Herd That (The Valentine Boys 1)

Getting out of here sounded like a great idea.

“Great.” Ace stood up and then offered me his hand.

I took it and he placed his hand on the small of my back, guiding me to the door without nary a word to anyone, even though I saw quite a few faces in the crowd that noticed who he was.

It wasn’t until we were gone, driving away from the place that I was so excited to visit not so long ago, that it all hit me.

Though Ace was a great reason to stay… I knew what we had wouldn’t work out. A person like me and a person like Ace were complete opposites when it came down to it.

He wanted someone that could help him at the farm, offer him something. But I’d be a burden.

I couldn’t get a job doing what I wanted… and that was important to me.

“What’s the long face for?” Ace asked, his hand reaching over the center console to grab mine.

I clenched my molars for a few long seconds before saying, “Nothing. I was just thinking I didn’t want to go home.”

And that wasn’t a lie.

I didn’t want to go home.

I wanted to stay with Ace.

Ace felt warm and inviting. I felt like I was wanted when Ace and I were together.

He made me forget that the rest of the town didn’t feel the same way.

He grinned. “Want to go see a movie after breakfast? I hear the new superhero movie is pretty good. I know a friend at the movie theater, too. He said he could sneak us in to a private showing of the really new one. The one by the other comic book world.”

“That sounds great.” I paused. “Who is this friend?” I asked curiously. “And I’m not going to get arrested for sneaking in and watching a movie that hasn’t been released yet, am I?”

He grinned. “Don’t worry. All the employees and their families get to see it early if they so wish. We’ll just have to act like you’re his sister.”

An hour and twenty minutes later, after I’d consumed three more large pancakes and another whole stack of bacon, I was looking at the man who was supposed to be my ‘brother’ and started to laugh.

“I’m half Japanese, Ace,” I snickered. “I’m not Chinese. Those are two different countries, for your information.”

Chen, the man who worked at the movie theaters, snorted. “Nobody will look close enough, I promise. We do this all the time.”

I was fairly sure that would’ve worked out, too, had Jace’s wife, Marie, not been there to watch the other superhero movie at the same time we were sneaking in to watch the one that hadn’t been released yet.

It was as I was going to the bathroom that I heard her say, rather loudly, that she thought I was following her.

I came out of the bathroom and glared at the woman.

“I’m not following you,” I told her bluntly. “I was here about thirty minutes before you, and I’ve been talking with a friend.”

She sneered at me. “Yeah, because I’m going to believe a liar and a thief.”

I tilted my head and stared at her. “I never lied, and I never stole anything. In fact, if you want to know the truth, your husband was the one who stole the car, not me. Yet, he probably didn’t tell you that, did he?”

Marie scoffed. “My husband would never do that.”

“Actually,” I heard Jace say. “That was me. I was the one who took the car. Dad just didn’t want that getting out to the public.”

Marie gasped and turned. “You did what?”

Jace shrugged. “I was a rebellious kid who hated that his father told him what to do all the time. Are you ready? I have the tickets, and I have to pee.”

Marie nodded her head and reached for their child, giving Jace the freedom he needed to head to the bathroom.

I chose that moment to head back, despite Marie still talking to me—or trying to.

I just couldn’t handle her shit today.

I also couldn’t handle her shit any day.

It’d be super if she accidentally fell and broke her jaw, rendering her unable to screech at me every time I passed her.

Sadly, my day didn’t improve. Mostly because I found myself not wanting Ace to leave.

Not even when I had Ace’s hand on my face as he dropped a chaste kiss on my mouth as he was leaving me at my front door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, darlin’.”Chapter 12My brother told me to have a good day. So I went home.

-Ace to Codie

Ace

“Hey,” I said softly to my brother-in-law. “Can you talk to Luke for me?”

Nico looked over at me with a raised brow.

“What for?” he asked curiously.

“A couple weeks ago, Codie put in her application to work at Kilgore Police Department as a crime scene tech,” I explained. “She hasn’t heard anything back, and I read in the newspaper today that the department was in desperate need of one. If they were really desperate, they’d have called her back at least.”