‘I don’t believe it,’ said Aysha. But really? She did. And she thought it explained a lot.

137

137

Jeb Cleaver was still furious. He stalked around the farm in the icy downpour, doing his work with the hogs, giving his old dad nothing more than the bare minimum of conversation. He couldn’t shake off the rage he felt at Shauna’s nerve. So the bitch thought she could just dump him, did she? Chuck him, as if all these years meant nothing at all. Damn, she’d got that wrong. Hadn’t he been her helper, her bedmate, through all their lives? He had. And now she thought she could call it off, just like that?

Big mistake.

Jeb had waited so patiently, too. One day Josh Flynn was bound to leave her, he knew. She was a strong woman and some men couldn’t hack that. He could, of course. He knew how to master her. But Shauna had run Josh Flynn ragged, Jeb had seen it all happening from the sidelines. Poor cunt hadn’t had a leg to stand on. She’d ruled the roost, had him firmly under the thumb.

And now Josh was dead.

Which should have left the way clear for him.

Jeb trudged through mud and rain, fed the pigs, watched them grunting and shoving each other to get to the feed. So the father was gone, out of reach. But that still left the son, didn’t it. That still left the sexy dark-haired daughter. Shauna lived for her kids. Lived through them. If anything should happen to them, wouldn’t she be in a tear then? Wouldn’t that break that ice-cold heart of hers?

He toed one of the big sows with his mud-spattered boot and she grunted and turned with a snap of her jaws. He jerked his leg back with a grin. Fucking pigs’d eat the lot. Meal and fruit and ale waste, any damned thing. Even people – if they stood still long enough.

138

138

Connor hated to do it, but he’d had to put Aysha in the picture. If the Milo woman was still hanging around – and she might be – then he didn’t want Aysha being approached by some stranger and mocked for her ignorance. Within a week, Dad’s will was going to be read at the solicitor’s up West, yet another fucking dreadful thing to look forward to.

After Connor left Aysha’s, he did something he’d been wanting to do for a long, long time. Now Dad was gone it seemed appropriate somehow. He drove down to the gypsy camp where Josh had lived as a young man.