Take Her to HeVan (Nephilim Book 6) Read Free Page B

up to you, I surely will. But, honey, I can’t just sign away half my property,” he said, a little of the anger he was trying to hide tightening his voice.
    She had a teacher once who told her if a person uses the word ‘but’ in the middle of sentence or group of sentences, everything they said prior to that was negated; it was a lie. Marla never forgot it.
    “That means you’re already planning on cheating. Thanks for lunch, we’re through,” she said, standing up.
    She considered throwing her water in his face or dumping her salad on his head. That would have been too much of a cliché and her friend, Sheila, who was the waitress, would be the one having to clean up the mess. Instead, she walked out.
    A couple of weeks later, she found out he’d been screwing Sheila and wished she’d dumped not only her salad but also his chicken fried steak with gravy on his head. She had felt so angry and betrayed after, that she hadn’t dated anyone else.
    Letting out a huff, she rolled over in bed. Dwelling on this shit didn’t help; it just gave her sleepless nights. It would take a miracle to find a man to get married now. It was the reason she’d signed up with the matchmaker. The woman, Miranda, was supposed to have a perfect track record. When they last talked, she had honestly thought all her problems were over. Miranda seemed to think finding her a husband would be easy.
    Unfortunately, she hadn’t sent her one single guy to check out and time was running out. She made another mental note to call Miranda in the morning. Since she was wallowing in her misery, she thought about her more recent problems. Machinery breakdowns, broken fences, mislaid tools and equipment, had all combined to chip away at her savings and her determination. Thanks to Jake the Snake, she had no luck in hiring any help. She found out he actually paid people not to work for her. She was pissed no one was willing to stand up to him.
    The dawn insisted on arriving every morning at the crack of…dawn—and that was damn early. So putting down her e-reader, she turned off the light. After pounding her pillow into the perfect shape, she snuggled down into the covers and closed her eyes. Thinking about her problems always tired her out. Like every other day this week, she was asleep in minutes. Her body wanted to get away from her troubles too—oblivion was a nice place to hide for a few hours.
    It was several hours later, around two a.m., when she heard a horrendous explosive crash. It woke her up from a sound sleep and she sat straight up in her bed. She figured some drunken idiot had taken the wrong driveway and hit something. He better not have hurt her animals! She flipped up the covers and reached to turn on the light. Stepping into her house shoes, she grabbed up her grandfather’s old flannel bathrobe. She could hear Rusty barking at the bottom of the stairs. In the kitchen, she went to the pantry and got her grandfather’s shotgun.
    She’d been keeping it handy ever since her break-up with Jake. She’d had to use it a few times to convince him not to step foot on her property. Checking to see the gun was loaded, she headed out of the house. Rusty took off when she stopped to pull on her boots. Stepping out, she noticed it was pitch dark outside. She came back in and opened the utility cabinet to grab a flashlight. Starting out again, she whistled for Rusty; he had disappeared. He came running out from behind the hay barn and barked at her. She started working her way across the muddy ground with Rusty running back and forth from the barn as if to say ‘hurry up’.
    From Rusty’s attitude, she figured there was something new going on instead of Jake coming back again. If it were trespassers, she’d convince them of the error of their ways with a little rock salt in their backsides. I don’t get enough sleep to put up with this in the middle of the night!
    Rusty took off in the direction of her hay barn again. She couldn’t see