by Katie Lane
Everyone laughed, but Val could tell by the exchange of looks from the other men that there was hope one more Double Diamond boy would make his home here in Simple—a name that wouldn’t change. The vote had been taken and the almost unanimous response had been to keep the town’s name. Simple would remain simple. Val thought it was wise choice.
“What are you bad boys talkin’ about?” Penny Cassidy walked up with the other bridal attendants. They looked like beautiful garden flowers in their frothy gowns in a rainbow of colors that matched their husband’s tuxedos.
Cru pulled his wife into his arms. “We were just talking about how damned lucky we are to have caught some Simple country girls. But did my wife have to choose pink as her dress color? I look like Emma Johansen’s house.”
Penny looped her arms around his neck. “I figured you were manly enough to carry off pink without letting it ruffle your ego.”
“Damn straight I am.” He kissed his wife until her cheeks turned as pink as his tuxedo and the photographer called for the groomsmen to line up for pictures.
The reception was held in a huge tent on the south lawn—mostly because the garden had been too small for the number of people who attended. There were all the people from New York and the publishing world, all the townsfolk, and the guests who were staying at the boardinghouse.
Val had thought the groups would stay divided the entire night, but once the bar opened and the dancing started, everyone mingled and enjoyed themselves. Luanne sold an X SEX bracelet to his agent. Chester kept his editor laughing most the night. And Lucas and Aunt Gertie sat with Nicholas Sparks and told him the story of how they had gotten back together. Val wouldn’t be surprised if their love story ended up in one of Nicholas’s books.
The way everyone got along proved something Val had just learned.
It didn’t matter what you did for a living or what city or town you lived in or what you wore or drove or ate. Or if you were cool or a nerd. As long as you were you, you’d get along just fine in the world. Valentine had figured out who he was. And in the process he had found a woman who loved him for it.
“You’re doing it again.”
He glanced down at the beautiful redhead in his arms. “I stepped on your toes? Sorry, baby. I guess those dance lessons we took didn’t help your two-left-footed husband.”
Reba sighed as a smile lit her face. “Husband. I like the sound of that. But I wasn’t talking about you stepping on my toes. I was talking about you typing on my back.”
He realized his fingers were twitching and he tightened his hold on her to get them to stop. “Sorry.”
She leaned in and kissed him. “You never have to apologize to me, my love, for being a creative genius.” As his heart soared at her words of praise, she unhooked her arms from around his neck and pulled him off the dance floor. A lot of people tried to stop them. But when Reba was on a mission, she was unstoppable. She politely greeted their guests, but kept right on walking.
“Where are you taking me, woman?” he asked. “I hope to bed.”
“We’ve spent plenty of time in bed this last month.” She stopped at the garden gate, and he took the opportunity to pulled her against him and nuzzle her neck.
“You want to make love in the gazebo? It’s a little chancy with all the guests, but I’m game if you are.”
She laughed. “You are a bad, bad boy, Marvin Valentine.” She gave him one over-the-shoulder kiss that left him breathless before she opened the gate and pulled him into the garden. But they didn’t head to the gazebo. Or the cottage. They headed to the garden room. She stopped just outside the French doors and took a key from between the tempting swell of her cleavage. She held it out to him.
“Happy wedding day.”
He cocked his head before he took the key, still warm from her body, and inserted it into the lock. When he opened the door, he found the room much as it had been when he’d stayed there . . .with one minor exception. A large mahogany desk with a cushioned desk chair. On top of the desk sat his open laptop all ready for writing. Next to the laptop was a vase with one red rose.
“Welcome to your new writing retreat,” Reba said. “Aunt Gertie wanted you to have her old desk, and I bought the chair on Amazon. If it doesn’t work or you don’t like the color, we can send it—”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Although it was hard to kiss when he had a huge smile on his face. He drew back and smoothed a wayward curl from her forehead. “Thank you. I love the chair and the desk. But we really can’t spare a room we could rent out. Especially when we don’t know if I’m going to make any money writing middle school ghost stories.”
“You’ll make money. I believe in you. But you’ll never know if you don’t finish your book.” She turned him around and pushed him toward the chair.
“I can’t write now. We have guests.”
“We are always going to have guests, especially now that the boardinghouse is continually filled with ghost hunters. So you can’t use that as an excuse not to write.” She pulled out the chair and spoke in a stern voice very similar to her aunt’s. “Sit.”
He sat. He expected her to leave and rejoin their guests. Instead, she kicked off her shoes, hiked up her wedding dress, and climbed up on the bed. After plumping up the pillows, she relaxed back with a smile that said she would be content lying there watching him for the rest of her life.
As he turned to his laptop and started writing, Marvin Valentine realized there was such a thing as heaven on earth.
The End
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A Sneak Peek of Katie Lane’s next Bad Boy!
TAMING A TEXAS DEVIL
is out September 2020!
“You’ve got exactly two seconds to drop your weapon and reach for the sky, Mister, before I fill you full of more holes than a pair of fishnet stockings.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Dixie Leigh Meriwether lowered the gun and stared in complete and utter annoyance at her reflection in the mirror. “Fishnet stockings? Good Lord, Dixie Leigh, do you think a criminal is going to take you seriously if you start talking about women’s hosiery?”
She narrowed her eyes, lifted the gun, and tried again. “You’ve got two seconds to drop your weapon and reach for the sky before I blow your bee-hind to smithereens.” She rolled her eyes and did a little foot stomping dance of frustration. “Bee-hind? Dirty Harry would not say bee-hind! Come on, now. Concentrate. You got this.”
She shook out her shoulders, adjusted her tan felt cowboy hat at just the right jaunty angle, then took a nice deep breath and slowly released it like she did before she stepped out on a beauty pageant stage. Except now, she wasn’t playing the part of a perfect southern lady vying for a crown. She was playing the part of a steely-eyed deputy hoping not to get shot.
Although getting shot by a criminal in this town was extremely unlikely. Which is why Dixie had chosen to be a deputy here. Simple had one of the lowest crime rates in the state of Texas. Probably the world. Still, her mama had always taught her to expect the best, but prepare for the worst.
She narrowed her eyes at her reflection and was about to deliver her lines once again when she noticed the red bump on her chin. “What in the name of Sweet Baby Moses is that?” She lowered the gun and leaned closer to the mirror. “No . . . just no. A pimple!” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a pimple. Probably at thirteen, right before her mama had started her on a daily skin care regime that Dixie had stuck too religiously ever since.
As her mama always said, “If the Lord was nice enough to bless you with a gift as precious as the human body, then you needed to take good care of it.” And Winona Meriwether believed in taking care of
her body. At almost sixty, Dixie’s mama was still mistaken for her big sister. She had great hair, great teeth, great nails, and great skin due to her diligent care—and the diligent care of an experienced team of hair stylists, dermatologists, dentists, and plastic surgeons. Dixie intended to be just like her mother.
Although it was hard to find a team of professionals in a town that didn’t even have a nail salon. And the hair salon they did have didn’t exactly meet Dixie’s high standards for hair care. Which was why, in the last six months of living in Simple, Dixie had been forced to handle her own personal crises.
Holstering the gun, she walked to the Miss USA tote bag that hung on a hook by the door and searched through it until she found the skin-tightening facial mask she’d ordered from Amazon. Since she wouldn’t have anything else to do while she let the mask do its job of exfoliating, she also pulled out her pedicure kit.
“Alexa, play me some Kelsea Ballerini,” she called to the black cylinder setting on the filing cabinet. But as soon as Miss Me More came on, the white Persian cat sleeping on the purple satin pillow on the desk got to her feet and started arching and hissing. Dixie looked up at the ceiling in silent prayer. “Fine, Queenie! Alexa, play Luke Bryan.” When Drunk on You came on, Queenie stopped hissing and nestled back down in her pillow and closed her eyes contentedly.
Dixie sat in the chair behind the desk. “I don’t know what you have against women singers, but you need to get over it. No one likes a bitch who can’t get along with other bitches. I won the title of Miss Congeniality twice because I followed mama’s golden rule—‘Don’t let misters get in the way of sisters.’” She took off her hat and tossed it to the desk before she opened the mask package. “Although I must admit that I do love me some Luke. Did I tell you I met him when I was at that pageant in Memphis?”
By the time Dixie finished retelling the story, her face was covered in a cooling mask that left only her eyes and mouth uncovered and her feet were propped up on the desk getting a coat of pretty coral nail polish. Luke had moved on from his speakers going boom-boom to knocking boots.
“Shoot!” Dixie said as she once again got polish outside her toenails. Coloring within the lines had never been her forte. She grabbed a tissue to wipe it off when a sharp rap sounded on the office door.
Dixie froze in stunned surprise. No one ever came to Sheriff Willaby’s office—except for the mailman and the cleaning lady. But the mailman put the mail in the slot of the front door and left with only a wave, and the cleaning lady came on Friday nights. If someone in town needed the sheriff, they usually called. And even that was infrequent.
Sheriff Willaby was not a favorite with the townsfolk of Simple. Probably because he was an arrogant, misogynistic bully—something Dixie had figured out in their very first phone interview. But since she’d had no intentions of working for him longer than a few months, she’d figured she could handle him. Handling men was her forte. Within weeks, she’d wrapped the sheriff around her little finger. Although it was still hard to work for such a petty, small-minded man and she wasn’t the least upset when he’d been suspended for a sexist comment he’d made on his social media page.
And she could end up suspended just like the sheriff if she didn’t move quickly.
“Just a second!” she yelled as she scooped up Queenie and shoved her and the purple pillow into the cat carrier. After slipping the carrier under the desk, she quickly peeled off the mask and threw it into the trash before using the tissue she still had in her hand to wipe off her face as she wheeled the chair over to the filing cabinet and unplugged Alexa. Then she wheeled back and shoveled all her pedicure supplies into the top desk drawer. Once she slammed it shut, she pulled on her hat, pinned a smile on her face, and called in a breathy voice, “Come in.”
There was a long stretch of silence, and she thought that whomever it was had given up and left. But just as she was about to relax, the door opened. A man stood in the doorway. A big man. And Dixie was no wilting violet. Even in short-heeled cowboy boots, she was usually as tall, if not taller, than most men. While all her pageant friends complained about being taller than men, Dixie had no problem with it. In fact, she kind of enjoyed looking down.
But even in her five-inch bathing suit competition heels, she wouldn’t be able to look down at this man. The crown of his cowboy hat was only inches from the top of the doorway. And height wasn’t the only thing oversized on the man. He had shoulders as wide as the Dallas Cowboy linebacker Dixie had once dated, and if he had been a woman, he would’ve needed a C-cup for the hard pectoral muscles that pushed out the pockets of his heavily starched white western shirt.
The shirt was snapped all the way up to the man’s thick neck where a black tie was perfectly knotted between the sharp points of the stiff cotton collar. Two belts encircled his fat-free waist. One looped through the waistband of his razor-edge pressed khaki pants and the other held the low-riding holster resting on his right hip. While lots of folks walked around with guns in Texas, usually only lawmen had them holstered on the hip.
Well, crap on a cracker. She could be in trouble.
But as her mama always said, “The bigger the man, the harder they fall.” And Dixie was an expert at getting men to fall.
She brightened her smile to the highest wattage as she rose to her feet. She would’ve loved to step out from behind the desk and sashay over to him. Her sashay had always been a showstopper. But she couldn’t leave the desk with smudged naked toes. “Well, good mornin’. What can I do for you?” She drew out the “you” into a nice long Texas “ye-e-ew.”
There was a slight hesitation before he spoke. “Who are you?” His “yew” sounded much more country than hers. And sexy. Extremely sexy in his rough baritone voice.
She rested her hands on her hips and tipped her head. “I believe that should be my question, seeing as how you are in my office.”
“Your office? This is Sheriff Willaby’s office.”
“True, but since the sheriff . . . has taken a short leave of absence, I’m the one in charge.”
Beneath the brim of his low-tugged hat, she watched as his square jaw flexed and his lips pressed into a thin line. “You’re Deputy Meriwether?”
Blistered biscuits! If he knew her name, she was in big trouble. Still, she tried to bluff her way through like she had bluffed her way through high school, college, and the police academy. “That would be me. And you are?”
He swept off his hat. “Lincoln Hayes, Texas Ranger.”
Dixie could count on one hand the times she’d been struck speechless, but she was speechless now. Not only because he was a Texas Ranger, the elite of Texas law officers, but also because he was hot. Not hot in a Brad Pitt pretty boy way, but hot in a rugged manly way. If he were a dog, he’d have been a pit bull. His dark eyes were deep set and his nose broad and his jaw square. The only things that weren’t masculine were his long dark lashes, the dimple in his chin, and his soft-looking lips—although even those were marred with a jagged white scar in the top right corner.
A shiver of sexual awareness tiptoed up Dixie’s spine. She wasn’t surprised by her body’s reaction. The man was more virile and studly than one of her daddy’s prize stallions. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if women threw themselves at his big-booted feet for just a chance to be his mating mare.
Just not Dixie Leigh.
If anyone was going to be throwing themselves at someone’s feet, it wouldn’t be her.
She stood and swept off her own hat, making sure to give her long blond, highlighted hair just enough shake so it fell nicely around her shoulders. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Officer Hayes.”
His eyes widened, and she couldn’t help doing a mental fist pump. That’s right, Mr. Big Shot Texas Ranger. Don’t think you can strut in here and get the upper hand. This is my turf. She reached her hand over the desk.
It took him a full minute to finally stop staring and step closer. His hands were as big and masculine as everything else o
n him and she steeled herself for a bone-crushing shake. Instead, he held her hand gently in his huge paw, as if it were a flower he was worried about crushing, and released it quickly.
“Nice meeting you, Deputy Meri—”
Queenie started to scratch at her carrier to get out. Dixie tried to cover it up by talking loudly. “So what can I do for you, Officer Hayes?”
He stared at the desk as he answered. “I stopped by to check on things. Being a new deputy, I thought you might need some help. I’m surprised the sheriff’s department haven’t sent someone to take over for the sheriff.”
They had tried, but she’d done some fast-talking and assured them that she didn’t need any help. The last thing she wanted was another arrogant male bossing her around.
“As you can see,” she waved a hand around, “I’m doing just fine and dandy. Simple isn’t really a hot spot for crime, now is it? So there’s not a whole lot to do besides make my morning and evening rounds.” Not that she had been doing her morning and evening rounds. Simple might not have a lot of crime, but if some criminal activity did take place, she’d just as soon not be around for it.
He studied her for a moment before he cocked a jet-black eyebrow. “And give yourself a facial.”
“Excuse me?”
He made a loop around his face with his finger. “There’s some kind of blue goop hanging off your face.”
She wanted to stomp her foot again. But a beauty queen never threw tantrums or showed her frustration in front of people. Or owned up to her flaws and mistakes. “Oh, that. It’s just a new sunscreen—the sheriff’s department is big on protecting their officers from the damaging rays of the sun.”
“Are they also big on their officers painting their toenails dark pink while on duty, Deputy Meriwether?”
Her eyes widened. She glanced at the window, but the shades were drawn tight so he couldn’t have been spying on her. Then how had he known she was painting her toes?
