Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Extract from What I Love About You
About the Author
Also by Rachel Gibson
Copyright
About the Book
Get ready to play some Texas Hold ‘em ...
Things are getting tricky for sexy Sadie Hollowell, about to be forced into a bubblegum-pink bridesmaid dress for her little cousin Tally Lynn’s wedding. And if that ain’t problem enough, the second she drives back into town, the entire population of Lovett, Texas will be fixing her up with the nearest available man – any man. She needs a rescue plan now. And good-looking stranger Vince Haven might just be the perfect ‘date’ she needs to get her family off her back.
But moody ex-Navy SEAL Vince Haven is only stopping by Lovett to visit his crazy Aunt Luraleen. ‘No strings attached’ is his motto, and he’ll be damned if he acts as any woman’s fake date! Sadie’s out of luck again – but when Vince’s aunt makes him an offer he can’t refuse, he could be hanging around town for a while. And if Sadie gets that date after all, she might just get more than she bargained for!
Another brilliantly funny and sexy romance from the wonderful Rachel Gibson
RESCUE ME
Chapter One
ON DECEMBER THIRD, 1996, Mercedes Johanna Hollowell committed fashion suicide. For years, Sadie had teetered on the brink—mixing patterns and plaids while wearing white sandals after Labor Day. But the final nail in her fashion coffin, worse than the faux pas of white sandals, happened the night she showed up at the Texas Star Christmas Cotillion with hair as flat as roadkill.
Everyone knew the higher the hair, the closer to God. If God had intended women to have flat hair, He wouldn’t have inspired man to invent styling mousse, teasing combs, and Aqua Net Extra Super Hold. Just as everyone knew that flat hair was a fashion abomination, they also knew it was practically a sin. Like drinking before Sunday service or hating football.
Sadie had always been a little … off. Different. Not bat-shit crazy different. Not like Mrs. London who collected cats and magazines and cut her grass with scissors. Sadie was more notional. Like the time she got the notion in her six-year-old head that if she dug deep enough, she’d strike gold. As if her family needed the money. Or when she’d dyed her blond hair a shocking pink and wore black lipstick. That was about the time she’d quit volleyball, too. Everyone knew that if a family was blessed with a male child, he naturally played football. Girls played volleyball. It was a rule. Like an eleventh commandment: Female child shalt play volleyball or face Texas scorn.
Then there was the time she decided that the uniforms for the Lovett High dance team were somehow sexist and petitioned the school to lower the fringe on the Beaverettes’ unitards. As if short fringe was a bigger scandal than flat hair.
But if Sadie was notional and contrary, no one could really blame her. She’d been a “late-in-life baby.” Born to a hard-nosed rancher, Clive, and his sweetheart of a wife, Johanna Mae. Johanna Mae had been a Southern lady. Kind and giving, and when she’d set her cap for Clive, her family, as well as the town of Lovett, had been a little shocked. Clive was five years older than she and as stubborn as an old mule. He was from an old, respected family, but truth be told, he’d been born cantankerous and his manners were a bit rough. Not like Johanna Mae. Johanna Mae had been a beauty queen, winning everything from Little Miss Peanut to Miss Texas. She’d come in second place in the Miss America pageant the year she’d competed. She would have won if judge number three hadn’t been a feminist sympathizer.
But Johanna Mae had been as shrewd as she’d been pretty. She believed it didn’t matter if your man didn’t know the difference between a soup bowl and a finger bowl. A good woman could always teach a man the difference. It just mattered that he could afford to buy both, and Clive Hollowell certainly had the money to keep her in Wedgwood and Waterford.
After her wedding, Johanna Mae had settled into the big house at the JH Ranch to await the arrival of children, but after fifteen years of trying everything from the rhythm method to in vitro fertilization, Johanna Mae was unable to conceive. The two resigned themselves to their childless marriage, and Johanna Mae threw herself into her volunteer work. Everyone agreed that she was practically a saint, and finally at the age of forty, she was rewarded with her “miracle” baby. The baby had been born a month early because, as her mother always put it, “Sadie couldn’t wait to spring from the womb and boss people around.”
Johanna Mae indulged her only child’s every whim. She entered Sadie into her first beauty pageant at six months, and for the next five years, Sadie racked up a pile of crowns and sashes. But due to Sadie’s propensity to spin a little too much, sing a little too loud, and fall off the stage at the end of a step ball change, she never quite fulfilled her mother’s dream of an overall grand supreme title. At forty-five, Johanna Mae died of unexpected heart failure, and her beauty queen dreams for her baby died with her. Sadie’s care was left to Clive, who was much more comfortable around Herefords and ranch hands than a little girl who had rhinestones on her boots rather than cow dung.
Clive had done the best he could to raise Sadie up a lady. He’d sent her to Ms. Naomi’s Charm School to learn the things he didn’t have the time or ability to teach her, but charm school could not take the place of a woman in the home. While other girls went home and practiced their etiquette lessons, Sadie shucked her dress and ran wild. As a result of her mashed education, Sadie knew how to waltz, set a table, and converse with governors. She could also swear like a cowboy and spit like a ranch hand.
Shortly after graduating from Lovett High, she’d packed up her Chevy and headed out for some fancy university in California, leaving her father and soiled cotillion gloves far behind. No one saw much of Sadie after that. Not even her poor daddy, and as far as anyone knew, she’d never married. Which was just plain sad and incomprehensible because really, how hard was it to get a man? Even Sarah Louise Baynard-Conseco, who had the misfortune to be born built like her daddy, Big Buddy Baynard, had managed to find a husband. Of course, Sarah Louise had met her man through prisoner.com. Mr. Conseco currently resided fourteen hundred miles away in San Quentin, but Sarah Louise was convinced he was totally innocent of the offenses for which he’d been unjustly incarcerated, and planned to start her family with him after his hoped-for parole in ten years.
Bless her heart.
Sure, sometimes in a small town it was slim pickings, but that’s why a girl went away to college. Everyone knew that a single girl’s number one reason for college wasn’t higher education, although that was important, too. Knowing how to calculate the price of great-grandmother’s silver on any given day was always crucial, but a single gal’s first priority was to find herself a husband.
And Tally Lynn Cooper, Sadie Jo’s twenty-year-old cousin on her mama’s side, had done just that. Tally Lynn had met her intended at Texas A&M and was set to walk down the aisle in a few short days. Tally Lynn’s mama had insisted that Sadie Jo be a bridesmaid, which in hindsight turned out to be a mistake. More than the choice of Tally Lynn’s gown, or the size of her diamond, or whether Uncle Frasier would lay off the sauce and behave himself, the burning question on everyone’s mind was if Sadie Jo had managed to snag herself a man yet because really, how hard could it be? Even for a contrary and notional girl with flat hair?
Sadie Hollowell hit the button on the door panel of her Saab and the window slid down an inch. Warm air whistled through the crack, and she pushed the button again and lowered the window a bit more. The breeze caught several strands of her straight blond hair and blew them about her face.
“Check that Scottsdale listing for me.” She spoke into the BlackBerry pressed to her cheek. “The San Salvador three-bedroom.” As her assistant, Renee, looked up the property, Sadie glanced out the window at the flat plains of the Texas panhandle. “Is it listed as pending yet?” Sometimes a broker waited a few days to list a pending sale with the hopes another agent would show a property and get a bit more. Sneaky bastards.
“It is.”
She let out a breath. “Good.” In the current market, every sale counted. Even the small commissions. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hung up and tossed the phone in the cup holder.
Outside the window, smears of brown, brown, and more brown slid past, broken only by rows of wind turbines in the distance, their propellers slowly turning in the warm Texas winds. Childhood memories and old emotions slid through her head one languid spin at a time. She felt the old mixed bag of emotions. Old emotions that always lay dormant until she crossed the Texas border. A confusion of love and longing, disappointment and missed opportunity.
Some of her earliest memories were of her mother dressing her up for a pageant. The memories had blurred with age, the over-the-top pageant dresses and the piles of fake hair clipped to her head were just faded recollections. She remembered the feelings, though. She remembered the fun and excitement and the comforting touch of her mother’s hand. She remembered the anxiety and fear. Wanting to do well. Wanting to please, but never quite pulling it off. She remembered the disappointment her mother tried and failed to hide each time her daughter won best “pet photo” or “best dress” but failed to win the big crown. And with each pageant, Sadie tried harder. She sang a little louder, shook her hips a little faster, or put an extra kick into her routine, and the more she tried, the more she went off key, off step, or off the stage. Her pageant teacher always told her to stick to the routine they’d practice. Go with the script, but of course she never did. She’d always had a hard time doing and saying what she’d been told.
She had a wispy memory of her mother’s funeral. The organ music bouncing off the wooden church walls, the hard white pews. The gathering after the funeral at the JH, and the lavender-scented bosoms of her aunts. “Poor orphaned child,” they’d cooed between bites of cheese biscuits. “What’s going to happen to my sister’s poor orphaned baby?” She hadn’t been a baby or an orphan.
The memories of her father were more vivid and defined. His harsh profile against the endless blue of the summer sky. His big hands throwing her into a saddle and her hanging on as she raced to keep up with him. The weight of his palm on top of her head, his rough skin catching in her hair as she stood in front of her mother’s white casket. His footsteps walking past her bedroom door as she cried herself to sleep.
Her relationship with her father had always been confusing and difficult. A push and pull. An emotional tug of war that she always lost. The more emotion she showed, the more she tried to cling to him, and the more he pushed her away until she gave up.
For years she’d tried to live up to anyone’s expectations of her. Her mother’s. Her father’s. Those of a town filled with people who had always expected her to be a nice, well-behaved girl with charm. A beauty queen. Someone to make them proud like her mother or someone to look up to like her father, but by middle school she’d tired of that heavy task. She’d laid down that burden, and just started being Sadie. Looking back, she could admit that she was sometimes outrageous. Sometimes on purpose. Like the pink hair and black lipstick. It wasn’t a fashion statement. She hadn’t been trying to find herself. It was a desperate bid for attention from the one person on the planet who looked at her across the dinner table night after night but never seemed to notice her.
The shocking hair hadn’t worked, nor the string of bad boyfriends. Mostly, her father had just ignored her.
It had been fifteen years since she’d packed her car and left her hometown of Lovett far behind. She’d been back as often as she could. Christmases here and there. A few Thanksgivings, and once for her aunt Ginger’s funeral. That had been five years ago.
Her finger pushed the button and the window slid all the way down. Guilt pressed the back of her neck and wind whipped her hair as she recalled the last time she’d seen her father. It had been about three years ago, when she’d lived in Denver. He’d driven up for the National Western Stock Show.
She pushed the button again and the window slid up. It didn’t seem like that long since she’d seen him, but it had to have been because she’d moved to Phoenix shortly after that visit.
It might seem to some as if she was a rolling stone. She’d lived in seven different cities in the past fifteen years. Her father liked to say she never stayed in one place long because she tried to put down roots in hard soil. What he didn’t know was that she never tried to put down roots at all. She liked not having roots. She liked the freedom of packing up and moving whenever she felt like it. Her latest career allowed her to do that. After years of higher education, moving from one university to another and never earning a degree in anything, she’d stumbled into real estate on a whim. Now she had her license in three states and loved every minute of selling homes. Well, not every moment. Dealing with lending institutions sometimes drove her nutty.
A sign on the side of the road ticked down the miles to Lovett and she pushed the window button. There was just something about being home that made her feel restless and antsy and anxious to leave before she even arrived. It wasn’t her father. She’d come to terms with their relationship a few years ago. He was never going to be the daddy she needed, and she was never going to be the son he always wanted.
It wasn’t even necessarily the town itself that made her antsy, but the last time she’d been home, she’d been in Lovett for less than ten minutes before she’d felt like a loser. She’d stopped at the Gas and Go for some fuel and a Diet Coke. From behind the counter, the owner, Mrs. Luraleen Jinks, had taken one look at her ringless finger and practically gasped in what might have been horror if not for Luraleen’s fifty-year, pack-a-day wheeze.
“Aren’t you married, dear?”
She’d smiled. “Not yet, Mrs. Jinks.”
Luraleen had owned the Gas and Go for as long as Sadie could recall. Cheap booze and nicotine had tanned her wrinkly hide like an old leather coat. “You’ll find someone. There’s still time.”
Meaning she’d better hurry up. “I’m twenty-eight.” Twenty-eight was young. She’d still been getting her life together.
Luraleen had reached out and patted Sadie’s ringless hand. “Well, bless your heart.”
She had things more figured out these days. She felt calmer, until a few months ago when she’d taken a call from her aunt Bess, on her mother’s side, informing her that she was to be in the wedding of her young cousin Tally Lynn. It was such short notice she had to wonder if someone else had dropped out and she was a last-minute substitute. She didn’t even know Tally Lynn, but Tally Lynn was family, and as much as Sadie tried to pretend she had no roots, and as much as she hated the idea of being in her young cousin’s wedding, she hadn’t been able to say no. Not even when the hot-pink bridesmaid’s dress had arrived at her house to be fitted. It was strapless and corseted, and the short taffeta pickup skirt was so gathered and bubbled that her hands disappeared into the fabric when she put them to her sides. It wouldn’t be so bad if she was eighteen and going to her prom, but her high school years were a distant memory. She was thirty-three and looked a little ridiculous in her prom/bridesmaid’s dress.
Always a bridesmaid. Never a bride. That’s how everyone would see her. Everyone in her family and everyone in town. They’d pity her, and she hated that. Hated that she still gave a damn. Hated that she didn’t currently have a boyfriend to take her. Hated it so much she’d actually given some thought to renting a date. The biggest, best-looking stud she could find. Just to shut everyone up. Just so she wouldn’t have to hear the whispers and see the sideway glances, or have to explain her current manless life, but the logistics of renting a man in one state and transporting him to another hadn’t been real feasible. The ethics didn’t trouble Sadie. Men rented women all the time.
Ten miles outside Lovett, a weather vane and a part of an old fence broke up the brown-on-brown scenery. A barbed wire fence ran along the highway to the rough log-and-wrought-iron entry to the JH Ranch. Everything was as familiar as if she’d never left. Everything but the black truck on the side of the road. A man leaned one hip into the rear fender, his black clothing blending into the black paint, a ball cap shading his face beneath the bright Texas sunlight.
Sadie slowed and prepared to turn up the road to her father’s ranch. She supposed she should stop and ask if he needed help. The raised hood on the truck was a big clue that he did, but she was a lone woman on a deserted highway and he looked really big.
He straightened and pushed away from the truck. A black T-shirt fit tight across his chest and around his big biceps. Someone else would come along.
Eventually.
She turned onto the dirt road and drove through the gate. Or he could walk to town. Lovett was ten miles down the highway. She glanced in her rearview mirror as he shoved his hands on his hips and looked after her taillights.
“Damn.” She stepped on the brake. In the state only a couple of hours and already the Texas in her reared its hospitable head. It was after six. Most people would be home from work by now, and it could be minutes or hours before someone else drove by.
But … people had cell phones. Right? He’d probably already called someone. Through the mirror, he raised one hand from his hip and held it palm up. Maybe he was in a dead zone. She checked to make sure her doors were locked and put the car into reverse. The early evening sunlight poured through the back window as she reversed out onto the highway, then drove up alongside the road toward the big truck.
The warm light bathed the side of his face as the man moved toward her. He was the kind of guy who made Sadie a little uncomfortable. The kind who wore leather and drank beer and crushed empties on their foreheads. The kind who made her stand a little straighter. The kind she avoided like a hot fudge brownie because both were bad news for her thighs.
She stopped and hit the power button on her door handle. The window slowly lowered halfway, and she looked up. Way up past the hard muscle beneath his tight black T-shirt, his wide shoulders and thick neck. It was an hour past his five o’clock shadow, and dark whiskers shaded the bottom half of his face and his square jaw. “Trouble?”
“Yeah.” His voice came from someplace deep. Like it was dragged up from his soul.
“How long have you been stuck out here?”
“About an hour.”
“Run out of gas?”
“No,” he answered, sounding annoyed that he might be confused for the kind of guy who’d run out of gas. Like that somehow insulted his masculinity. “It’s either the alternator or timing belt.”
“Could be your fuel pump.”
One corner of his mouth twitched up. “It’s getting fuel. No power.”
“Where you headed?”
“Lovett.”
She’d figured that since there wasn’t much else down the road. Not that Lovett was much. “I’ll call you a tow truck.”
He raised his gaze and looked down the highway. “I’d appreciate it.”
She punched the number to information and got connected with B.J. Henderson’s garage. She’d gone to school with B.J.’s son, B.J. Junior, who everyone called Boner. Yeah, Boner. The last she’d heard, Boner worked for his dad. The answering machine picked up and she glanced at the clock in her dash. It was five minutes after six. She hung up and didn’t bother to call another garage. It was an hour and five minutes past Lone Star time, and Boner and the other mechanics in town were either at home or holding down a barstool.
She looked up at the man, past that amazing chest, and figured she had two choices. She could take the stranger to her daddy’s ranch and have one of her father’s men take him into town, or take him herself. Driving to the ranch would take ten minutes up the dirt road. It would take twenty to twenty-five to take him into town.
She stared into the shadow cast over his profile. She’d rather a stranger didn’t know where she lived. “I have a stun gun.” It was a lie, but she’d always wanted one.
He looked back down at her. “Excuse me?”
“I have a stun gun and I’ve been trained to use it.” He took a step back from the car and she smiled. “I’m deadly.”
“A stun gun isn’t a deadly weapon.”
“What if I set it really high?”
“Can’t set it high enough to kill unless there is a preexisting condition. I don’t have a preexisting condition.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I used to be in security.”
Oh. “Well, it will hurt like hell if I have to zap your ass.”
“I don’t want my ass zapped, lady. I just need a tow into town.”
“Garages are all closed.” She tossed her phone in the cup holder. “I’ll drive you into Lovett, but you have to show me some identification first.”
Annoyance pulled one corner of his mouth as he reached into the back pocket of his Levi’s, and for the first time, her gaze dropped to his five-button fly.
Good Lord.
Without a word, he pulled out a driver’s license and passed it through the window.
Sadie might have cause to feel a little pervy about staring at his impressive package if it hadn’t been sort of framed in her window. “Great.” She punched up a few numbers on her cell and waited for Renee to pick up. “Hi, Renee. It’s Sadie again. Gotta pen?” She looked at the hunk of man junk in front of her and waited. “I’m giving a stranded guy a ride into town. So, write this down.” She gave her friend the Washington driver’s license number and added, “Vincent James Haven. 4389 North Central Avenue, Kent, Washington. Hair: brown. Eyes: green. Six foot and a hundred and ninety pounds. Got it? Great. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, call the Potter County sheriff’s office in Texas and tell them I’ve been abducted and you fear for my life. Give them the information that I just gave you.” She shut the phone and handed the ID through the window. “Get in. I’ll drop you off in Lovett.” She looked up into the shadow of his hat. “And don’t make me use my stun gun on you.”
“No ma’am.” One corner of his mouth slid up as he took his driver’s license and slid it back into his wallet. “I’ll just get a duffel.”
Her gaze dropped to the back pockets of his jeans as he turned and shoved his wallet inside. Nice chest. Great butt, handsome face. If there was one thing she knew about men, one thing she’d learned from being single all these years, it was that there were several different types of men. Gentlemen, regular guys, charming dogs, and dirty dogs. The only true gentlemen in the world were purebred nerds who were gentlemen in the hopes of someday getting laid. The man grabbing a duffel from the cab of his truck was too good-looking to be a purebred anything. He was likely one of those tricky hybrids.
She hit the door locks, then he tossed a green military duffel into the backseat. He got in the front, and set off the seat belt alarm, filling up the Saab with his broad shoulders and the annoying bong bong bong of the belt alarm.
She put the car into drive, then pulled a U-turn out onto the highway. “Ever been to Lovett, Vincent?”
“No.”
“You’re in for a treat.” She pulled on a pair of sunglasses and stepped on the gas. “Put on your seat belt, please.”
“Are you going to zap me with your stun gun if I don’t?”
“Possibly. Depends on how annoyed I get by the seat belt alarm between here and town.” She adjusted the gold aviators on the bridge of her nose. “And I should warn you in advance, I’ve been driving all day, so I’m already annoyed.”
He chuckled and belted himself in. “You headed to Lovett yourself?”
“Unfortunately.” She glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes. “I was born and raised here but I escaped when I was eighteen.”
He pushed up the bill of his hat and looked across his shoulder at her. His driver’s license had stated that his eyes were green and they were. A light green that wasn’t quite spooky. More unsettling, as he stared back at her from that very masculine face. “What brings you back?” he asked.
“Wedding.” Unsettling in a way that made a girl want to twist her hair and put on some red lip gloss. “My cousin’s getting married.” Her younger cousin. “I’m a bridesmaid.” No doubt the other bridesmaids were younger, too. They’d probably arrive with a date. She’d be the only single one. Old and single. A “Welcome to Lovett, Texas, Y’all” sign marked the city limits. It had been painted a bright blue since the last time she’d been home.
“You don’t look happy about it.”
She’d been out of Texas too long if her “uglies” were showing. According to her mother, “uglies” were any emotions that weren’t pretty. A girl could have them. Just not show them. “The dress is meant for someone ten years younger than me and is the color of Bubble Yum.” She glanced out the driver’s side window. “What brings you to Lovett?”
“Pardon?”
She glanced at him as they passed a used car lot and a Mucho Taco. “What brings you to Lovett?”
“Family.”
“Who’re your people?”
“Person.” He pointed to the Gas and Go across the street. “You can drop me off there.”
She cut across two lanes and pulled into the parking lot. “Girlfriend? Wife?”
“Neither.” He squinted and looked out the windshield at the convenience store. “Why don’t you go ahead and call your friend Renee, and tell her you’re still in one piece.”
She pulled to a stop in an empty slot next to a white pickup and reached into the cup holder. “Don’t want the sheriff knocking on your door?”
“Not on my first night.” He unbuckled the belt and opened the passenger door. His feet hit the pavement and he stood.
She could practically smell the popcorn from the Gas and Go as she punched in Renee’s number. Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” played in her ear until her assistant answered. “I’m not dead.” Sadie pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”
The rear door opened and he pulled out his duffel. He dumped it on the curb, then closed the door. He placed his hands on the roof of the car, then leaned down and looked through the car at her. “Thanks for the ride. I appreciate it. If there’s any way I can repay you, let me know.”
It was the kind of thing people said and never meant. Like asking, “How are you?” when no one really gave a crap. She looked across at him, into his light green eyes and dark masculine face. Everyone in town had always said she had more nerve than sense. “Well, there is one thing.”
Chapter Two
VINCE HAVEN LOWERED the bill of his ball cap and watched the Saab pull out of the parking lot. Normally he didn’t mind doing a favor for a beautiful woman. Especially one who’d saved him from humping it ten miles into town. Although compared to a thirty-mile jog or a hike in the Afghani mountains with at least sixty pounds on his back and enough ammo in his chest rig to blow up a small village, a ten-mile walk across the Texas panhandle was just a pleasant stroll through the country. Back in the day he’d have packed an M4A1 across his chest, his Sig on his hip, and a .45ACP 1911 custom sidearm strapped to his thigh.
He reached for his old Navy-issue pack and tucked it under one arm. He’d turned Sadie down and blamed it on not having a suit. Which was true but wasn’t why he’d told her no. Blond-haired Sadie wasn’t his type. She was certainly pretty enough. Beautiful really, but he liked his blondes easy. Easygoing, easy tempered, easy to be around, and easy to get in the sack. Brunettes and redheads, too. An easy woman didn’t ask anything from him, like wearing a suit and attending a wedding where he knew no one. Easy didn’t chew his ears off with talk of feelings. Easy didn’t demand a commitment beyond sex, or any sort of stability, nor did easy expect the one hundred and one other things he was unable to give. Luckily for him, there were plenty of easy women who liked him as much as he liked them.
He didn’t know what that said about him. Probably a lot. Probably things he wouldn’t particularly like to admit. Good thing for him, he didn’t particularly give a shit.
The rubber heels of his boots didn’t make a sound as he moved toward the front of the store, passing a white truck with a big dent in the rear fender. The woman who’d dropped him off was far from dumb. A dumb woman wouldn’t phone in his ID like he was a serial killer before she let him in her car. He’d actually been impressed by that, and the nonexistent stun gun had been a nice touch, too. He didn’t know if she was easy. Sometimes smart women were just as easy as dumb, but he’d guess not. Her clothes—jeans and a big gray hoodie—hadn’t given any clues, and he hadn’t been able to tell if the body matched the face. Not that it mattered. Women like Sadie always wanted a relationship. Even when they said they didn’t, and he wasn’t in any position to commit to more than a one- or two-night stand. Possibly more if all the woman wanted was great sex.
He pulled open the front door, and the smell of popcorn, hot dogs, and Pine-Sol hit him. A cowboy stood at the counter loaded down with jerky and a twelve-pack of Lone Star, chatting it up with a woman with a pile of fine gray hair and deep wrinkles. A white “Don’t Mess with Texas” T-shirt was tucked into the belted skirt beneath her breasts. She looked a bit like a skinny Shar Pei with long, dangly earrings.
“Hello, Aunt Luraleen.”
“Vince!” His mother’s sister glanced up from bagging the cowboy’s jerky. “Well, aren’t you just a handsome sight.” Her blue eyes were bright as she came around the counter. She hurled herself into his chest and he dropped the pack at his feet. She wrapped her arms around as much of him as she could and squeezed him with the kind of free affection he’d never understood. His mother’s Texas relatives were natural-born huggers, like it was part of them. Like it was in their DNA, but somehow neither he nor his sister had inherited the hugging gene. He raised a hand to pat her back. How many pats was enough? One? Two. He kept it at two.
She lifted her chin from his chest and looked up at him. It had been several years since he’d seen her, but she hadn’t changed. “You’re as big as hell and half of Texas,” she said in that deep, tobacco raspy twang that had scared the hell out of him as a kid. How she’d lived so long was a testament to stubbornness rather than clean living. He guessed he’d inherited that particular strand of DNA because he hadn’t exactly lived a clean life himself. “Good-lookin’ as original sin, too,” she added.
“Thanks.” He smiled. “I get my looks from my Southern relatives.” Which wasn’t true. His Texas relatives were fair-skinned and redheaded. Like his sister. The only thing he’d inherited from his mother was green eyes and a penchant to roam from place to place. He got his black hair and roving eye from his father.
Luraleen gave him one last squeeze with her skinny arms. “Bend down here so I can kiss you.”
As a kid, he’d always cringed. As a thirty-six-year-old man, and a former Navy SEAL, he’d endured worse than his aunt’s Marlboro breath. He lowered his cheek.
She gave him a big smack, then rocked back on the heels of her comfortable shoes as the cowboy exited the Gas and Go. “Luraleen,” he said as he passed.
“See ya tomorrow night, Alvin.”
The cowboy colored a deep pink as he walked out the door. “Does he have a thing for you?”
“Of course.” The soles of Luraleen’s shoes squeaked on the linoleum as she turned and headed back behind the counter. “I’m a single woman with needs and prospects.”
She was also in her late sixties with a bad smoker’s wheeze and had about twenty extra years on the cowboy. Twenty hard, unattractive years. He laughed. “Aunt Luraleen, you’re a cougar.” Jesus, who would have thought? It just went to show that some men had no standards. Some women—mainly his sister—might consider Vince a dog but he did have his standards. Old ladies with smoker’s hacks was one of them.
Luraleen’s raspy laugh joined his and ended in a coughing fit. “You hungry?” She pounded on her bony chest. “I got Wound Hounds in the warmer. My jalapeño dogs are real favorites with the customers.”
He was hungry. Hadn’t eaten since Tulsa.
“And I got some regular all-beef franks. Folks like to load ’em up with Cheez Whiz, salsa, and chili.”
Not that hungry. “Maybe I’ll just have a Wound Hound.”
“Suit yourself. Get a beer.” She smiled and motioned toward the big coolers. “Get two and I’ll join you in the back room.”
While Vince’s mother had been deeply religious, Aunt Luraleen had worshipped at her favorite bar with a bottle of cheap booze and a pack of smokes. He moved to the cooler and opened the glass door. Cool air brushed his face as he grabbed a couple of Shiner Blondes. He hadn’t had a Shiner since he’d been in San Antonio visiting Wilson’s mother. Pete Bridger Wilson had graduated BUD/S with Vince and was one of the smartest guys Vince had ever met. He’d had a big round head stuffed with everything from the trivial to the profound. He’d been a tall, proud Texan, a teammate, and a SEAL brother. He’d also been the best and bravest man Vince had ever known, and the accident that had changed Vince’s life had taken Wilson’s.
On the way to the back room, Vince stuck one bottle beneath his arm and snagged two Wound Hounds out of the warming drawer. Those jalapeño and all-beef dogs rolled up and back on one of the nastiest-looking wiener grills he’d ever seen.
“I expected you hours ago,” Luraleen said as he walked into the room. She sat at an old battered desk with a Marlboro clamped between her fingers. Obviously smoking in the workplace was acceptable at the Gas and Go. It probably didn’t hurt that she owned the place.
He handed her the beer, and she held the neck as he twisted off the top. “I had a little trouble with my truck about ten miles outside of town.” He twisted off his own top and took a chair across the desk. “It’s still parked out there on the side of the road.”
“And you didn’t call?”
He frowned. Still unable to believe what he had to confess. “My phone’s dead.” He was Mr. Prepared. Always made sure his gear was in tip top working order. There had been a time in his life when preparation had been a matter of living or dying. “I think something is wrong with the charger.”
She took a long drag and blew it out. “How’d you get here? You didn’t have to walk, did ya?”
“Someone stopped and gave me a lift.” He pulled back the foil on his hot dog and took a bite. It wasn’t the best meal, but he’d certainly eaten worse. Silkworm pupas from a street vendor in Seoul came to mind.
“Someone from around here?”
It had either been the pupas or dog meat stew. The pupas had been smaller. He swallowed and took a drink from the bottle. It had helped that he’d been blind drunk.
“Who?”
“Her name was Sadie.”
“Sadie? The only Sadie from around here is Sadie Jo Hollowell, but she doesn’t live in Lovett these days.” Luraleen poured her beer into a Tweety Bird coffee mug. “She took off right out of high school. Abandoned her poor daddy.”
“She mentioned that she doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Huh. Sadie’s back, then.” She took a drink. “Probably on account of Tally Lynn’s weddin’ this weekend over at the Sweetheart Palace Weddin’ Chapel at six o’clock. It’s a big doin’s.” She set the mug on the desk. “I wasn’t invited, of course. No reason I would be. Except maybe I went to school with her cousin on her daddy’s side and Tally Lynn and her friends used to try and buy beer from me with fake IDs. Like I haven’t known them all their lives.”
Luraleen sounded bitter so he didn’t mention that he’d been invited. “If you aren’t invited, how do you know so much about it?” He took another bite.
“People tell me everything. I’m like a hairdresser and bartender all rolled into one.”
More likely she pried a lot. He swallowed and took a long drink of his beer. The door chimed, indicating a customer, and Luraleen snubbed out her smoke. She placed her hand on the desk and rose.
“I’m gettin’ old.” She moved toward the door and said over her shoulder, “Sit tight and enjoy your dinner. When I get back, we’ll talk about that business proposition I have for you.”
Which was why he’d driven to Texas. She’d called him a few weeks ago when he’d been in New Orleans, helping a buddy re-side his house. She hadn’t told him anything else, just that she had a proposition for him and that he wouldn’t be sorry. He figured he knew what the proposition was, though. For the past five years, he’d worked a regular job in security, and on the side, he’d bought a run-down Laundromat. He’d fixed it up and turned it into a real cash-rich business. No matter the dip in the economy, people washed their clothes. With the money he’d made, he’d invested in a recession-proof pharmaceutical company. While others saw their stocks wiped out, his were up twenty-seven percent from when he’d bought in. And six months ago, he’d sold the Laundromat for a nice profit. Now he was taking his time, looking at other recession-proof stocks and cash-rich businesses in which to invest.
Before joining the Navy, he’d taken a few business classes in college, which came in handy. A few classes weren’t a business degree, but he didn’t need a degree to look at a situation, run a cost-benefit analysis in his head, and see how to make money.
Since Luraleen didn’t seem to need highly trained security, he figured she had some sort of fixing-up job for him.
Vince took a bite and washed it down. He glanced about the office, at the old microwave and refrigerator and the boxes of cleaning products and Solo cups. The old olive-colored counters and ancient cabinets. The place was run-down, that was for sure. It could use a coat of paint and new ceramic floor tiles. The counters here and in the store needed a sledgehammer.
He polished off a Wound Hound and balled the foil hot dog wrapper in his hand. At the moment, he had the time to help out his aunt. Since leaving his security job in Seattle a few months ago, he had some time on his hands. Since leaving the teams a little over five years ago, his future was pretty much wide open. A little too wide open.
A few months after he’d been medically retired from the SEALs, his sister gave birth to his nephew. She’d been alone and scared, and she’d needed him. He’d owed her for taking care of their terminally ill mother while he’d been gone, down range in Iraq. So he’d been living and working in Washington State, looking after his little sister and helping her raise her son, Conner. There were only a few things in Vince’s life that caused him guilt; his baby sister taking care of their mother, who could be difficult at the best of times, was one of them.
That first year out had been a tough one, for him and Conner. Conner screaming from bellyaches, and Vince wanting to scream from the damn ringing in his head. He could have stayed in the teams. He’d always planned to do his full twenty. Could have waited it out until things got better, but his hearing would never be what it had been before the accident. A SEAL with hearing loss was a liability. No matter his expertise in armed and unarmed combat, his mastery of everything from his Sig to a machine gun. No matter his underwater demolitions skills nor that he was the best insertions guy in the teams, he was a liability to himself and the rest of the guys.
He’d missed that adrenaline-fueled, testosterone-driven life. Still did. But when he’d left, he took on a new mission. He’d been away for ten years. His sister, Autumn, had dealt with their mother all alone, and it had been his turn to take care of her and his nephew. But neither of them needed him now, and after a particularly bad bar brawl at the beginning of the year that had left Vince bruised and bloody and in lockup, he had needed a change of scenery. He hadn’t felt that kind of rage in a long time. The pent-up kind just beneath the surface of his flesh, like a pressure cooker. The kind that blew him apart if he let it, which he never did. Or at least hadn’t for a very long time.
He tossed the foil into the garbage can and started on the second hot dog. For the past three months, he’d been traveling a lot, but even after months of reflection, he still wasn’t real clear on why he’d taken on a bar filled with bikers. He wasn’t real clear on who had started it, but he was clear about waking up in jail with a sore face and ribs, and a couple of battery charges. The charges had all been dropped, thanks to a good lawyer and his sparkling military record, but he’d been guilty. As sin. He knew he hadn’t picked the fight, never did. He never went looking for a fight, either, but he always knew where to find one.
He reached for the beer and raised it to his mouth. His sister liked to tell him that he had anger problems, but she was wrong. He swallowed and set the beer on the desk. He had no problem with his anger. Even when it crawled across his skin and threatened to blow, he could control it. Even in the midst of a firefight or a barroom brawl.
No, his problem wasn’t anger. It was boredom. He tended to get into trouble if he didn’t have a goal or mission. Something to do with his head and hands, and even though he’d had his day job and the Laundromat to fill up his time, he’d felt at loose ends since his sister had decided to remarry the son of a bitch ex of hers. Now that the SOB was back in the picture, Vince was out of one of his jobs.