Their Ex's Redrock Midnight (Texas Alpha) (7 page)

“I know you’re working, but just listen,” Tess said.

Rusty muttered back, and Tess took that as the okay to spill.

“Rusty, Cabe’s moved out. I know this because Cabe got Vincent to help him move his things here to our big storage. But Cabe’s not staying here. I didn’t get that part, I just know Vincent would have asked me if Cabe was staying.”

Rusty felt conflicting emotions over all that, and the ability to not voice them was not helping as hope and fear kind of blossomed in her chest. He’d left her. God, he’d actually left his wife.

“Vincent told me not to take any calls from Vega or any in-persons either,” Tess shared, to Rusty’s mute breathing. “Not that I would anyway. You know me and her do
not
get along.”

That was the truth, Rusty thought gratefully, putting her mind into another place from freaking out. It had nothing to do with her and Cabe either, it was just Vega dissed Tess a few times. Once at a WTSF get-together when Vega had tried to flirt with Vincent right there where Tess could see, then once in Cha-Cha’s Vega was in there and she’d told Tess, “All the plus sizes are all on sale, hon.”

She and Tess had both seen red over that one.

“I gotta go, but I knew you’d wanna know, babe,” Tess said, then the line went silent. Tess knew Rusty shouldn’t talk with a customer in her cab. But Rusty felt pretty guilty not informing Tess of her renewed and further interest in Cabe for real.

But she just couldn’t.

Because if she did, then she’d have to share everything. Then they’d have to analyze everything. Thereby making it real and making Rusty have to think about what she was doing and how stupid it might be falling in lust with a man that was still so tangled.

“Thanks. The rest is your tip.”

Rusty nodded as her fare stepped out and another got in behind him. This one was a local, a woman, and a gossip. So that was when Rusty heard more about Cabe, without it being from him, because Yvonne of Beauty World Cuts and Nails told her the hottest new gossip as Rusty drove her to her salon because her car was in the shop.

“Vega Santos was doing a car salesman from one town over. Heard he was hot,
but
still. Vega got beat up, and now she wants back home with her husband. I heard Cabe Santos is not having it. Finally. How such a
hot
hunk of man can let his wife go all nympho and he still keeps her, I’ll never know,” Yvonne said.

Looking in the rearview with her heart leaped up into her throat, Rusty could see Yvonne studying her pink jewel-studded nails. Ready to spill more as her chartreuse lipstick-coated lips pursed. Rusty cringed, half hating what would come and half breathless to hear more.

“Tammy saw that Cabe in Richard and Son Law Office.” Yvonne nodded in the rearview with her slightly pudgy lower chin spreading out in an unkind way. “You know what that means,” she declared. Then she mouthed the word “divorce.”

Rusty sucked in a breath, feeling very weird, as if she might faint or leap into cheers at the same time. The end of a marriage was tragic ... the end of Cabe’s marriage was—what
she
wanted.

Thank God, Yvonne was getting out of her taxi. “See you, hon! You come in for your nails here and I’ll give you a discount,” Yvonne said, waving as she walked to the front door of her salon.

Rusty left quickly after that, trying to get her mind back on work and away from thinking any more about Cabe and about whether he was going to come back and give her some more bossy sex. But twenty minutes later found her thinking about if she should invest in some new sexy lingerie while she was trawling Redrock for another fare when another strange person jumped into her cab. It ended up being more about Cabe in the end too. But first a mysterious adventure ensued.

“Rusty Jean, I need you to hit the pedal like
now
, babe,” Finn O’Neil ordered. And it was not a request but a heavy-handed demand that had her startled, but doing as he commanded. She saw a big man with a comb-back head of black hair that had to be in a ponytail, which was typical Indian style. But what was weird about him was that he was an Indian wearing a sports coat over jeans and a button-up, plus he was big and she’d never seen him before. His broad face turned to look at her cab—

“
Don’t
look at him, babe. Just go,” Finn ordered.

Rusty did what Finn told her with her mind whirling on why Finn was evading a big and mean-looking Indian dude. Couldn’t be good, she decided, checking her security panel, which she’d not really spent any time getting to know better yet.

Finn’s really hot electric-green eyes looked at her in her rearview as he leaned forward and clasped her shoulder over the seat and through the new partition window Cabe had installed, while the masculine smell of Irish spring wafted her way.

“I’m thinking cab drivers are like a doctor or lawyer, honey. They ‘no comprende’ anything asked about their customers.”

Rusty nodded enthusiastically to this, as it was her new rules after opening her mouth to Cabe that first time he’d entered her cab. But still—“O’Neil, that very scary-looking Indian dude is not going to come around and ask me anything, is he?”

“Shit,” Finn cussed with his hand leaving her shoulder as he sat back. Looking in her rearview mirror, Rusty got pretty worried at the look on Finn’s handsome but rugged features. She could be in trouble. “
Take
me, back,” he ordered suddenly and sharply.

It startled her into gripping the wheel in a death grip.
Why, what, and how
leaped through her thoughts as she swerved and swung the taxi to park by the back fence of Kingston Ranch behind Redrock. She turned in her seat, glaring at Finn. “Are you crazy?” she demanded.

“Babe,” he said firmly. “Go. Back.” He did this leaning forward, with his exceptional green eyes intense and doing weird things inside her.

She bowled right over his badassness. Tess would be proud of her student. “Why?” she demanded back at him. Then she held up her hand when he opened his mouth. “If it’s anything about you sacrificing yourself to keep me safe by going back into the clutches of that scary dude, then,
no
... ain’t happening.”

“Clutches?” Finn growled at her gruffly. Then he sat back with sharp motions, digging in the front pocket of his jeans to pull out his cell, she saw, while he was grumbling, “He better have a handle on his woman.”

That was how she found out more about Cabe, like he’d told Finn about them ... of all people to tell.

That was also how she got her ass throw into protective custody.

J
ustice Walkinghorse? Was there ever a hotter man in law enforcement, Rusty wondered with her gaze traveling over his cowboy hat, buzz cut, past his aviators, sharp nose, red bluff jaw without the red part. Then she wandered over his tan sheriff’s shirt, tight across his broad chest, to his skintight blue jeans packing a gun on one side and badge on the other, and then down to study his cowboy boots.

They looked snake-skinned, like a pair she had, and wasn’t it too damn bad about Justice’s age. She and Tess had lamented the fact he was six years younger than them on several occasions, after seeing his fine ass saunter through town, on the occasions the town needed a federal marshal.

Normally she could spend some time Justice gazing. Now wasn’t one of them.

“No freaking way I’m going into protective custody with you or anyone else, Justice. I need to make money. I’m losing cash just arguing with you and the mysterious Finn, who can get a lawman out at his beck and call.”

Rusty glared at Finn, who was leaning negligently against the front hood of her taxi. His hotter-than-shit mouth bracketed by a black goatee was not smiling as his eyes narrowed back at her. “Need-to-know basis law enforcement and you are not going to know any more than you already do,” Finn declared, in his badass bossy voice.

“Which is squat,” Rusty declared right back at him, with her hand on her hip as she stomped one of her boots in the dirt. “I don’t know anything to tell
any
one!”

“Ma’am,” Justice said, and she felt his warm hand on her arm. Ohmygod.

“Don’t—” she hissed, jerking from his touch. That did not affect her. “Call me ma’am. I’m not old enough to be a ma’am.”

“Rusty Jean—” Justice started, then Finn overrode him.

“Babe, you’ve got to let me try to protect you. I’d never live with myself anything happened to you,” he growled, and it rumbled right into her flesh and over her.

Aw man ... She tried to look mean ... failed, and then tried again. Then she threw out past the lump in her throat, “You’ve got to give me something.”

“There’s bad shit trying to work its way into town, Rusty Jean,” Justice said, and his voice wasn’t as deep as Finn or Cabe’s, but he was getting there. “Some people are trying to stop it.” Justice’s cowboy hat tilted toward Finn.

Finn didn’t move, didn’t twitch, and did not blink his eyes or make any indication it was him as she sucked in a breath and whispered, “I need the money, Finn.”

Then he moved with a growled curse and she was hugged up against all that was Finn O’Neil and that meant everything that was fine about a man. “Fuck, I’m sorry, babe,” he said. “Shit thinking on my part, jumping into your cab like that.”

Rusty kind of cupped his hard waist with an even littler squeeze. “So okay, you were getting away from the bad guy.”

Finn’s knuckles came under her chin, pushing her gaze up to his. “If you won’t go with Justice into protective custody that leaves me calling Cabe, babe.”

She blinked into his mesmerizing green eyes. “Why Cabe?”

Well, she found out.

Twenty minutes later, she was up against her taxi with Cabe’s long, hard body pressed the full length of her. Finn and Justice were gone.

“Now it’s my fucking duty to stick to you,” Cabe said with a wicked smirk, while she fumed. It seemed Finn’s solution was passing her off to Cabe, which was when she knew Finn knew about them. And Cabe seemed ready to give up his entire life to “stick” to her.

She grabbed Cabe’s tee shirt by the side of his waist and tugged. “You know something about all this mystery, don’t you?” she accused. She saw instantly by the intensity coming into his brown eyes that he did as his lips outright lied to her.

“Nope, nothing. But Finn says you need looked after, I listen.”

She tugged his tee again with his eyes watching her lips. “It was protect, not look after like a little girl.” Something about saying that to Cabe—the minute it left her lips, a very sexual vibe rose up between them.

“I like protecting my little girl, boo.” His mouth came close to the side of her face as he dipped closer. “I like doing a lot of things, little girl, like feeling your hard nipples on my chest.” She so should argue with him about not to call her that, as she quivered against him. What was wrong with her?

Well, really, her nipples
were
hard against his chest.

“Captain, I can’t take your life away like this,” she whispered.

Suddenly, she was transported upward, until she naturally hooked her legs over Cabe’s hips and clutched his hard shoulders. His hands under her held her tight. “Take me away from it, Rusty.”

She looked into his eyes and started messing with the hair on the back of his shoulders. Her inner thighs quivered because her entire body knew how close the position was to hot sex and amazing fulfillment. But she ignored her constant Cabe arousal.

“You help me during the prime cab customer times and I will help you do whatever it is you do.”

Well, it ended up being a good thing Cabe stuck to her, because later that day three very mean-looking Indians, with the one she’d seen before in the middle of them, were outside Redrock eyeing her cab up.

Cabe’s large hand pressed to the top of her head. “Stay down, boo,” he ordered.

Cabe looked at Ian Runningtree standing by two even-rougher-looking Indians as they scrutinized the several cabs outside Redrock’s main entrance. He could feel them looking for Rusty and it pissed him off. He knew Runningtree wasn’t a good man, because two of Runningtree’s young girlfriends had sought asylum from him at WTSF.

Cabe could tell by looking at the tall man beside Runningtree that he was worse trouble, and while he didn’t know what Finn had been up to with these guys ... he could guess. Guns, drugs, or most likely it could be human trafficking. Just the thought that Rusty could be on their radar to seek out and ask questions chilled him to the bone as he slowly pulled away from the main entrance without picking up a customer.

Good thing Rusty hadn’t fought him when he’d told her he was driving her taxi.

“You know them?” Rusty asked from her scrunched position on the seat next to him.

Cabe nodded, but kept watching the rearview when Runningtree’s meanest-looking companion kept watching Rusty’s empty cab pull away.

“You’re staying at Rowdie’s with me,” Cabe ordered. “There’ll be no fucking going home, unless I’m there.”

“So what you know, it isn’t good news,” Rusty surmised, then she added, sweet as hell, “Won’t it mess up your thing leaving Vega? Me being with you.” She paused while he let her straighten out of her scrunch. “Us being seen together,” she whispered.

He grabbed her nape, curling her toward him. “So sweet, I feel it deep,” he muttered, then he glanced from the road into her worried but widening eyes. “We got each other’s back, right?” he asked, and she nodded. “That means we’ll have to deal with it.”

She scooted closer and pressed her hand on his chest. “I just don’t want to make it harder on you, Captain.”

He chose a bit of levity. “Boo, the harder the better to fuck your sweet, sweet pussy.”

She smiled a little, but it didn’t go to her eyes as she petted him, and he liked her touch as she said, “Okay, I’ll take that as a promise.” Her gaze lingered on his mouth, and he felt it. “I’m glad you have my back, Captain.”

She sighed and snuggled into him while Cabe wondered about a woman that didn’t tear him apart for his decisions, just sweetly accepted them. This thing between them was burrowing deep into him and the feelings he’d been having of “rightness” kept getting more solid and sure.