“We can’t do either,” she said, tipping her head back to look up at him. “The event vet is supposed to be on site tonight to inspect the arena and treatment areas. We have to be there.” Shaking her head, she snorted a laugh. “I can’t believe the rodeo is nearly here already.”
“Home after the inspection then?” He leaned close, brushing his lips delicately across hers as his hand slipped down her back, cupping her ass cheek, and pulling her against him, letting her feel the hardness of his erection. Whispering, he said, “You’re all I want to eat, anyway,” grinning as she gasped, his words causing heat to flare in her belly. “But after the rodeo, I’m taking you out on a proper date, Bee.”
Stepping back on unsteady legs, she tipped her chin down and nodded. “Home with you sounds phenomenal. Let me finish up in here, and we can head out.”
The heat from his hands covered her shoulders for a moment, then his palms slid up her neck as he cupped his hands around her, running a thumb softly along her jawline. He stared into her eyes searchingly, tipping her chin up. She didn’t know what he found there, but after a moment, he bent down and kissed her with a small, satisfied sound. Stroking her tongue with his, delving deep into her mouth, not stopping until her breath came ragged and she felt drugged, sinking against his chest with a sigh. His mouth pressed to the top of her head, and he said, “Love you, Bee.”
Sounds outside were rapidly approaching the house and Brenda recognized the excitement in her son’s voice as he called for her. “Mom, Mom!” She stepped slightly away from Reuben and was facing the door when it slammed open. The screen door slapped against the end of the spring and banged shut behind Eli as he sprinted inside, boots sliding for purchase on the wooden floor. “Mom! Gill said the new vet worked magic and Breezy is ready to ride! Essa’s good to go for the rodeo!” Eli’s joy was contagious and she found herself returning his grin as he ricocheted across the room, arms pinwheeling for balance.
“Excellent news,” she said, reaching out to steady him as he slid to a stop in front of her. “She’s due for a break in her luck. This could be exactly what she needs.”
Eli nodded, head moving up and down quickly as he stood, looking up at her. Bottom lip clenched firmly between his teeth, a half-smile curled the edges of his mouth up in an expression she recognized. She had seen that exact look on Reuben’s face not five minutes ago, just before he’d kissed her. You have got to tell the man, she scolded herself, feeling the dark cloud of worry settle over her. She knew with every passing day it became harder to come up with a rational reason to delay. She wanted to tell him, needed to, but the timing never seemed right.
“Want to come with us to the grounds? We’re meeting the vet in a little while. Ice cream afterwards?” Reuben offered this casually and Eli’s face lit with pleasure as he peered around her and up at the big man.
“Heck, yeah,” he yelled, spinning and running flat out at the door, hitting the surface with his palms and shoving it wide to crash back into the frame behind him. His voice trailed, “I’ll be in the truck.”
Before she could turn around, Reuben had pressed up against her back, arms wrapping around her to hold tight. Nuzzling against the side of her head, he peppered soft kisses on her cheek, up her temple and into her hairline. “He’s a good little man,” he murmured and she stiffened. His next words told her he had noticed and had mistaken her reaction for something it wasn’t.
“Don’t do that, Bee. Don’t be mad. I wouldn’t ever try to take his dad’s place, but I love how good that boy is. You’ve done such a good job with him, and he’s so tough and sweet. Protective of his momma, wanting only to do right.” He nibbled on her earlobe, gently pulling it into his mouth and sucking softly. “You, however, are purely sweet and delicious.” Nipping harder, he growled, “Makes me want to eat you right up. Lap at your honey, my Little Bee.”
Relaxing into his arms, she twisted her head and offered her lips. “I’m all yours,” she said in between kisses and smiled to hear the hum of pleasure deep in his throat.
***
Reuben glanced across the cab of the truck, laughing at the cacophony of sound coming from the passenger side as Brenda and Elias competed for the lead part in some country western ballad. The boy mischievously put his palm across his mother’s mouth to quiet her, and she just as mischievously pretended to bite him.
When he laughed and continued to try to prevent her from singing, it looked as if she had licked his hand because Elias quickly drew it back with a disgusted, “Gross, Mom,” as he wiped it on his pants leg. His antics pulled uncontrolled laughter from Brenda and Reuben frowned for a moment, loving the sound but wishing she did it more often. Laughing, carefree. It transformed her face, making her natural beauty something stunning, but more than that, the exuberant merriment was filled with such joy and a freedom he loved to hear from her.
Glancing ahead, he saw the bar where he had seen bikes before coming up on the right, and realized with a shock there were probably more than a hundred on the lot now. Fuck. That’s a lot of fucking bikes. Men stood around in groups, looking at the bikes, talking and comparing rides, as bikers do, and this gave him a chance to get a good look at the cuts they wore. Each had a central patch with an American flag, set alongside empty boots and a gun. He knew that patch, knew it well. These men were Southern Soldiers.
Jerking the truck off the road and into the far corner of the lot, he parked, setting the brake as he muttered, “Need a minute, Bee,” when she asked a question, but he didn’t pay much attention to her words. He had seen a face he recognized in one of the groups, and needed to pay his respects. “Wait in the truck.”
As he climbed out of the vehicle, he saw three groups of men were already moving towards him, converging on the corner where he had parked, and he didn’t want that. There was no need for Bee and Eli to hear anything citizens didn’t need to know, so he quickly moved away from the truck, walking towards one of the groups. The lead man in the crowd called out a casual sounding question, “You in the right place, man?”
With a nod, he walked past them, using his agility to maneuver through and around each man who reached out to halt his progress. He quickly found himself behind them, listening to curses and shouts rising from all sides. He stopped in place and put his balled fists on his hips, shocked for a moment there wasn’t leather underneath his hands, and then he threw his head back and roared, “Fucking shit, Watcher. The hell you doin’ in my hometown?”
His shout called down silence around him, drawing the stare of every man on the lot. At his name, the head of the man he had seen jerked up and twisted to look at him. The dark stare would have unnerved most men, but the smile that followed it warmed his heart. “Duck,” Watcher called, his long strides eating up the distance between them. “I think the question is what the fuck are you doin’ in my town?”
First clasping wrists, then drawn into a back-thudding one-armed embrace, the two men wordlessly greeted each other. Watcher, a longtime friend and national president of the Southern Soldiers, pulled back first, having apparently noticed the lack of a patch underneath his fist, because his next question was a hushed, “What the fuck, man? Where are your goddamned colors?”
“I’m not here officially,” Duck reassured him. “I didn’t want to stir shit, so I told Mason I’d respect with removal. They’re hanging in my closet out on the ranch.”
“Ranch? You’re really from here, then? No shit? Hometown boy?” Watcher shook his head in surprised disbelief, motioning several men forward. “Good to see you, regardless, Duck. While you’re here, want you to meet some of my local men.”
For the next fifteen minutes, he was introduced and reintroduced to men who wore the Soldiers’ patch. Some of the men were from Lamesa and he knew their family connections, if not the individuals, but most had been assigned to the chapter here in town, relocated from other chapters across the southern United States and northern Mexico.
Watcher was talking through some things he was wor
king with another club to put into place, when his gaze moved to over Duck’s shoulder, and he nodded towards whatever he saw. “Brother, your old lady got tired of waitin’.”
Fuck, Duck thought, turning to see Brenda walking towards him, her stride uncertain as she gave each group of men a wide berth, skirting the edges of the ones she couldn’t avoid entirely. Seeing she had his attention, she picked up her pace, a tentative smile on her lips that did not come close to reaching her eyes. “Brenda,” he called, holding out an arm invitingly. He frowned when she didn’t step into his embrace, but gripped his hand instead, staying a couple of feet away.
“Watcher, this is Brenda Calloway. She’s been running my stock contracting business for years.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her closer so he could slip an arm around her waist. She stiffened, every muscle rigid, and he gave her a reassuring squeeze as he said, “She’s with me.”
Watcher inclined his head in a slow nod, but his eyes didn’t leave Duck’s face as he said, “Pleased, Brenda. We’ll be done with your old man here in a minute.” At his dismissive words, she jerked and Duck looked down to see a dark cloud of anger settle on her features.
Not acknowledging the thin greeting from Watcher, she fixed her gaze on Duck. “Vet’s waiting, Reuben.” He winced at her use of his government name and heard a few snorts of laughter from the men in the group. “We have an appointment.”
Looking down at her, he nodded in response, and then looked back at Watcher, because the business she had interrupted was something they had to get sorted soon. “Watch, I got some shit to take care of right now, but can meet you tonight. Nine okay?” He returned Watcher’s nod, saying, “See you then. You cool with my colors?”
“Disturbed to see you without them now, brother,” Watcher told him somberly, conveying that while he grasped the reasoning behind the actions, he did not appreciate Duck slipping into their territory for nearly two weeks without placing a call to inform the local chapter.
“Understood,” he responded, letting go of a silent Brenda to reach out for a warrior’s shake with Watcher. Turning to leave, he nodded at every man who said his name in farewell or met his eye, then walked away, returning his arm to its position around her waist. Peering towards the truck, he saw Elias standing in the back, having crawled out the sliding back window of the cab, probably in order to keep an eye on his mother. Brenda split from Duck when they got to the truck and he let her go, reaching up to pluck Eli from the bed, setting him on the ground and watching as the boy ran around to where Brenda waited by the passenger door.
Back in the truck, the lighthearted atmosphere from earlier had entirely bled away, leaving a tense hush that told him Brenda was waiting for an explanation. Shaking his head, he glanced at her, noting the thin line her lips made as she stared forward. Neither of them spoke, and he finally reached out and turned the radio up, filling the silence with music they all ignored.
Stopping beside the office on the rodeo grounds, he parked the truck and sat still for a moment as both Brenda and Elias climbed out the passenger side. Staring around at the setting, he was rattled, feeling a strange disconnection from where he’d been only a half an hour before. In the brief conversation with Watcher, Duck had gotten so deep into club headspace he found he needed a minute to pull out his Reuben persona.
Putting it back on, he found places it chafed more acutely, felt the uncomfortable pinch of the citizen world where it no longer fit. With a snort at his mental imagery, he opened the door and swung out of the truck, tugging the smile Reuben frequently wore onto his face. That last piece of the puzzle slipped back out of place immediately when he saw Brenda waiting for him at the front of the truck, her hand resting on the hot hood as she watched him.
“How do you know those men, that gang?” She asked the question quietly, but his head snapped back at her language. An affront she didn’t even know she gave, still seemed like a direct attack against him.
“It’s not a gang,” he responded, feeling that pinch again as portions of his rancher role stretched thin. Not something he’d ever wanted to be, not what he identified with. “The Southern Soldiers are a club that’s friendly with the one I belong to. Those men are my friends.”
“First Steve, now this gang.” Muscles all over his body tensed. It seemed as if she were deliberately persisting in her use of a word she should have already realized was guaranteed to piss him off. “Looks like your taste in friends has remained true.”
“Bee,” he said warningly, not wanting to have this discussion now, when he already felt off balance. “Don’t push me.”
Turning on her heel without another word, she strode away from the truck, anger radiating from her form. Her dismissal of him more cutting than any words she could say. He looked around, that foreign feeling displacing any ease he had built up. She belonged here, though.
Uncomfortable, Duck shifted his shoulders to settle his cut into place, scowling heavily when he realized what he felt was an absence. The loss of the leather’s weight, unnoticed in recent days, now seemed acute. His loyalty should be present, borne on his skin to show the association with the Rebels was as much a part of him as anything. The loss, now recognized, was painful. Wrong.
Playing house over the past few days, he hadn’t felt naked like he did the first week. So wrapped up in Brenda and what was blooming between them, he had hardly spared a thought for the club. A hard ache of disappointment in himself settled into his chest, because the club had saved his life, given him something to hold on to. Something to be proud of, when his own family provided nothing good. A life filled with honor, versus nothing but shame.
***
Stalking away from Reuben, Brenda felt hot tears pressing at the back of her eyes. Blinking rapidly, she refused to allow them to fall. Compared to some of the men her high school friends had hooked up with, Tommy had been a good partner, for the most part. Sure he could get angry, but what man didn’t? Before he got sick, he had been a decent husband, but from the beginning, there were whole segments of his life he defended fiercely against all comers, including her. The bull riders were a closed, exclusive group. Elite athletes, they were blessed with a surgeon’s ego, paired with a preacher’s certainty they could do no wrong.
Being told to stay in the truck sounded too close to what Tommy would tell her when she and Eli would go to his events. “Stay in the motel,” he would say as he pulled his boots on, dusting his hat against his jeans-covered thigh. Then Tommy would walk out and leave without a backwards glance, his wordless dismissal of their company a tacit reminder she would never be able to breach the tight pact with his friends. Never understood the bonds holding them together.
She had seen that same rejection in Reuben’s face today when he turned to watch her walk to him. His attention only returned to her because the man he was speaking to had called her out. The unpleasant introduction to a single man in the group of twenty underscored the fact they were his friends, and her presence not only wasn’t needed, but appeared unwelcome. The man beside her in the crowd of bikers didn’t seem like the same man who’d held her less than an hour before in the ranch kitchen, a promise of love on his lips, dirty talk making them both hot.
“Mom, I found the doc.” She heard Eli’s voice coming from the largest exhibition barn to her right, and shifted her trajectory to head that way. Stepping into the cool darkness of the barn from the glaring late summer sun, Brenda paused a moment to let her eyes adjust. She saw Elias about halfway up the shed row, standing in front of a stall. “Mom,” he called, “Doc Winters is in here.”
Brenda took a moment to draw in a calming breath. It wouldn’t do to make a bad first impression on the event vet, because he held a lot of power over the rodeo. If he determined the environment unsafe, or a contestant’s horse unsound, he could, and should, go to whatever lengths were necessary to correct the issue. As the organizer and stock contractor, it was in her best interests to get on his good side. Hopefully, this wasn’t one of the old school
vets, the kind of man who couldn’t accept a woman’s involvement in an event such as this one.
With steady steps, she walked up the shed row, smiling at Eli when he looked at her with wide eyes and a too-pale face. She held the smile until she smelled the rancid scent wafting from the stall. The odor made her wince, because it did not bode well for whoever’s animal this was. Turning to look into the enclosure, she first saw the bent back of a man she suspected would be tall when he was upright. His denim jeans wrapped around his ass and legs tightly, the confining, form-fitting fabric exposing the firm lines of his muscles. Definitely not one of the old school vets, she thought, watching as his hands worked down the horse’s leg, effortlessly lifting the hoof and bending the knee to give him the best view of the problem.
“Badly abscessed?” She saw the flash of a blade and the horse grunted, shifting restlessly and then settling back into place as the infection flowed out of the incision created in the frog of the hoof, the painful pressure lessening with every moment.
“Yes,” the faceless man responded curtly, still bent over the horse’s lifted hoof. “Hand me that soaking boot, would you?”
Glancing around, she saw his equipment nearby, the boot already set up with a soapy drench in which to soak the foot. A treatment designed to draw any remaining infection out rapidly, hopeful of ensuring a full recovery. Quietly, she slid the stall door open a third of the way and leaned in with the boot in hand, intending to set it within reach of the vet. He turned his head, looking up at her with a stern expression. “This your horse?” God, no wonder Essa had spent so much time at the vet hospital since this guy got into town. She hadn’t said anything, but he was good-looking, with dark eyes and a strong jaw.
Shaking her head to dislodge those thoughts, she muttered, “Nope.” Looking up at the animal, she recognized the gelding immediately and sighed heavily. “He belongs to one of the local boys. I’ll give him a call and let him know he’s scratched unless he can surface another horse to use.” Wrinkling her nose, she said, “That hoof is stinky enough he should have caught on. I’ll make sure I let his daddy know, too.”
Rebel Wayfarers MC Boxset 3 Page 45
