Their Ex's Redrock Dawn (Texas Alpha Biker) (12 page)

***

C
arly saw the large bouquet of flowers coming toward her, and her eyes widened. The young messenger guy didn’t look as happy as the gift of flowers suggested when he clunked the vase onto her desk.

“Long way out here,” the delivery guy muttered, then he straightened. “Carly Oliver? Those are for you.”

“Hey,” Carly called to the guy’s already retreating back. “You know we don’t accept flowers here; it’s too dangerous for the women we are sheltering.”

The man didn’t turn back, but he shrugged. “Boss’s orders,” he semi-yelled, and then he pushed through the front doors of the office.

Carly swiveled her rolling desk chair and frowned at the elaborate bouquet of flowers from roses to lilies; it was an expensive collection. Then she snatched the card, intending to call the floral shop and let them know how dangerous it was to do this, and to please not do it again. But her gaze caught on a name she knew well and now despised.

Rick.

Seeing his name set her off worse, because he knew not to send anything to her job. But it was just like Rick, not listening and not taking her job or the security it needed seriously. She also noticed the flower shop was from the next town over, but her phone rang before she could wonder why.

Hoping it was Zeb, she grabbed it quickly without looking, and then she heard a voice she didn’t want to hear. “Carly, you get my flowers?” Rick asked.

Carly squinted out into the office area—Cabe was in the back but the front was empty—as she considered how loud to get. “Rick, you can’t send flowers here—” she started to exclaim.

Right over the top of her, Rick said, “You don’t remember, do you? Baby, it’s our anniversary, and I
am
trying.”

Carly’s mouth sputtered as her heartbeat did a nervous little flip. Anniversary? For one second she’d really thought she’d forgotten something. “What anniversary?” she hissed lowly.

“Baby, the first time we made love, don’t you remember?” Carly actually felt physically ill. “The candy and the flowers, baby, I am trying. Please come to dinner tonight, please.”

Candy? But more importantly, Carly wanted to scream, “
Why
.”  But instead she blurted, “
Oh
no, Rick, there’s a code red just coming through the door. I have to go!”

Carly cut the call as she nervously swiveled her chair.

“You okay, doll?”

Carly was afraid Cabe could see the fear in her eyes when she turned to look up at him. “I’m ...” she started to lie, then she blurted, “
so
confused, Cabe. God.” She wrenched her fingers through her bangs, while Cabe came around her desk and squatted in front of her.

“Honey, it’s all right. Talk to me,” Cabe said.

Carly shook her head. “We see lots of crazy stuff here, don’t we?” she asked. “Especially married people’s off-the-wall madness, like that one case Vincent worked where that Southern lady with that thick accent from outside Dallas thought her husband was stalking her boyfriend on the side.”

Cabe looked confused, just like Carly felt, and she hurried on, “Or that one where Vincent heard the wife trying to get some gang guys to kill her husband, but Vincent warned him.” Carly paused, while Cabe looked at her like she’d lost her head, then she blurted, “They should have
just
divorced.”

“Yeah, babe,” Cabe muttered.

Carly moved forward out of her chair, making Cabe move back and stand, then she whispered, “I need to do that.” She grabbed her purse and kept her eyes from Cabe. “I-I need the afternoon off.”

Cabe’s hand was warm on her forearm. “Carly, I think I need to go with you,” he said.

“No!” Carly exclaimed, horrified, glancing at him. “I’ll just go see that lawyer you went to,” she muttered.

“I’m not sure what’s going on,” Cabe said. “But you’re a good woman, Carly, and he’s a fool.”

“Thanks,” Carly half exclaimed.

She brushed past Cabe and rounded her desk, then nearly walked into a deliveryman standing there. Carly made a surprised sound.

“Carly Oliver? Delivery,” the guy said, thrusting a heart-shaped box of obvious chocolate candy with a big pink bow on it at her.

Startled, Carly grabbed the candy, then she knew she had to leave before Cabe stalled her, wanting to know more about why she was so upset, so she followed the deliveryman out, telling Cabe over her shoulder, “I’ll be back in the morning. It’ll be okay.”

But she didn’t go to a lawyer ... she needed to go to a lawyer but she didn’t go. Instead, she threw the candy on the front seat of one of WTSF’s trucks and she went to see Tess, while totally forgetting Zeb didn’t want her to leave WTSF without him.

***

Z
eb was extremely pissed, but trying like hell to fight it back so he could think clearly. He knew Vincent was furious too, because an hour ago they’d looked over Carly’s car and found a sliced brake line. Nice, even cut. There was no way it could be a break.

“Why?” Vincent growled. “That leads to the answer.”

Zeb looked out the window—they were in some remote back country. Zeb thought a lot of people wouldn’t know the trails Vincent was driving, kicking up dust.

“Money,” Zeb uttered without a pause. There was no other reason. Vincent glanced at him. “Yeah, I know she’s got money,” Zeb said.

Vincent nodded. “Thing you don’t know, her dad found ways to keep her money away from Shaw, even though she married him.”

Zeb was surprised, but he said, “But does Shaw know that? Carly says she’s never really let Shaw know she had money.”

“Hell,” Vincent uttered. “That’s a hard thing to hide.”

Zeb made a noncommittal sound. “Hear men get crazy for less than losing a house or car in a divorce.”

“As ever, brother,” Vincent agreed.

Then Zeb growled, “We’ve just got to catch the bastard.”

Twenty minutes later, Zeb watched Finn O’Neil, who was some type of vague law enforcement officer. The dude looked rough, from a dusty goatee to dirt-crusted motorcycle boots. What he did not look like was any kind of law enforcement Zeb had ever seen. That meant the dude was serious and probably deep undercover.

Zeb didn’t ask him any personal questions after Vincent introduced them.

“Haven’t got a lot of time, hardass,” Finn said to Vincent. Zeb watched Finn looking up the cliff face of Indian ruins they stood beside. “And you better vouch for two white boys being in one of your tribe’s sacred places.”

Vincent tilted his head, black hat forward, his voice a rough rumble. “Anywhere you’re out here, man, you need my word, you got it.”

Finn’s teeth flashed in a sneer. “Not saying where or what I’m doing, but I get ready to be scalped I’m squalling your name, friend.”

Vincent gave a hard chuckle, then Finn dropped what he was carrying on the hood of Vincent’s truck. Zeb knew sniper rifles intimately, and the one Finn laid on the hood was a .50 caliber Windrunner. It looked like the newest model, and Zeb’s fingers flexed with the desire to feel it in his hands. But he ignored that want.

“Carly Oliver,” Vincent uttered. “Think her husband’s trying to kill her.”

“Shit,” Finn said, wiping his goatee. “Heard you say it on the phone, hearing you say it here is still fucked.”

“What’s your advice?” Vincent asked with a cutoff sound. “Nail that fucker.”

Finn looked at Zeb. “Vincent says you got her back.”

Zeb gave him a look of
no shit
. “I do.”

Finn nodded. “Don’t know her well but I’ll do what I can; however, seeing as I’m caught doing whatever I’m doing, I think you boys need to bring in Justice, our local federal marshal, in on this so we can catch the asshole on audio and get something to put him away with.”

Vincent started to say something, but Finn interrupted, continuing, “I pulled his financials over my phone and they looked jacked. I sent what I had to your secure fax, brother,” he said, nodding to Vincent. “We can run him off, that’s easy ... but—”

Now Zeb interrupted. “That doesn’t catch him.”

“Right,” Finn said, squinting in the harsh desert sunlight at Zeb. “You’re going to have to set him up and keep Carly safe while you’re doing it.”

“I got that last part,” Zeb said.

“But if he’s looking for money, and we all get he is, having his wife leaving him, divorcing him, and taking up with another guy is going to stall him,” Finn said.

“Or speed him up,” Vincent muttered.

Zeb nearly reached a hand out to caress the .50 caliber as he uttered, “Crazy, fucked-up shit.”

“Yeah, happens every day, though,” Vincent said.

“You have to scheme with Justice about getting Shaw to confess on audio or say what he is up to, while you boys figure out the motive and find proof,” Finn said.

Finn shook hands with them both and held Zeb’s a second longer as they chin-nodded. His for saying thanks for Finn’s help, and Finn’s, Zeb guessed, saying he’d help if he could. Then Vincent and he watched Finn disappear into the desert, where they heard a motorcycle rumble and Zeb wondered how Finn carried his sweet .50 caliber on a motorcycle.

On the way back from the meet with Finn, Zeb called Carly to check in and got her voicemail. He went inwardly ballistic.

“Hit it,” he growled at Vincent sharply.

But five minutes later, he was calmed slightly because Vincent got a text from his wife. It said Carly was visiting her and they were going for a drink so she’d be late.

“Told her
not
to damn well leave WTSF without me,” Zeb muttered, feeling the driving need to be on his bike and rolling faster than a truck could go, while he was the not-in-control passenger.

––––––––

A
fter texting Tess she needed to talk to her, Carly found Tess at Rusty Harper’s amazing new gift shop, called the cute name Harper’s Bazaar. Carly was fully intending, when she got there, to blurt out that her cheating husband might be trying to get her hurt or incapacitate her so he could probably get hold of her bank accounts or sell the house to finance his hot new fling. It had to be money ... she knew it
had
to be. Her dad had always warned her that men would try to get it any way they could and she’d better be watchful.

But when Carly grabbed the candy box and clicked her heels up to the gift shop’s front door, she knew she couldn’t tell anyone those horrible suspicions. But she was going to tell them about the affair and about meeting Zeb and the other things Rick was doing, so maybe she could find a way through the awful mess that was her life. However, just looking in the gift shop’s windows had her mesmerized, because Rusty had color-coordinated different sections of the store.

So the front two windows of the store showed a blue side and a green side. Everything in the blue side had some shade of blue in it, from homemade quilts, candles, picture frames, several dolls, to just oodles of knickknacks, and craft items.

It made Carly want to shop and it made the heartache inside her ease as she opened the door and smelled baking cookies and lemon.

Wow, her new favorite hangout.

An hour later, she, Tess, and Rusty were sitting on high stools at Lulu’s with a nearly empty pitcher of margaritas on the round table between them. It was the afternoon, so Lulu’s was thankfully quiet, except for a couple guys sitting at the far end of the bar looking like permanent fixtures.

Carly took a bracing gulp of her margarita, while looking at the big pink bow in front of her where the candy box sat.

“So your asshole gave you that candy? What are you doing with it?” Rusty asked. Both Tess and Rusty had been very supportive and nonjudgmental, which Carly really needed and was grateful for.

“I was thinking about throwing it in his face or something, but Zeb wouldn’t like that.”

“Girl, I cannot wait to meet this badass biker of yours, and I get the smashing the ex’s face into the candy box thing,” Tess said.

“I think this town is cosmic or something,” Rusty declared. “First you and Vincent with the cheating ex’s”—she nodded to Tess—“then me and Cabe with a cheating ex.” She pointed to herself. “Now you, Carly—
a
gain with the cheating ex’s! It’s cosmic,” she declared.

“It makes you believe in fate,” Tess said, while fiddling with her amazing silver wedding band that had a small diamond-crusted eagle on it and still looked chic.

“Fate,” Carly mumbled, and maybe she did it with a little tear. Fate at meeting Zeb. It had to be.

“Both our men’s ex-wives were hot in an irritating and I-wanna-smack-them-down way. But being a beauty queen wannabe ... that is
not
freaking fair,” Rusty declared.

Carly felt Tess grab her hand. “I’ll get Vincent to take you off as a judge.”

Carly squeezed Tess’ hand back. “No, really, that’s not the hardest part.” Sadly, it wasn’t. “She’s got fake boobs for brains, but Zeb didn’t look at her twice so I know he
is
into me.”

“Boobs for brains,” Rusty spurted, and laughed.

“Well, if you change your mind just ask,” Tess said. Then she said, “We have to do this more often, and when Rusty and I go out we usually dress up.”

Rusty nodded. “It’s not slut-worthy, but close.”

Now Carly found herself laughing a little, and it surprised her that she could. “I’d love to do that.”

“Uh oh,” Tess exclaimed from Carly’s right side. “I might have texted Vincent we were going out and he might have told your Zeb, because there’s one really mad-looking man coming through the door that is major smoking hot with just a glance.”

“Uh oh,” Rusty chimed. “Vincent too!”

On an empty stomach Carly might have been a bit tipsy, and she exclaimed, “My badass biker babe! God, he is so hot.” Then she squinted at Zeb’s forced stalk toward her. He looked very lean and mean, in a glaring, hard-jawed way. At the last second, she squeaked, “Uh oh.”

Zeb’s palm smashed the box of chocolates under Carly’s nose. “Your fucking dickwad give you those?” he asked, in a seriously hot, growled voice.

Carly hadn’t seen this side of Zeb, but it was smoking in a dangerous and quiver-worthy way. But then she remembered something ... uh oh ... she wasn’t supposed to leave from work unescorted. She opened her mouth to tell him why she’d done it, but then Zeb blew her away completely, and she was tipsy, so that wasn’t hard.