Page 44 of The Risk

Chantal had had a wonderful time,even while doing something as simple as going to dinner at Mamaw’s Place, where she had eaten hundreds of meals before in her thirty years. It was being with Gene that felt so… different.

His hands scorched her when he touched her. And the man… almost constantly touched her. Everyone they knew that had been in the restaurant had known what they were doing there tonight. Together.

Rory and Charlotte had teased her, making it clear they approved. Charlie had been a bit thunder-cloudy, but her oldest brother had taken overprotective of her to the next level lately. Even before the abduction.

He had always watched out for her. She didn’t see that ever changing. Gene’s brother and sister-in-law had just acted like they weren’t surprised at all.

Like it was normal for her and Gene to be together. Almost expected.

Well, that wasn’t something she had ever expected—but she was perfectly happy that it had happened.

He held her hand, and pulled her close while he and George had spoken about some legal matter involving Kurtland Chase. It had upset Gene a little, but he had tightened his hold on her hand and pulled her closer. That had seemed to calm the beast a little.

Now, they walked across the parking lot toward his big monster of a truck. He held her hand, pulled her even closer. “Don’t get too far away from me.”

“Afraid I’m going to disappear?” She meant it teasingly, but that wasn’t what came out. He stopped walking.

And just looked at her out of hazel eyes. “Yeah, a little. This… feels a little unreal, no use hiding that. You’ve been right there next to me this whole time, and I was too stupid to see it. I can’t help thinking about the years we missed.”

“Don’t look at it as we were missing something. Look at it as that was time we needed to find who we were, so we could make this mean something more now.” Chantal had had a lot of time to think, especially since her diagnosis. She fully believed things happened the way and time they were supposed to. She honestly didn’t know if she had been ready for Gene before. Until now. “We are meant for now, and… forever?”

He just stared at her for a moment. “I’m not a man of pretty words, Chantal Fields. I never have been. But I am a man who works hard, and will love hard. If that makes sense. You will be my world. You and Calvin and any others we’re lucky to have. Forever. You can have my word on that. I’ll never hurt you, and I will love you until the day I die?—”

He grunted and almost went down on his knees in front of her. A curse escaped.

Chantal screamed when she saw the man standing behind Gene now, a gun in his hand. Pointed right at her.

“Pretty words,” the man—she recognized him. Detective Wright. The man who had been there that day Chantal hadfound the woman in the field. He had been at her house, too. When the cattle had escaped. “Don’t make a fucking sound, Chantal. Don’t. Or I won’t just hit your boyfriend. It’ll be him his family is burying, too.”

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Gene’s head pounded.He tried to shove the pain away, to get Chantal behind him even further. All he could focus on was the damned gun in the man’s hands. The gun pointed directly at Chantal.

They were right in front of a diner full of cops—and this guy had a gun pointed right at them. “What’s this about?”

“Shut up. I’ll do the talking. I’m sorry about this. This wasn’t how I saw this going. Not that I really saw it going much of anywhere. Just… I had to do it, you understand. You got sisters, Hiller, I know you do. Saw that little thing, that little one, just recently, too. You’d do what you had to, to protect her, right? To make things right?”

The man just kept rambling. Sweat was pouring down the guy’s neck. But the hand he had on the gun never wavered.

And it was aimed at the woman Gene would love for eternity.

Very few things in his life had ever truly scared him. The day he had almost lost Greer, the day he had carried Chantal through the land his family had ranched for generations unconscious in his arms, the moment he had watched those bastards take her,hurt her—those were defining moments in his life. This was another.

“I’m not going to let you hurt her, Wright. I just want to put that out there.”

“No, I suppose you won’t. Or you will try to stop me.” Wright looked toward the diner window. “They will, I’m sure. Know a bunch of them are inside right now. Saw them. But I got a point to prove. A man has to prove something sometimes. Even if it’s just to himself, Hiller. Even if it’s just to himself.”

“What’s this about, Detective Wright? Who?” Chantal asked quietly.

The man’s hand flexed on the grip. But he never lowered it, never moved it away from his target.

Chantal.

Why would he have a problem with Chantal?

“Why her, Wright? Tell me. Help me understand. You saidsisters.Tell me about yours.”

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