Kinkade, Lea - I Got a Feelin' [The Chisholms of Texas 2] (Siren Publishing Classic)

The Chisholms of
Texas

LEA KINKADE

Copyright © 2011

Chapter 1

“Damn, Xander. Could you throw us a bone or something? You run the table every damn time,” lamented Ryan Chisholm as his eldest brother sank the eight ball in the corner pocket, winning the game for the third time tonight. The Chisholm boys were at their regular Friday-night watering hole. They were playing pool at Chaps & Spurs, the twins’ country-and-western honky-tonk in Deseo, Texas.

“Can I help it that you pussies all suck at shooting pool? Man, Ryan, you’re in here nearly all day, every day. Take some time to practice a little, dickhead.” Xander moved to the side table where he had left his beer, grabbed the cold bottle, and took a long draw on it as he eyed his younger brother sardonically.

“Wouldn’t make a bit of difference, Xander. You just have a natural ability for the game,” butted in their brother Levi. Levi was one of two of the Chisholm brothers who were married.

“Doesn’t hurt that he has a pool table at his house, either,” commented Ryder dryly, coming to his twin, Ryan’s, defense.

“Not that he gets much of a chance to use it anymore. What with being a newlywed and all, I’m sure big brother isn’t getting in much practice lately.” Turning to his oldest brother, he said, “You should just give the table to me, Xander. I’ll put it to good use.” Dillon racked the balls for a new game as he goaded his older brother.

“Dream on, asshole. You’re not getting your hands on it. Besides, Jordan likes that table just where it is,” drawled Xander with a slow, sly smile.

“
TMI
, bro.
TMI
,” groaned Ryan. “Why don’t you give us a break and go dance a few slow songs with your pregnant wife? I could use a chance to win back some of the money I’ve already lost tonight.”

“I go down there, I’m not coming back. You know how much Jordan loves to dance.” Xander took another long pull from his beer as he leaned casually against the wall. “Tell you what. I’ll sit out the next few games and we can all talk about Dillon’s little intern. Better yet, go see her for yourselves. She’s downstairs with Jordan and the rest of the women at their regular table.” Ryan could see that Xander was having fun at their brother Dillon’s expense tonight. This wasn’t the first comment Xander had made about the new veterinarian intern working out at the Ranch under Dillon’s supervision. So far, Dillon hadn’t taken the bait.

Both he and Ryder liked to play the field. The
flirt twins
,
as they were known in this area of southern Texas, loved women. Hell, all of the Chisholm brothers loved women. They got it from their father, Alex Chisholm, who’d been quite the ladies’ man back in the day. At least until he met their mother, Cassie White. From that moment on, there had been only one woman his father had given any attention to. That’s how their parents told the story, anyway.

The story the brothers had heard over and over growing up had Alex and Cassie married within two months of meeting each other. Nobody counted the months between their wedding and Xander’s birth too closely. After nearly thirty-five years of marriage, his parents loved each other as much as they had when they got married. His father often confessed to loving his wife now even more than he did when he proposed to her. Now
that
was true love. Ryan saw a similar kind of love between Levi and his wife, Taylor, and Xander and his wife, Jordan. Ryan shuddered a little at the thought.

Ryan and his twin thought an awful lot alike. Like two halves of the whole. They were usually attracted to the same woman but had a system for working out who got to ask the woman out. They had also made a pact with each other regarding when they were allowed to become serious with a woman and settle down. That wasn’t going to happen for years, so Ryan had nothing to worry about. Maybe he should get a look at this woman Dillon was supposedly interested in and decide whether or not he wanted to go after her for himself.

“I think I need to check on the bar downstairs. I’ll be right back.” Ryder headed quickly for the steps leading to the lower level.

“I better check, too, little bro. Could be a big problem down there.” Ryan walked quickly to catch up with his twin. Ryan knew Ryder hated it when he referred to himself as the older brother, but he was. Ryan had been born exactly three minutes before Ryder. He never let Ryder forget it.

As the twins went down the stairs side by side, the only way to tell them apart, at least initially, was Ryan’s closely trimmed moustache and goatee and the earring he sported. Other than that, the twins looked exactly alike. Six feet three inches of lean muscle. They had raven-black hair that they wore down to their shoulders and the intense green eyes that labeled them as Chisholms.

All the brothers looked alike in terms of height, coloring, and facial features. They had both Native American and Hispanic ancestry. There were subtle differences in the musculature of their bodies, but it wasn’t easy to tell with their clothes on. Each of them was lean, without a hint of spare flesh on their bodies, and they all worked out regularly in the gym at the Ranch. Dillon especially enjoyed jogging along the dirt roads out at the Ranch. He enjoyed getting down and dirty with his workouts. Dillon also had some very bold tattoos on his arms, shoulders, and back that set him apart from the other brothers. They were designed after Cherokee Indians’ war paint and got him some extra time between the sheets, too. Women sure seemed to love his brother’s tats. Ryan didn’t want to think about how long it had taken his brother to get the tattoos inked. It seemed like it would be pretty painful to him with all that black. He’d just keep the pierced ear and leave the rest to his brothers.

Out of all the brothers, Dillon was the most intense. He had played the field just as hard as Xander, Ryder, and Ryan, but his relationships seemed to last a little longer than theirs did. Still, however, a couple of months at most. Rumor had it, from the women Dillon had dated, that his brother was a little too intense for them to handle long-term. Recently, Dillon had taken a step back from the dating scene. When Ryan had asked him about it, Dillon had proclaimed that he was done sowing his wild oats and was looking for a woman to settle down with. So, if there was a woman who had caught Dillon’s eye, Ryan wanted to meet her. The fact that a relationship between Dillon and this woman was impossible right now only added fuel to his desire to see this woman for himself.

“If Dillon is interested in this woman, he’ll never last a year before making a move on her. If he wants her, why would he even hire her? If he hires her, he’s going to have to walk a fine line between having a personal relationship with the woman and sexual harassment.” Ryan and Ryder knew from personal experience, owning a nightclub in town, that dating coworkers was a bad idea. Hell hath no fury and all that.

“I know, bro, but we can have a hell of a lot of fun riding him about this until the year is up.” Oh, they wouldn’t take her to bed. They weren’t so crass as that, but they could certainly chat her up at every opportunity and make their brother’s life a living hell. That could be a lot of fun, and there was nothing the
flirt twins
loved more than having fun.

As they came to the landing on the first floor of the club, Ryan and Ryder both looked over at the table near the dance floor that was filled with Chisholm women and their friends. Jordan, Xander’s pregnant wife, Taylor, Levi’s wife, and Jessie, their sister, along with about five of their other friends, always sat at the same table on Friday nights to talk, drink, and enjoy some dancing.

Ryan looked closely at the table and noticed not one but two women he didn’t recognize talking with the rest of the ladies. One was a pretty brunette with deep blue eyes and a teasing smile on her face. She was talking to Jeff Taylor, Levi’s right-hand man in the horse-breeding division of the Ranch. The woman was sitting down in her chair and Jeff was leaning over her with his hand on the back of the chair as they spoke softly to one another.

Although she was very pretty, she wasn’t the woman who held Ryan’s interest. There, standing beside Jordan, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was positioned so that he could only see her profile, but Ryan could see everything he needed to see.

She would be around the same age as Jessie and Jordan, and she looked like a fucking Barbie doll. She had golden-blonde hair that waved all the way to the top of her ass. Full, high breasts, a trim waist flaring out to hips that balanced her figure just right. She looked to be about five feet eight inches in height and had nice, long legs that were showcased to perfection in her slim-fitting jeans. As they got a little closer, she turned her head in their direction and he noticed that her eyes were almost violet in color—the color of Bachelor’s Buttons. He felt his cock come to life.

Ryan heard Ryder pull in a deep breath. “Hot, holy, hell,” exclaimed Ryder as he walked beside his brother to the women’s table. “Do you see the leggy blonde standing next to Jordan?”

“Do I ever. Back off, little bro. I saw her first and I’m calling dibs.” Ryan didn’t know why he was so viscerally attracted to this blonde goddess, but he used their childlike way of claiming a woman they were both interested in to shut Ryder down.

“What do you mean you saw her first? She’s never been in here before. Believe me, I’d remember a woman like that.” Ryan knew Ryder was pissed that he had called dibs on the beautiful woman. If his brother had been thinking a little more clearly, Ryder would have staked his claim and Ryan would be the one backing off.

Instead, Ryder was the one that was going to miss out on this beautiful woman. He and Ryder had virtually the same tastes when it came to women. Their father, Alex Chisholm, had been the one to tell them they needed to come up with another system for declaring their interest in a girl rather than beating the crap out of each other and, after many drinks at a bar one night, the brothers had settled on the “dibs rule.”

“Fine. You’ve got a week to get her to go out with you. If she isn’t interested, I get a shot at her.” Ryan was surprised. Ryder had never taken sloppy seconds from his twin. Evidently Ryder felt that this woman just might be worth it. As a general rule, the Chisholm brothers didn’t date previous girlfriends of one of the other brothers. They had learned the hard way that women often used the prior relationship to get back at the brother who dumped them. They weren’t about to be manipulated like that. However, in that context “date” was a euphemism for having sex with the woman. If a brother dated a woman and didn’t fuck her, then one of the other brothers could ask her out without reprisal.

“Okay, but I get two weeks. She’s obviously new to town. It may take a little time for her to get to know me well enough to go out on a date with me.” Ryan wasn’t taking any chances that this woman would slip through his fingers too easily.

“Let’s go meet her. Shit, I hope she’s not Dillon’s little intern.” Ryder and Ryan continued to the table more slowly.

As they approached the women’s table, Ryan spoke first. “Ladies, I trust you’re enjoying your evening. Jessie, it appears you’ve added two beautiful women to your entourage. Don’t we get an introduction?” He looked pointedly at the new blonde and brunette who were at the table.

“Sorry, boys. I suppose you haven’t had a chance to meet either of these ladies yet,” responded Jessie. She pointed first to the brunette who sat across the table from her. “Ryan and Ryder Chisholm, this is Abigail Barnes. She’s Dillon’s new intern out at the Ranch. She started a couple of months ago but we haven’t been able to talk her into joining us until now. Abby, meet my twin brothers, Ryan and Ryder. Or, as they are affectionately known around here, the
flirt twins
.” Each of the men bowed slightly with smiles on their faces as they were introduced so that she could tell them apart.

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Barnes,” said Ryder with a smile.

“Call me Abby, please,” replied the pretty brunette. She seemed a bit shy.

“Abby, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Welcome to Deseo. I’m glad you decided to join the ladies tonight. Hope to see you back sometime soon.” Ryder was the consummate host, but Ryan knew he wasn’t interested in butting heads with Dillon over this woman no matter how pretty she was. And make no mistake, the woman was very pretty. Both brothers’ attentions turned to the blonde woman standing next to Jordan.

“And this lovely lady would be?” asked Ryan, wanting an introduction to this beautiful woman.

“This is Samantha Michaels. She bought into Bach Florists about a month ago, around the time of Jordan and Xander’s wedding as a matter of fact,” said Jessie. “Tonight is her first night for our weekly girls’ night, too.” Jessie watched him and Ryder warily. She could obviously see the interest the brothers had in Samantha. She watched Ryan particularly close, and he schooled his face to keep it politely interested but no more.

“Ms. Michaels, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m glad you decided to come out with Jessie and her friends tonight. Hope to see more of you around here.” Ryan turned his attention back to his brother. “Ryder, we’d better get back upstairs before the rest of the guys come looking for us.” Ryan wanted to ask Samantha to dance, but he needed to get back up to the pool game. Besides, Sheila was here tonight, and she hadn’t taken the breakup very well. Ryan didn’t know why she was being so difficult. He’d never made her any promises, but she had started acting very territorial about him before he had broken it off. Ryan hadn’t dated anyone since. Hadn’t really been interested. Maybe if he started dating another woman, Sheila would get the hint and let it go. Ryder gave Ryan a knowing grin, and they both said good-bye to the women and headed back upstairs.