Hot Texas Sunrise

by Delores Fossen

  “Thanks, Aunt Cleo,” Beckham called out. The other boys echoed the same.

  “Beckham’s naming him Mango,” Judd told her. “More details to follow, but I gotta go. I need to get them to school so I can get back to work. Later.”

  Even though Judd ended the call, Cleo just stood there, her gaze nailed to the photo that was still on her screen.

  Finally, she had an answer to her question.

  That was what she wanted.

  * * *

  EVEN THOUGH JUDD wasn’t sure what was going on, he didn’t have to guess that this was not something he wanted. He was tired all the way to his bones and would have given a week’s pay just to crash in bed.

  But bed and crashing were clearly going to have to wait.

  Mercy, his sponsor, was leaning against the side of his truck in the parking lot of the police station. She was wearing a nun’s habit. Not an understated outfit, either, but one with a hat the size of a truck tire. Had it been sunny, she could have provided shade for a family of five under that brim.

  Judd quickly shifted his attention from the clothes to the woman. She was crying. Correction: Mercy was sobbing with wet, loud wails. Despite the bulky outfit, Judd could see her chest heaving beneath the black fabric.

  It was going on midnight, but there were enough streetlights for him to see her and vice versa. Which meant there was enough light for someone else to have seen her, too. There’d be gossip, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass about that now. Mercy wasn’t much of a crier so something bad must have happened for her to be like this and have come to Coldwater.

  She looked at him, paused only a second and then went back to wailing again. “Pudge broke up with me,” she said, her voice hiccuping.

  Judd muttered more profanity as he walked toward her. He’d never met Pudge but knew from the way Mercy had talked about him, she cared a lot about the guy. Judd also recalled her saying that Pudge was a former wrestler who was hung like a horse with jackhammer moves. But the thousand-pound gorilla in this mix was that Mercy had been in love with the guy.

  Mercy continued to sob. “I really thought he was the one.”

  Because he didn’t know what else to do, Judd went closer and put his arm around her. His Stetson collided with her nun’s hat. “I’m sorry. Want me to kick his ass for you?” It wasn’t a particularly good or adult solution, but it seemed to be his go-to response. Probably not wise in this case, though, because of Pudge’s former profession.

  Her head whipped up as if she was considering that. “No,” she said on a heavy sigh. “Maybe,” she amended. “No,” Mercy concluded several moments later. “He broke up with me while we were at the costume party at his friend’s apartment in San Antonio.”

  Well, that explained the outfit, though he’d never actually believed that she would have checked into a nunnery.

  “Pudge hooked up with a fairy princess,” Mercy went on. “Perky little boobs, tight ass.” Her tone wasn’t so sobby right now and had taken on a jealous edge. He hoped Mercy didn’t want him to beat up the fairy princess instead of Pudge. He’d have to draw the line on that.

  “You want to go somewhere so we can talk about it?” he asked.

  “No.” She didn’t hesitate, either. “I have Wild Turkey in here.” She patted the area between her huge breasts.

  Since he’d been listening carefully, he noted that she hadn’t said “a” wild turkey, which meant she was talking about bourbon. The tension in his gut popped like a rubber band.

  “Why do you have liquor in your bra?” Judd asked.

  “It’s not the actual liquor.” The crying picked up again, and when she wiped the back of her nose with her hand, Judd took out his handkerchief and gave it to her. “It’s a picture that I took. It was in the window of a liquor store.”

  She reached down into the habit and came out with her phone. There was indeed a picture of a bottle of Wild Turkey.

  Judd sighed. “Why’d you get that close to a liquor store?”

  “Well, I didn’t start there, and I didn’t go in. It was on the way between the party and where I was parked. Before I took the picture, I tried to stop myself. I started saying my safe word.”

  “Bat-shit,” he said, causing her to nod.

  “When that didn’t work, I used your safe word,” she went on, “and then I took out my distraction. I always carry it in my purse.”

  “A strap-on dildo,” Judd said. A disturbingly large hot-pink one with vibrating balls.

  Another nod from Mercy. “FYI, it’s not a good idea to be pacing in front of a liquor store while dressed as a nun, carrying a dildo and muttering ‘bat-shit’ and ‘dick inches.’”

  “Yeah, I could see that alarming somebody.” His grip tightened on her. “You didn’t get arrested, did you?”

  “No.” She huffed, and he got a whiff of her breath. No booze on it, thank God. “But nothing was working so I took the picture of the Wild Turkey.” She made it sound as if it’d been a big-assed failure instead of just a little backslide. “Then I got in my car and came here.”

  Judd didn’t want to get on her for the things she’d done right—not going into the liquor store and especially not drinking. Actually, that was what mattered most, but Mercy hadn’t taken her own advice—advice that had worked for him since she’d been his sponsor. And that’s what he wanted to get on her about.

  “You should have called me when you started spiraling down,” Judd reminded her. “You should have especially called me when the safe words and distraction didn’t help.”

  She bobbed her head in a nod. “I considered it, but I know how much you’ve got weighing on you.”

  “Well, hell.” Silently, he belted out some harder profanity. Judd didn’t want Mercy thinking like that. “What’s weighing on me isn’t enough for you to hold off calling me when you need it.”

  “You’re not my sponsor,” she mumbled, but like his reminder, there was no bite in it. “I didn’t call him because my actual sponsor’s having business troubles. I didn’t want to put this on him and having him get down.”

  “So, you thought of everyone but yourself.” Now, there was a bite, and he thumped her on the arm. Hard enough to get her attention. “Don’t do that again. Call me and we’ll talk it through.”

  Mercy seemed to consider that, but then she shook her head. “I shouldn’t have come here. You’ve been working all day, and now you probably have to get home to check on those kids, huh?”

  “No. My brother Callen and his wife are on kid duty.”

  Which meant he didn’t have anything to worry about. Well, not immediately, anyway. There was another visit from the social worker that was coming up in a few days, and that was weighing on him. For the moment, though, what troubled him most was Mercy.

  “Do you remember what you always tell me?” he asked.

  Her forehead bunched up, and she made another effort to wipe away her tears. “That you need a nubile young woman who’ll lick you in places you’ve never been licked?”

  Judd frowned. Well, she had indeed told him that. “I was thinking something more specific to what’s happening right now.” And since he didn’t want her to keep tossing things around, he spelled it out for her. “When you need help, ask for it. Help is my middle name.”

  Her mouth quivered a little. “That’s a stupid middle name. Say, what did the toilet say to the septic tank?” she asked, moving right into one of her really bad jokes.

  “You’re full of shit?” Judd said.

  Despite his getting the punch line, Mercy laughed like a loon, and it did him good to hear it. Still, Judd didn’t think it was all smoothed over just yet.

  “You want to come to my place for a while?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, frowned. “A hot guy finally asks me to his place. I’ve got a dildo, some cherry-flavored condoms and I gotta say no. I’
m not the woman who should be licking you, cowboy.”

  Even though he knew she’d meant that as a continuation of the joke, Judd immediately thought of Cleo and some licking that had gone on just that morning. An image of her flashed through his head. Of Cleo naked. And since that wouldn’t help his focus on this conversation, he pushed it aside.

  Judd tapped the picture of the Wild Turkey on her phone screen. “You want to delete this, or should I?”

  “I’ll do it.” She hit the delete button and groaned when the next photo automatically popped up. “Pudge,” she snarled.

  Mercy hit the button again but not before Judd got a glimpse of the guy. Yeah, he was thankful Mercy hadn’t asked him to attempt a butt whipping on him. Pudge looked like a cyborg wrestler.

  Judd nearly suggested that she put a picture of her distraction on her phone, but since a strap-on probably wasn’t the best image to carry around for possible viewing by others, he took out his own cell and showed her the group selfie he’d taken with the boys and the puppy.

  Mercy leaned in for a close look. “Well, now that’s worth at least a dozen or so words.” But she didn’t say what words those were.

  Judd studied it, too, and just seeing it again brought back that moment. Of course, that’s what pictures did. They brought back the good and the bad. In this case, it was both. The boys were so damn happy. Ditto for the puppy. And there’d been a smile on Judd’s face, too, but now, like then, he was still tamping down the concerns.

  “There’s a lot of uncertainty about their future,” Judd muttered.

  Mercy adjusted her leaning so that she was staring at him. “Well, duh. Only a shit for brains would think the future was certain.”

  Judd frowned at what were surprisingly wise words. He opened his mouth to try to justify his comment by using a different angle. Something along the lines that there were a lot more obstacles for these kids than the norm, but that only made Mercy’s words even truer.

  Mercy pushed herself away from his truck and patted his back. “You know, Judd, maybe it’s time you pulled some tags off mattresses.”

  Whenever he had a conversation with Mercy, there were also some blank looks involved. Like now. “Excuse me?”

  “Those tags always say don’t remove them, but that’s poo-poo nonsense. I mean, why not rip it right off? But people don’t because the tag says not to. Well, I’m telling you to start pulling and see what happens.”

  He tried to work his way through that metaphor, but his brain was just too tired to figure it out. “You want me to drive you home?” he asked.

  “No. I’m fine, really. All cried out and everything.” She thumped his arm as he’d done to her, and in the same motion, she snapped a picture of them. “There. Now that’s a screen saver if I ever saw one.”

  She held out the photo for him to see. Her nun’s hat took up 90 percent of the shot, but he could still see Mercy’s bright smile. And his puzzled expression. For them, that was the norm so he supposed it did indeed make it a keeper.

  “Text me when you get home,” he instructed, “and call me if and when you get the urge to stroll in front of any more liquor stores or take that strap-on out of your purse.”

  “Words of wisdom,” she declared, tapping her heart with her hand in an exaggerated patter. “I will call you. Promise.” Mercy moved in for a kiss on the cheek, but she damn near put out his eye with her hat.

  Blinking hard and rubbing his eye, Judd watched as Mercy went to her car. “Hey, Judd,” she called out. “What do you call a blubbering sister? A crisis,” she answered, without waiting for him to guess. She cackled with laughter.

  Mercy’s god-awful joke and her laugh eased some of the tension inside him. Apparently, when Mercy had a personal emotional crisis, crying it out and conversation worked. He’d have to remember that.

  Judd waited until she was in her car and had driven away before he headed home. Another wave of fatigue hit him hard, a reminder that he hadn’t been sleeping well, followed by a reminder that he’d agreed to take a morning shift for one of the other deputies who had a doctor’s appointment. Falling face-first on the bed was a strong possibility.

  Or not.

  He quickly changed his mind about sleep when he stepped into his cabin and spotted Cleo. She was sitting up in his bed. And she was naked. Or at least she was from the waist up because the sheet she was holding in front of her had dipped down on one side to reveal her breasts. Apparently, Cleo’s nipple was a cure for exhaustion.

  “Want to get lucky tonight?” she asked.

  She smiled, and Judd quickly realized he was smiling, too. Now, here was a mattress tag that he wouldn’t mind pulling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PULLING THE PILLOW over her head, Cleo slapped at the buzzing sound to make it stop. She froze when her hand didn’t come in contact with a fly or some other critter, but rather warm, hard flesh.

  That got her awake.

  Since she wasn’t accustomed to waking up in bed with anyone, it took her a moment to piece everything together. Judd was next to her. He was on his stomach and was also swatting at the buzzing sound, which she also figured out. It was the alarm on his phone.

  Cleo reached across him, turned it off and started to give him a shake to get him awake. One look at him, though, and she decided on something better.

  He was naked, only his butt and legs covered by the bedsheet. She remedied that by sliding it off him and biting his right butt cheek. It was way more effective than an alarm because he scrambled around, his hand going to his backside while his cop’s eyes fired over the room. Well, they fired until they landed on her.

  She smiled.

  He blinked, stared at her. “Did you bite my ass?”

  “I did.” Now, she moved in for a kiss, and what the heck—she made it French. A nice way to start the morning and clear out the sleep from her head. Of course, the sleep quickly got replaced by a sizable dose of lust.

  “Why do men usually wake up with these?” she asked, sliding her hand over his erection.

  He grunted, a manly sound of pleasure to compliment the manly way his body shifted to pull her to him. “We have an eternal hope that we’ll get lucky and want to be prepared if that lucky situation arises.”

  She settled side by side against him, trapping that morning wood between them. Since it was there, she bit his neck, too.

  His next grunt was even huskier, and Judd slid his hand into her hair, cupping the back of her head to ease her in for a long, slow kiss. There was no urgency in it, considering he was obviously primed and ready to go.

  Cleo went in the long, slow mode, too, figuring that they had at least a half hour before he had to rush out for work. Since Lissy would be getting the boys off to school, she had some time, too.

  “You dreamed about mattress tags,” she said while she nibbled her way from his neck to his chest. That required some sliding down the bed, and Cleo made sure she touched as much of him as possible on her journey.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Yes, you talk in your sleep.”

  She definitely hadn’t meant for that to alarm him, but Judd leaned over to the nightstand and checked his phone. Cleo felt him relax as fast as the tension had come. “Just making sure my sponsor didn’t text or call when I was asleep. She’s going through sort of a rough time. She texted me last night when she got home and said she was feeling better, but her mood could have changed between now and then.”

  Cleo stopped, and she lifted her head to meet his gaze. The heat was stirring and rising inside her, but he so seldom mentioned AA or his sponsor that she gave him a moment to add something. He only gave her a lazy smile and lowered her head back to his chest.

  “You should invite your sponsor over here,” Cleo said. Going with her morning theme, she bit his chest, licked it and then blew her breath over it. Her version of a non-BJ
BJ.

  “Uh, Mercy isn’t exactly the inviting-over sort.”

  Intrigued, she lifted her head again. “Some people say that about me, but she might enjoy meeting the boys, Buck and Rosy. I’d certainly enjoy meeting her.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she left it at that, but Cleo made a mental note to remind him that they were both off on Saturday. No pressure. However, Judd was obviously concerned about the woman or else he wouldn’t have checked his phone for messages.

  “You’re a good person,” he finally said.

  She smiled. “You’re a good person, too.”

  Judd didn’t give her a chance to add more to that because he hauled her back up his body and flipped Cleo onto her back. Maybe it was momentum or merely the slick move on his part, but he landed on top of her with his erection pressing right in the V of her thighs.

  Oh, yes. Now there was some urgency.

  Apparently, the urgency was mutual because he slid right into her, one long, hard, amazing stroke that caused her toes to curl. It was possible Judd’s toes curled, too, because he cursed, but if so, it was not the right kind of curling.

  Still cursing, he pulled back and started fumbling around the nightstand again. Cleo wanted no part in him moving away from her, and she was just heated up enough that it took her a moment to realize what he was doing.

  Putting on a condom.

  Well, at least one of them could think smart at this hour of the morning. And multitask. He tore off the wrapper and moved straight back into a sizzling kiss while he got on the condom.

  “Show me just how good you are,” Cleo insisted.

  And much to her delight, Judd did.

  * * *

  CLEO WALKED INTO smelly chaos that looked more like a bizarre crime scene than the living room at Buck’s. The floor and all the furniture were littered with shredded toilet paper, and there was a puddle of red liquid and some disturbing-looking green stuff.