Blame It on Texas (45 page)

“Hey,” he said. “What brings you guys by?”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dallas O’Connor snapped.

Austin grinned. “Well, I was thinking about taking a piss when someone started pounding on my door.”

Bud, Dallas’s dog, nosed his way between his owner’s legs and stared up at Austin with the same bulldog face as Austin’s partners.

The fact that Bud was an English bulldog made his look understandable. Not that Austin didn’t understand his partners’ dire expressions. He knew they’d attempt to derail his plan.

“I thought you guys were in Galveston.” And he was supposed to be gone when they got back. Austin raised his boot and scratched the dog’s neck between the folds of loose canine skin.

“We came back early. Roberto called us.” Dallas, a big man carrying a bad attitude, pushed inside, and Tyler, slightly less bulky but equally tall, joined him. Bud, snorting and probably farting, followed at their heels.

Austin shut the door and then regretted it when, sure as heck, the strong odor of doggie gas hit him square in the face. As if instinctual, all three of them waved a hand to clear the air.

Tyler’s gaze, his eyes as dark as his black hair, shifted to Austin’s suitcases sitting beside the bar. “I thought we decided to let Roberto handle this.”

Roberto was the undercover man they had digging up info on the SOB DeLuna who’d framed them. And while Austin liked Roberto, the guy was taking too damn long to get the job done.

“No, you two decided that,” Austin said, letting the bitterness shine through in his voice. “I distinctly remember telling you that I was tired of handing everything over to Roberto and getting handed back shit. It’s been six months since he’s given us a solid lead on DeLuna.” That meant it was time for one of them to intervene. And since both of his partners now had wives to consider, he figured it was up to him to do it.

And that was just fine with him.

“My bet is by now all of DeLuna’s men know our faces,” Dallas said. “You go through with this, and we’ll be buying your casket in a matter of weeks.”

Austin sat down on his favorite armchair and stretched
out his cowboy-boot-clad feet. “Just use the one we keep in the entranceway of the office and save yourself some money.” The damn casket had been left by the previous owners of the building, which had been a funeral home. Now it was sort of their icon.

“He’s serious,” Tyler said, using his calm voice that always reminded Austin of a damn therapist. Not that Austin had gone to one in a hell of a long time. Well, not since he was thirteen and decided that being a ward of the state didn’t mean he had to follow their damn rules.

“So am I,” Austin said. And he was. His mind was made up.

“What brought this on?” Tyler asked. “Is this about your—?”

“Stop! Quit trying to get in my head.” Austin felt his anger surface. But it was directed more at the stranger who’d shown up at the agency and spilled her dirty laundry right in front of everyone than at his two partners. Still, that didn’t mean he had to discuss it with them.

“You want to know what brought this on?” he asked. “It was the year and a half I was fucking locked up in prison. Or have both of you forgotten about that?”

It seemed to him they had. Okay, maybe they hadn’t forgotten it, exactly, but they’d somehow gotten past it. And while Austin was friggin’ happy for them that they’d been able to do that, and he’d danced a jig at both their weddings in the last two months, he couldn’t get past it. He wouldn’t until DeLuna was behind bars.

Or dead.

Tyler exhaled. “I just think—”

“Then stop thinking!” Austin moaned. The last damn thing he wanted was to have anyone rummaging through
his mental closet. There were just too many damn skeletons, too many nailed-shut trunks of emotional crap, that he didn’t want to think about it.

“Damn it, Austin,” Dallas snapped. “This is shit. We need to stick to our plan.”

“What plan?” Austin asked. “We don’t seem to have a plan anymore.”

Dallas’s shoulders tightened. “The plan hasn’t changed. We keep picking apart his organization until we force DeLuna to come out of whatever hole he’s taken cover in to face us. Use your brain for once. You know as well as I do that we lose every advantage by going to him instead of having him come to us.”

“Look, nothing personal, but you two have other priorities right now. As in wives. And I get it. But what he did still eats away at my gut. I want my pound of flesh.”

“Roberto is working it,” Dallas said. “If you go in now, you’ll probably get him killed. Can you live with that?”

Austin raked a hand over his face. When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at his partners’ concerned faces. Real concern. Damn it to hell, he knew they were here because they cared. And yes, he felt the same way about them. If anything, the bond he had with these two were the closest thing he’d ever come to having a family, but…

“I don’t know what Roberto told you,” he said, speaking calmer. “But I’ve already worked this out with him. I’m not even going to Fort Worth. I’m checking the other lead that—”

“Which lead?” Dallas asked.

“The sister.”

“Half sister,” Tyler corrected.

“Whatever,” Austin said. “They’re Latin, and you”—he pointed to Tyler—“know how important family is in that culture.”

“She’s half-Latin,” Tyler corrected again. “And stop stereotyping.”

“It’s a good stereotype,” Austin said.

“Roberto watched her for a month and found no connection to DeLuna,” Dallas added.

“Yeah,” Austin replied, “but I’ll bet my left nut she knows what rock he’s hiding under.”

“You could lose more than your left nut. And even if she knows, why would she tell you?” Dallas asked. “Plus, Roberto tried connecting with her, and it didn’t work.”

Austin smiled. “I’m not Roberto. I’m charming. Women like me. It’s a natural gift.”

He was just like his biological father… or so his “mother,” aka the woman who’d given birth to him, raised him for a few years, and then abandoned him had said. The brief conversation they’d shared came back to haunt him, but he pushed it aside. He wasn’t going to think about that. Nope. So he shoved the memory back into his mental closet.

Only it kept falling out. She’d come looking for peace of mind and ruined his in the process.

“We know the type of women who find you charming,” Tyler said. “Leah Reece is educated, and she’s part Latin, which means she’s too smart to fall in bed with you.”

“Now who’s stereotyping?” Austin asked. “Besides, I didn’t say I was going to sleep with her. I said I was going to charm her. Get her to trust me enough to confide in me. And actually, her being Latin works in my favor.” He
grinned. “We’ve discussed this before. I go for blondes. Of all the brunette Victoria’s Secret models, there’s only one brunette I’d pick before I’d sleep with their whole list of blond models.”

“How the hell does Victoria’s Secret models come into this?” Dallas ranted.

“Anytime you can bring them into the conversation, it’s a good thing.” Austin grinned. “Besides, I’ve already worked out a plan. Roberto rented me the apartment next to hers. She’s a vet, and I’ve been thinking about getting a dog, so I’ll buy one and pop in to see her and say… ‘Hey, aren’t we neighbors?’ And,
voilà
! Instant connection.”

“Right,” Tyler said. “Once again, you didn’t do your research. Leah Reece isn’t a regular vet; she’s a specialty vet.”

“Like a gynecologist?” Austin grinned again.

Tyler smirked. “Like a Feline Specialist. Feline as in cats.” He laughed. “I’d pay to be a fly on the wall. You, an ailurophobe, are going to try to charm a Feline Specialist. I’ll bet she’s got at least two or maybe three cats living with her.”

People really had three cats?
“I’m not scared of cats.”

Okay, maybe he was a little. “So, the vet angle won’t work,” he said. “I’ll find a different way.” Somehow, someway, he’d win Leah Reece over enough that she’d confide in him about her brother. How hard could it be? She was, according to Roberto, a petite little thing with a soft spot for animals.

“I still don’t like it,” Dallas said.

“Me, either,” Austin admitted, still thinking about the cats. “But I’m doing it.”

The way he saw it, he had no choice.

Monday morning, Leah Reece was busy doing one of the things she did best.

“I swear, you enjoy this, don’t you?” Sara, her vet assistant and good friend, asked in a teasing voice, and stroked the anesthetized cat on the table.

“Can’t you see the satisfaction in her eyes?” Evelyn, the office manager of Purrfect Veterinarian Clinic, added from the doorway.

Leah grinned but didn’t look up until she removed the second testicle from the tiny incision and dropped it into the metal container. It landed with a tiny
thud
in the pan beside its brother ball. “I was just thinking that I’m good at it, but it doesn’t bring me the type of joy you two are insinuating. Now if Spooky here walked on two legs, thought he was God’s gift to women, and spewed out come-on lines instead of purring, then it would do my heart good.”

Sara laughed and so did Evelyn. Then Evelyn cleared her throat in that kind of way she did when she was about to offer some advice that she knew going in wouldn’t be well received. “It’s been two years. I think it’s time you stop dreaming of castrating them all, and remember what a man can do for you.”

“Oh, you mean like cheating on you with your cousin and running up your credit cards by having phone sex with strangers?” They all laughed. Sometimes even the truth was funny. Or it could be after two years.

Still in the doorway, Evelyn gave Leah her I’m-serious look. Leah adored Evelyn; she’d been the first employee Leah hired three years ago when she’d started the practice.

She’d known Evelyn was the right fit when Leah asked
her if she had any prior office management experience and the fifty-five-year-old answered, “Nope, but I managed to keep a household afloat, take in over ten cats, clothe and feed three boys, get two through college on my husband’s car salesman income. If you need someone who can run a tight ship, balance a budget, knows how to get stains out of men’s underwear, and doesn’t mind picking up hairballs, I’m your woman. Besides, with the economy down, and one boy still in college, I could really use a job.”

Evelyn cleared her throat again, pulling Leah back to the present. “Carl was an idiot.”

And managed to make her feel like one, too.
“But he was so good at it.” Leah checked Spooky’s scrotum one more time.

Sara laughed again. “I think both of us would have helped you castrate Carl. But Evelyn’s right—not all men are scum.”

No, Leah thought. Some of them were even worse. Carl was just the last in a long line of men in her life to disappoint her. First had been her father. Then her half brother. And a few boyfriends along the way, who’d lied and cheated as easily as they drew in air. If she didn’t have Luis, her younger brother, she’d have given up on the whole male species. But as it was, she would be hard-pressed to trust another man. And the only kind she’d let get close were the feline variety that she’d previously neutered.

“Don’t you miss it, just a little bit?” Evelyn asked.

“Miss what?” Leah moved Spooky into the kennel cage and placed him on a soft mat where he would wake up. She gave the unconscious feline an ear rub. Hopefully now that he was fixed, she could find him a home. But Lordie, she was such a sucker for a stray.

If she didn’t already have four fur babies at home, she’d add him to her collection.

“A man’s touch,” Sara answered for Evelyn, and her voice went dreamy. “The way the palm of his hand moves over your skin or fits just so in the curve of your waist. The way seeing him look at you like you are eye candy makes your skin get ultrasensitive. Those sexy bedroom smiles that make you want to squeeze your thighs together a little tighter. Oh, and that moment when he’s naked between the sheets and—”

“Oh, my.” Evelyn started fanning herself. “I’m gonna go call my hubby and tell him to come home early.” She walked out, her step a little peppier than when she’d walked in.

“Well?” Sara asked.

“Well, what?” Leah barely got the two words out. Her mind felt like mush, and her body ached for something she didn’t think she could ever allow herself to have again. She’d tried it. And as wonderful as it all was in the beginning, it cost too damn much. Both emotionally, and monetarily. Phone sex didn’t come cheap.

“Do you miss it?” Sara asked.

“Not at all,” Leah lied, and looked down at the testicles she’d just removed.

“Hey, Leah.” Evelyn appeared in the doorway again. “You have a phone call. He says it’s your brother, but it doesn’t sound like Luis.”

Also by Christie Craig

Only in Texas

Praise for
Only in Texas

“5 Stars! An entertaining tale with delightful, fully formed characters and an intriguing mystery.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“I lost count of the number of times I laughed out loud… Craig [has a] wonderful ability to write comedic dialogue, appealing characters, tender sentiments, and sexy love scenes… I’m not sure how I missed Ms. Craig’s books… Now that I know what is inside the covers, I won’t make that mistake again.”

—All About Romance (
LikesBooks.com
)

“Fun… [a] caper-filled story… a good madcap-type romance. I look forward to Tyler and Austin’s stories.”

—
TheRomanceReader.com

“Steamy… Craig seems to have a real knack for writing fun little romantic romps… There is an almost tongue-in-cheek quality to them that just makes them fun to read… I know all I need to do is just sit back and enjoy the ride… Be sure to check out
Only in Texas
.”

—
TopRomanceNovels.com

“Absolutely a delight to read. Christie Craig has hit a home run with
Only in Texas
. I laughed, teared up, laughed, sighed, laughed, blushed, laughed and laughed, and finally finished the last page with a bit of sadness because I did not want this book to end. It made for a great weekend of reading pleasure.”