Trouble (Bad Boy Homecoming Book 2)

by Avery Flynn

  Failing to come up with the same answer she had, he asked, "What thing?"

  She sprang out of her chair and grabbed her purse, fishing out a wad of cash and tossing it on the table. "I've gotta go."

  Oh, hell no. He clamped his hand down on the handle of her suitcase. She wasn't going anywhere without him. "You mean, we've gotta go."

  She rolled her eyes at him. "Fine. Come on."

  They hustled out of The Hamburger Shack and he followed her to Vazquez's Auto Care while she ignored every question he hurled at her. Once there, they hurried up to the sidelined Aston Martin parked in the garage, opened the passenger door, and searched inside the empty glove compartment.

  "Hey, Jorge," she hollered to the owner, who was watching from the corner. "Did you guys grab the stuff out of the glove compartment when you cleared out the interior?"

  "Yep." Jorge nodded. "It's in the big envelope I gave you."

  Without another word, she pulled a manilla envelope out of her purse and opened it up. Then, she took out a goofy pink bag with a unicorn on it and emptied its contents into her palm. It was the biggest fake diamond he'd ever seen. At least, he figured it had to be fake.

  He took a closer look. "That can't be real."

  "That's what I thought too," she whispered. "Until the assholes in the truck showed up at The Hamburger Shack, but who leaves a million-dollar diamond in a glove box?"

  Someone cleared their throat. Hand going to his gun, Drew whipped around to face the threat. Two men in matching dark suits stood with their hands clasped in front of them. Everything from their close-cropped hair to the way they held themselves screamed Feds. As if they had it choreographed, they flipped open their wallet badges.

  "It's one point six million, actually," the guy on the right said. "I'm Agent Curtis. This is Agent Ritter. FBI. Is there somewhere we can talk?"

  Great. Drew swallowed a groan. His life had just gotten a lot more complicated. Why did that always seem to happen when he was around Leah? Still on guard, he stalked over to the men and inspected their badges. They were legit. The Feds had come to Catfish Creek. Lucky him. His last week on the job was supposed to be boring, filled with dumb shit like dealing with Beauford Lynch's eternal war against Maisy Aucoin's cat. Then Leah Camacho had come squealing into town with what was probably a stolen diamond and what was definitely bad news in the form of two paid thugs on her ass. He let out a sigh and surrendered to the inevitable.

  He nodded at Curtis and handed him back his badge. "We can use my office."

  "This doesn't involve you," Leah said, stubborn right down to the freckles on her toes.

  Ignoring Ritter's arched eyebrow and the smile Curtis was failing to smother, Drew turned his attention to the woman who always seemed to disrupt everything about his orderly world. In her tight jeans, T-shirt and Doc Martens, with her long hair streaming down her back like an invitation to wrap around his fist and hold tight, she was nothing but trouble. And he wasn't about to let her out of his sight anytime soon.

  "Sweets," he said, his voice dropping to a lower register that he usually didn't use outside the bedroom. "Don't even try to fool yourself on that one."

  3

  Leah

  If he didn't stop calling her Sweets she was going to...she didn't know what but it would probably involve the hard toe of her Doc Martens. She'd given him the cold shoulder on the ride over to the sheriff's office, only to have him ignore it completely. The man was an ass. And now she had the Feds on her ass. Just wait until her brother Isaac found out—and he would. With his connections as part of the B-Squad Investigations and Security in Fort Worth, there was no way he wouldn't.

  Keeping that little tidbit to herself, she followed Drew into his office, taking the time to admire the way his ass made well-worn blue jeans look even better. Yeah, it seemed kind of crazy to be mentally drooling over his butt under the circumstances, but ‘roided up assholes in big trucks who were obviously compensating for something didn't shake her up. It just pissed her off. And when it came to her and Drew, anger and sex went together like toasted PB and J.

  Drew's office could have been a picture in Texas Sheriff's Monthly. There wasn't a single item out of place and absolutely nothing—with the exception of one family photo featuring his parents and bitch queen of a sister, Jessica—personal about the place.

  "Have a seat," Drew said, gesturing to the three chairs facing his desk as he sat down behind it. "Why don't you guys bring me up to speed."

  Nope. That wasn't going to fly. The Rhinestone Cowboys had come to her. She wasn't sitting by the sidelines now while the menfolk discussed serious things. This was her life and she wasn't about to be shut out of it—especially not by someone who'd taken her sense of trust and shredded it completely.

  "Us," she said, dragging one of the chairs around so it was next to Drew's and facing the agents.

  Drew arched an eyebrow. "Us?"

  "Yeah, bring us up to speed," she said, sitting down and giving him her best don't-fuck-with-me-fella look. "I'm not just here because I'm cute."

  "No, you're not," Agent Curtis said right before the tips of his ears turned cherry red. "What I mean to say is that we've been tracking you since you left the car rental place in Fort Worth."

  She froze in her seat. "Why?"

  "The fifteen-carat diamond," Agent Ritter said.

  Her stomach sank. Part of her—that idiot part that believed things would always work out in the end, even when she knew they wouldn’t—had held out hope that the whole thing was just a bizarre misunderstanding.

  "It's really real?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

  Ritter nodded. "It's the last piece from a massive jewelry heist in Antwerp. We'd been following Ricky Jessup—that’s the guy who'd been behind the rental desk. He'd been in on the heist but double-crossed the rest of his crew and walked away with the best diamond in the lot. His fellow thieves weren't particularly happy with him, as you can imagine, and decided to get it back. When he spotted the guys in the truck tailing him, he ditched them long enough to swap your compact rental with the Aston Martin rental he'd been driving. According to what he said before he lawyered up, he figured he'd track you down later using the rental company's LoJack system."

  The agent's words swirled around in her head. "So it wasn't the boobs."

  Ritter blinked twice. "I don't know what that means."

  "Never mind." She wasn't about to explain that she'd figured the rental agent had gone boob-blind when he'd upgraded her. With the explanation for what really happened—and why—taking hold, some of the confused fog lifted, leaving two very important unanswered questions. "Why are you telling me this? You have the diamond now. Why didn't you just arrest the Rhinestone Cowboys?"

  "We need you," Curtis answered.

  Drew stiffened beside her, his brown eyes narrowing as he stared down the two agents. "Why?"

  "The guys in the truck are low-level," Curtis said. "We want the man who organized the job. And if they think the diamond is in federal custody and they have no chance of getting it back, we have a much harder job at tracking them back to the head of the snake. But if they think you still have it..."

  Realization sank in. "You want me to be bait?"

  "Only for a day or two," Ritter said.

  "No way," Drew said.

  The harsh finality in his voice needled her in all the soft spots she'd fought for so long to keep protected. It was a call back to her days when walking down the halls of Catfish Creek High School was like navigating a minefield with people like his sister, Jessica—her former best friend—lobbing verbal grenades for the freak in black, her teachers warning she'd never make anything of herself if she didn't stop hanging out with the losers in the school parking lot, and those losers wondering why in the hell the bitchy brainiac was out there smoking a joint with them. Everyone had loved to tell Leah what exactly she should be doing with her life. It had taken awhile, but she'd finally figured it out on her own and she wasn't about to gi
ve up that power to anyone—especially not the man who'd broken her heart as if it hadn't been worthy of special care.

  She pivoted in her seat, facing Drew full on, and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "It's not up to you."

  The vein in his temple pulsed. "You're putting yourself in danger."

  "I'm already in danger from the sounds of it." What with the Rhinestone Cowboys following her from Fort Worth and threatening her at The Hamburger Shack.

  Drew's hand clamped down on her arm, sending a wave of invisible sparks up her arm that went straight to her clit. "Not if you refuse."

  Her nipples puckered against the sheer material of her bra and a lazy wave of desire slid through her. Damn this man. Damn him for having this effect on her when she knew better than to fall for it. Desperate to reassert her control, she yanked her arm free, missing the heat of his touch as soon as it was gone.

  "Now where's the fun in that?" She turned to the agents. "I'll do it."

  Ritter nodded. "We can keep a watch on you, Ms. Camacho, but we have to keep our distance or risk blowing the case. If their past history is indicative of future behavior, then Hank Wynn and Markus Miller, the men following you, won't be aggressive. They tend to use their size for show."

  "Don't worry," Drew said. "I'll be right next to her the whole time."

  Telling him to fuck off would feel so good that she almost gave in to it, but she wasn't that dumb. The Rhinestone Cowboys weren't the regular badass wannabes that she dealt with on an all too frequent basis in Denver. They had FBI agents following them. There was a one point six million dollar diamond on the line. Nicer people than those two would do a whole lot of bad things for that kind of money. If it were anyone else acting as her temporary bodyguard she would have said yes immediately. That it was Drew rankled, but the choice between dealing with him shadowing her when she left her hotel room or facing the Rhinestone Cowboys again on her own wasn't much of a decision.

  "Fine," she said, still not liking it even if it was the right choice.

  Curtis looked relieved. "Okay, we need to work out some details, take your statement, and outline the plan of action to get these guys to lead us back to the guy in charge. The easiest to deal with though is if you can look off duty while you're with her, Sheriff, so Wynn and Miller knock up the confrontation in the restaurant as just an overprotective male. It's a good thing you're not wearing a uniform today. We need you to pretend to be a friend or boyfriend rather than a guard dog."

  "Oh, that won't be difficult," Leah said with a harsh chuckle. "He's played that part already."

  And he should have gotten an award for it.

  Drew

  A few hours later, Drew was white knuckling his sanity as he got in behind the wheel of his truck. The drive from the sheriff's office to his house would only take about ten minutes at most, but with Leah steaming in the passenger's seat and shooting him dirty looks, it felt a lot longer. Keeping his hands loose at ten and two on the steering wheel instead of relaxing back and letting his fingers wander over to her long legs like he wanted, Drew watched the road for any signs of the truck Wynn and Miller had been spotted in. The problem was with the influx of new vehicles into town because of the reunion this weekend, Catfish Creek's streets didn't look the same as they normally did.

  "What do you mean you canceled my hotel reservation?" Leah asked after he pulled out of the sheriff's office parking lot. "Where am I supposed to stay?"

  Ignoring the last question, he kept his tone even as he answered, "Exactly what it sounds like." And he'd do it again.

  High-handed? Yep. Smart? Most definitely because when he said he was going to be with her 24/7, he meant it. The woman always seemed to turn his world upside down—especially the last time she'd rolled into town. She'd been nothing but temptation and trouble wrapped up in an off-limits package that he hadn't been able to resist then and was having a helluva time doing so now. Especially when she looked at him like she was now, as if she didn't know whether to fuck him or fight him.

  "This is Catfish Creek," she said as he turned left at Sam Houston Avenue. "This weekend is probably the only time every hotel room in the entire town is booked with a waiting list a mile long."

  "County fair time," he said, turning right onto Alamo Road and fighting to keep the grin off his face.

  A half beat of silence. Then, she leveled one hellacious glare at him. "What?"

  He gave in to the smile twitching his lips. God, he loved giving her shit just to watch her spark. "No hotel rooms to be found during the county fair."

  She let out a huff and turned away from him to stare out the window. "I hate you right now."

  Good that would make what came next easier—even if hearing it was like getting jabbed in the eye with a broken stick.

  "Okay," he said, keeping it as neutral as he could.

  He turned onto Denton Court and headed straight for the small one-story house at the end of the first block. Halfway there, he pressed the garage door opener attached to his visor.

  "That's all you have to say?" she asked, looking around at the neighborhood, no doubt trying to figure out where they were going. "Am I supposed to sleep on a park bench so as to make a better target for the Rhinestone Cowboys?”

  "Nope." He pulled into the garage, pulled up until the tennis ball hanging from the ceiling told him his truck had cleared the door, cut the engine, and watched the garage door roll shut behind them. "You're staying with me."

  Her eyes went wide. "No. Fucking. Way."

  "It's the easiest way for me to keep an eye on you 24/7." And if there was more to it than that, he wasn't about to admit to it out loud--or in his head for that matter.

  Not wasting time waiting for her response, he was out of the truck and halfway through the house with her bag before she caught up to him in the hallway outside the only bedroom.

  "You can't be serious," she said, following him into the bedroom.

  He tossed her bag in the middle of his bed. "Call your brother and see what he thinks."

  Hands on her hips, fire sparking in her eyes, she stared him down. "Why, because I'm a girl and couldn't possibly understand things?"

  Girl? She definitely was not a girl. Leah Camacho was all woman and he had a raindrop's chance in hell of ever forgetting that. He hadn't forgotten it in the years since their summer together no matter how fucking hard he'd tried. But this wasn't about the fact that he'd never been able to shake her ghost. Her safety was at stake and no matter what had happened between them before, he'd do whatever it took to keep her alive and in one piece--even if that meant breaking himself apart in the process.

  "No, because I'm a professional," he snarled, bearing down on her to send his message home. "This is what I do. I keep people safe. Right now I'm going to keep you safe. If we had to sell a shitload of pot, then I'd trust you to know the right way to go about it. Until then—which will be never—you need to trust me and do what I tell you."

  When she didn't say anything, he reached around behind her, slid his hand inside the back pocket of her jeans, and pulled out her phone.

  "What are you doing?" she asked, her cheeks flushed and her voice a little more breathy than it had been before.

  Ignoring the way his body immediately responded to her, he took a step back and scrolled through her contacts list. "Calling your brother." He hit the call button. "Maybe he can talk some sense into you."

  She swiped the phone away as it was ringing. "I don't need to—”

  The muted sound of Isaac Camacho saying, "Hey, sis," sounded from the phone.

  She flipped off Drew and put the phone to her ear. "Isaac, I think I might need bail money."

  "What do you mean you might need bail money?" Isaac's voice came in loud and clear over the phone for that one.

  Leah looked directly at Drew. "Because I just might kill Drew Jackson."

  He laughed. He couldn't help it. She was pissed and it looked fucking good on her. Giving her some space, he walked out into the hall and to
the living room and gave it a once over. He didn't need to pick up anything. He'd always been neat. He liked things cleaned up and orderly, which is why his attraction to Leah had come out of left field. Orderly was not her way. She was risk and disarray and taking the plunge without knowing what was coming next.

  That summer, after gaining real world experience as a cop in Fort Worth, he was ready to bite the bullet and follow his dad's dream for him and go to law school and become a corporate attorney. It wasn't what he'd wanted but it had been expected. A few whirlwind weeks with her and he'd taken the risk. He told his dad that he was going to law school to study criminal law. His dad had responded by pulling the plug on paying for school. The result was Drew going back to Fort Worth as a cop—this time, permanently. After years of night school, he had his law degree but by then he wasn't just working as a cop anymore, he'd become one. Spending his life behind a desk just wasn't in the cards. Even Catfish Creek was better than that. And in a few days, that would be gone too. All he was waiting for was the call from the Fort Worth PD with a start date.

  A noise behind him pulled him out of his thoughts and he turned around. Leah stood in the dim hall, the light from his bedroom silhouetting her and outlining every curve.

  She held out the phone. "Isaac wants to talk to you."

  He just bet Isaac did. He took the phone from Leah. "Hey, man."

  "I'll be there in three hours," Isaac said.

  "No need. I've got her and the Feds are doing surveillance."

  "It doesn't seem right."

  Drew shoved his hand through his hair and tried to imagine the fallout if Isaac showed up in Catfish Creek. It wouldn't be good. "You show up here with your B-Squad fire power and you'll put an even bigger target on Leah because Wynn and Miller will know she's got more backup than one guy and it'll make them desperate. People do stupid shit when they're desperate. Right now they still think it's an easy job and will lead the Feds right back to the man running the show. If Wynn and Miller scatter, the head of the snake will just send in more muscle—maybe more dangerous and definitely unknown. Right now, we know who they are and where they are. This is the best plan. She's protected. She's safe."