Texas Hold 'Em (Smokin' ACES) - By Kay David Page 0,1
crashed into him and he spilled it. When the men finally parted enough for her to get by, a redhead with dark roots moved to his side and handed him a stained towel. As he pressed it to the wound, a dark-haired girl took his good arm and pulled him toward the bar. A battered metal box that looked like it got plenty of use was handed over by the bartender, and the two women began to patch him. He let them slap a couple of bandages on the wound then he pushed them aside. “That’s enough,” he growled. “I don’t need you two operating on me.”
They giggled, the younger brunette, Brandy, he’d learned earlier, laughing a little too long as she pressed her breasts against his chest. Another biker had told him she was quite a prize. “Warm and sweet going down,” he had promised with a wink.
She’d had her eye on him as soon as he’d shown up. Twenty-one if a day, soft curves, and inviting eyes, she had tempted him to bed her, the episode going a little farther than he had planned a few weeks back. After they’d been interrupted, he’d been relieved and put her off with an empty promise for more. The way her gaze met his now, he knew she expected her more sometime soon. When he turned to the bartender instead, her pout told him how she felt.
It was four a.m. before the last call went out. Half an hour later, the bikers moved the party to the graveled parking lot, holding on to each other and their women as they stumbled outside. Tossing their beer bottles at the trash can, Santos’s pack rose from the scarred table where they’d been sitting and followed.
Some of the bikers had already pulled bottles of Jack from their saddlebags and were passing the whiskey around in the dark. As he and his men walked by, they made smooching sounds and mocked him.
“Hey, cowboy, y’all going back to the ranch? Better be careful now—them Harleys buck better than your skanky-ass girlfriends!” More raucous laughter rang out. “Don’t fall off and bust your butts…”
He and his crew heard the same taunts every time they came to the Rio County dive, and they waved them away with one-finger salutes, the other men shouting with laughter in response.
Mounting their motorcycles, Santos and his men pulled onto the highway and rumbled toward their home away from home, a rundown house on the edge of the county line. The cold wind rushing over his raw face helped him stay upright, his stinging arm doing the same.
Thirty minutes later, they reached the caliche road that took them the rest of the way. He owned the house and the six-hundred-acre cattle ranch where it sat, but for safety’s sake—his own and, more important, the people he loved—the name on the deed could never be traced back to him. His grandfather had turned over the property to him on his deathbed, the section of land having been in the family since Santa Anna had come and gone.
The ear-splitting roar of the Harleys echoed against the spreading mountains, a cloud of dust marking their progress. They reached the stone house after another thirty minutes and turned off their engines, the sudden silence as deep as the darkness. The mesquite trees smelled like heaven after the smoky bar, their hollow shadows leading the men toward the windows warm with light.
He made it to the living room and stopped before a ratty couch where he lowered himself to the cushions, every muscle in his body crying out. He was doubly glad the ranch was so isolated. If his newfound best friends could see him right now, they would have wondered just what kind of badass biker he was. Of course, if they knew the real truth, more than his reputation would be at stake.
Biker gangs and Texas Rangers didn’t normally mix.
He had never been the kind of man who cared about normal, though, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have stopped him now. He and his undercover team had come to Rio County to stop the violence that had taken control of west Texas—and he was there to make that happen, no matter what it took, including cutting some corners that might have made other officers uneasy. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d broken one law to keep another one, and it wouldn’t be the last.