Texas Kissing (3 page)

I gave Francisco a glower, grabbed the soda out of his hand and took three big glugs. “There,” I panted. “Better now.”

It’s a mark of how well we get on that I dared to do something like that. The Gallegos put the fear of God into most people and Francisco answers directly to Isabella, the head of the whole cartel. But after two years, I counted him as a friend. We’d even been out for drinks a few times—I mean, not in
that
way: he’s pushing fifty. But he was friendly and paid on time and didn’t give me a lot of sexist crap about being a woman, so I liked him. Plus, meeting with him was one of the few bits of actual social contact I had.

He grabbed the soda back off me and blinked at me from behind his huge, gold-rimmed sunglasses. “You got the stuff?”

I slapped the package of fake IDs onto his lap, concealed within the latest
Sports Illustrated.
It was part of our routine that I picked up an issue for him each time we met.

He didn’t even bother to check them, just passed me a
Vogue
with my money inside. That was kind of a running thing, too, because he’d done it the first time we’d ever traded, having heard on our phone calls that I was a woman. He’d kept it up ever since, despite the fact that I’m about as far from a fashion model as it’s possible to be and the last time I’d bought any new clothes was...yep, I literally can’t remember. No one who does business with me cares what I look like and no one I see socially—

Well, I don’t see anyone socially.

The crowd whooped and cheered because some cowboy had just roped a horse. I craned my neck to look...but it still wasn’t Bull. And then I caught myself and flushed, embarrassed that I’d looked.

“You stayin’?” asked Francisco. “They got chuck wagon racing and chute dogging coming up.”

Part of me was tempted. Somewhere in that mess of sweat and rope and action there was a hulking cowboy with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. A cowboy who, against all logic, had actually asked me out for a drink...

I stood up and shook my head. “Nope,” I said. “You knock yourself out. I got air conditioning and artificial light to get back to.”

He shook his head and gave me a long-suffering look. “There’s a whole world out here you’re missing out on.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “But it’s not my world.”

Lily

When you do something enough, it becomes magnified in your mind until you know every detail. I know every swirl and loop of the stenciled paper on a passport just like you know every pothole on your commute to work.

Which is bad. Because, as I sat there at my desk, working away, it meant that my mind was free to think.

I squirmed inside when I remembered how I’d reacted to him. It was as if all the normal parts of my brain, the ones that let me escape New York and customize the bus and build a little forger empire here in Texas, all suddenly shut down. All I’d been left with was some primal, animal brain that I hadn’t even known was lurking underneath. And
it,
faced with Bull, had been reduced to a puddle of hormones. I’d stood there slack-jawed and helpless.

I’ve always been proud of my independence. When you’re on the run, being
a woman on her own
isn’t any kind of worthy feminist crusade, it’s simple survival fact. I didn’t need a man because I didn’t need
anyone.
And yet I’d just stayed there gaping up at him as that arrogant, cocky bastard had—somehow—talked me into a date. A
date?
I didn’t go on
dates!

I couldn’t go on dates.

I’d made a decision, back in New York. A very simple decision which had kept people around me safe ever since. The decision had been that, live or die, I was on my own. No friends. No boyfriends. No connections of any kind.

No one my uncle could hurt.

And then, just because he was all—all—
muscley
and
male,
I’d somehow forgotten all that and turned into a weak-kneed idiot.

I’d looked him up on Facebook—it’s not hard to find a six foot-something rodeo rider nicknamed “Bull” in a small town. His last name was Rollins, but there was no mention of his real name—he always called himself
Bull. Asshole.
And when he wasn’t working with horses on a local ranch, he was a rodeo rider, getting paid to be thrown around by wild broncos. What kind of idiot would choose that for a career?

I was fairly sure he wanted to fuck me and that surprised me as much as it annoyed me. Surprise because—well, this is
me
, curvy and big, and with precious little in the way of feminine wiles even
before
I spent two years living as a hermit on a bus. And annoyed because his Facebook page was a non-stop stream of photos of him in bars—each time, with a different woman. It was a barely-disguised list of his conquests, the modern equivalent of notches on his bedpost.
Me and Charlene, last night. Me and Kara, last night.
If he slept with me, it would be
me and Lily, last night,
and then, just one mouse-scroll further down the page, would be the next one. Women, to him, seemed to be disposable playthings. He was just another cocky, irritating alpha male.

But the more I thought about it, the more the hot anger seemed to seep down through me and sort of...change.

Bastard. Arrogant bastard. I bet he wanted to fuck me right there, in the basement of the arena, with all those animals around. Down in the hay. Or on a table or something, pulling my jeans off and him shoving down his pants and grunting as he shoved his—

I was uncomfortably aware of how, the more annoyed I got, the more I found I was pressing my thighs together. I tried to focus on my work—I was cutting plastic with a craft knife, a precision job.

It’s just because it’s been a while.
And by
a while
I meant over two years, since well before I’d left New York. I mean, I hadn’t been completely idle—I had my vibrator and my imagination, but—

But suddenly, that didn’t seem like any kind of replacement for a hard, muscled body, so heavy on top of mine, his knees spreading my thighs….

The blade of the craft knife snapped, the tip of it pinging across the room. I’d been pressing too hard.

This is ridiculous.
I should have been concentrating on real things that mattered, like the passports for Luka, the Russian arms dealer, and the next batch for the Mexican cartel, and those couple for the weed farmers in Canada. You know, normal stuff.

Rules were rules. Of course I wouldn’t go on the stupid date. I’d avoid ever going back to the arena. I’d never see him again. In a few days, I’d have forgotten all about him and everything would go back to normal. Everything would just carry on, just the same as it always had.

I found myself staring at my single bed.

And I started to get ready to go out.

Lily

I’d never been to Lucky Pete’s, but that didn’t mean I went in cold. I’ve met with Colombian drug lords in old train yards and Japanese mafia in theme parks. I
never
go in cold. I’d pieced together the interior of the place from photos on the web and knew all my exits in case of disaster. I debated whether to take my gun but eventually decided it was inappropriate for a date. So I took a Taser instead.

Imagine every cheesy Wild West saloon bar you’ve seen in a movie, recreated on a low budget and then filled with too many people who’ve had too much beer. The highlight of the place was the mechanical bull and the animatronic prospector (complete with pickaxe and long white beard) who stuck his head out of a barrel every few minutes and asked if anyone had seen his mule. That line probably got pretty tired, after you’d heard it four hundred times. I’d only been there ten minutes and I was ready to bury the pickaxe in the puppet’s head.

Where the hell was Bull? It was five past eight. Was this normal? Were guys always late for dates?

I was uncomfortably aware that I didn’t have a whole lot of experience to go on. My teenage years hadn’t been exactly normal.

I hadn’t known what to wear, so I’d put on a fresh blouse along with my jeans, added a little make-up and left it at that. Now, looking around at the other girls, I realized that maybe I should have spent less time checking the exits and more time looking at what people were wearing. Everyone else was in little skirts or shorts and strappy tops, with either towering heels or some quirky take on cowboy boots. I was showing about ten percent of the skin all the other girls were, and theirs was beautifully sun-kissed and smoothly tan.

I
still
couldn’t see him anywhere. I stalked over to the bar and asked for a beer. At least I could enjoy the one benefit of being out on the town. I don’t drink in the bus. I figure that if I start drinking out there on my own, things could get out of control very fast. And I’m kind of obsessive about staying in control.

When my beer came, I tipped the barmaid and said, in a low, slightly embarrassed voice, “I’m looking for Bull.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Not like that,” I said quickly, feeling my cheeks flush. “I’m just having a drink with him.”

She nodded towards a corner. “Join the line.”

I’d pretty much ignored the gaggle of girls over on that side of the bar because they seemed to be the loudest, most irritating bunch in the place. But now that I craned my neck, I could just see, amongst all the bare shoulders and perfectly-coiffed hair, a black cowboy hat. He was sitting down, hidden by his crowd of admirers.
Well, of course he was.

I edged closer to the crowd. The girls had formed a solid wall of perfect, slender shoulders and trim little waists. Most of them were taller than me and even the ones who weren’t were lifted by towering heels.

He wasn’t even going to be able to see me.

Maybe that’s for the best.
This whole thing had been crazy anyway. I knew
I couldn’t start anything with him, so what the hell was I doing there?
I’m fulfilling an obligation. He
did
save my life.

That’s what I told myself.

I edged my way through the crowd. A few of the girls turned and eyed me with disgust. They didn’t have to call me names: the disbelieving snorts were enough.

I’d been a hermit so long, I’d sort of forgotten what bitches women could be. I kept going, my face heating up. Then, as I broke through to the front of the crowd, I stopped and stared.

Bull’s chair was tilted back on two legs so that he could lean against the wall. He wasn’t topless now, of course, but the white shirt couldn’t hide the breadth of his chest or the thickness of his forearms. His long, denim-clad legs were stretched out, his boots resting on another chair, and two girls had perched their dainty behinds there, one on his calves and one just above his knees, as they giggled away at him. A third was just arriving with a fresh beer for him. A fourth was beside him, massaging his shoulders.

Now I began to see where all his arrogance came from. God, they just threw themselves at him! And why? Just because he was muscley and confident and had an enormous—