Texas Kissing (37 page)

I gave him an incredulous look.

“In one of those skirts like they used to wear in the sixties, all tight on your ass. And a tight blouse with lots of buttons undone.”

I kicked him under the table. His jokey, I-don’t-take-anything-seriously attitude was infuriating...and exactly what I needed.

“And maybe we could get you some of them glasses with the little horns—the big black ones?” He made a noise that was halfway between
mmm
and a growl. “And you could put your hair up in a bun—”

I crossed my arms. “Oh, you’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?”

“And stockings and heels. Big heels. And you can introduce me to all the city folk you work with.”

“And how am I going to explain a cowboy?”

“I won’t be a cowboy, by then. I’ll be something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something physical. Construction, maybe? A construction worker.”

I imagined him in a hard hat and—what did construction workers wear? I couldn’t picture the clothes, so I just imagined him stripped to the waist.
Mmm.
I took a deep breath, feeling a little calmer. “Thank you.”

He stared right back at me and squeezed my hand. “You’re welcome.”

***

It was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived back at Gold Lake and pulled up outside Calahan’s motel,
The Stallion Inn.
His car was plastered with road dust. “He’s going to be pissed,” muttered Bull as we got out.

On the other hand, getting me as a witness would be a coup for Calahan. If it meant my uncle went to jail, that was the sort of thing careers were made of. I figured he’d forgive the borrowing of his car. We strolled inside. There was a white horse in the field next to the parking lot—presumably, the stallion they’d named the place after. It ambled over as we passed by it. I stopped to let it nuzzle my palm. Funny, how I’d gotten to like horses.

When we got to Calahan’s room, the door was ajar. That set off a warning bell in my mind, but my whole body was feeling warm and slack with happiness. I’d lost my edge.

Bull pushed the door wide and walked right in. I walked in behind him and almost collided with him when he suddenly stopped. It was at about that point that I wondered why the door was open, but by then it was far too late.

Calahan was in the corner of the room, tied to a chair with duct tape over his mouth. Three men were standing around him, pointing guns at us. I recognized all of them—my uncle’s men.

“Hello, Tessa,” said one of them.. “Time to go home.”

Lily

They waved Bull over to a chair that was back-to-back with Calahan’s. When he resisted, they put a gun to his head.

“Please, Bull,” I said, feeling sick. “Just do it.”

“Yeah,” said one of the guys, a young one with close-cropped dark hair. “Listen to her and you’ll get out of this alive.”

Bull looked as if he didn’t believe that for a second and neither did I. But we didn’t have any choice. He sat down and they tied him to the chair. He and Calahan had matching, murderous glares.

I was doing my best to stay strong, but I knew it was over. I was glad they’d tied Bull to a chair because he had no chance against three armed guys. They’d kill anyone who got in their way.

“You’re fucking lucky you’re the boss’s niece,” said the eldest, who seemed to be the leader. “Because if you weren’t, we’d be beating the hell out of you for what you did to Antonio. As it is, I’ll settle for you playing nice all the way back to New York. You got that straight? Now we’re going to walk out of here and get in the car.” He nodded towards the remaining man, who had a shock of blond curls. “And Georgio here will stay with these two and fucking execute them if you try and run. Got that?”

I didn’t miss the look he exchanged with Georgio. Bull and Calahan were dead the second I was safely in the car. But there was nothing I could do except pray I was wrong. “Okay,” I croaked. I eyed the door to the bathroom. “Can I, uh,
go
before we go?”
Maybe there’s a window.
Or I still had my gun in my backpack. I could go in there and come out  shooting and—

The eldest one snatched my backpack from me. “You think I’m fucking stupid? You can piss yourself for all I care. Get in the car.”

The eldest one and the dark haired one started to hustle me out the door while the blond one strolled towards Bull and Calahan. I looked over my shoulder at Bull, my eyes filling with tears. I knew this was the last time I’d ever see him. He was sitting there stoically, staring right back at me, telling me silently that it was going to be okay.

And then the door closed and he was gone.

Bull

The blond-haired asshole started screwing a silencer onto his gun as soon as the door was closed. I’d figured they were going to execute us both but I wasn’t overjoyed to be proven right. “You damn idiot,” I muttered to Calahan over my shoulder. “You just let them walk in here and take you? Where was your
gun?”

“
Mmn mny arr,”
mumbled Calahan through the duct tape. He sounded pissed.

“What?”

The blond-haired asshole helpfully ripped the duct tape off Calahan’s mouth.

“
In my car,”
Calahan snarled. “My gun was
in my car.”

“Oh,” I said, a little abashed.

“You two got any preference?” asked the asshole, cocking the gun.

“Him first,” we both said at the same time.

The asshole shook his head tiredly. “You,” he said to me, and used the silencer to knock my hat off my head. Then he pressed the end of the silencer into my forehead. I tried to think up a plan, but nothing came to mind.

The asshole’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Think, Bull!

But I’ve never been much of a thinker. So I decided to just be myself.

“Hey,” I said. “You know why they
really
call me Bull?”

The asshole rolled his eyes and leaned in to listen. I lunged forward and head butted him as hard as I could. He crumpled to the floor.

“‘Cause my mama said I got a head made of nothing but bone,” I told his unconscious body. I started trying to get out of the ropes. Behind me, Calahan was doing the same. After a few seconds of straining, I lost my patience.
They’re getting away!
“Don’t you have a fucking FBI special-issue knife or something for shit like this?” I snarled.

“They’re ropes, cowboy, aren’t you meant to be good with ropes?”

I felt myself getting angrier...which was just what I needed. We both heaved and growled and finally yelled. Calahan’s ropes snapped and he gave a shout of victory. A split-second later, my chair tore apart into chunks of wood, which quieted him down. We stood there panting and, for a second, grinning. Then we remembered ourselves.

“Pretty boy asshole,” I spat as I pulled the remaining ropes off me.

“Dumb hick,” he spat in return.

I grabbed my hat off the floor and shoved it on my head. “Call for backup,” I told him and ran for the door.

Outside, I headed for Calahan’s car. They were well ahead of me, but there was only one road they could take and—

Shit.
They’d slashed the tires on Calahan’s car, just to be sure.

I looked desperately around the parking lot, my chest tightening in fear. And then my eyes fell upon the field next door.

Lily

They’d put me in the back with the dark-haired one. The older one was driving. We had to go through the center of town to reach the highway and traffic was heavy so we’d slowed almost to a crawl. The driver slapped the wheel in frustration.

I stared out of the window at the town I’d never gotten to know. Just as I was finally starting to fit in. Just as I’d found someone. Was Bull even alive, or had they already killed him?

The guy driving pulled out his phone and dialed. I knew immediately who he was calling. “We got her,” he told my uncle. He listened for a second. “He wants to talk to you.”

He passed the phone back to the dark-haired guy, who passed it to me. I braced myself for a voice I hadn’t heard in two years.

“Tessa,” it said with honeyed venom.

I wasn’t sure whether he was going to have me killed, when I got back to New York, or keep me imprisoned in the house and force me to testify in his defense. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

“Fuck you,” I said instinctively. Tears were flooding my eyes. I threw the phone back at the dark-haired guy and stared out of the window. I didn’t want them to see me crying. I stared at the street, at passing cars, at the driver-side mirror—

And saw something unbelievable.

Coming down the street behind us, riding between the lines of cars, was Bull on a white horse.

“You guys are in so much trouble,” I told them.

They followed my gaze and then twisted around to look out of the rear window. The dark-haired guy pulled out his gun, glanced around at the hundreds of witnesses and nervously holstered it again. The driver honked his horn, but there was nowhere for the traffic in front of us to go.

“He’s just one guy,” the driver said. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Yeah,” I told them. “But he doesn’t know that.”

That was what was so great about Bull. Sure, he was arrogant and pushy, with an ego the size of Mars. But that meant he never let anything get in his way. He simply couldn’t conceive of an obstacle big enough to stop him...and so nothing could.

And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.

The horse grew closer. Close enough that we could see the snarl on Bull’s face.

The dark-haired guy bailed, grabbing my wrist and pulling me with him. Out of the car and across the street, into the first store we came to.