Both he and Hank had attended the one she’d been a guest at. He was in awe of her ability to keep up with all their enthusiastic questions and the way she handled herself when a few less than friendly “readers” had shown up. They hadn’t attacked her outright but it seemed clear to him and Hank that their purpose in attending had been to create a little chaos in the chat room, filling it with unrelated chatter and repeatedly getting Veronica off subject. What’d pissed him off most were the personal questions. Veronica had handled it professionally, with a sense of humor, doing her best to be kind to all the attendees, but he knew that it had been stressful for her. It’d been hard to keep his mouth shut about the chat since she didn’t know they had planned to check it out. He didn’t want her to be self-conscious about interacting with her fans or distracted.
“You think that jackass, BookAddictedWhore, has some kind of agenda? Two or three of the others seemed to follow her lead—assuming it’s really a woman.”
Hank grimaced and shook his head. “I wish I had the resources to turn this over to the department, but the funds just aren’t there for an investigation that could lead nowhere. Ace and Kemp, and Duke and Gage, can work their voodoo faster anyway. I also need to show them that card Kate brought home with her from the coffee shop. Tabitha Lester is going to get herself into a mess if she’s not careful with the blogging and website, and those meetings.”
“Yeah, people have a right to express their opinions but she needs to do some research on slander and libel.”
Hank sipped his coffee as they talked quietly about the day’s agenda.
A little later, Travis followed him back to the bedroom and stood there watching her sleep for a minute. She’d intended to get up and spend a few hours writing while they slept but she’d fallen deeply asleep between them. That was fine by him.
Hank went to the side of the bed she’d scooted over to, with her arms wrapped around the pillow he’d slept on, and kissed her on her forehead. He whispered to her and she smiled and whispered back and kept right on sleeping. Judging by his expression as he turned away, this was a morning he’d prefer to stay in with them, but duty called.
Travis sat on the front porch, enjoying the brisk morning air, and had just walked back in the house for a coffee refill when Veronica’s phone started ringing on her work desk. He grabbed it off the table and was trying to figure out how to mute it so it wouldn’t disturb her sleep when he accidentally hit the wrong key and answered it instead. He could hear a male voice and cursed at himself as he put it to his ear and quietly said, “Hello?”
There was a long pause and a deep voice on the other end said, “This is Cord Benedict. Is Veronica available?”
Thinking this might be a golden opportunity, Travis stepped out onto the front porch with his fresh cup of coffee and said, “She’s not available at the moment.”
“Bullshit. She’s always awake at this time. Who is this?”
Travis could hear another male voice in the background before he said, “My name is Travis McDaniel, Cord. Veronica has mentioned you and your brother to us.”
“Us? Us who?”
Fuck!
“The us I’m referring to is me and the Divine County Sheriff, Hank Stinson.”
“What the fuck? Is she in
jail
? Holy shit, Jackson, call Henry! We’ve got to get to Divine. Veronica—”
Travis cut him off. “She is not in any trouble. We’re friends.”
Cord scoffed. “Friends who have access to her phone while she is sleeping at a time when she is usually wide awake. How did you meet?”
“Well, I knew her about eleven years ago but we were reintroduced through Grace Warner when Veronica and your Grandma Kate came to a wedding we attended.”
“Wait. You call her Grandma Kate?”
“She told us we should when we talked with her at the reception.”
Cord’s deep laughter rumbled over the phone and he repeated what Travis had said to Jackson and presumably whoever else was within hearing. “Did she give you the ‘What are your intentions?’ speech?”
“As a matter of fact she did.”
“You say you knew her eleven years ago. How did you know her then?”
“I’m a game warden. We met the summer after she graduated from high school.”
Cord’s tone was steely as he said, “
You’re
the game warden. Do you have any idea how much upheaval you caused coming around the house like you did? We were away at college at the time, but when we called home, we heard all about how much you upset Veronica. And they said you were old enough to be her father. That makes you an old man now. What the hell are you doing messing with a girl Veronica’s age? If you hurt my little sister I swear by all that’s holy—”
“Hold on a minute. I went to her house
twice
. Once to answer a call about an illegally trapped eagle and a second time in answer to her follow-up call about the same eagle. If you weren’t there, how do you know what happened?”
“I heard about it from my brothers, Jesse and Barry, and from Mom and Dad, and Addison. You don’t understand, McDaniel. Veronica is really reclusive and emotional. She gets her feelings hurt easily—”
“Did you ever hear her side of it? Judging by her account of that same visit, it was your brothers and their friends who were the ones dealing out all the hurt. And I’m twelve years older than your sister, Cord. That was the only reason I walked away from her eleven years ago, because I thought that was too big an age gap. She’s twenty-nine now and twelve years means nothing, so you just be careful with the insults—”
“Phil and Gordon told me you were old enough to be her father—”
“Only if I fathered her at the age of eleven. I was thirty when I met her.”
“Oh. Well,
shit
.”
“Cord, I mean no disrespect when I say this, but all is not as it seems in your family. Did you know that Veronica has a history of being bullied?”
“I knew there were a few times at school. But what does that have to do with—”
“I’m talking about within
your family
, and your family friends. I think you need to confront Phil and Gordon, and get the full story from your brothers, and your damned snotty sister, Addison.”
Cord snorted into the phone. “Hey, Jackson, Game Warden thinks Addison is snotty.”
Over the connection, Travis thought he heard a wry voice say, “He doesn’t know the half of it.”
Cord said, “Why would she think she was bullied at home?” In his voice as he asked was a trace of hurt—and maybe remorse.
“Do you recall her ever standing up for herself when she was picked on?”
There was a long pause. “That was pretty difficult for her. She was more likely to withdraw. That’s why they pushed her, I think, to get her to stand up for herself.”
“Their strategy didn’t work and it’s affecting her even now. It doesn’t sound to me like she learned how to stand up to bullies. She withdraws. That’s why she’s successful online. When she needs to withdraw she can do it more easily than she could face-to-face.”
“We tried to get them to stop, once we realized how it hurt her. There’s five years difference between us so she was still pretty young when we went to college. Jesse and Barry were little shits when they were teenagers.”
“Judging by what she’s told us, little has changed.”
“We took them aside before we left for school and told them that shit had to stop. Addison was more difficult. She never listened very well, the little snot.”
“When was the last time you saw her for the holidays?”
An even longer pause that time. “Last time we saw her at Christmas was when we barged in on her at her apartment for Christmas. She was working. She works a lot.”
“When was the last time she went home for Christmas?”
“Far as I know, her last Christmas at home was the year before she went off college. But we thought she was always working and just too busy to come home.”
“She lives in Billings. Your family ranch is less than an hour from there. It’s not like she had to travel cross country.”
There was an exchange of voices on the other end and a different male voice came on the line. “This is Jackson Benedict. So, you’re telling us that Veronica has been bullied all this time? And that she doesn’t want anything to do with her family, because that’s bullshit. We love Veronica, and we tried to get them to stop. We thought they did. She’s always been one to hide her feelings. When we call her, getting her to open up is still hard sometimes. She’s always busy with one deadline or another.”
Travis chuckled. That sounded like Veronica. Keeping busy enough so there was little time for a life.
“Veronica told us that you love her and we believe her, and it was obvious she thinks the world of you two. The rest of your family, however, doesn’t know the first damn thing about being a family. They were bullying on her to get her toughen up when they should’ve been defending her, starting with those two sons of bitches, Phil and Gordon. I swear if I ever meet them face-to-face—”
“Eh, they’re both dickheads. We already knew that.”
“Did you know those dickheads backed her into a corner at home on a regular basis, poking at her, teasing her for liking me, for being full-figured, for being creative? They bought into your family’s stupid dynamic and victimized her to the point where she couldn’t defend herself.”
“Damn it! No! See what I mean? Shit, just once I wish she’d called and told us. We’d have been home in a heartbeat dealing with those little shits, all four of them. All we ever heard was their side. Why didn’t she tell us?”
“I don’t know, Jackson. Maybe she was already used to taking it? Maybe she thought she deserved it or that it would only get worse? If you were busy with school, maybe she didn’t want to worry you. She’s pretty strong.”
“I wish she’d said something. But yeah, Mom and Dad had a ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ philosophy. I guess it’s clear they went overboard.”
“That’s why she hasn’t gone home any more than necessary. She’s insulated herself from all that ‘tough love.’ Lots of people think introversion is a disorder that needs to be cured. I’ll agree that she needed to learn to defend herself from picking, teasing, and bullying, but from her own family and family friends?”
Jackson breathed slowly on the other end of the phone. “Damn.”
“And that’s not the only bullying she’s had to deal with. Instead of toughening her up, I think your family managed to condition her to
take
the abuse, to withdraw into her own world.”
“She has a tendency to withdraw. We caught a little dickhead bullying her one day when she was waiting for the school bus. She could hardly even speak when we dealt with the little prick and sent him on his way. We told her she needed to stand up for herself and she nodded but didn’t say anything. We did our best to keep an eye on her after that, but our age difference made it hard. Then we were in college and away from home a lot. I thought she was holding her own better than that. After all, she’s been putting up with Bubba the knuckle-dragger for a couple of years now.”
“Not unless you call him popping her in the face for breaking up with him doing okay.”
There was dead silence on the other end for several seconds. “He hit Veronica?” Cord’s exclamation in the background was loud and clear as Jackson continued. “And you say she broke up with him? When?”
“Yes. Sometime in the days leading up to her arrival here in Texas.”
“We saw her the day before she went to Divine. She didn’t say anything about it.” Another longer pause. “If she had a mark we didn’t notice. Fuck.”
Travis said, “It’d faded completely by the time we met her. I’ll bet I can guess what she’d say. To not worry about it, that it’s in the past and nothing can be done. That motherfucker better hope he never meets me and Hank.”
“He’d better run if Cord and I catch up with him. I’d really like to talk to Veronica. Is she around?” Travis could hear Cord speaking in the background.
“No. She’s sleeping.”
“That’s odd. She’s always awake and working this time of morning. That’s why we called so early.”
“I think she intended to and changed her mind.”
“Well, I’m glad she’s getting her rest, then. So you got ‘the talk’ from Grandma Kate, huh?” Jackson asked, his tone softening somewhat.
“I guess. She encouraged us to spend time with Veronica and we’re both glad she did.”
Jackson let out a sigh. “Ménage?”
Travis went on alert. Veronica had told him that her family in Montana hadn’t approved of ménage lifestyles but mentioned that she’d been at Cord and Jackson’s engagement party. Two brothers announcing their engagement at the same party had to mean a ménage. “Yes. Why?”
“Good. We have that in common. You’ll take care of her then? Protect her?”
“For as long as she’ll let us.”
“How long is she planning to stay in Divine?”
“She’s extending her stay until December.”
“She’s planning to stay, presumably to work and to spend time with you. And you’ve got Grandma Kate’s blessing.” Jackson’s voice was full of good humor.