Their Ex's Redrock Midnight (Texas Alpha) (8 page)

After that, any call Rusty got on her business cell to pick up or let off at Redrock, she said she was too far out to take. So it was slow business, but they got about half a dozen. She’d scoot away from him every time a customer got in, but she’d be right back beside him each time they left her cab.

There were several more-than-interested locals wondering why he was driving her cab. But luckily they couldn’t find a way to come out and ask. Cabe was certain, though, that word would be spreading quickly he was spending time with Rusty.

Rusty was curling a long strand of her rich auburn hair around her finger while gazing out the window, when she asked, “So you moved into Rowdie’s?”

“Yeah, baby,” he said, glancing at her and seeing she had more on her mind, but might be holding back. “So ask it, boo.”

Her long, dark lashes dipped as she glanced sideways at him, and he wished he had a camera to capture the sultry effect with her hair twirl, eyelash dip, and her bare leg propped up on the dash. “How’s Vega taking it?” she whispered the question, not looking at him.

He took the turn onto WTSF’s long drive ... it was now his turn in their deal about the division of time. His belly clenched with unpleasantness, and he wasn’t about to share the sordid details, but out of his mouth came—

“Fucking crying, wailing, threatening to kill herself, and trying to drag me to bed at the same time,” he growled out, remembering the first scene, but not the last one, when he’d told Vega he was divorcing her ass.

He heard Rusty suck in a breath. “Sorry it’s so hard, Cabe,” she told him, now looking at him as her hand squeezed his thigh. “Must make you feel like it’s your fault or something, when someone acts that out of control.”

Jesus.
Cabe inhaled deeply. What was it about Rusty getting inside him and pulling out the parts he had the most trouble dealing with? It wasn’t Vega acting needy and crazed ... or her acting so fake fragile with tears, it was the fucking guilt she tried to lay on him.

“Boo—” It was all he could get past his lips.

She stroked his thigh to his knee and back again. “We all tried that on guys in high school. It’s when a girl learns her best manipulation weapons. Act crazy, tears, threats, or make them feel guilty. Whatever works to get hold of that cool guy you’re crazy about.”

Cabe swallowed hard. “You’re shitting me,” he rasped.

She scooted closer and moved, until he had to lift his arm over her shoulders. She dipped her gaze up to his. “Not shitting you,” she said softly. “I used them all on Finn. Even got him to feel guilty doing it a couple times. Gosh, I remember being so into it I nearly believed it myself ... Believed that I was that upset, when deep inside it was like I was looking out at him and gauging his reactions. Sometimes sucks to be a girl,” she muttered. “We’re kind of evil.”

“She’s trying to push any button she can push?” he asked.

“Yeah, Captain, any one that will get her what she wants. But the funny thing about it is ending up wanting it too much at the same time and it never gives you that golden feeling you’re jonesing for of being with that certain guy you want.”

He stopped the taxi outside of WTSF, put it in park and ground a hand over his face. “Hell, I see girls trying manipulation all the time, boo. I even know Vega’s doing it, but she does it so fucking big, it’s scary.”

“And you feel guilty,” Rusty whispered. “Un-crazy people ... normal and not-addicted people, they feel guilty because they can’t imagine playing such harsh games with anyone, let alone someone they love. So we feel guilty, thinking we must have done wrong or even we should help the poor, destroyed, addicted person, forgive them, and help them.”

“You experienced this,” he asked softly.

Rusty looked down at their fingers intertwined. “My druggy criminal mom would come in and out of my life, throwing guilt with each step, but her sister, my Aunt Clare that raised me, she’d fight hard to not let any of that stick.”

Cabe let out a deep breath. “Your dad?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He was gone before I was born. I don’t think my mom even knew who he was.”

“Boo,” Cabe called softly, then lifted her chin. “I got fostered out of the boys’ home at ten but had to leave Vincent and Sam Blackfoot in there. But my foster mom was like your aunt; she’d fight to keep life as normal as she could.”

“Just wow,” Rusty said, lifting a hand to touch his jaw too. “We have things in common, Captain.”

He moved her hand on his jaw with his slow nodding, then both their hands dropped. “Let me ask you something,” he said slowly. Then he nearly didn’t ask, but he couldn’t help wondering. “You ever think of Finn?” He paused then added what he had to: “You two looked close.”

Her head was already shaking halfway through his words. “My high school epiphany about him was solid, honey. We’ve just kind of known each other a long time without really knowing each other.”

“Say that again,” he demanded, and she opened her mouth, but he added, “honey.”

Her eyes darkened and her lips softened. “Honey,” she whispered. Then she said, “You said ‘she’s trying to drag you to bed.’”

Cabe had never seen her look as vulnerable, and he didn’t even think about where they were. The next second he pulled her over his lap, until she straddled him and he had her face caught between his hands. “Baby, no way I’d let her touch me ever again,” he uttered. “If you need to know anything like that, you just ask me. I’ve put you in a bad place and I want you to know you can trust my word.”

Rusty rubbed his shoulders, then squeezed them. “I trust you, Captain,” Rusty whispered as they looked deep in each other’s eyes. “Just needed to hear it like you did.”

That got their lips meshed together in a meaningful kiss, turning hot as usual and just starting tongue action when—

Rusty’s business cell phone rang and they both ignored it because they knew it was set to the answering service since she was off duty. But something caught the corner of his gaze and his fingers tightened on Rusty’s hips. As if she could read him, her brow scrunched while he turned his gaze slowly.

Damn. It was several of the WTSF girls, stopped to look and giggle behind their hands in the parking lot from walking to and from somewhere in the compound.

Rusty tensed. “We’re being watched,” she said.

Cabe nodded. Yeah, he forgot where they were, and Rusty did that to him a lot.

“T
hat’s Vicki from Lulu’s, isn’t it,” Rusty whispered to Cabe as they approached the two young women outside the WTSF main building.

Rusty knew Trish the main bartender at Lulu’s very well, and had been in enough to watch Vicki, a waitress there, go through her cowboy Goth stage into what looked like a new pink stage. Pink strands in her hair, a sweet pink tank top that said “Better than Barbie” Rusty wanted to steal off her body, pink shorts, and of course pink-shaded tennis shoes.

“She hooked up with a bad rodeo dude twice her age, a mean drunk and possessive. We’ve had her for a month,” Cabe said lowly. Then he added, “She’s a handful.”

“Hey,” everyone said to everyone.

Cabe hooked his hands in his back pockets while Rusty watched Vicki’s companion giving Cabe a look through pretty blue eyes of I-have-a-crush-on-you-big-time. Rusty glanced at Cabe to see if he caught the deal. Oh yes, he had it tagged, and it occurred to her that Cabe might be pretty good at reading girls. Which could make him even better than average at reading women.

Crush-on-Cabe girl gushed, “Boss, I tried to get those test security cameras wired up but I keep messing up and I need your help.”

Vicki popped her pink bubble gum, rolling her eyes at Rusty, and Rusty took it as a sister-communicating lameness. But that was a child sister and Rusty was a woman sister who shook her head back, not in commune with the youngster.

Cabe neatly commanded, “Go read your book again.”

Crush girl pouted with a head tilt.

Cabe added, “Again and again if you have too. Now I know you two brats need to be somewhere. So get there.”

Crush girl looked crushed as Rusty watched both girls dutifully adhere to Cabe’s command. She was impressed.

He muttered, “I’m practically deep throating you, you plastered in my lap, and she sees it yet still makes plays.” He looked down on her. “Never fucking going to get women.”

Rusty held back her laugh. “That was a girl’s play, not even close to a woman’s, and do they all call you boss?”

He gestured toward the building and she moved when he moved. “Yeah, helps keep that distance I need.”

She’d been going to unmercifully tease him, but that reason was so solid, she just smiled. Then she followed Cabe into his office, where he did freaking paperwork.

An hour later, he lifted his head and asked, “You bored?”

Rusty rolled her eyes like a girl, from where she sat in his really big office on his really big couch across from his really big desk, piled with really big piles of papers.

“Yeah,” she said, tapping her cowboy boot on his plush carpet the color of deep plum. It was the nicest thing in his office; not that the rest was bad, just uninspired and boring. She’d like to get her hands on decorating it.

“How can I get you un-bored?” he asked, and she noticed he must have had the same lascivious thought as her, because she saw heat touching his brown eyes briefly.

But she said hopefully, “Let me go back to work?”

“Not happening,” he said with that authority she had at times found delicious, but at the moment ... not so much.

Then he stood and came around his desk. “Come on.” He held out his hand.

She stood, but just looked at his hand. “But don’t you have paperwork?”

He reached forward and grabbed her hand. “I always have paperwork.”

She looked over at his desk as he started to pull her from the room. “Yeah, I can see that.” Now she felt bad. So she pulled on his hand and made him stop in the hallway. “I’ll help you with your paperwork, Captain.”

Oops, she’d forgotten where they were at, but the minute she called him “Captain,” his aura started to become Captain and the heat was back to broil on high. Then she was against the wall with him deliciously against her and she hung on, wishing they could make out right there.

His lips lowered to her ear. “That’s private, boo.”

“Oops,” she whispered back. Then he made her nearly come right there in the hallway to his office.

“Need a spanking for that.”

Wow.

She should
not
quiver!

She did ...

He felt it, and damn it, he chuckled. Knowingly. “You like that,” he murmured.

She shook her head, denying it, but her mouth said, “Maybe.”

He rubbed her lower with his hard interest, showing he liked it too. “We will explore that.”

Then he stepped back and left her a puddle of arousal. But the look on his lean, chiseled features said he was just holding on to his own fierce arousal.

“Come on, I have work to do.”

Rusty thought Cabe had done a fine job of work all over her, but she followed him.

That night in the shower in Cabe’s room at Rowdie’s, Rusty thought about Cabe’s work. She kind of knew from Tess that Vincent and Cabe had made money in oil after they’d both been in military service. That oil money meant they must choose to run the charity WTSF, which had to be time consuming and a pain in the ass but did worlds of good for people, which were life-changing worlds of good.

Cabe was a complicated man. He never talked about his money or even acted like he had any, and she’d been very surprised to hear he was an orphan. Tess had told her Vincent was raised in a boys’ home several counties over, but Tess had never said Cabe had been there too. Knowing that, Rusty understood more why Cabe was running a place for at-danger kids.

That afternoon, Cabe had checked her boredom by taking her to WTSF gun range at the back of the huge property. They’d gotten there by golf cart and Cabe had said he regularly checked that the weapons were accounted for, locked up, and even in good working order.

He’d muttered, “After clueless girls get their hands on them while gossiping to each other.”

Rusty had offered some advice: “Teach them one on one. Not in a group or pairing. It’d seem like it would take longer, but I’d bet you’d get more of their attention. Plus fire the first shot with no earplugs, scare them, then they’ll really listen.”

Cabe had stopped on the long walk through the outdoor gun range posts, and turned to her. “Brilliant.” He’d grabbed her against him, holding her there. “First question, do you want to volunteer here, and second question, how’d you come up with that?”

Cabe’s closeness had had Rusty’s mind instantly melting with pleasure, then her body had instantly heated with pleasure, and then the compliment had her belly fluttering with pleasure, so she’d had a pretty nice smile when she’d said, “Yes, I’d volunteer on my slow times, and my aunt taught me.”

“She did?”

Rusty knew that was probably a strange thing for a surrogate mom to teach their surrogate daughter, but her aunt had grown up as a farm girl and thought her daughter should learn to shoot; besides, her aunt didn’t let anyone mess around with her. That had come partially from Rusty’s mom being a dangerous, drugged-out flake before she’d died.

Rusty had explained, “My aunt taught Tess too, out on her dad’s farm before he passed away.”

“Did she use that gun scare tactic on you?”

“Yes.” Rusty smiled up at Cabe so he wouldn’t get mad. “It was a .357 and she shot it right by me. Freaking got my attention. She knew it would scare me and get my attention, which it did, but I think I surprised her by really wanting to shoot it after that.”

“Need to meet this aunt,” Cabe had said, tilting her chin up.

Rusty had grabbed his wrist. “She’s gone; it’s one of the reasons I even ended up back here to look after her after her stroke. But she had another that was too big and it took her.”

Cabe had wrapped her up in his embrace and it had felt so good. “Sorry, baby.” It was the first time since her aunt passed away that she’d felt really connected to something. Tess had been there, but that just wasn’t the same.