Pretty Shameless, page 23
part #2 of Deputy Laney Briggs Series
His smile deepened. “I thought you’d never get here, cutie.” He paused to take another drink, and then continued, “So tell me, Laney Briggs. What did this sorry rancher do to get you to dump your boyfriend and spend time with me on Christmas morning? Hell, I really didn’t even think you’d show.” He shook his head. “I had this speech worked up and everything,” he chuckled, “but now…”
I stood there unable to speak.
“Well, speak up, pretty thing,” Luke quipped, his voice lingering with a dark undertone that would’ve caused any cowgirl to shake in her spurs.
For a moment there my voice had stalled along with my heart in the back of my throat. And when I started to speak I didn’t even recognize my own damn voice.
“Could I have a coffee?” I sputtered out.
He chuckled, fiddling with a piece of my hair. “Come on inside, and I’ll pour you a mug.”
Luke led me inside. The storm door crashed back into the house, snapping shut. I stopped at the edge of the couch, turned to take in my surroundings, and quickly noticed that the old ranch house made me jumpy, thinking at any turn Bosley Conrad would pop out of some corner and say “boo.”
In an effort to keep my wits about me, I directed my attention back to Luke, catching that amazing backside strutting over to the dishwasher. As he bent over, the Levi’s pulled tight and snug around his ass. He spun around with two mugs filled to the brim with coffee.
“Drink, cutie,” Luke offered.
I accepted the mug and took a sip of his expensive coffee. Good and smooth. Then I placed the mug down on the bar.
Never allowing those smothering blue eyes to slip from my face, Luke sipped at his mug, giving me a painstaking headache with his full-body rundown. Finally, he stopped playing strip poker with his eyes and set the mug down and hunched over his elbows on the countertop and asked, “So I guess you’re wondering why I asked you to stop by, right?”
“Nah.” I grinned. “I was more curious as to who cleans up all your shit around the house.”
He smiled and picked up a flier lying next to the kitchen sink. If I didn’t have Wyatt and the entire shit-storm that’d rained down on my Christmas parade the past week nagging away at me, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. But yet there it was…a flier to Danny Redbud’s annual cook-off. Trying to compose myself as Luke sipped away at his coffee, I surveyed the rest of the countertop. My eyes were drawn to a note wedged under the wooden fruit bowl. I leaned over the bar top and tugged it out into view.
Hey Sexy,
Thanks for the amazing night, cowboy! You can saddle break me anytime. Maybe next time I’ll bring a friend or two along to play. Call me.
XOXO Hannah
Something was clearly not adding up. Luke had been confiding in me ever since grade school. Yet the other day, he’d acted like finding out about Hannah’s arrest had been hearsay. I stared a moment longer, mustering up the courage to question him.
“When did you and Hannah Roberts get so cozy?” I asked, pointing a finger at the note.
Luke was hunched over the sink, both muscular arms resting on the counter’s edge, his back facing me. Dishes clanked against the steel surface, and he whirled around, clutching a dish towel in hand. “I ran into her a few weeks back over at Rusty’s,” he said, tossing the towel on the countertop. “She gave me her number and told me to give her a ring if I was ever in the mood for a good time.”
My knees started to shake. No way in hell this was happening. Voice a low, uneasy whisper, I asked, “The flier to Redbud’s party…” I paused to look him in the eyes. “Did you go there with her?”
“Oh, that.” Luke smiled, trying to use that bullshitter grin on me. “Wyatt brought that by my place a few weeks back.”
Shit, I must be losing it. I should’ve seen the signs all along. Luke’s eagerness to help me find Wyatt went against the I-watch-my-back-first rancher attitude he was known and not loved for.
Lure him in with kindness. I balled my fists at my side and pulled a beauty pageant worthy smile. “Would you like to go grab a bite to eat?” I casually moved around the bar. “I could give you the present I bought you.”
The tension in his eyes slowly faded away. “Sounds like my kind of plan, Laney.” He took a step in my direction. “Let me lock up, and we can be on our way.”
“Okay.” I smiled.
Suddenly the sound of sirens blasted outside on the lawn. And then the loud boom of a megaphone cut through the silent farmhouse. I looked at Luke, catching a worried, odd appearance marring his normally upbeat face. He tossed his coffee mug in the sink and began to strut toward the front door. When he slung back the screen door I almost got whiplash from the sound of Gunner’s voice thundering inside the house.
“Luke Wagner, you are under arrest. I suggest you walk out calmly with your hands held high above your head. There’s no need for things to get messy.”
Shit, that damn boyfriend of mine.
Luke scooted a boot outside, hollering, “Well, if the almighty Gunner Wilson hasn’t just about figured everything out.” He snorted, reaching for the shotgun propped next to the doorway. My heart tumbled up my throat. Something needed to be done before this morning turned into a good ol’ boy’s gunslinger fight. I reached to my waist and came up empty-handed. Fuck, I’d left my pistol in the cruiser since there’d been no need to arm myself around Luke Wagner.
“Gunner,” I called from inside Luke’s house. “You want to tell me what all this is about?”
“Laney?” Gunner’s voice cracked over the megaphone.
Luke glanced sideways at me, and then he peered back out the front door. “I guess sending Laney to my house was all part of the plan, Texas Ranger?”
I heard the megaphone hit the ground and then a gun clip sling back.
“Nope,” Gunner replied, the anger ripping from his mouth. “Laney tends to not tell me everything she’s up to.”
Kind of like a sorry-ass Texas Ranger.
Time to a make a showing. I rounded the couch and stood directly beside Luke, coming face-to-face with Gunner posed behind the Yukon driver’s side door and Detective Cavanaugh standing next to him, gun drawn and aimed in our direction. Fuck me. I’d been right to suspect my hunky Texas Ranger boyfriend of harboring secrets. The good detective dropped a friendly finger wave.
“Well, we meet again, Deputy Briggs,” Brock called out as he stepped around Gunner, gun steady and locked and loaded. “I’d like to apologize about keeping you in the dark, but since I’ve been working the swinger-club murder case with your boyfriend here, I couldn’t really fill you in on all my comings and goings.”
My mouth fell open. I stared in shock at my boyfriend primed for a shootout. “Wait…what?” I cut my eyes over at Luke, then back to Gunner. “How does any of this have to do with Luke?”
Gunner grunted, lowering his gun midchest. “Laney, please go back inside and let the boys handle this,” he said, his tone of voice less cop and more protective boyfriend. “I just need to hash out some stuff with Luke.” His gaze lifted toward Luke standing next to me, the brim of his hat masking his face. “We can sort some things out, right, old buddy?”
Luke snorted, dropped the shotgun, and propped the barrel against his Levi’s. “Someone drank the Kool-Aid,” Luke countered, “because when have the two of us ever had a friendly chat?”
Gunner nodded, taking a step around the driver’s side door. “True,” he admitted. “Unless it has something to do with Laney”—he holstered his gun to his belt—“please just get in the Yukon and let’s sort everything out back at the station.” Gunner gestured at the Yukon’s backseat.
Tipping my straw cowboy hat up, I made sure to pin my cold, hard glare on the man who wanted to build a home with me. “How could you, Gunner?” I yelled across the lawn, allowing my red cowboy boots to take a home on the doormat. Brock just smirked my way, edging around the car door, gun drawn and ready to strike. “You told me no more secrets,” I stated, glancing back over my shoulder at Luke’s hand hugging the shotgun.
Gunner took a single step forward, shoulders squared and tense. “This was work related.” His cocky rebuttal shot to my gut like a bullet. “And seeing that you’re hell-bent on keeping him as a friend,” Gunner grunted, the tone in his voice condescending and rippling a bitter pain of regret through me, “it was best not to fill you in, sweetheart.”
“You fucking bastard. Was last night all a pack of lies?” I charged forward, running directly into the path of a muscular forearm.
“Laney, don’t do this,” Luke ordered, arm pressed flat against my chest.
“Luke?” My question lingered in the air between us.
He flashed me a worried smile. “Can you lock up the place for me, cutie? I shouldn’t be long.”
“Sure,” I croaked.
Luke tugged at his belt buckle. “Thanks, Laney. I knew I could always count on you.” Then he turned, his shirt hiking up, and my eyes fell upon the Case pocketknife with an engraved deer horn handle shoved in his back pocket.
It couldn’t be. Everything from my odd run-in with Luke at the Filler-Up to the way he’d mentioned his uncle Kent knowing a few friends in the swinger lifestyle…and Hannah Robert’s note. A cold sweat coated my palms. At that moment it dawned on me: both the men in my life had played me a fool. And I’d willingly been a pawn in their ongoing feud.
I stood motionless as I watched Luke stroll past me arms held high above his head. And I didn’t blink an eye when Gunner grabbed him by the arm, then twisted it behind his back and slammed him chest down on the Yukon hood.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Gunner stated as he whipped out his cuffs, his cold voice whistling through the morning chill. He latched one around Luke’s wrist, adding, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in court of law…”
When Luke turned his head and shot those blazing blue eyes at me mouthing, I’m sorry, I’d had enough. I took a step back, distancing myself from yet another fucking heartbreak and casually pulled the front door to Luke’s farmhouse shut. The sound of tires crunching gravel outside signaled the fact that Gunner was pulling away with a handcuffed Luke in tow. As the roar of the engine faded from the property, I slid down against the door and fished out my phone, putting in a call to the last person on my list that might be willing to lend a helping hand.
The line was picked up on the third ring. “Hello,” he answered, half asleep.
“I need your help.”
I heard sheets rustle in the background, and then he cleared his throat.
“I can be there by nightfall,” he drawled.
Sighing, I told him, “Meet me at Bristol Mills.”
And then the phone slipped from my hand, and I finally allowed myself to cry.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to my husband and kids for all the support. I know writing can be a tough business, and I appreciate everything y’all have done for me.
To my writerly friends, Veronica Forand, Carmen Falcone, Incy Black, Lauren Smith, Amanda Weeks, and Aleah Barley. You all have been great friends and give fantastic advice.
And then a very special thanks goes out to Liz for seeing something in my writing and my series. Entangled Publishing, I truly appreciate that you took the time and energy to work on the Deputy Laney Briggs Series.
To my readers, I am grateful for each and every one of y’all.
Enjoy.
About the Author
Jodi Linton lives and works in Texas with her husband and two kids. Most days she can be found cozied up to the computer—escaping into a quirky world of tall tales and sexy, tight jeans-wearing cowboys—with a protagonist sharp-tongued enough to hang any cowboy out to dry. There’s a good chance she’s brushed paths with a few of her characters, but she’ll never tell—those lips are sealed. She is currently at work on her next Laney Briggs book.
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Jodi Linton, Pretty Shameless
