I Ran to My Best Friend's Alpha Father, and His Whole Council Kept Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sit Down, Girl
Barefoot and muddy in the Tarver kitchen at two in the morning, Dessa tells the council she wants a place, and sits in the alpha's lap.
At two in the morning I walked barefoot into the Tarver kitchen and sat in the alpha's lap in front of his whole council.
I had come in by the back door without knocking, the way I had every summer since I was nine.
Six men sat at the long mesquite table with cold coffee in front of them, and every one of them stopped talking.
My blue dress was torn from the collar to the ribs.
I had red clay dried to my ankles, and nowhere else in the world to go.
Hoyt Tarver stood up from the head of the table.
He is six foot six, and I am five foot two.
I had to tip my head all the way back to find his face.
It was the same face I had looked up at for sixteen years.
It was gray-streaked and weathered and very still.
Jolene came through the hall door in her robe with her braid half undone, and she threw both arms around me.
My best friend since the fourth grade smelled like laundry soap and home.
"Dess," she said into my hair.
"Dess, who did this?"
"The Amarillo alpha gave me to his son at supper," I said.
"I wasn't even invited to the supper."
"I found out at my own front door, when the son took hold of my dress and told me I was his."
Nobody at the table said a word.
"I tore loose and ran," I said.
"A feed truck took me as far as your cattle guard, and I walked the rest."
Jolene looked down.
"Honey, that's creek clay," she said.
"Where did you cross the draw?"
"I didn't cross any draw," I said.
"I came up the road and cut over your north pasture in the dark."
The cattle buyer at the table swore under his breath.
"We have lost a calf a week on that pasture for a month," he said.
"Something is out there, girl."
"I didn't see anything," I said.
Hoyt looked at his foreman, the broad red-mustached man on his right.
The man looked at his coffee cup and said nothing.
I let go of Jolene and turned to the room.
I was shaking, and I was not going to let it show.
"I'm not asking for protection," I said.
"I'm asking for a place."
"I'll earn it any way you like."
Somebody's chair creaked.
The retired sheriff had been leaning back with his arms folded, and he sat up straight.
Hoyt looked at me for a long moment.
"Girl," he said, in that rope-rough voice of his.
"Sit down."
He meant a chair.
He had pulled one out for me with his foot.
I knew it, and I looked straight at it, and I did not take it.
"Make me," I said.
The kitchen went so quiet that I heard the refrigerator hum.
The foreman put his hand over his mouth, and his shoulders started to shake.
"Don't, Dub," Hoyt said.
"I'm not," said Dub, behind his fingers.
"I'm not doing a thing."
I walked around the corner of the table.
Everyone knew that Hoyt Tarver had not touched a woman in the eleven years since his wife died.
Everyone in the Panhandle knew it.
I stopped in front of him, and he looked down at me, and he did not step back.
His hands hung open at his sides.
They were enormous, with rope scars across the knuckles.
"Dessa," he said.
"You told me to sit," I said.
"I'm sitting."
I took hold of his shirt, and he let me turn him.
He sat back down in the chair at the head of the table because I pushed, and then I climbed into his lap.
He was a lot of man to climb.
His thighs were as wide as my waist.
I sat across them sideways with my bare feet hanging off the floor, and my shoulder fit under his collarbone.
Hoyt went completely still.
Then his right hand came up and settled on my back.
It was flat and hot, and it covered me from my shoulder blades to my hip.
He did not move it.
He did not pull it away, either.
The preacher from the cowboy church cleared his throat.
"Well," said the old sheriff.
The cattle buyer looked at the ceiling, and the vet at the end of the table looked at me and did not look away.
I could feel Hoyt's heart going under my cheek, slow and hard.
"Hello, Hoyt," I said quietly.
"Hello, Dessa," he said, and his voice was not steady at all.
"Daddy," Jolene said from the doorway.
I turned my head.
She leaned on the frame with her arms crossed over her robe.
She was smiling so wide that her eyes had gone wet.
"About time," she said.
I laid my head on his chest and I did not get up.
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