him.
As I attempted to go around the corner to enter the barn, his arm shot out, and his gnarled fingers fisted the back of my hair. He yanked me so hard I screamed as I arched backward, my spine twisting in pain as I was flung to the ground.
My ass smarted the second I hit the hard earth, and I cried out, then looked up and noticed the chunk of my hair my father still held within his fist like a trophy .
I barely noticed the sound of a vehicle rolling up the gravel path just as my father shoved me down with a boot to the chest. I fell back farther, my palms grating along the dry, rocky earth, bits cutting into my skin.
“Don’t you dare speak to your father like that, missy. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want. You hear me? This is my farm. My land. Mine to do with as I please.” He belched out loud and spit at my feet. “And you are my spineless, useless daughter, just like your momma.”
I blew out a harsh breath as I pushed on my scraped hands and got up, testing the back of my head where he’d pulled out a chunk of hair.
“You’re running our family’s legacy down into the ground.” I narrowed my gaze as anger tore through my chest. “I won’t continue to watch you do it and neither will Savannah!” I hollered and stomped toward him.
His eyes were glazed over from alcohol, and his breath smelled of rotting sewer as I got closer.