Angel of Mercy| Yellowstone| Lee Dutton

Current State of Affairs 3

Three: Lies Unraveled.

After the main course was served, Lee pushed his chair back away from the table and grasped Spencer's hand before standing up and pulling her with him. "Excuse us." He nodded at their fathers and his siblings. Lewis had been sat at another table and he was furious, especially after the showdown he had with Frank, John, Royal, and the boys where he got called out on all of the things that they thought they knew.

He had been under the impression that Spencer was a drama queen that acted out to get attention and what happened between them happened for a reason.

But of course, other people didn't see it that way, especially her father, uncle, and cousins. Before her second cousin Amy's birth, Spencer had been the only girl in the Abbott family so she was spoiled and used to getting things her way and Lewis was going out of his way to make sure that didn't happen with him.

Shaking his head he watched as the older Dutton boy led his fiancée out of the dining room. He wanted to follow but the murderous look that was being directed at him by her cousins and how one of the Ranch hands, Billy stabbed the end of his steak knife into the tablecloth near his fingers stopped him.

He would go after her when this was all over.

**

"Where are we going Lee?" she asked once all eyes were off of them and they were standing in the hallway.

"Just come on." He ordered as he led her out of the house and towards where the tree house, that Spencer had been begged to build when Beth started spending more time over at her house after her mother's death and her father eager to appease any burned feelings by his divorcing her mother who later died. Frank had it built. It was not only a getaway for Beth but for Lee, Jamie, Kayce, and to a point Rip.

"I am not climbing that ladder in this dress or shoes.'

"You have before." He smirked, remembering how they spent New Year the first year that she and Kayce seriously started dating and there had been a fight between Frank and John that they didn't want to see, and so the girls climbed the ladder barefooted, the material of the skirts hiked up way past their knees.

"I was also 16 and hadn't been drinking like I have tonight."

"I will be right behind you, you know I will never let you fall."

Glancing back once at the party and then at the man that was standing in front of her, she toed off her heels and gathered them in her hand before grabbing a hold of the ladder to start climbing, grumbling as she did so.

Lee smirked and glanced once back at the party himself then turned his attention back to Spencer who was about halfway up the ladder by then.

"Lee?" He shook his head and motioned for her to keep climbing, he didn't want her to know that he was looking to see if Lewis followed them. But he knew that Rip and her cousins had it in hand and they would take care of it.

***

The treehouse hadn't changed much since the last time that Spencer had been in it right before she left for Yale. The blankets and pillows that still lined the floor were still in blue and white, and the pictures from her days at the Rodeo still lined the walls along with her last crown still hanging on the corner of the picture frame.

"Wow, it hasn't changed in 8 years," Lee commented as he shrugged off his jacket and dropped it onto the hook.

"No, it hasn't, I think Leighla kept it like this just in case I came back." She returned going over to the crown and plucking it up and twirling it between her fingers.