Page 28 of Forbidden Cowboy
The crowd gasps at the secret she divulges. A secret that doesn’t belong to her. My heart breaks at my sister’s betrayal in front of the entire town.
“A Wilde can’t date a Fox.” The shout comes from the Wildes crowd.
“Foxes don’t want to date Wildes!” Chants from both sides increase.
“Everyone, stop!” I shout. “We’ve spent the day having fun. It didn’t matter whose side you were on.” My pleas are ignored.
An open can of red paint soars from the Fox side and splats over the Wilde crowd. The strike ensues a full-on western brawl.
“You steal blueberries from our patch to make the pies you sell for a profit!”
“Your eggs aren’t grass-fed!”
“If you don’t cut down the tree on our fence line, I will!”
Some fight with words. Others run forward, fists swinging. Within minutes, the entire area is ransacked. Tent poles are kicked in half and ripped down. Chairs are tossed, and tables of food are overthrown.
Levi runs in the middle of throwing punches to separate people.
“Mrs. Miller, you liked the flowers, remember?” I try to break up the shouting matches, but there are too many, and I’m pulled in all different directions. We’re losing. It’s two of us against an entire town. I’m desperate to change a single person’s mind, but no one is open to anything other than fighting and arguing.
I smell the burning wood before I see the smoke billowing.
“No, no,no!” I shove my way through the crowds. I’m too late. Flaming fire licks the kissing booth from base to top. “We need water! The hose! Where’s the hose?”
Levi catches my arm. “It’s too late.”
“This can’t be how today ends.” I glance around the dust-up of conflict. The fire stops no one. “This can’t be how it ends.” The sentence repeats in my head like a broken tune.
Cold metal snaps against my wrist. My gaze flickers down to find handcuffs on my wrist.
“I warned you, Hope.” There’s no mistaking the irritation laced in the sheriff’s tone. “Hope Fox and Levi Wilde, you are both under arrest.”
Chapter Ten
LEVI
––––––––
“THIS ISN’T WHAT I meant by spending the night in a cell with you.” I lean against the bars connecting the two cells in Rocky Ridge Creek’s small jail. All my brothers join me in one cell, while Hope occupies the second alongside her sisters.
Sheriff Nash stretches out on his chair with his ankles crossed on the corner of the single desk.
Hope chews on the inside of her mouth. “None of the day went the way we’d hoped.”
“We will figure something out.”
“You know we can all hear you.” The consistent tap of Jade’s boot on the cement floor sounds like a clock’s ticking second hand.
Hope spins around and points at her sister. “Hear this. I won’t forgive you for your part in causing today’s riot.”
Jade pushes off the wall and folds her arms over her chest. “I don’t forgive you for sneaking around behind my back.”
“Can you blame me? Look at what happened when you showed up.”
“If you hadn’t been all,look at me and a Wilde—” Jade flails her hands in the air. “—all over social media, I wouldn’t have even known.”
“You shouldn’t have come! You weren’t invited!” Hope’s scream silences the few scuffles in the cells. The shout doesn’tstop old man Earl’s crackling snores. The drunken fool is passed out and curled in a ball in the corner of the Wilde cell.