In Bed With My Ex's Brother-in-Law novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Letter Board

Rance didn't like it.

He said so in the Jessup yard with his hand on the truck door and his eyes going gold at the edges.

"Alone, in that house, after what you just did to her in front of seventy wolves."

"He can't lift a spoon, Rance."

"I'm not worried about him."

"Noreen drove to Riverton. Kacey saw her truck go." I squeezed his wrist. "Twenty minutes. Keep the engine running."

He looked at me a long moment.

"Twenty," he said. "Then I come in, and I don't care whose door I go through."

The old Alpha's room was at the back of the ranch house, on the ground floor.

It used to be his study.

Noreen had moved a hospital bed in after the stroke and moved everything else out. His saddles. His books. The photo of him on a buckskin at the Cheyenne Frontier Days parade, forty years ago.

The nurse wheeled him in and set the brake.

"I'll be in the hall," she said. "If anybody comes, I'll drop a tray."

The door clicked shut.

I sat down on the end of the bed so I was at his eye level.

"Hey," I said.

The good side of his mouth moved.

For five years I'd brought him his coffee on Sunday mornings while Noreen was at the cattle sale.

I'd read him the livestock reports, the real ones, not the ones she read out at supper. He'd tap the board when a price made him mad.

Nobody else in that house ever sat with him.

He lifted his left hand and set one finger on the letter board.

It was a sheet of laminated cardboard strapped to his tray. The alphabet in big black letters, the numbers under it, and YES and NO in the corners.

His finger moved slowly.

G, O, O, D.

"Good?" I said.

He tapped YES. Then he spelled again.

S, H, O, W.

"The hearing." I almost laughed. "You liked that."

YES.

The good corner of his mouth went up and stayed up.

← Chapter 10 · All chapters · Chapter 12 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend