Their Ex's Redrock Midnight (Texas Alpha) (20 page)

Rusty straightened away from the counter she’d been working on. Angel meant either Justice had arrived or her brother James, street name Spider, had arrived. James was the first inductee into the newly formed portion of WTSF for young men. He’d been clear of the gang for a month, and now Rusty was going to give him a job running her taxi part time. Justice was backing her up with some stern warnings to James to stay clean and away from the gang that Justice had already broken up, running most of them out of town.

Angel was extremely hopeful, but she was also extremely not happy with Justice, and that was pretty much standard between them. Angel thought Justice butted in too much, and was therefore too hard on her little brother. Justice thought he wasn’t hard enough. Angel was happy James was getting the job offer, because he was showing signs of getting antsy again, but she did not understand why Justice had to be there or add his brand of opinions to it or James.

Rusty smiled because she thought Angel and Justice butting heads was very interesting. She also thought the fact Justice chose the two gang members with their sights on Angel to run out of town first—or put one of them in jail—was very interesting. Then Justice going after the Indian named Creed, who had personal interest in Angel, was interesting, even though Finn called Justice off that particular mission.

Angel came to stand next to her, looking toward the double doors propped open to their revamping efforts, and Rusty tweaked a light red strand of Angel’s hair. “It’ll be all right, brat-a-licious.”

Angel stopped chewing on her lower lip and smiled, but it did not reach the worry in her eyes. “I just hope he listens,” Angel said.

Once again, Rusty wondered whom she meant, James or Justice, but right then Cabe prowled in. Angel sighed with relief, because Cabe was a great mediator and James pretty much idolized Cabe. Then James sauntered in and Justice followed. Rusty touched the picture at her fingertips, watching Cabe come toward her. She’d seen him in bed just that morning, her body wrapped into him, gasping his name, but a thrill still ran through her at the sight of him.

Every day proved she was one freaking very lucky woman.

The End

C
arly choked on the sip of beer she’d just taken while strolling through the lively Spring Cultural Festival that was using over five blocks downtown and all of Takoda Park. Instant pain sliced through her, nearly crumpling her to the ground.

It was Rick ...

Her husband—they’d been separated, but recently reconciled.

Rick
was kissing a petite woman with long black hair, up against a tree in the park.

Her husband’s tongue was
down
the woman’s throat!

Carly tried to hold on to the beer bottle so it wouldn’t hit the ground and break as she wobbled to the side.

He’d been freaking
lying
to her.

Her three-inch wedge sandals made her feel as if she could fall off a cliff, while pain and deceit ripped a hole through her. All she could think:
Freaking glad I didn’t give him back all my heart.
She’d been holding back, with some inner sense telling her that Rick wanting them to reconcile was not ringing true.

Carly watched with blurry eyes because of the tears she was fighting as Rick grabbed the petite woman’s ass, and then he pulled her into his body—to grind against her.

A harsh gasp shot from Carly’s lips, while her body felt numb. It was out there in the open, for all to see. She jerked her head, ripping her gaze away from the sights of raw infidelity. That was when she saw him—on the other side of the cheating couple. He was standing as far away from them as she was, but he seemed closer because he was a big man, and all his attention was focused on Rick and the woman’s heavy necking.

Carly blinked the tears out of her eyes and loosened the hold she had on the neck of her beer bottle, dropping it in the grass. The large man looked like a cross between a biker and a soldier. He had on faded jeans, black motorcycle boots, and a leather vest over a tee shirt that showed the swell of muscular arms. But it was his shortly cropped, dark reddish hair that gave her the military vibe; maybe the tattoos too, but those could go either way. In the seconds she’d become aware of him, and watched him, he’d torn off his sunglasses and she’d inhaled a sharp breath at the intensity flaring in his icy light blue eyes.

Then she watched him crush the sunglasses in his big fist, until she saw blood beginning to drip out of his clenched hand, and it started to drop on the grass. Those emotions wrenched her free from immobility, and she realized, without a doubt, the biker knew the woman Rick was deep throating.

Is she his woman?
Carly wondered blindly as the raw emotions of the moment dragged her toward the fierce-looking biker. She didn’t look at Rick mauling his newest honey—she just watched the emotion barely playing across the biker’s hard-angled face. His face was like a piece of carved masculinity, but she saw the blaze of pain and betrayal in his gaze.

She knew that beast and could spot it anywhere.

God,
if the fierce-looking biker took on Rick ... Rick would be dead, and the biker would be in prison for life.

The certainty of that startled her.

“They’re
not
worth it,” she blurted at the biker.

Up close, he was even bigger. His eyes were more piercing and intense as he turned them slowly toward her until their bitter blueness slammed into her, full force.
Yes,
she wanted to scream at him.
Yes, I feel it all, or did months ago when my husband first left me.

To him, she continued as fiercely as he looked, stealing her breath away. “They’re freaking
not
worth going to jail for.”

“Who the fuck are you?” he snarled, cutting his eyes back to the adulterous couple and not tearing his fierce gaze from them. He’d said it like a demand to get out of his business ... and she should ... she
so
should.

Carly pointed a shaking finger at Rick, who had his hand up under the woman’s short summer blouse, while the woman had her leg hooked over Rick’s hip.

“
My
husband,” she expelled in a suppressed little screech. Then she wondered why she wasn’t going over and punching Rick in the face, which she started to do, but a wide hand gripped her arm, stopping her.

“You’re shitting me?” Carly’s gaze jerked to the blaze of blue eyes, but before she could tell him no one would shit about something like that, he expelled his own stunning revelation. “
My
fucking wife.”

His jaw, like a cliff, jerked in the cheating couple’s direction as she gasped. Some part of her knew he had history with the woman, but “wife”?
No
, that thought had not occurred to her. She was stunned as angry tears started in her eyes.

“Let me go,” she hissed at the man, as if
he
was the vile cheater, while she tugged on her arm, but he held her firmly.

Her bitterness didn’t move him, instead he tugged, and her wedge heels gave, making her totter, but he held her from falling while he growled, “Talk.” Then she was pulled after him as the vibrations of his guttural voice slithered through her.

Zeb pulled the curvy blonde after him.
Wife.
She was the bastard’s wife. She was a girly girl, wearing some kind of gauzy summer dress of yellow and turquoise, along with a pink baseball cap that had damn sequins on it. Her blond hair was in a ponytail out the back of the cap, and she had on high-heeled wedge sandals that showed off her pink sparkle-painted toenails.

The thing that messed with him right off, after the rage of finding his wife, was even noticing the babe he was pulling along with him had no fucking bra on.

What man let his woman, who looked like this one, come out dressed like she was when she wasn’t on his arm?

Fucker with his tongue down your wife’s throat
, came back his mental reply. He reached his hog in the park’s parking lot and he swung the babe around, giving a little push until her very round ass hit his Harley’s leather seat and her long, bare legs stretched out in front of her.

Damn him; his gaze settled on the outline of her full breasts beneath the airy stretch of her dress, noticing up close he could see hard nipples. That dragged another growl from his throat as he scraped a hard hand over the skull-cut bristle of his hair.

Then the babe exclaimed, “You’re bleeding!” She grabbed his hand, with his sunglasses still crumpled in his fist, pulling it to her, while she also complained, “You shouldn’t just drag women off.” Her full lips pouted up at him as if he was supposed to take her seriously, then her face darted toward his belt as she leaned forward.

Whoa. Which was in the direct area of his little-used cock, because he’d been searching for his wife for three months, in the army before that, and it’d been twenty-one damn months since his cock had seen anything but his hand. Her nose nearly touched his zipper—he felt her hand at his back pocket as he played statue. Then he finally figured out her game ... it was his bandana she was after.

He tugged his hand out of her fingers and tossed his broken and bloody sunglasses on the pavement, then he grabbed the bandana out of her other hand and he wound it a few times over his cut hand to stop the blood. He could still feel glass in there, but he didn’t give a shit. He’d been running on hyper-cruise for days now, looking for his missing wife, tracking her from town to town.

His intention was to ask her why the hell she’d left him and forgot to tell him about it before he’d gotten home. Even then she hadn’t told him; he’d just gone to their house after her no-show at the airport, and he’d found their house empty, with all her stuff gone. No note. Not even any fucking electricity.

He could have thought she was dead, murdered, or something, but her dickwad brother at least told him when he’d called that Tula was running the beauty queen circuit. Okay, did that mean his lovely little wife just
for
-got he was coming home? Dickwad didn’t know, but offered the meaningful advice that if you didn’t give your woman cock, someone else would.

“There’s still glass in there,” his busty wannabe nurse exclaimed, grabbing back his hand. “Should go to emergency care,” she muttered as he sighed a grunting sound and let her have at it.

What the hell; while he seethed with anger over Tula’s fucking cheating he could look at breasts he could imagine getting his hands on.

“Zeb Andersen, you?” he asked while she used her long fingernails to pick out a piece of the sunglasses’ fake glass.

“Carly Shaw,” she answered, and he heard the snit in her voice. “And I
don’t
want to talk to you.”

He got that she meant that from his earlier one-word vocalized command, and he also knew, looking down on the pout of her plumped-out pink bottom lip, that she really fucking
did
want talk to him, she was just being riled. Who the hell else would she want to talk too? Her cheating husband? His cheating damn wife?

“Sweetness, we
are
talking,” he uttered in the growl of a voice he had. Her gray eyes pinned him with a glare from under her lashes and the brim of her pink ball cap.

“Sugar’s not getting you shit,” she declared. And he nearly chuckled at her sass.

If circumstances were different he could prove to her his brand of sugar would have her screaming his name very passionately. He was surprised under the same circumstances that he felt a flash of wanting to take her up on the dare.

He thought the cutesy name “Carly” fit her down to her pink-painted toenails. And it had been a long time since he’d had a woman touch him, even if it was his damn hand. Hell, it had been a long time since he’d had a woman that close, and she was a pretty woman, but way curvier than usually attracted his look. She had long eyelashes and full, pouty lips. He wanted to lift her ball cap off so he could see her face better.

“He just came back to reconcile with me,” she whispered. He saw the instant pain and tears as she turned her face down, wrapping the bandana slowly around his hand.

Damn.

He cupped her nape below her ponytail and his grip tightened. “Fuckers,” he growled, trying to keep his fury under control.

It was too amazing for him to get. Him finding Tula, then finding the wife of the bastard cheating with his wife. After the long hours riding his Harley across half the country looking for Tula, he’d figured about midway the endgame had to be she was cheating and had run off from their marriage. Maybe unable to take the time alone while he’d been in the military.

He’d known in the year after he’d married her, to basically get her away from her abusive stepfather, that she was like a feather in the wind, bouncing from one thing to the next. She never really seemed to take settling down to be a wife, and he’d worried about her managing while he went overseas. He’d been bothered enough that he’d set up his accountant to handle money and just give Tula a monthly allowance.

One minute he’d think he should have known, and the next he’d be pissed for taking all the blame because she had married him. That implied she’d wanted a husband, kids, family life, and she wanted to try to be a wife.

“Yeah, bastards,” she said more delicately, but with as much venom as he had.

Zeb was immediately bothered by the fact Carly’s husband had come back, she’d said, “to reconcile,” at the same time screwing around with Tula. Those two actions did not match up. His thumb slid along the smoothness of Carly’s jaw and cheek, and he felt a telltale tear wet his thumb.

“Why’s your asshole come back if he’s sticking it in her?” Zeb jerked his chin back in the direction of the offenders.

Carly’s gaze turned up to him with pain on her face, but also confusion. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

Carly watched Zeb’s rugged features—which were sun-brown enough, as if he’d been riding his bike a long time—tense more as he uttered, “Not good.”