Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy, page 7
“Well, sweet cake, you’re home,” he said deliberately, drawling out the words.
I pushed open my door and hopped out of the cab. “Thanks for the lift. You didn’t have to go out of your way like that.”
“I know,” he replied, cocky as ever.
Colt reached for his door, but Luke caught him by the arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded. “Because I know you’re not even thinking about going inside Laney’s house.”
Colt looked at me, then back at Luke. “I was going to have her swing me by the station, then drop me off over at the Pistol Rock Motor Lodge.”
“Can’t you see the lady’s beat? I’ll haul you around until you can arrange for a rental or a replacement vehicle. It ain’t like I have anything better to do,” Luke told him as he gave me his grin. “Laney, it was good seeing you again. And don’t you hesitate to call when you need something. You hear me?”
“You got it, Luke.”
Then he fired up the engine, and I was left watching his rusty tailgate disappear down the twisty, dirt road.
I went back to work to answer the gazillion and a half questions that Colt’s superiors had about the highway shooting, then did the paperwork on that same incident. Like Colt, the marshal’s service also seemed to suspect the shooting had to do with Missy/Kate crossing the Perez gang at some point, though I was hard-pressed to figure out what, unless maybe she’d taken one of their members for the financial ride of his life.
When the paperwork was done, I did as much checking into the Perezes as the NCIC database would allow. What I found scared me enough to understand why Missy/Kate might have been desperate enough to marry Coach Granger, hide out in a place as off the grid as Pistol Rock, then do whatever she could to finance her escape when the Perezes found her. I mean, hell, they’d shot up Colt’s Jeep, and as far as I knew, neither Colt nor I had done anything to warrant that.
After that, I went through all the stuff we had on the coach’s incident. There wasn’t much. Finally, about four, I knocked off early and went home to my empty house for a beer and dinner.
I was kicked back on the porch swing, soaking up the moonlight and sipping on a Miller Lite, when I heard gravel crunching under tires on my driveway. I squinted at the bright headlights as they swept over the porch, heading toward the barn. As if someone had heard my dirty thoughts, Gunner’s black Yukon coasted by and parked. He flung the driver’s-side door open and out stretched his long, denim-clad legs.
“Late night at the office,” I hollered, drinking in the lethal cowboy who’d managed to tattoo my heart—and my ass—with his name.
“Sweetheart,” Gunner drawled, “please tell me that ain’t the last cold one.”
“Nope, there’s plenty in the fridge”—I slung back another swallow—“but a cold beer is gonna cost you.”
He strutted across the lawn, his boots crushing the dry, crunchy weeds in his path. He made his way up the porch steps and stopped to lean on the banister. “Well, babe. You know I’m cheap,” he told me, “but hell, I’m in the spending mood tonight.”
“Well, I guess I’m in luck, then.” I chuckled.
Smiling, he sauntered up the steps and sat down next to me on the swing. “Go ahead and tell me what my girl needs,” he said as he put his arm around my shoulders and held me close.
I stuck the empty beer bottle between my knees and raked a hand through my rumpled brown hair. “I need any information you can get me on the Perez gang.”
He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, but he might as well have said, “Bitch, are you crazy?” I knew I was in for it.
“Really, Laney? Have you lost your damn mind? I’ve only been working this new case in Odessa for a couple of weeks now, and already you’ve gotten yourself knee-deep in shit.”
“It isn’t like I go looking for trouble. You know that. It just seems to find me,” I told him. “That bastard federal marshal didn’t fill me in on all the info with Rip’s wife, and now it seems she might have rubbed a member of the Perez family the wrong way.”
He lowered his face so he could cut his eyes up at me, his usual expression for calling my bullshit. Then he stretched his arm across the swing, leaned back, and crossed his legs at the ankle. The way his dark eyes were zeroing in on my face like a bull sizing up a rodeo clown wasn’t settling too nicely on my empty stomach. “I don’t want to know what happened today, do I?” he asked suspiciously.
“Not until after dinner,” I said, twiddling my thumbs and avoiding eye contact.
“Oh, shit. There’s something else you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”
“It’s no big deal,” I mumbled.
His eyes suddenly got panicky huge. “Laney Briggs, what are you not telling me?”
I needed all the courage I could muster up. I sucked down the backwash roosting at the bottom of the beer bottle, then gulped and said, “My mother and father are going to be here in ten minutes. We…I invited them over for dinner last week.”
Gunner motioned at the bottle in my hand. “Give me the beer.”
I shook it in his face. “It’s empty.”
He jumped out of the swing. “You want one?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, and he started off. Before he got through the front door I said, “What about the Perez gang?”
“We’ll see how tonight goes,” he said right before the screen door slammed shut.
By the time the clock struck seven, I was as jumpy as an inmate on death row waiting for the governor’s pardon in the Huntsville prison. Gunner had taken it upon himself to slouch back on the couch, TV blaring the most recent Cowboys’ game he’d DVR’d while he tossed back one beer after the next. I sloshed the potato salad in a green Rubbermaid bowl, jammed the wooden spoon down the side, and placed the bowl in the center of the table. All the while my mind kept circling the knowledge that I hadn’t had a lot of cop training before becoming a sheriff’s deputy, and Gunner might be right to be concerned over me needing to take on the Perez gang. And I hadn’t even told him yet about getting shot at. Probably because I’d been out investigating with Colt.
But one disaster at a time. Naturally, I sucked at cooking. I grew up in a house where the kitchen was run by a chain smoker whose taste buds were so shot that she could eat a raw jalapeño like it was a Mentos. When I got out on my own, I’d never bothered to learn because I was too busy screwing up my life. And after I became a deputy, it just seemed like there was never any time—or, honestly, any real interest to learn how on my part. I wiped my hands on a dish towel, picked up my lukewarm beer, and chugged, all the while eyeballing the clock ticking away above the stove.
The doorbell chimed, and Gunner made no attempt to get up and answer it. I passed the couch on my way to the door, making sure to thump him. He tilted his head back and gave me a blank stare. There were times like this, and when he didn’t put his boots away in the closet after kicking them off in the middle of the living room floor, that I could just wring his neck. I rolled my eyes sky high, then turned my attention back to the front door. I could hear my parents arguing already.
“Floyd, put the beer back in the bag. You can’t have one ’til we get inside.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s rude. That’s why.”
Family time always made me appreciate the small things in life, like owning my own house.
I wrenched open the door and stared my parents down. “Glad y’all could make it over for dinner,” I told them, my gaze immediately zeroing in on the Pyrex bowl sitting snuggly in my mother’s arms. Upon further inspection, I spotted the mashed pickles, onions, smeared eggs, and potatoes inside it. The insufferable bitch had made potato salad in spite of the fact that I told her I’d be making it. When she shoved the bowl into my hands, my horns sprouted.
“Here you go, pumpkin,” my mother said in a strained but deceptively pleasant voice. She looked back over her shoulder at my father. “Floyd,” her smoky tonsils wailed, “go make yourself useful and grab the chicken and cornbread off the swing.”
I watched blank-faced and spitting mad as my father scooped up the dinner spread my mother had so graciously prepared for us all tonight.
“I told you I’d take care of dinner, Mom,” I said through clenched teeth.
“I know,” she sang, “but I brought something just in case.” She pushed me aside and charged into the house. “So where’s the asshole you got shacking up with you?”
Gunner lifted his beer in the air. “Right here,” he drawled, tipping his head back for a better view of my mother waddling into my house. “Nice to see you too Ruth.”
My mother didn’t even waste a nod on him before wandering off to the kitchen ahead of my father, leaving me holding her potato salad.
Gunner smiled. “You look so pretty when you’re pissed.”
I cradled the bowl against my stomach and eyed the sorry man down. “Not a word,” I warned him, “not a single word.”
Then I stomped after my company.
When I stepped back inside my kitchen, my mother was at the sink, clutching my bowl of potato salad. She turned on the garage disposal, letting the Marlboro droop from her bottom lip, and began to scoop it out. “We aren’t gonna need all this potato salad for just the four of us, Laney.” She slung spoonful after spoonful of the potato salad into the disposal. “What we don’t eat of mine tonight, you can take to work tomorrow for Elroy. He just loves my potato salad.”
My fingernails dug into the Pyrex bowl. I was fixing to ride the woman’s spiteful ass when a heavy hand fell low on the small of my back.
“I wouldn’t take it as a compliment that Elroy likes your cooking, Ruth,” Gunner told her, moving his hand up and down my backside until his fingers latched onto my ass. I jumped. He grinned and added, “I once saw him eat a moldy burrito that I’d left in my Yukon, just because it was something he hadn’t had in a while.”
My mother was so mad that I could almost see the smoke curling out of her ears.
Gunner pinched my butt cheek and placed his mouth inches from my ear. “I’m so glad you invited your parents over for dinner. It really is important to have family.”
I nudged him in the side. “Tell me. What’s got you so happy?”
The grin widened. “You give good bitchy sex.”
“Don’t push your luck,” I told him.
Gunner just kept on smiling as he took the open seat next to my dad. He slouched in the chair, slung both bulging biceps across its back, and then had the gall to toss me one of his sexier-than-hell winks.
My breath strangled in my throat. God knew he could turn me on with a glance. Immediately, I looked at my mother before the lady-killer had me so hot I’d be squirming in my seat the entire meal.
My mother whirled around from the sink, her hands on her hips. She pulled a long, steady drag before she said, “Well, it looks like y’all are ready to eat.” She made herself at home, grabbing plates, forks and knives, and paper towels and plopping everything on the table. “Now eat up,” she ordered with a slap to Gunner’s back. Then she parked herself in a chair at the table.
“When were you going to tell me you took a permanent job at the Odessa Ranger office?” my mother asked Gunner in the middle of sipping her iced tea. And aside to me, “Laney, this tea is weaker’n shit. How many tea bags did you use?”
Gunner put down the fork he was using to shovel potato salad into his mouth and licked a speck of potato off his bottom lip before replying, “I suppose I hadn’t planned on it, Ruth.” He looked at me. “Laney’s a big girl, and if she wants to share her bed with me, then who am I to turn down such a sweet offer.”
The tea glass slipped from my mother’s grip. “Heaven have mercy,” she sputtered. “Did you just hear what Gunner said, Floyd? He’s screwing your daughter again.”
A beer cracked open. We turned, waiting for my father to take sides. More than likely he’d side with Gunner. Gunner had always been the cool guy my father wished he could’ve hung out with when he was young.
“Shit, Ruth,” he said, swirling the beer around in the bottle. “Did you think he was sleeping on the couch?” He gave Gunner a look of approval. “For Christ’s sake, the boy popped her cherry back in high school. I don’t see why you’re so surprised to find out he’s screwing her now in her own house when he was slipping it in while she lived with us.”
Heat scorched my cheeks. “Who told you that?” I asked, keeping one eye on Gunner.
“Well, Gunner told me, pumpkin. We were shooting the bull one night over at Rusty’s when you and Elroy were pulling an all-nighter to wrap up the paperwork on the school vandalism, and I started talking about how much I’d missed him when he was in Houston, and how I was so glad he found a way to saddle break my little wild child. Then we started talking about how y’all first got together. After a few beers and me talking about how happy I was to see the two of you together again, Gunner got to going on about how he’d fallen for you after he sealed the deal in the back of his pickup behind the Piggly Mart after the homecoming dance your senior year.” He reached across the table to pat Gunner on the shoulder.
Gunner crossed his arms, gloating. I was mortified. He was such a bastard when he wanted to be. Who did he think he was, talking about our sex life with my father?
I stretched my leg under the table and kicked him in the shin. The smile on his face vanished, and he jolted up from the table.
“Shit, Laney,” he snapped. “It’s not like he didn’t already know.” He tried one of those panty-wetter smiles on me.
Not this time, cowboy, I thought.
“You need to learn to keep your trap shut when you’re drinking with my father,” I told him. “And Dad, what the hell’s wrong with you? Why do you want to hear this kind of stuff about me?”
My father swallowed another slow draw of his beer. I took into account all the empty Shiner bottles. Five total already, and they’d barely been at the house an hour. That’s why he’d made sure to snag the seat by the fridge. “It’s hard to not be happy. We live in Pistol Rock, and around here, Gunner is like a first-round draft pick in the NFL. And you snagged him,” he burped out.
“Well, that’s about the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me, Floyd,” Gunner said, beaming.
“Besides,” my father continued, “I’d like to see a grandchild sometime soon.”
Gunner leaned forward. “Amen to that.” He laughed. Then he placed a hand on my father’s arm. “We’ll get to work on that later tonight, right, sweetheart?” He winked at me.
Before I could swallow the frog in my throat to reply, a set of acrylic nails dug into the tabletop.
“Enough,” my mother said shrilly. “That’s enough. I don’t wanna hear another word about who’s screwing my daughter and planting babies in her.”
We all dropped our mouths at the same time.
“Mother,” I gasped, appalled.
She shrugged me off and took a bite. “I think I outdid myself with this potato salad.”
We skipped dessert, and shortly after, my father collected our last unopened Shiner and my mother hauled his ass out the door and into the dark. She gave me a brisk wave after strapping him into the passenger seat, then squeezed herself behind the wheel. I didn’t relax until I heard the last squeal of the fan belt from the Oldsmobile leaving my driveway.
At half past midnight, Gunner was neck deep inside the fridge, rooting through the contents.
“When was the last time you hit up the store?” he asked, pulling out the only remaining Miller Lite. He cracked the cap open and took a swig. “I really hate to sound like an ass, but you’re slacking on your womanly duties.” Being an ass was his specialty.
I pushed off the doorway. “There are two of us living here, you know. And I don’t recall you being laid up and incapable of going to the store for things.”
He took another drink and raised his eyebrows an inch, truly enjoying pissing me off a little too much. “Are you forgetting that I picked up the lube last week on my way home from work?”
Aw, hell. He had to throw the lube back in my face just because I was interested in trying something with him that I’d only ever read about.
I told myself I wasn’t going to let him get to me. “Well, I’ve been busy working, too,” I spat and walked out of the kitchen.
So much for not letting him get to me.
I stopped in the doorway, turned around, and slid my gaze down the length of his toned, hard body. “Besides, what with being shot at by a biker while on an investigation with Colt Larsen, the last thing I could care about is whether or not we have milk in the fridge.”
Beer spewed all over the countertop. That bombshell had been totally worth it.
“Excuse me?” He wiped beer froth from his lips and slammed the bottle down hard on the counter. “Did you just say you were out with that pretty-boy cowboy and he almost got you killed?” he asked, but it sounded more like a threat to me. “I’m going to rearrange that son of a bitch’s nose.” He banged his fist into the countertop, rattling the dishes drying next to the sink.
I bent over and pulled off a boot, then got to work on the other while keeping my eyes fixed on my brooding dark horse.
I tossed a boot behind the couch. “If it was a contest, I’d say you’re probably a better shot than he is.”
His chin shot up, his brown eyes narrowed all hot and sensual when I sent a significant look from his gun to his zipper, and then he was on the prowl. “What you’re forgetting is that there isn’t any contest.” His voice ran smooth and rough. He stopped directly in front of me, crouched low enough to wrap both hands around the nape of my neck, and tipped my chin upward with a thumb. “There’s a reason you keep coming back for more.” He tugged on my neck, closing the gap between our mouths. “Maybe it’s time for a reminder.”
