Birthright

shove. Work around them ceased. “You think malicious destruction of property, vandalism, spray-painting crude insults and threats on my car is a goddamn joke?”
    “I think when you’re somewhere you’re not wanted, doing something a lot of people don’t want you to do, there’s a price to pay.” He wanted to shove her back, wanted to show his men he couldn’t be pushed around by a woman. Instead he jabbed a finger in her face. “Instead of crying to me, you ought to take that advice and get the hell out of Woodsboro.”
    She slapped his hand aside. “This isn’t some John Ford western, you moronic, pea-brained rube. And we’ll see who pays the price. You think I’m going to let you, any of you,” she continued, scraping a disgusted look over the faces of the laborers surrounding them, “get away with this, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you think this sort of malicious, juvenile behavior is going to scare me away, you’re more stupid than you look.”
    Someone snickered, and Dolan’s face went beet red. “It’s my property. I want you off it. We don’t need your kind coming around here, taking jobs away from decent people. And you’ve come whining about a little paint to the wrong man.”
    “You call this whining? You’re the one who’s going to whine, Dolan, when I stuff your head up your ass.”
    That announcement caused a flurry of hoots and catcallsfrom the men. And that had her hands balling into fists. What she might have done was debatable, but a hand clamped on her shoulder, hard.
    “I think Mr. Dolan and his band of merry men might have more to say to the police,” Jake suggested. “Why don’t we go take care of that?”
    “I don’t know anything about it,” Dolan repeated. “And that’s the same damn thing I’m going to tell the sheriff.”
    “He gets paid to listen.” Jake pulled Callie back, began to push her toward the cars. “Consider the fact that there are about a dozen men armed with power tools and really big hammers.” He kept his voice low as he steered her toward her Rover. “And consider that they’ll elect to use them on me first, as I’m not a woman. And shut up.”
    She shrugged his hand off, yanked open the door. But she couldn’t hold it in. “This isn’t over, Dolan,” she shouted. “I’m going to tie up your precious development. You won’t pour the first yard of concrete for a decade. I’m going to make it my personal crusade.”
    She slammed the door, then sent mud splattering as she reversed.
    She drove half a mile, then pulled over to the side of the road. Jake stopped behind her. They both slammed their doors after leaping out.
    “I told you I didn’t need help.”
    “I told you to wait two goddamn minutes.”
    “This is my car.” She rapped a fist on the Rover. “This is my situation.”
    He lifted her off her feet, dropped her ass on the hood. “And what did your pissing match with Dolan accomplish?”
    “Nothing! That’s not the point.”
    “The point is you made a tactical error. You confronted him on his turf while he was surrounded by his own men. He’s got a hundred-and-twenty-pound female facing him down under those circumstances, he’s got no choice but to blow you off, no choice but to prove he’s wearing the balls. Jesus, Dunbrook, you know more about psychology than that. He’s the honcho. He can’t be pussy-whipped in front of his men. He can’t afford to lose face in that arena.”
    “I’m pissed off!” She started to leap down, then just vibrated when he clamped his hands over hers to keep her in place. “I don’t care about the psychology. I don’t care about the arena. Or about gender dynamics and tribal hierarchy. Somebody takes a shot at me, I take one back. And since when do you back down from a fight? You usually start them.”
    Oh, he’d wanted to. He’d wanted to wade in swinging when he’d seen her standing there. Surrounded. “I don’t start them when I’m outnumbered ten to one, and when several of those ten are holding power saws and nail guns. And being forced to retreat doesn’t put me in a sunny mood.”
    “Nobody asked you to interfere.”
    “No.” He released her hands. “Nobody did.”
    Even temper couldn’t blind her to the change in him. From fire to ice, in a finger snap. Shame wormed through the anger. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have gone alone, maybe I shouldn’t have run out there until I was a little more controlled. But since you were there anyway,