Lonesome Lawmen Mini Bundle

Two-4

Jake rubbed the back of his neck. His other hand was wrapped around a waist so small, his fingers reached past her spine. He needed time to figure out what had just happened. He didn’t get time. She was in his arms, in his face. And she smelled great. Like really fresh flowers.

Almost as tall as he was, the body brushing against his went in and out where it was supposed to and did it with extreme prejudice. Something red hugged her breasts. A brief bit of denim played second skin to her hips. Bare flesh above and below. Long legs disappearing into boots. Smooth dark hair, except for the crease from her hat. Face done up to look cheap, failing to look anything but classy. Her features were too cleanly cut, her dark eyes too intelligent. Her mouth—

Better not go down that road, Kirby.

He blinked and took a mental step back. His body wasn’t responding yet.

“Sorry,” Phoebe said, staring into eyes a cool blue drink of water. Eyes that gave but also took. An intriguing sleight of eyes if you had nothing to hide.

She had plenty to hide.

She spread her hands defensively across his chest, feeling heat push through the soft cotton of his shirt as she applied enough pressure to put a little air between their bodies. Instinct had her curving up the edges of her mouth and putting on her bedroom look, the way a wild thing donned protective cover. Adrenaline did a rising scale along her nerve endings as her hands did a slow slid down cotton and muscle, then dropped clear.

“I’m not.” The grin he followed this with managed to be both wicked and little-boy innocent. It also packed about a thousand watts of charm.

“Phoebe?”

Earl’s plaintive whine cut between them with all the delicacy of a chain saw. Instead of relief, she felt regret as their eyes broke contact. Earl had her hat in hand and a mournful expression pulled down his face.

“Thanks, Earl.” She took the hat, rammed it on top of her head and adjusted the angle. The brief respite gave her confidence to look at the stranger again. “Sorry ‘bout almost mowing you, cowboy.”

“You can mow me anytime you want, Reb.”

Against her design, her smile lost its provocative edge, and the shadows in her soul retreated, leaving a girl looking at guy looking at a girl.

Damn the boy was cute—looked good enough to eat, drink and be merry with.

If only—

If only every single thing in her life were different? Who was she kidding? Guys came to the bar looking for a slam, bam, thank you, ma’am. Just because this one looked like a heart wouldn’t melt in his eyes didn’t make it so.

She made herself turn away from his might-have-been eyes and tasty mouth, made her heart turn away from the dangerous promise of safety he gave off like aftershave. “If you boys’ll excuse me, I got a set to play.”

Jake watched Phoebe slip into the crowd, then looked at Earl. Dogs looked like Earl when they begged. He looked in the mirror behind the bar and saw the same expression on his face.

Not good. He’d learned to read eyes and body language, but Phoebe shape-shifted like a kaleidoscope, the changes so fast his impressions were disjointed and laced with lust. Only thing he was sure about: there was a great huge well of sadness at her center. Even when she smiled her eyes were shadowed, as if she already knew that life sucked and always would for her.

He saw Bryn watching him. It helped him find his focus. Reminded him he wasn’t here to feel desire or pity. Phoebe Mentel was connected to JR’s. JR’s was connected, somehow, to Phagan and Dewey Hyatt. That’s all that mattered.

“Looks like we’ll have to postpone further contact ‘till after the show,” Bryn said when he rejoined her.

Jake nodded, lifted his beer to take a real drink and felt a change ripple through the crowd. He looked up, turning to face the stage.

Without ceremony, the band launched into their first number, a fast-paced piece about small towns on a Saturday night that made the rowdy crowd theirs even before the chorus.

The band members were a good looking bunch of people, the guys as poster pretty as Phoebe, but it was more than that or the audience’s level of intoxication, Jake decided, that lifted their competent musical rendering into something damn near mesmerizing.

It wasn’t easy to hang on, to focus, with Phoebe so easy on the eye and the music pushing out thought for feeling, but after a time Jake found the group’s interaction interesting enough to mute the call to the senses they sent out as they worked their way through songs, slow and fast, old and new, mixed with the occasional request.

The men were cocky, but seemed able to table ego when they changed lead singers to get the right sound. They constantly interacted with the audience to keep it pumped. Jesse, the eldest appeared to be in charge. Phoebe stayed toward the back of the stage, so it took him a while to realize she was the one running the show.

Throughout the set, Earl stayed front and center before the stage, paying bizarre homage to Phoebe with his doughy body. Sometimes he sang along, his voice both loud and bad. In his tight jeans, greenhorn boots and too new hat, he sweated until the thin wisps of his hair plastered to his white skin.

Toward the end of the set, Jesse Mentel, a big, shaggy man with a huge white smile, stopped the music with a gesture. He leaned into the microphone, said with easy confidence, “Everybody having a good time?”

The audience responded with enthusiasm.

“Good enough. Time to introduce us to you. Have to before I get too drunk to remember who the hell we are.” Egged on by the stamping of many feet, he took a long drink from his beer. “On keyboard—damn it, boy, where—” He turned in a listing circle, “oh, there you are. How’d you get back there? Never mind, this here’s my little brother, Leg.”

Leg waved from his keyboard, then did some fancy stuff on the keys. He was young, lean and blond, with a cocky mustache and matching attitude. His smile lit his green eyes and beamed good will all the way to the back of the hall.

A young woman answered its siren call. “He single?”

“Totally single and alone only when he has to be. You can leave your phone number and vital statistics in the tin cup here at the front of the stage, little darlin’.”

The guys groaned, and the girls laughed.

“On bass guitar is my other little brother, Mert—who also has needs.”

Mert touched his hat, his smile sweet and hopeful. His long fingers moved in an intricate riff across his guitar strings.

“On drum is my cousin, Toes. And let me assure you, ladies, he didn’t get his nickname for playing drums with his feet.”

Toes grinned wickedly from his place behind the drums. His hair was blond, too, and reached halfway down his back. Like those of his cousins, his eyes and his smile were unashamed come-taste-me. He flipped his hair off his face, bent over his drums, and pounded out a short, pagan, mini solo that had the women rocking and stamping up puffs of dust from the floor.

“I’ll take one of him,” a girl called out.

“Nothing he likes more than being taken—unless it’s taking, sweet thing,” Jesse assured her with a good-natured leer. He took another swig of beer, wiped his mouth and said, “I’m, uh, oh, yeah, Jesse. I sing and play a little fiddle when called for.” He played a few clear notes. “All together we’re Cattle Call.”

“Uh, you forgot Phoebe Ann again,” Toes said into his mike, giving his hair another flip.

Jesse turned to Phoebe with a start, then swept his hat off and over his heart. “Damn, girl, I’m sorry—”

“Sorriest man I know,” Phoebe said, leaning into her mike.

He put his hat back on and grinned. “Ah, hell, you know I was just fooling. I couldn’t never forget the shining light of Cattle Call, our lead guitarist, my wife—”

Jake’s hand tightened involuntarily around his beer.

“Ex-wife,” she inserted.

Jesse’s grin was loaded for bear. “I keep forgetting, honey. It was such a friendly divorce.”

She rested her arms on her guitar and looked reflective. “True. You got friendly with that waitress—and I got a divorce.”

The crowd whooped and hollered their delight.

Jesse rubbed the back of his neck and looked rueful. “But you still love me, don’t you, darlin’?”

“Course I do, honey—now that I don’t have to live with you.”

“Ouch!” He threw up his hands in a mock surrender. “Lead guitar, the lovely— shrew, uh, sweetheart—Phoebe Ann.”

Phoebe laughed, then bent to play her solo riff. She was good, better than her companions were, her fingers plucking the strings with a technical precision that pleased without quite satisfying.

It might be imagination, Jake thought, that she seemed to hold something back. The riff was, after all, just a bit of flash to take the dull out of the introductions. But it wasn’t imagination that Jesse’s smile was edged with intimacy when he held out a hand to Phoebe and said, “Let’s sing, girl.”

She took his hand and let him draw her into the spotlight next to him, her answering smile affectionate. Her hair fell across her face when she bent over her guitar, plucking the strings with a haunting delicacy as she led off. Jesse started the vocal, his deep, soothing bass perfect for the wistful song about love spurned. At the refrain, Phoebe’s voice blended neatly with Jesse’s, sweetly husky, strangely familiar, as if Jake had heard her sing this song before.

On the next verse she started the vocal, her lightly Southern phrasing a pleasing underpinning to the melody line. On the dance floor, lovers leaned into each other, swaying in place amid the smoke and dust making eddies on the plank flooring.

Caught up in the thrall of her wistful stage presence, Jake didn’t find Earl quite as pathetic. The music, her voice, her sad eyes, all made her performance seem personal and intimate, as if she sang only to him.

Jake turned his back to the stage, to her, and leaned on the bar. He wrapped his hand around his cold bottle and wished he could apply it to his face. Wouldn’t his brother Matt hoot if he could see Jake trying not to moon over a honky-tonk singer who was also a suspect? In fact, his gut had just moved her to the head of the line.

He lifted the bottle and drank because he needed something cool and wet running down his dry throat. Behind him Phoebe started singing a song about taking it like a man.

Jake downed half the bottle, but it didn’t near do the job. He set the beer down just as the barkeep thrust a plastic cup filled with electric pink fluid at him.

“I didn’t order that.”

“The lady bought it for you.” He pointed down the bar to a barely dressed blonde. She lifted a matching cup to him and wet her pouting lips. Beside him Bryn choked. Behind him the husky s*x in Phoebe’s amplified voice hit him in waves. Jake swallowed and said to the keep, “What is it?”

The keep grinned. “A Hot Damn.”

Jake looked at the blonde who leaned on the bar, her upper arms squeezing the sides of her breasts until they nearly popped out of her shirt. Bryn turned away, her shoulders shaking. Phoebe repeated the refrain about taking it like man.

Jake rubbed the back of his neck and wished for a cold shower.