by Tina Leonard
“Free country, isn’t it?” Rebel asked.
They were spoiling for a fight, and by the look on Declan’s face, they just might get one. Trace decided tonight was not the night to rip up Redfeathers. He had other things on his mind that required attention.
Specifically, how he was going to talk Judy out of the kissing booth idea. Now, that was an important subject to tackle. He glanced toward Ava, and she met his gaze—glancing away just as fast.
“I’m outta here,” he said. He put his cue on the rack. “I promised Rory I’d get out to his place tonight to help with a couple of chores.”
“We’ll come along,” Saint said.
“Table’s yours,” Declan said, “and my pool cue, too.” He whipped it, slicing the cue hard against Buck’s knees. Buck let out a howl, and Trace realized tonight was destined to be fight night after all.
“Now, now, boys,” Steel said, muscling in with his big, solid six-foot-one frame. “There are ladies present.”
“Yeah, and they’re standing right here,” Rebel said, glaring at the Outlaws.
Trace scoffed, put his hat on. “You never learn, fellas. But that’s okay. It makes it that much easier to enjoy kicking your ass when necessary.”
Judy got up, waved Trace over. The Horsemen laughed, but Trace didn’t care. When one got the call from Judy, one went—and if Ava was sitting at the table, one put a little git in his getalong.
“Trace,” Judy said, “can you drive the Belles home? I have something I want to discuss with the Horsemen, now that Steel’s calmed them down.”
He eyed Judy. There were donations and uniforms and kissing booths and other topics on the mayor’s mind—and if the Horsemen were correct, wedding-consultant interviewing. “I’ll take them home, sure. But then you and I need to have a chat.”
She sniffed, rose up to her full six feet to try to meet his gaze. “Talk is cheap, Trace Carter.”
“It may be, but let’s spend a nickel together. There’s some things we need to get straight.”
He glanced at Ava, hot temptation in tight blue jeans to his eyes. There was no way any of Buck’s crowd was getting his hands on that.
Mine, mine, mine.
Actually, not mine at all.
Going to have to get that figured out—before I lose my mind.
* * *
Trace drove the Belles home, with Ava sitting in the seat next to him and Cameron and Harper in the back. They were pretty chatty, giving him a chance to think.
Plot how he could get Ava alone.
The problem solved itself when he parked his truck and Cameron and Harper got out. Ava remained in the truck, and when they were alone, she looked at him. “Just to let you know,” Ava said, “I wasn’t planning on staying in Hell.”
“I know.”
“In fact, I’m not even sure I will past the holidays. But for now, I’ve taken the job waitressing at Hattie’s, and I’ve got my riding.”
He nodded. “Glad things worked out.”
She was stiff, not about to bend. This was no casual excuse to stay in his truck to pretend to talk, and then to work her way into a make-out session, which had happened to him—a lot—with other women.
No, this one had to be truly hard to get. And she wasn’t playing unavailable—he could practically feel the ice wall between them.
All on her side, of course.
“You don’t have to train with Saint,” he said.
“I do. He asked.”
Unlike him, who’d kicked her off his practice squad.
He was in a tough spot.
“Listen, about that—”
She held up a hand. “I completely understand. Once Saint and Declan explained it to me, I totally got it.”
“Explained what, exactly?” Small warning bells began to peal at the back of his brain.
“Your partners say you have intimacy issues.”
He blinked. “Intimacy issues?”
“Yes. You came back from the war changed. You don’t really want a woman in your life. You’re afraid of feeling anything.” Ava nodded. “It all totally fits with the way you act.”
“The way I act?”
“Yeah.” She gathered up her purse. “You know, like you’ve got a chip on your shoulder that’s the size of the world. It is the size of the world.” She looked at him. “I get that you don’t want to lose anybody, or get close to anybody. Saint says no one goes in and no one goes out of your life. And that way you keep yourself aloof.”
He had two brothers-in-arms he was going to bark at when he got home. But right now, he had an urban legend to dispel. “Not even close.”
She opened the truck door. “It’s all right, Trace. I understand why you don’t want to train me anymore. I’m okay with it, I promise you—”
He didn’t let her finish. He hauled her back over to him, capturing those sexy lips, partly to shut off the spigot of fairy tales his brothers had told her, but mostly to get his mouth on hers.
Oh, God, it was better than he remembered.
Trace drank Ava in, sliding his tongue along hers, tasting the sweet velvety moistness that was Ava, felt himself practically time-traveling out of his head with suddenly blinding need.
She pulled away from him, gazing at him, her eyes huge. “What are you trying to prove?”
This was definitely the first time a woman had ever said that to him after he’d kissed her. Trace felt himself practically die a little inside.
“Saint and Declan say it’s not good for you to be with anyone right now. That your fear of intimacy is something you’re going to need a long time to work—”
He pulled her back to him, kissing her, drinking her in, holding her warm body to him as close as he could get it. “I’m glad you’re staying in Hell,” he got out before drowning himself in her mouth again. “You can help me get over these issues. I may be a long way from recovery, but you’re just the woman to cure me,” he said, and dove back in, stroking and teasing her with his mouth. He wanted her so badly it hurt, and he felt himself growing rock-hard. She opened up to him like a flower, finally relaxing in his arms, and Trace swept her mouth the way he’d been dying to since she’d first showed up in Hell.
The kissing booth was going to be a problem. No one was finding out how sweet this luscious, red-velvety mouth was. “You’re not going to be in any kissing booth,” he blurted out. “I think I’m in love with your mouth.”
She pulled back. Stared at him. “Are you insane?”
Yes, he was insane. She was driving him mad. “There’s a school of thought in Hell that adheres to that premise.”
Ava looked at him. “What does that mean, you think you’re in love with my mouth?”
“It means that the week crawled by, inch by inch, since the last time I got to kiss you.” Okay, he was a super-dope, a dumb-ass, a geek-nerd who didn’t know how to talk to a woman. He sounded like a drip, and she was going to burn a hole through his truck door getting away from him.
She stared into his eyes, looking at him like he was a madman.
And then, very gently, very sweetly, she pressed those sweet, sexy lips against his. Licked lightly between his lips with that wonderful tongue of hers, practically inviting him to devour her. He waited to see what she would do next, how far she would come to meet him—was shocked when she put her cool, delicate hands against his cheeks and kissed the holy living daylights out of him.
He’d never had a woman French him before; he’d always done the forward motion passes. Ava searched his mouth, letting him feel everything he loved most about her lips, taking her time about teasing and taunting him into wanting her. She was seducing him, and he loved every minute of it. She was so innocent about her seduction, so trusting, that he thought he was going to explode.
“That better?” she asked, pulling back to look at him, and he suddenly remembered she thought he had issues.
Hell, he did have issues. “Almost,” he said, and took over again, working his way from her li
ps down to her neck, and into the vee of her blouse. He could smell peachy-fresh perfume and maybe a little powder, and he was so straight-up in his jeans he was going to have teeth marks from his zipper.
“I have to go inside,” Ava said, pulling away, gazing into his eyes. “But I’ll make a deal with you. You train me to bullfight—and I’ll help you with your problem.”
“My … my problem.”
She nodded solemnly. He stared at her earnest doe eyes and her pert nose, all the more quaint because of the short dark hair, wanting to kiss and nibble her neck so bad he could taste it, when sanity hit him like a thunderbolt.
Dear God, she thought he had some kind of post-traumatic stress issue. Trace swallowed hard, seeing the handiwork his brothers had wrought. Well-played, too. Wished like hell he could take her up on her offer. Thought about friends of his who really did have issues, PTSD—couldn’t lean on that excuse even if he wanted to.
I’m going to bean my brothers a good one for putting me in this foxhole.
“Ava,” he said, “I don’t have a problem.”
“Saint and Declan say you do, but that you just don’t like to acknowledge it.”
“Yeah, but they’re just trying to make you feel better. In ham-headed fashion.” Her eyes widened. “Oh. Make me feel better because you don’t want to train me. You want to make out with me, but not train me. So actually, you’re a rat bastard.”
“Yeah, probably.” He sighed.
“Your friends are weasels.”
“No, they’re just trying to help. Everybody in this town is always trying to help.”
“Why?” She genuinely seemed perplexed. “Can’t you take care of yourself?”
“I can, but they have so much fun trying to help me.”
“Help you do what?”
He was not about to say, Find the woman of my dreams.
“Ava,” he said, realizing there was only one way out because he’d found the woman of his dreams; he just was, as his brothers had pointed out, in possession of a few tiny intimacy issues.
Very well-played indeed.
They’d left him only one card.
“Ava,” he said, “I’ll train you to be the best female bullfighter this state has ever seen.”
She looked at him. “Why? Why are you changing your mind?”
“Because damn it, I want you to stay in Hell. I need you. And I need your mouth.”
She blinked. “That’s the catch? You train me, and I kiss you?”
“Yes. Often. No kissing booths. Just let me kiss you, and we’ll both be happy as babies at grandma’s.”
She looked at him for a long time. He hung on the edge of a precipice, waiting for her to say yes, to accept his deal, so that he could ravish those sweet lips to his heart’s content.
He had the woody of a lifetime waiting for that yes.
“No deal,” Ava said, and got out of his truck.
Chapter Fifteen
Shot through the heart. Crushed. Flailing around like—
Hell, he was starting to act like Steel. Trace straightened, watching Ava as she closed the front door to the bungalow, the bungalow Mayor Judy still hadn’t paid him a dime of rent on.
No deal. Just like that, he was tossed into the cold.
He drove toward home, noticing Eli Larson making his way from Redfeathers. Stephen was good about giving Eli a hot meal once a day, whenever Eli showed up for it. The man had been homeless for a long time, but he preferred his lifestyle. Hell had gotten together once, trying to coax him into a small house in town, but Eli said he liked being free. Everybody still pitched in to “the fund” at Redfeathers, to help pay for Eli’s meals. But it always pained Trace when he saw Eli making his way around town.
What went wrong in a person’s life to make him prefer being alone and with no secure roof over his head?
Which somehow made Trace think about how lonely he was, especially now that he knew Ava wanted nothing to do with him. He couldn’t blame her. She didn’t have any reason to trust him, and the manipulations of Hell weren’t her style.
He went home, finding Saint and Declan sacked out on his leather sofas. “Up, up, buttheads!” he barked, just like in the days when he’d been a platoon leader.
They sprang to attention, relaxing upon recognizing their surroundings.
“Damn, Trace,” Saint said, “you about gave me heart failure!”
“I don’t want to relive those days,” Declan said, “so if you don’t mind, pipe down, bud. Shit.”
Trace got beers for all of them, sat down opposite his brothers, let his hound get up on the sofa next to him, a rare treat. Tonight he enjoyed Prince’s sucking up to him. “So, why are you bothering me?”
Saint opened his beer. “Bothering you is what we do.”
“Anyway,” Declan said, “it’s Friday night. We have nothing better to do.”
“Well, I was getting kissed,” Trace said, and their eyes lit on him, “but it seems it was something of a pity kiss, as the woman in question seems to think I need to be liberated from my demons.”
Declan and Saint high-fived each other.
“We were hoping the sympathy card would work,” Declan told him. “Frankly, you’re down to very few cards, bro.”
“I didn’t need sympathy,” Trace said. “What I needed was for you two to butt out.”
They stared at him.
“Because you were doing such a good job on your own with Ava,” Saint said. “She wasn’t even speaking to you. We at least gave her a reason to consider it.”
“And if you kissed her,” Declan said, “you’re halfway home. Better than Saint here, the suffering succotash.”
“What happened?” Trace asked, looking forward to sharing someone else’s misery for a change.
“I asked Cameron out.” Saint looked chagrined. “Turned me down flat.”
“I’m not even going to bother to ask Harper,” Declan said. “The way you guys are going down in flames, I’m off of women.”
Trace shook his head. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry than women.”
“No we don’t,” Declan said. “They’re life itself. Ask Steel. He’s got twenty-four hours until he finds out whether Judy’s going to open her door or not.”
They sat in silence, considering the options.
“Here’s the deal,” Trace said. “Women aside, we got the Horsemen running some game that I haven’t quite figured out. We’ve got dead chickens at Rory’s—”
“And we’ve got Miss Judy taking her plans to the next level,” Saint said. “I feel like I’m living in a whirlwind.”
“A real shitstorm,” Declan agreed.
“It’s a plan,” Trace said. “Somebody’s cooked up a plan, and they’re running all this at once to catch us off guard.” He looked around at his friends. “It’s Friday night. I vote we invite the girls over to discuss the situation this weekend. Six heads are better than one.”
“Strip poker,” Saint said.
“Bare Naked Twister,” Declan said.
Trace thought about the proposed kissing competition. “When you fellows get through dreaming, you’ll realize that the only game we need to play is the one we already know.”
They stared at him.
“Being ourselves,” he clarified.
“Sounds good,” Declan said, “if we were heroes, which apparently, we’re not. Our ladies don’t think we’re heroes, or they’d be right here with us.”
“Or better yet, in our beds.” Saint sighed. “I really have a hankering for Cameron, which is strange, because redheads usually scare the hell out of me. But no guts, no glory.” Saint grabbed his phone, hit a number. “Cameron, it’s Saint. We’d like to ask you to—oh, you’re heading out to Ivy’s?” His gaze shot to Trace’s, and Trace felt an uncomfortable churning start in his stomach. “You think that’s a good idea?” Saint asked. “No, I know you’re—yeah, okay. Bye.”
He hung up, his expression totally creamed.
“Well?” De
clan and Trace said at the same time.
“The girls say that they’re all heading out there together. They want to see what Ivy’s is all about, that they can’t really understand Hell until they see the part of it that makes Judy crazy.”
Trace’s blood thundered. “So Judy’s taking them?”
Saint nodded.
“Shit.” Judy had a grudge on Ivy that wouldn’t quit.
And then it hit him: Judy’s team was really about putting Ivy out of business. Judy had no intention of allowing her rival to survive in a town where Steel Durant was a very eligible catch.
“Saddle up, brothers,” Trace said. “If the fur’s going to fly, then we better be there to stop the catfight.”
“If you ever say that around Judy, she’s going to scratch your eyes out,” Declan warned. “She considers catfighting beneath her. She says a real woman solves her battles with her wits and her—”
“Never mind,” Trace said, not wanting to think about Ava joining Judy in a direct assault on Ivy’s place. They hurried to Trace’s truck. “Nothing good can come of this, and that’s the reason Judy didn’t want us to know she’d planned this mission.”
He just hoped they got there in time.
* * *
Ava wasn’t certain about this latest scheme of Judy’s, but Cameron and Harper had jumped at the chance to check out the Honky-tonk and Ava wasn’t about to be left behind. Trace had just kissed her like no other, and frankly, she couldn’t have slept if she’d wanted to. It had taken everything she had to turn down his spur-of-the-moment offer and walk away.
Fast.
They sat in Judy’s big-ass silver crew cab truck, way back from the road, spying. So that’s what it’s come to, Ava thought, spying on the enemy.
Then again, there wasn’t this much excitement at the paper factory.
From her perch in the front seat, she peered toward the rocking Honky-tonk. White lights and colored lanterns hung from the live oaks, brightening up the low-slung building. The parking lot was jammed full. Couples danced in boots in the open, boot-scootin’ or hanging over each other and laughing. Music filled the air, clear even inside Judy’s truck.
