Claiming the Enemy: Dustin (Porter Brothers Trilogy 3)

“Thanks, lover. I better be getting a text soon. I need my Dustin fix.”

She would be seeing him sooner than she expected.

“What time does your boss leave? You want to get a drink after he leaves?”

“I look forward to it.”

He took a bite of his meatloaf instead of responding to Shelly’s promising smile that was nothing like the one the Hayeses were giving him.

He didn’t even have time to swallow the bite, and Shelly wasn’t out the door before the men came barreling toward his table.

Holt’s palms landed on his table, shaking it and sending his refilled soda over the side. “You’re dead meat.”

Dustin placed his fork down on the plate. “Holt, sit down. Bubba, pull up a chair, and I’ll explain. Asher, you can go fuck yourself.”

22

Asher rudely took an empty chair from another table, pulling it closer to Dustin’s. Bubba found one at the next table as Holt took the chair that Shelly had been sitting on.

Holt waited until all the men were seated before addressing the killing glares that had been directed at Dustin’s table when Shelly was there. “I must not have been clear with my warning this morning. I usually don’t have that problem.”

Dustin faced down meaner men than Holt ever thought about being. If it were any other person, he would have told him to meet him in the parking lot or bashed in his thick skull with a chair. But, as much as he disliked these men, they were Jessie’s kin, and he didn’t want her hurt by their misguided attempts to step in. She had been hurt enough.

“I’m not going to explain myself to you knuckleheads every time you see me in town with a woman. I know you don’t like me any more than I like you, but we’re going to get along whether we like it or not.”

“I for sure don’t,” Asher grumbled. “And you’re right about another thing, too. I don’t like you.”

“The feeling is mutual.” Dustin scooted his chair closer to the table, folding his hands together to keep himself from strangling the fucker.

Pinning his eyes to Holt’s, he addressed the only one who would make the other two listen. “You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jessie.”

“I don’t know that,” he started, then stopped when Dustin stared meaningfully into his eyes.

“If it weren’t for your pa, Jessie and I would have been married and had a couple of kids by now.”

Holt went pale as Asher and Bubba looked at him, clearly surprised that Holt knew something they didn’t.

Dustin didn’t have any sympathy for him. “I ain’t blaming you. You were in the same position as me and my brothers with our pa. I blame our fathers. We can make the same mistakes they did, or we can settle it here and now and put the past behind us.”

Dustin would never forget the dark and dreary day after he had thrown the bracelet down at Jessie’s feet. Realizing he was just a hothead, he had wanted to apologize, hoping she would be at their meeting place. Jessie hadn’t been there, so he had sneaked toward her house.

Her pa had caught him, jerking him by the collar and shaking him like a rag doll until Holt had come out of the house to stop him. When Holt forced his pa to release him, he was thrown to the ground where the furious man spat at him.

“She ain’t here, you little bastard. I sent her to the store with her ma. I knew you would come here, sniffing after her when you got out of school.”

Dustin used his elbows to crawl backward, her pa following him every inch of the way.

“Boy, if I see you on my property again, or if I even hear you within breathing distance of my girl, I’m going to shoot you the way I did your dog. I’d rather see my girl dead and buried than ever see her with a Porter.”

His blood went cold at the implicit threat that he would hurt Jessie.

“Isn’t that right, Holt?”

Dustin would never forget how scared for Jessie he was when Holt answered, “Yes, Pa. Let him go, Pa. You’ve warned him. Let him go.”

Jessie’s father stomped his foot down next to his head. “Get!”

Dustin had run, too afraid to look back, too afraid his heart would stop beating because he was so scared.

Once he was safely at home, he never breathed a word to his family about the threats that Jessie’s father had made. No one knew that he and Jessie had been threatened, except for him and Holt.

“I would have killed him before I let him hurt Jessie.” Holt’s roughhewn features grew pained at the memory Dustin had brought up.

“I didn’t know that, did I? I was just a kid, and I let him scare me away.”