Last of the Red-Hot Riders (3 page)

Cameron looked at Judy. It seemed to her that Judy was a bit pale today, not her usually bubbly self. Certainly she still had lots of energy—Judy on her deathbed would be planning a party or instructing the
pallbearers—but
it seemed to Cameron that something wasn't quite right.

And Judy never passed up Stephen's cooking, even if everybody else lived on the hope that one day, his chicken might actually taste like chicken.

“Judy, love, let me order you another pie,” Steel said.

“I don't have much appetite, handsome. But thank you.”

Judy went on with her parade plans, and when Saint excused himself twenty minutes later to get back to work at the Hell's Outlaws Training Center, Cameron gratefully slid out of the circular booth, too.

“See you later, Judy, Steel,” they both said. Cameron made a beeline for the sidewalk, hurrying to her truck—but it wasn't going to be that easy, she realized, hearing Saint call her name.

“Yes?” she asked, turning to face him.

“We should probably plan a meeting or two to figure out how we're going to address this kissing booth idea. I'm not particularly looking forward to going out to Ivy's to put the idea forward.”

This was a concern. The Honky-tonk was always jumping, and it was a nightmare to try to have a conversation, much less plan anything. Cameron swallowed. “Even on my best day, I'm not much of a planner,” she said, telling what would have been recognized by Ava and Harper as a monster fib. “I don't think I'll be much help with Ivy.”

She didn't want to go to Ivy's, because she didn't want to take a chance on jeopardizing Ivy's complicity in her sneaking out to the Honky-tonk occasionally for a little harmless fun. Plus, she didn't want to be alone with Saint.

She wanted everything to go back to pre-kiss, so that she could exist in a happy bubble of admiration, and crushing on Saint from afar.

“Yeah, but you kissed me. You have to go with me.”

Cameron stared into his eyes. “That's not how one slight momentary lip-to-lip engagement works, and I'll remind you that you kissed me first. None of which implies a future IOU.”

“Sure it does. We're a team now.”

They couldn't be a “team.” She didn't have that much willpower. And she knew willpower was very important in meeting one's goals.

“I don't think it's a good idea,” she said, stating the obvious on many levels.

“Oh, it's never a good idea to go out to Ivy's. That's why I'm taking you for backup.”

She saw his point. Poison Ivy's gals were pretty poisonous themselves—not to mention that Judy and Ivy were the closest thing to blood enemies there could be. She'd heard a whisper that Judy and Ivy's bad blood went way back, further back, even, than Judy's being jealous of Ivy over Steel, which was just the tip of the iceberg. Judy wanted to grow the town, and Ivy didn't, preferring to keep Hell man-friendly, rough, and tough, a lawless paradise for men looking for a place to forget, to lose themselves in a wild time. Which made Ivy very rich.

Judy wanted to clean Hell up, and not just because she was its mayor. She genuinely didn't see the benefit of Ivy's business model. In Judy's opinion, Ivy's place attracted a reputation Hell didn't need. Judy wanted families and eligible bachelors and bachelorettes. A modern-day chicken house of sorts didn't fit with Judy's vision of Hell.

They were also competitive over the matter of their hair: Ivy's long, loose tresses silver-blonde over rich brown, sexy and beautiful, versus Judy's tall, elegant beauty showcasing a silvery, high-stacked mane of curls and strands. But these details were just window dressing (serious window dressing, to be sure) for the real rivalry.

On a recon mission one day through some papers in Judy's office, Ava, Harper, and Cameron had come across an astonishing document that claimed Judy and Ivy were, in fact, first cousins. They'd hardly been able to believe it, but there it was. So the war between them was Hatfield and McCoy, with bad blood between their families. Ivy's roadside establishment for men on the outskirts of town stuck in Judy's craw like no other. But a two-lane road was all that separated the two women, Hell proper on Judy's side, the Honky-tonk just outside city limits on Ivy's side, though still under the demesne of Hell.

Ivy would have liked nothing more than to nip off one of the Outlaws, one of the men Judy considered Hell's and well out of Ivy's clutches. Steel wasn't safe, and when he got called out to Ivy's Honky-tonk in the capacity of sheriff, he always took his deputies and sometimes an Outlaw or two for safety's sake.

Saint was no safer. Ivy would get a charge out of siccing her girls on the big, handsome SEAL. Cameron took a deep breath.

“I'll go. On one condition.”

He grinned, slow and sexy. “Name it.”

She tried not to notice all the hot sex appeal being aimed at her. “You can't bring up that I gave you a friendly peck. Ever again. You kissed me, I kissed you, it was harmless.” Not exactly, but it sounded brave—or at least she hoped it did.

He smiled. Ruffled her springy ponytail. “Come on, Red. If I didn't tease you about that kiss, I wouldn't get to see your freckles light up.”

Great. This was going to be a nightmare.

“The problem with this town is that there's not enough kissing. A lot would be solved if there was more smooching and less yakking. Kiss me, gorgeous. We'll start a new trend of make love, not gossip, in Hell.”

Her eyes went wide. “I can't.”

“Sure you can. You put your lips right here—”

She backed up a step. “No, I mean, I—no. I had a brain cramp when I kissed you before, Saint, not a loss of common sense.”

“Oh, I see. That's what we're going to call it. A ‘brain cramp.' ” He laughed out loud, and passersby walking past them to the shops turned and smiled at them.

If he liked seeing her freckles light up, they were surely on fire now. “I'm going.”

She hopped in her truck. He gave her a salute.

“I'll pick you up at nightfall. We'll head out to Ivy's, see if we can stir up a little trouble.”

Cameron nodded, pulled out of her parking space. Drove away, her heart racing just a bit. Her well-ordered life was a little less orderly now, and it was all her fault.

The first impulsive thing she'd done in years, and Saint didn't seem to have any plans to let her forget it.

It was obvious to Saint that the sexy little redhead was teeing him up, the same way Ava had worked Trace over. Of the three new girls to town, Cameron was by far the biggest daredevil. Harper had her wild streak too, but her having a young son kept her from too much trouble, at least so far. Saint was of the opinion that sometimes still, quiet waters were the ones that secretly wanted most to experience raging waves of wildness, but so far Harper had kept any waves to herself. Judy was the queen of making waves, and she'd looked far too pleased when kissing had been brought up. Cameron's freckles had been a dead giveaway to anyone who cared to look. They'd practically been sparks of flame.

It was so darn sexy when she did that. Hell, he longed to turn those freckles hot himself. No doubt they were all over her body, a tantalizing thought he'd like to explore.

But that was a fire he wasn't even going to try to start.

Yeah, Judy'd placed her bet squarely on Cameron's being the one to break through into bullfighting, and that meant she had to have a mentor.

That mentor would be him, of course.

It was a halfway tempting idea, but he didn't want to mentor anybody in anything, certainly not one of the Hell's Belles. That was Judy's boat, and she could float it all by herself. He wasn't going to get caught the way Trace had. Once you'd seen the game played, you had only yourself to blame if you got burned.

But Cameron was darling and sexy, and just his type, so it wasn't easy to pass up the temptation. Still, he didn't need a woman in his life. A woman would pretty much mess up his solitude, and there was little solitude in Hell, anyway. He needed solitude. No one could do tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and not need peace and quiet afterward.

Cameron was not the woman for peace and quiet. No woman was, especially not a woman who was tight with Mayor Judy, and no one would doubt that statement. Look what Ava had done to Trace, after all. There Trace had been, a happy man secure in the mission of making the Hell's Outlaws Training Center a viable business. Then Judy tossed Ava into his life like a well-thrown bomb, and Trace had never been the same.

Obviously Trace was happy about it now—but getting there had been a questionable road strewn with potholes. No sane man wanted that.

But that kiss Cameron had given him—and that sweet, sexy ass of hers—destroyed him. Oh, Judy was good, there was no question. She'd picked her team with precision, one for each of them. Trace, Saint, Declan—they were all marked men.

Kissing booth, my eye.

That was a Mayor Judy plan if he'd ever heard one. The idea for the kissing booth had blossomed in Judy's brain two years ago, when she'd first hit upon the idea for the Hell parade. The parade idea he'd fully supported. Revenue, notoriety, a chance to show that Hell was something more than a hot, dusty backwater of a town of hardscrabble
residents—sure,
he endorsed that plan. The Hell's Belles would get a chance to strut their stuff, and Hell would look like a family-friendly place, though it really wasn't. Not yet.

But the kissing booth idea hadn't gotten off the ground the first year of the parade, mainly due to lack of time and organization. Plus, the members of Judy's Hell's Belles team had been new, and learning how to be a team.

This year, however, would be more successful. What would bring more visitors than pretty girls lined up for kisses?

He didn't want Cameron in a booth kissing every loser that found his way to Hell. He didn't inspect why he didn't want her kissing losers when he wasn't offering any concrete reason why she shouldn't do exactly as she pleased. Judy had a win-win going with her idea, now that it looked like it might actually get off the ground.

But since he was a chairman of the committee, he didn't want it getting too
far
off the ground.

Which made him something of a selfish rat bastard, caught between the cheese he professed not to want and the trap he certainly didn't want snapping his neck into a dating noose. More particularly, a matrimonial noose.

Like Trace. Who was pretty happy about the noose or trap, whichever analogy you preferred, that now took up nightly residence in his bed.

Saint sighed. “I wouldn't mind Cameron in my bed,” he said out loud, pulling into the training center. Trace met him at his truck, a smile on his face.

“So. A date with Cameron tonight, is it?” Trace said.

“A date?”

“Heard you two were cozy at Redfeather's. And that there was some smooching going on. You old dog.” Trace laughed as he ambled toward the barn holding a saddle. “Speaking of dogs, I appreciate you keeping an eye on Prince. Or maybe it was Prince keeping an eye on you, if gossip is to be believed. We heard all about the cupcake fiasco. How you went from a knee to the groin, to kissing Cameron is a story you'll have to share around the booth.” Trace seemed to find his comment hilarious.

Saint followed him. “The greased lightning known as the grapevine in Hell is incorrect on all levels.”

“I don't care. The story is good, so don't ruin it for us.”

“ ‘Us'?” The plural sounded a bit ominous.

“Declan and me. And the sheriff. Jimmy Merrill, and a few of the other guys,” he said, naming some of the town elders. “If you last the summer, it'll be a miracle, now that lips have been locked.”

“Lips were in no way locked. It was a friendly peck,” Saint said, same as he'd told Declan.

“Declan said it was a good minute,” Trace said. “Too bad you couldn't stay on that long when you were riding bulls.”

Declan clearly had embellished the story. “It was nothing like that. Friendly peck between friends, nothing more.”

“This is awesome. Methinks you protest too much, old friend.” Trace went whistling into a stall, clearly enjoying the town version of the story and not interested in the truth.

“Judy put me in charge of the kissing booth,” he called after Trace. “As a married man, I think it would be more reputable if you manned that battle station.”

“You're on your own, brother,” Trace called back. “I'm trying to get Ava pregnant, and it's taking up all my attention.”

Saint went to the stall. “You guys are trying to have a baby?”

Trace nodded. “As hard as I possibly can.”

“Trying as in with no birth control? Or trying as in practicing real hard? Running in the rain with rubbers on, as it were.”

“We're definitely trying to get pregnant.” Trace looked so happy Saint was envious for a moment. “But the practicing is surely going to help us hit a bull's-eye any day now.”

“Does Judy know? It would kind of mess up her team, wouldn't it? Ava, Cameron, and Harper?”

Trace eyed him. “Ava's mine now. Not Judy's. We're no longer under the auspices of our favorite town mayor.”

Saint sank onto a hay bale. “I didn't know there was such a thing as not being under Judy's auspices.” He shook his head. “You and Judy have been best friends for years. If you can break free, so can I.”

“Sure. Just takes a wedding ring, buddy.”

Saint raised a brow. “Maybe I just say to hell with Judy instead.”

Trace laughed. “Good luck with that.”

Saint had known what he'd said was stupid the moment he said it. Judy was only relaxing on Trace because she wanted babies in Hell, wanted it to grow. “Cameron's her new big star at the moment. She'd kill me if I knocked her up.”

“Whoa, buddy.” Trace wheeled around to stare at him. “Where did that come from?”

“I don't know. I guess I was thinking out loud.” Saint didn't know why he'd said such a dumb thing. It was as if his brain had gone on lockdown.

Getting Cameron pregnant was so far from his list of possible activities he wasn't sure why the idea had even circulated in his brain at all.

“That must have been a helluva kiss to get you thinking about babies,” Trace said, his eyes huge. “You have my sympathy. Judy's going to kill you.”

He went off whistling, leaving Saint annoyed with himself. Annoyed with Trace, and Judy, and Hell in general, which could never, ever mind its own business.

But mostly, he couldn't wait to pick Cameron up tonight, even if their first big date would be a cruise to the worst side of Hell.

“I've made a list,” Cameron said a few hours later as she hopped into his camo-painted truck. “A comprehensive list of everything we might think about doing if we're going to pull off the biggest, baddest kissing booths anyone has ever seen.”

Saint closed his eyes for a second before pulling away from the small Honeysuckle Bungalow. It was owned by Trace, but Cameron and Harper lived there now. Ava had been a roommate, but her marriage to Trace had left the Belles with an empty room. He glanced over at Cameron, trying not to drink her in and make everything more awkward than it already was between them. She had her springy, long, red locks tied up in a high ponytail, and she had on a blue and white polka-dot dress, the dots so small as to be barely noticeable unless you were staring at her, as he was. Tiny spaghetti straps kept the dress on her body by not much more than air. For a man like Saint who'd seen a lot of ugly things, this much sweetness in his truck was practically mind-boggling. He forced his mind back to business. “A list.”

Her eyes bounced to his, then back to the pad she was holding like a good-luck charm. “We have to be organized. There's a lot to get ready.”

He didn't want to make the biggest, baddest booths anyone had ever dreamed up in their small town. The only kissing he wanted to think about involved Cameron's sweet lips meeting his. “What are the funds being raised for this year?”

“The committee apparently wants to build a school. An elementary school.”

“We don't have any kids in Hell. In fact, kids don't belong in Hell.”

“True enough—for now. But the committee believes that may change in the future.”

The committee consisted of Mayor Judy; Sheriff Steel Durant; Dr. Ann Chandler, who took care of the various medical needs in town; Dr. Jack Turner, the vet; Jimmy Merrill, who owned the hardware store and a small grocery; Madame Chen, who owned the florist shop; and Hattie Hanover, who ran the local restaurant where
good
meals were served. Not like Stephen's—but then again, you couldn't wind down with a beer at Hattie's. “So Judy's really counting on Ava and Trace to start a population boom.”

“The possibility got the committee thinking, but they've also had some inquiries from folks from the big city who are looking for some peace and quiet.”

He laughed out loud. “They won't find peace and quiet in Hell. And what would we name this elementary school? Hell Elementary?”

Cameron closed her notepad. “You know, you don't have to help with this kissing booth project. I can do it myself.”

“I'm a helpful guy. Happy to help.”

“Sure. Just so you can cut to the front of the line.”

“The front of what line?”

“The lines at the kissing booths.”

“Oh.” He shook his head. “I doubt I'll be in any line.”

“You're not a fan of kissing?”

He glanced at her. “I like kissing
you
.”

She shrugged. “Declan says he's not even sure you like women.”

“What?”
Saint let out a guffaw. “When did he say that?”

“Today.” Cameron's eyes were serious as she studied him. “The friendly pecks came up, and I said things had been a little awkward between us after that, and Declan said, no way, that he didn't think you were really into women, that was all. That you didn't date, hadn't in years. In fact, couldn't remember you ever talking about a woman. Said he had to fix you up for proms in high school because you never wanted to ask a girl to go.”

“I'm going to kill him,” Saint muttered under his breath.

All he wanted to do was kiss her again and see if her lips had really been as soft and sweet as he remembered. The third time would surely be the charm; or maybe it was three strikes and he'd be out. Either way, he was dying to hold her and kiss her for hours—no more of this “peck” crap.

But Cameron had mentioned the
A
word: “awkward.” For a guy, that was bad, a real stop sign. A Go Slow sign.
Damn.

So stuck between a rock and a hard place—and with a buddy trying to make him sound like some kind of deliberate eunuch—Saint said nothing.

“Does Ivy know we're coming?” Cameron asked, changing the subject, for which Saint was grateful.

“I thought a sneak attack was best.”

“Why?”

He felt her looking at him curiously. “How many times have you been out to Ivy's?”

“Once or twice,” she said, too casually. “I actually think it's fun. But I understand the bad blood, so I don't visit often.”

“Wise choice.” He knew she was fibbing, but who was he to judge? He just hoped she hadn't found any men to kiss on more than an occasional basis at the Honky-tonk. He turned into the parking lot across the two-lane county road from Ivy's establishment.

She opened the door and popped out.

“Hang on. We need a plan.”

“A plan?” She peered back in the truck at him. “Are you afraid?”

Saint laughed out loud. “Afraid of what?”

“I'm not sure. Women?”

Oh, great. Declan had gotten in her head with his stupid story. “Damn it, no.”

“Then what's the problem?”

“Why does there have to be a problem if I just want to plan my attack?” A SEAL never executed any maneuver, or, for that matter, anything, without a plan. “Get back in the damn truck and let me think.”

She peered at him again. “Will it take long?”

“No!”

Cameron shook her head, seeming to consider making a “plan” as wasted time and effort. Her ponytail bobbed as she got back in, staring at him. “Why is everyone so afraid of Ivy?”