Tiny Dancer [Divine Creek Ranch 13] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (21 page)

“Those rims are pretty pricey to just leave them lying on the ground after removing them,” Quinten said as he walked around the vehicle. “And the stereo is still in it. The only damage to the body is this. Looks like they kicked it.” He pointed at a scuffed dent behind the front right fender.

Hank shook his head and cast his gaze around the area. “Whoever did this wasn’t trying to steal it.” He pointed to the security cameras mounted near the back door and on the light poles. “Those operational?”

Ben nodded, and Quinten said, “Yes. You can view the recordings from Ben’s office.”

Hank went around the vehicle, and they followed as he squatted and looked at the dent. Another vehicle pulled up beside his sheriff’s department SUV. He looked over at it and said, “They’ll look for prints. Does it look like anything is missing?”

“No. I don’t keep very much in it. A few CDs in the glove box and the doors was all. Oh, wait.” She checked with Hank before she felt around in the console between the seats. “It’s gone.”

“What?” Hank stood and looked in the console.

Camilla shook her head and looked around the windswept parking lot and the field of tall grass beyond it. “It must’ve blown away.”

Ben looked inside the car, too. “What?”

Camilla felt a little silly sharing her sentimentality with the sheriff standing there but didn’t have a choice since she’d opened her mouth. She turned to Ben. “The love note you stuck on the steering wheel of my car this morning, before you left to run errands.” She glanced at Hank to find him standing there with a half smile on his face before he busied himself and gave them some privacy. Ben hugged her and rubbed her back, probably thinking she was being silly. “It was special.”

Quinten smiled as he joined them. “Something tells me there are more where that came from, baby.”

Hank pointed at the dent. “Whoever it is, they’re frustrated. They broke in, but they didn’t take anything.” He turned to Camilla and said, “For your own safety, I think it might be a good idea if you stayed with Ben and Quinten until we can figure out what’s going on.”

Ben caressed her shoulder and said, “That won’t be a problem.”

“I don’t mean to scare anyone, but I’d also keep that fact confidential, to protect her just in case.”

First her home had been invaded. Now her car. It irked her that these choices were being taken out of her hands whether it was for safety purposes or not. She didn’t mind staying with Ben and Quinten, but she wanted the choice to be hers.

Hank said, “I wish it wasn’t necessary, Camilla, but I want to avoid an escalation. Let’s have a quick look at the camera recordings. I know y’all need to get back to work.”

Hank followed them in, and Camilla sat at Ben’s desk as they reviewed the footage, which was pretty grainy. “I can’t make out his face because of the cowboy hat.”

Hank asked, “Does his body type look familiar?”

“In that bulky jacket, no. He looks like any other guy of an average build,” she replied. He looked like any number of men that came in The Pony on a regular basis.

Ben let Hank take the security DVD, and he said he’d be in contact if he found out anything else. The sheriff looked notably concerned and pissed that she’d been victimized again as he assured her they’d get to the bottom of whatever was going on.

Ben called Ethan, to let him know what had happened. Five minutes later, he was there at the club, offering whatever assistance was needed. Once the deputy was done dusting for fingerprints, they had the vehicle towed to the dealership. Camilla hoped it could be repaired, but there was so much damage she wasn’t sure.

By the time Ben left and returned with their supper, her appetite was practically nonexistent. Safety suddenly felt like an illusion, and she was glad she was going home with Ben and Quinten that night.

Her thoughts revolved around the home invasion and the car break-in, and something hovered on the edge of her mind, a clue that she wasn’t picking up on. She wracked her brain as she recalled walking around the house. Frustrated when Corinna sympathetically repeated a drink order to her for the third time, Camilla had to put it out of her mind so she could concentrate on the task at hand.

Get through this evening and think about it later.
Hank’s words from earlier came back to her, about the perpetrator searching for something. But what?

Halloween rolled around two days after Camilla’s car was torn up. Although Ben noticed that Camilla was more subdued since it’d happened, he liked that she didn’t let the incident kill her enjoyment of the holiday, even though it meant he and Quinten had been talked into dressing up.

He sat still in front of the master bathroom vanity and groused as she applied his makeup. “Why doesn’t Quinten have to go through this?” He complained, but he let her have her fun, figuring that it was just more brownie points for the both of them and one more step toward her seeing they could have a thriving relationship and still work together.

They’d taken her back to her house the afternoon before so she could pack up the Halloween costumes she’d gotten for them. If she didn’t look so cotton-picking pleased with herself, he’d complain until she let him off the hook, but seeing her have her fun had become important to him.

“Don’t worry. I’m getting to him next. You need this in order to pull Jack Sparrow off. Hold still.”

“Ow!” His eyes watered as she lined them with a black eye pencil. He cursed his dark coloring that had won him the role of Jack Sparrow from
Pirates of the Caribbean
.

“Stop squirming.”

“Uh, I’m not used to this. I’m a guy.”

Camilla made a purring sound. “Don’t remind me, baby. I know you’re all man.”

“Quinten doesn’t have to wear a wig. Not fair.”

She rolled her eyes and made a pouty, mimicking face before giggling at him. Her teasing mood did fluttery things to his heart. “Your wig is attached to the pirate hat. Quit complaining. You’re kinda sexy with those dark, mysterious eyes, Captain Sparrow.” She squealed when he slid his hands up the sleek fabric of her breeches, under her long pirate coat, and cupped her luscious derriere.

Camilla had opted to dress as Elizabeth Swann, the pirate heroine. Ben thought the costume was pretty damn sexy, too. She’d topped the snug pants with a leather corset under the pirate’s doublet and wore a tricorn hat at a sporty angle over her wildly tossed curls. The thigh-high boots she wore to complete the ensemble had him remembering how she’d taken them off the last time she’d worn them.

Quinten grinned at him from the master bedroom, swiping his sword back and forth, testing it out. “Hey, does Captain Jack get laid in any of those movies? I know Will Turner does, but—”

Camilla giggled and threw a towel at him. “That’s enough of that, now. In our version of the story he
does
. If they’d let Grace write that screenplay it would’ve had a whole different ending. ‘The three of them lived happily ever after.’” She patted Ben on the shoulder and said, “Sorry, baby. You’ll probably get asked that question a bunch tonight. Rest assured, if I have anything to say about it, Captain Jack gets a smokin’ hot threesome.”

Ben growled as she finally finished lining his eyes, and he pulled her into his lap so she could feel firsthand how he “felt” about that. He tickled her until she giggled and threatened to wet her breeches.

“Maybe that’s the payment we’ll extract from you later tonight for talking us into playing dress-up with you.”

Quinten appeared in the door like he had radar, waiting for her answer.

“I’d love it.”

She melted in Ben’s arms as he tilted her head back and kissed her. He sighed with pleasure as she returned his kiss, her lips sweet like nectar to a bee. The hat she wore slipped off her head onto the floor, and she seemed to not notice as she wound her arms around his neck.

Ben finally released her lips, sitting up with a groan. His cock didn’t care that they had the whole evening ahead of them. It wanted attention right then. She was breathless and dazed as she smiled up at him, and he knew she’d give in to anything he requested. But she’d gone to a lot of trouble with her costume and with theirs, and Ben didn’t want to ruin all her hard work.

He sat her upright and pressed a kiss to her cleavage, burying his nose there for a second before growling. “You’re lucky we’re all duded up, my pirate wench, otherwise I’d have you stripped bare nekkid in two seconds flat.”

Camilla snorted. “
Duded
up?”

“Yup. Technical term. But I wish I could nibble this derriere right now,” he added with a squeeze to the tush in question. “Time to make Quinten pretty now too.” He turned and gaped at the mirror’s reflection and Camilla burst into laughter when he squinted and pursed his lips in a pretty good impression of Johnny Depp’s character.

His cock had just about calmed down by the time they arrived at The Dancing Pony. Ben was relieved to find that a number of his friends had also been talked into dressing up for the Halloween party and costume contest by their women.

He had to suppress the urge to bust a gut when he saw that Grace Warner had indeed managed to get her men into the Halloween costume of her choice. He greeted her with a hug and asked, “How did you manage it, Grace?”

Grace giggled. “I promised to introduce us to
everyone
as Goldilocks and the Three
Daddy
Bears.” She patted her long blonde corkscrew curls. “So that’s what I’m doing.”

“Beautiful, somehow I don’t think the fairy tale included Goldilocks in a baby-blue satin corset. Speaking of babies, how’s your little angel doing?”

“We took her trick-or-treating at her Grandpa Joe’s and made a few other stops. We dressed her as a ballerina, and she loved it. And thanks, Ben. You’re good for a girl’s ego.”

She pulled her phone out and showed him a picture of her daughter, Rose Marie, who’d won his heart the first time he’d laid eyes on her in the hospital nursery after she was born a little over a year before. One of Grace’s other husbands, Jack Warner, came over when he saw her showing pictures and pulled out his phone and, like a proud daddy, showed off the pictures he’d taken of Rose Marie.

Ben smiled and made conversation with both of them and pondered how much had changed in both of their lives in the last few years. He recalled the zeal and enjoyment with which Jack and his distant cousins, Ethan and Adam, had wooed Grace into a permanent threesome. He looked back with a bit of regret on the rocky start that he, Quinten, and Camilla had in their budding relationship. He was reminded also of how quickly things could change for the better or worse. Fate had placed Camilla on the river bridge road several nights before. They were lucky that they’d found her, and she was lucky that she hadn’t been home that night when the break-in had occurred. Things could’ve turned out so much differently for all three of them.

Grace pointed at Camilla and Quinten behind the bar and winked at him. She held up her phone and said, “Let me get a picture of the three of you and I’ll text message it to you.”

Ben beckoned the two of them to come out from behind the bar, and he posed with Camilla between him and Quinten and thanked Grace for even thinking of it.

He peered around the club when he saw Camilla’s jaw drop open in shock. He immediately spotted the cause of her surprise when he saw who walked up to the bar next.

Seth Carter and his fiancée, Jayne Sheridan, were dressed as Neo and Trinity from
The Matrix
. Jayne was clad in a snug black patent vinyl outfit and boots, with her hair skinned back into a tight ponytail, while Seth sported the long black coat and dark sunglasses. His typically serious demeanor lent itself to the character he was portraying.

Jayne and Seth’s wedding was planned for the first weekend in November. Life had changed from one instant to the next for Seth with the arrival of the son he hadn’t even known existed two months before. Of course, Jayne made a big difference in his life, too. He could recall how Seth had reacted to seeing her dancing with another man back during the summer. Ben hadn’t even known that the two of them were an item at the time, and now there they were engaged to be married the following weekend.

Grace hugged Jayne, who was also her cousin. “You look fantastic!”

Jayne smiled with pleasure. “I had to perform illicit favors to pull this off.”

Ben thought the half smile on Seth’s face was pretty satisfied looking.

The Dancing Pony filled with patrons as the night progressed, and Dave the DJ kept things lively with a combination of the country hits he normally played, mixed with classic rock songs and Halloween-themed classics.

Camilla and Quinten worked at a fast and furious pace behind the bar while Ben and Ethan took turns mingling with patrons and bartending. Some patrons lingered from happy hour, but as the night progressed, more people showed up dressed in costume, some simple, others elaborate. Eli Wolf was very good-natured about playing the Big Bad Wolf to Rachel’s Little Red Riding Hood and even danced to the “Monster Mash” with her.

Ben winced at Presley Ann Woodworth’s whiny tone as she spoke to Dave in the DJ booth. “Dave! Come on. I know you have it. You must have it in there somewhere. Just once?” Presley Ann was a frequent patron of the club and never ceased to amaze Ben and Ethan with her spoiled-little-rich-girl antics. She ran off female friends as quickly as she made them and was a constant source of embarrassment to her sister, Leah, who kept a low profile.