Joker Joker (The Deuces Wild Series Book 2)

by Irish Winters

  She cleared the door, her feet spread, and her heels planted, pointing that revolver at Tate through the car window. “I don’t think so, Agent Higgins. You’re going to pretend you never saw me. Trust me. You will let me go.”

  Showdown.

  “Think about what you’re doing to that little girl you raised,” he bit out. “She’s watching you now like she’s watched you all of her life. Is this how you want Winslow to remember you?”

  Hattie’s chin came up. “I could say the same to you. Do you want the bitch you’ve been fucking to dream about the day I turned your fat head to red crap?”

  Tate winced at the language. God, she had her nerve to accuse a woman as pure as Winslow of something like that in front of her parents. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

  He and Tucker had already searched the ranch and questioned the help. Hattie was outnumbered and on her own. Her family, if she’d contacted them and asked for their help, wasn’t even in Texas, which was sad in a weird, pathetic way. Tate didn’t know why that image of Hattie alone against the world bothered him, but it did.

  This was, after all, the only mother Winslow had known, and Winslow was the only decent thing Hattie had ever had, and probably loved—in her way. Yes, Hattie was a twisted piece of work, but she was alone in the world. Even as a kid growing up, she had no idea what a decent home and family life was. Tate lost his parents and still carried that hurt with him, but they were both good people. They’d loved him. Not a day went by that he didn’t know he’d been wanted.

  But Hattie? He could appreciate the desperation that drove people to choose poorly. It was simple math. Wrecked people made wrecked choices. They drove people away or they left them behind. They blocked them out of their lives. Ring a bell?

  “Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Hattie barked. Quick as the snake she was, she flicked the end of her gun at Winslow, still standing in the arms of her mother at the front of the car. “How about we make it a twofer? You let me go, I’ll let Brooklyn and her mommy live.”

  But Hattie had gotten over-confident, and Tate could see what she could not.

  “Works for me, Ms. Beau-re-gard,” Tucker bit out her name, the business end of his pistol now snug at the bottom of her skull, and his fingers securely trapping her pistol. “It’s over, Hattie. Drop your weapon and let’s call it a day.”

  God, the man was a—well—a godsend. Tate drew in a breath, relieved that Tucker had gotten the drop on Hattie as planned. What could have been damned ugly was—

  “No!” Hattie shrieked as she nailed Tucker’s family jewels with one well-aimed kick of her pointy heel, and down he went with a hiss and a “Son-of-a-bitch!”

  Fumbling, she retrieved her weapon, aimed it at Winslow, and—

  BLAM! Tate dropped her where she stood. In the dirt.

  “Mom! No!” Winslow screamed as she let go of Emma and rounded the Taurus at a dead run. Shit. Tate holstered his weapon and intercepted her before she could see her mother, ah, Hattie, like that.

  “You killed my mom!” she shrieked, elbowing him, hell-bent on getting to Hattie. “Let me go! I have to help her!”

  “No, baby. You don’t.” Barricading her inside his arms, Tate dragged her kicking and screaming to the porch, away from the scene while Tucker stumbled to his feet. Tate never would have unholstered his weapon if he hadn’t meant to use deadly force to stop this child predator. Hattie was where she belonged now. Where she’d never hurt Winslow again.

  Booker took over then. Several of his ranch hands appeared out of nowhere with a tarp. Poor Emma stood watching, her shoulders set, her mouth set in a grim line as they covered the body, and Tate knew she was giving him time to make amends with Winslow.

  “She’s not your mother,” he crooned. “She never was. She would have killed you and your mother.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Winslow cried, tearing at her bare head with her fingernails, leaving long red scratches over her scalp. “But she was my mom, Tate. For years. She took care of me, and yes, she was cruel, but she was all I had. I hate you! You killed her!”

  Cupping her poor sunburned head, he pressed her under his chin, knowing this was shock and grief talking. He wished there’d been another way. “I’m sorry you had to see that, but you can’t ask me not to protect you. I’m not made that way. I will always strike first. I will always be here for you.”

  A strangled scream choked out of her. “I know,” she sobbed hoarsely, hiccupping she was crying so hard, “but this. I didn’t want her to die.”

  Shifting his feet, Tate wrapped his body around her, swaying to comfort her even though he knew there was none to be given. Death sucked, and self-defense didn’t mean shit when someone you cared for died as a result. That was Winslow through and through. She cared about others even when they didn’t deserve it.

  At last she melted against him. “I don’t hate you, Tate. You had to do it, and I... I understand,” she said, shivering from the adrenaline rush. “I do, and I’m glad you didn’t let her kill my real mom and dad.”

  Or you. “Me too,” he said as he pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Hattie lived a damned hard life, baby.” So did Ike and Sue Ellen and all the other Beauregard children. In a way, none of them got a decent break in the world. “She’s been headed down this road since the day she was born.”

  “It’s just that she never had a... a chance.” Winslow wept, her face in his shirt—right over his heart.

  “Yes, she did,” he whispered into the top of her head. “She had you for twenty years, Winslow. The second she stole you from your parents, she had everything. The sun. The moon. Every last one of the stars. She could’ve lived happily-ever-after from that moment on, and you never would’ve known she wasn’t your real mother. She could’ve loved you and spoiled you rotten, but she chose to poison you instead. When that didn’t work out like she wanted, she sold you back to your real mom and dad for three million pieces of silver.”

  How Winslow could feel compassion for Hattie Beauregard after all she’d endured amazed Tate. She should be damned mad at this despicable betrayal, but she wasn’t Hattie, was she? Hattie was damaged goods from the get-go, but Tate had a hunch that Winslow was more like Booker Lockette, if those soft green eyes staring at him from across the yard meant anything. The man was poised like a snake to strike. He wanted his daughter back, and that clenched fist told Tate he meant to fight for her if he had to wait much longer.

  An odd sad whine climbed out of Winslow’s throat. “She stole me then she sold me, Tate. Like I meant nothing to her. How messed up is that?”

  “She’s the loser, not you,” he murmured against her scalp, giving Winslow time to remember who was who, and what was what in this crazy mixed up life she’d been forced into. What else could he tell her, but “I love you, Brooklyn Lockette. So do your mom and dad. Look at them waiting to get their hands on you. They want you in their lives. Give them a chance.”

  It must’ve worked. He barely had time to close his eyes before her mouth crashed onto his, and there, under the bright Amarillo sky, he tasted the salty, tear-flavored kisses of the woman he would soon have to let go.

  Brooklyn, aka Winslow, patted her Stetson, a lovely chamois colored cowboy hat with a pink and black bandana underneath it to protect her ears and scalp from the sun. Texas was hot. Tate was hotter. He’d stayed on at the Booker Lockette Ranch to make sure she settled in where she’d never been before. Or so he said.

  As it turned out, Booker’s display of righteous outrage when Winslow had first arrived at the ranch was an act. It had nearly broken his heart to deny the woman he’d known damned well was his child, but he’d had to do it. Pride and authenticity demanded he give that woman—he still couldn’t speak Hattie’s name without a long list of expletives—a small taste of what she’d given him and Emma. Besides, the ruse gave Tate and Tucker time to get into position.

  Tate. Hmmm. Because of his courage, she now went by Brooklyn Winslow
Lockette. Emphasis on the Lock. Sometimes…

  Winslow wanted to move forward, but the one-eighty degree turn in her life was humongous. Make that phantasmagorical. Mind boggling too.

  Some days she didn’t know who she was. Booker called her his Little Bit, an endearment he’d blessed her with twenty years ago, but one she didn’t remember. Without fail, Emma—still working on calling her Mom—called her Brooklyn, her given name. But Tate called her Bdub, short for BW, her initials. ’Course he usually said it with a sly wink.

  Winslow still wasn’t sure which name she wanted to go by. Both Winslow and Brooklyn betrayed someone she loved now or had loved in the past. Tate’s solution seemed the best, but she wasn’t Bdub when she’d met him, so yeah. Lots of adjustments.

  The truth was she’d never felt better. Her eyes were clear. She hadn’t thrown up in weeks, not since that last day when everything went crazy, umm, crazier. She smiled more and she’d put on a little weight, probably because homemade potato salad, Texas-style barbecued beef ribs, and her father’s baked beans were to-die-for good. Emma and Booker couldn’t seem to feed her enough.

  Her body had done some kind of system-reboot now that the poison was out of her system, and she was eating properly. Her hair was making a tentative appearance, still short but coming in as dark as before, and a little curly too. She could run her fingers through it and spike it if she wanted to, but that reminded her of Joyce, umm, Hattie. Damn. I’m never going to get that right in my head.

  Every day the air smelled a little sweeter, the sky looked bluer, and wow. It was good to be alive. Autumn was different in Texas, but the nights were still cool. Thanksgiving was a week away, and Christmas was fast on its heels, but none of that mattered because her heart was on the verge of breaking again. Tomorrow morning, Tate was leaving Amarillo. He had a job to get back to and she had a family to reconnect with.

  Winslow shoved the thought out of her mind. Life was what she’d wanted, but one without Tate in it? Not so much. She hadn’t had any time alone with him, not between his boss calling him and her dad putting him to work. Every time she tried to get him to herself, either Emma came looking for her or something came up. Like family albums and clothes shopping. A visit with the Lockette family doctor or a drive around the ranch. Old Curly, one of Booker’s ranch hands cried when she was reintroduced to him. He’d been there the day Hattie stole her, and he’d blamed himself as much as Booker blamed himself. So yeah. Winslow had lots of family and friends now, and she was beginning to love them all.

  Tate never complained, but Winslow did. Her days were filled, but empty at the same time. Her nights were spent thrashing, tangled in sheets and thinking about him. Wanting his arms around her. Needing the smell of his skin in her nose and the taste of his mouth on her tongue. She missed him with a craving so deep that she ached day in and day out for his touch or one of his infrequent smiles. Damn, I’ve got it bad.

  Which was why she was where she was today, watching the calf branding in the dusty corral. With one boot hooked over the bottom rung of the rail and Pepe snuggled in the cradle of her arm where he belonged, Winslow kept a hungry eye on her cowboy.

  Pepe came to Texas courtesy of FBI Special Agents Ky and Eden Winchester. Along with their baby boy, Kyler, they’d made a special trip just to bring Pepe home. How amazing was that, strangers traveling all this way just to deliver a shivering, big-eyed little dog to his mistress? By the time they’d left two days later, Kyler sported little cowboy boots and two front teeth. He wasn’t walking yet, but he was the cutest thing ever.

  Ky and Eden also brought an unexpected surprise, her handwritten journals. Eden thought she should use them to write a book, an autobiography of her experiences as a kidnapped child. Ky offered to help since the Department of Defense was vetting his book, Surviving Life, A USMC Story of Hope, before it could be published. Ky had a good agent who was primed to jump on Winslow’s story too, but telling that life story meant betraying the woman she’d known as Mom again. Winslow couldn’t do it.

  For now, the journals rested under her bed in a colorful cardboard box that Eden had bought for her. Call it stupid or call it wrong, Winslow still loved that crazy, mean lady, Hattie Beauregard, so she went with her heart and let the chance to make millions pass her by. Life in Amarillo was enough of a treasure, and truth be known, this was all she’d ever wanted. A home and a family. Maybe a baby boy in her future, a sweetheart with dark shaggy hair and a frown that only she or his daddy could love away. If only...

  But man, that cowboy on the back of that buckskin sure could ride. Winslow shook her head and schooled her runaway thoughts. She focused on what she had today. Tate was a natural at herding the pesky red calves around the corral and into the holding chute. He was on Romeo, the one her father called a damned good cow horse. When the calf dodged right, Tate and Romeo cut it off before it could get away.

  Tate followed up with a quick as lightning feint to the left to keep the calf off-balance and moving forward. With a slap of his dusty black cowboy hat to this thigh, and a sharp, “Hey!” Tate startled the balking critter into the chute. The other ranch hands took over from there, herding the little guy to vaccinations, branding, and other stuff.

  Her dad’s registered brand consisted of two overlaid letters in a circle: B and L for Booker Lockette. Both letters shared the same bold vertical and bottom strokes. The two curves of the B were lighter, leaving no doubt there was a definite L to be reckoned with. Booker said a brand was the same as a man’s word. Just as telling. Just as good. And the Booker Lockette Ranch had a name above reproach, which was why he always emphasized the lock.

  Booker was a good horseman and a respected rancher, but Winslow’s abduction had destroyed him as much as it had Emma. He’d blamed himself so bitterly for losing his only daughter that he’d built another ranch house, the one Brooklyn—aka Winslow—lived in today, as far from the highway and civilization as he could, nearly in the heart of his thousand-acre ranch. The home itself was stone and timber, unlike the deserted one Hattie had driven by at the start of the long drive in. Behind the rustic exterior, an extensive security system monitored every road, walkway, and door on the ranch. Booker had known the precise moment that Hattie entered his territory.

  He’d offered the same reward back then, but apparently Hattie hadn’t seen it. Was it wrong to believe that maybe—just maybe—she had, but that she wanted to be an honest-to-goodness mother so much that she’d chosen her new, albeit stolen, daughter over her greed? Winslow liked to think so, but she kept that thought to herself. Emma and Booker had been through enough. They didn’t need to hear her defending the woman they despised.

  “That’s quite a decent young man you’ve set your sights on.”

  Winslow jumped, startled Emma was suddenly at her elbow. “Tate’s a good friend.” To say the least.

  “You love him,” Emma said, her eyes on Tate’s broad back as he roped an escapee on the other side of the corral. She hooked her boot over the bottom rung of the corral just like Winslow.

  “I do. He saved me. I owe him everything.” And I’ll never be able to repay him.

  Emma crossed her arms on the top rail, watching the impromptu rodeo. “That doesn’t mean you have to marry him, Brooklyn.”

  Winslow winced, not yet feeling like a Brooklyn. “True,” she agreed with a sigh. But look at him go.

  The man was cut out of granite, the dense kind that didn’t crumble or flake under pressure. Didn’t chip or buckle either. His wide shoulders were made for carrying heavy loads. For work. His chest was thick and powerful. His heart as hard as flint, yet as tender as a little boy. Even wounded when he’d arrived on the ranch, he’d never asked for help, not once, just stepped up and gave back at every opportunity to serve.

  He might be a tough FBI agent, but he had a way with dogs, little boys too. Winslow had seen the way Pepe and Kyler gravitated to Tate, but then so did she. There was something about the man...

  “Is he still leaving
tomorrow morning?” Emma was worried he’d take her long-lost daughter with him when he left. That was what this conversation was about.

  The sad truth was, “Yes. His flight to Reagan leaves at six-fifty-five.” Which means he’ll be gone by five because he has an important job to do, and he’s committed to serving America. That’s what men like him do. They leave their loved ones behind and they die in the line of duty.

  “What will you do once he’s gone, Brooklyn?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, but she thought, ‘I’m seducing that man tonight if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  As was his custom, Tate came into the Lockette home through the side door like the servants did, which put him in the mudroom. Doffing his boots to keep the dirt from the corrals and stables out of the house, he stripped out of his socks and stuffed them into his boots, just to be on the safe side. He might be a guest, but these fine people deserved respect for the way they’d taken Winslow, ahem, Bdub, back into their hearts and their home.

  Like it or not, he was on the first flight out of Amarillo come morning. Damn, that hurt just thinking about it, but it was time he let Winslow—Bdub—get on with her life. He’d heard Booker talking to her about tutors and school, college even. Emma had already taken her shopping and filled her bedroom closet with more new clothes and shoes than Winslow had owned in her entire life. Booker had even given her a horse. Her brothers, Rhett and Gunn were due home for the holidays, so yeah. It was time Tate got out of their way and let Bdub become part of her family.

  Interestingly, his guest bedroom was on ground level at the rear of the house while Winslow’s was upstairs next to her parents’ bedroom. That made sense. Booker Lockette apparently knew horses and men. Smart man.