Houston Callaghan: The Devil's Bastards MC

by Kendra Plunkett-Witt

  I would be gone nearly a day and a half by the time I made it back home. And who knew what fresh hell would await me at the Homeland then. Homeland, the ranch that had been in our family since Sam Houston freed Texas and now, my last wild card was useless. I was likely going to lose this ranch too.

  It was a fool idea, going to Amarillo and looking for Tate. Fool idea walking into that skeevy bar and being manhandled by that Rat-tailed man that Houston had called Dart.

  And Houston Callaghan. I had heard the name Callaghan when I had called Sweetwater. Apparently, the family was big in the Bastards. I was a little thankful for Houston’s power and brute tonight. Despite the straight up B.S. I fed him, there was little chance I could have fought off Dart at that point, but I liked to think I could. I wasn’t big on having men save me yet today I had run off to find Tate hoping he would and needed his president to save my skin in the process.

  There was something so attracting and alluring about Houston. If it had been a different time and I a different girl… no I wasn’t the kind of girl that made first advancements on rough and tumble cowboys let alone their equally as destructive counterparts in the outlaw bikers.

  Lying in the motel bed, I tried hard not to think about the condition of the sheets or pillow covers as I pictured Houston’s ripped arms straining the material of his t-shirt and the leather of his cut. Or the way his hair fell not quite long enough to pull back but much longer than I was used to seeing.

  His complexion was a bit darker as if he were at least part Mexican or maybe a Native American, but his facial features were white and his eyes a deep green that burnt into me wherever they fell.

  Yes, Houston Callaghan was a man who any woman would find attractive and with that, I assumed, was a man who had the vast experience that would produce an intensively enjoyable night for any woman.

  Any woman but me.

  ***

  “Where the hell have you been?” Brad’s voice bellowed the second I parked my truck. I kicked open the door and grabbed my overnight bag and headed for the house.

  “None of your damned business,” I shot back at my older cousin, wishing he would just disappear, temporarily, permanently, whichever.

  “All the shit going on here and you choose now to be the time to take off and go on some overnight romp with a new boy toy?”

  “Don’t provoke him. He’s better off being ignored, fighting him isn’t worth the effort. Doesn’t matter if you whoop him Amelia, nothing short of wiring his jaw shut with ever make him change his tune.”

  Tate’s words echoed through my mind. Brad hadn’t been his favorite person either, but he was their first cousin and he had grown up on the Homeland while the two of us had spent most of our lives across the state on the Lazy L.

  Or that’s where I had grown up at until Daddy died. I was just thirteen when we lost him to the cancer. He didn’t have a fighting chance, but he hadn’t suffered long. Three weeks. That’s all it took from prognosis to passing. Stage four prostate cancer. We didn’t have a prayer.

  I was old enough to understand Daddy dying but that wasn’t much comfort. I was terrified and for good reasons. Not knowing any better, or not having any other options at the time, I turned to my big brother. Tate being six years older than me, he was supposed to help. Tate was supposed to be able to do it all, including keeping Daddy’s ranch afloat.

  But the medical bills weren’t cheap and the financial situation on the ranch wasn’t spectacular, the debtors had come around before Daddy got sick, cattle ranching wasn’t always prosperous, and we were coming off a few bad years as it was.

  Tate had held on as long as he could, yet it wasn’t enough. He sold the cattle and the equipment just weeks before the bank foreclosed on the land. In the end all we managed to save was our personal items and our four working horses.

  We left the Lazy L financially even. Not richer, not poorer. Just missing Daddy.

  Three months was all that Tate made it at Homeland before he left. We had rarely seen him since. Brad was happy to see him go and Granddad had been harsh at his decision to leave but at the time I supported it a hundred percent. Surely Tate just needed some space to get his head on straight and he would be back.

  That wasn’t the case.

  Letters and phone calls became fewer and farther between and Tate always demanded that me and Mom meet him somewhere if we wished to see him. In nine long years my big brother hadn’t set foot on Homeland. Nor had he seen Grandfather.

  Ten years ago, I had lost Daddy and the Lazy L. Now it was set to happen all over again.

  “Amelia do you even hear what I’m telling you?” Brad’s voice broke back through the reminiscing.

  “Not particularly. I’m putting my bags up and going to see Grandpa and then maybe I’ll have the energy for a chat,” I brushed him off and headed up the steps of the big lavish porch and through the front door.

  Brad muttered something I chose not to hear as I slammed the door and headed up the stairs. Being twenty-three and living in the same house as your mother, both your grandparents not to mention your cousin being just a stone throw away in the foreman house, isn’t always fun. But I needed to be on the ranch, it’s everything to me.

  I slipped up the stairs and into my bedroom and tossed my things onto the bed. I grabbed a change of clothes took a quick shower and headed downstairs. We were coming into September now and south Texas was still hot as hell. The summer had been hard and hot; and the rustlers didn’t help things. We had to get the remaining cattle to market and hope to hell we had enough to pay the bills let alone keep a breeding herd for the next year.

  The next year. The next fight. The fight to pay bills, the fight to stay afloat in an ever-struggling cattle market. Some days I wondered if Tate had the right idea, up and leaving like he did. Mom thought he had no kind of life, bouncing around living out of the saddle bags on his bike. Modern day roamer, same as the cowboy had been a century and some change ago.

  Every time I thought about leaving the ranch, giving up and starting a life somewhere else, I felt physically ill. This ranch was home. I couldn’t let go of another one. Generations of my mother’s family raised their kids here, spent their lives living and loving here. After we lost Daddy, I was sure this was place where I would do just that.

  Marry and come home to the ranch or be close by. Spend my days working aside Grandfather, arguing with Brad. Raising calves and taking them to market. Teaching my kids, the same lessons in ranching I had learned here. Lessons about life, about love. And that someday just maybe, me and my husband would sit on the same front porch swing hand in hand watching our grandchildren and maybe even great-grandchildren play in the yard. Same as so many Charlon couples had.

  I headed into the covered back porch where Grandpa sat in his chair reading a quarterly cattleman’s journal.

  “Where you been Amelia?” Grandpa George asked, never looking up from his paper.

  “Working a lead on the rustlers. It didn’t pan out though.”

  “You shouldn’t look into that alone.”

  “We’re stretched thin Gramps, and I wasn’t taking Brad with me.”

  “You should have at least told your mother where you went. She was worried sick. You might be an adult…”

  “But your house your rules,” I finished for him. “I know Gramps. Believe me, I know. Anything special happen while I was gone?”

  “No rustler hits if that’s what you are fishing for. Hopefully we have seen the last of them.” Grandpa put the paper down and stared out the wire screen that enclosed the porch. From here you could see for miles of fenced in pasture land.

  “Hopefully, but I fear that’s not the case.”

  “We haven’t been able to get any leads. The neighbors and the law haven’t had any luck either.”

  “Any word on if the neighbors have been hit?”

  Grandpa shook his head. “Not since you left town. Things are the same. A few missing here and there but it appears we are gettin
g the brute of it.”

  “That concerns me. Grandpa you are sure you aren’t being targeted? That you don’t have any enemies that want to see this go under? To see the Charlon’s lose Homeland?”

  “No Amelia. I think we have to play the hand we have been dealt.”

  I fell quiet searching for the words to voice my frustration. Looking at Grandpa I realized how tired he looked. Course, he looked tired a lot lately. Although he made it to the herd daily still it was for short visits and he didn’t put in the hours or the work days he had just a year ago. It broke me seeing him like this. My grandpa was a force of nature. A strong and caring jokester with a stubborn streak fit for Texas ranching.

  I knew it would happen, I hadn’t tried to fool myself out of the truth. That one day I would wake up and he wouldn’t be here anymore same as with Daddy. But I wasn’t prepared for that. Wasn’t prepared to watch another of the strongest men slip away. To me, despite the strength of her father, Grandpa George was stronger. Because it was Grandpa who had helped guide Mom back to living after Daddy. He was the man who kept me working on the ranch and moving forward. He put the two of us back together after Daddy died and after Tate left. Seeing him slip away if only physically and luckily, being spared of the mental withering, was devastating.

  “I don’t know how to do this Grandpa. I don’t know how to draw the line in the sand so to speak. We have to take a stand. Fight them or they will take everything,” I finally let the words fall from my lips.

  “This isn’t a John Wayne movie sweetheart. It isn’t the old days, no wild west any longer.”

  “But that’s what we need. Men stronger than I am. More fearsome that I am who can put the fear of God into these rustlers. We need regulators! We need men like… men like…”

  “Like me?”

  Chapter Four

  Houston

  Amelia turned to look at me through the screen door. Shock and confusion painted her face.

  “Houston.”

  “Amelia.”

  “What?” she trailed off making me smile. Her hair was damp from a shower and she looked as tired as she was stubborn. I glanced behind her to the old cowboy in the chair, had to be her grandfather Charlon.

  “No one answered when I knocked so I walked around back. Surprised you didn’t hear me roll in. The bike’s not exactly quiet.”

  “I’m a little…”

  “Preoccupied?”

  “I can finish my own sentences!” she snapped in frustration.

  Her grandfather’s gaze settled on me. “Let him in Amelia.”

  Amelia walked over and opened the door and I fought back the grin. I liked seeing her flustered. It was cute. I walked inside and stood close to her grandfather’s chair. The old man carefully brought himself to his feet, still staring me down, still assessing me the same way that Amelia had. The same way that Tate stared down situations that he took seriously.

  What little I had gathered from Tate over the years when he drunkenly muttered about the man was that his grandfather was proud, a trait common in Texas, especially among old ranchers. The silence was long and strained but tension like this never did bother me, while Charlon decided what he thought of the muscles, the hair, the tattoos and the leather cut on my back. A man like him would easily sniff out the guns I wore in my side holsters. Old men like him knew how to do things like that.

  “George Charlon,” he finally said reaching out a hand, “and you might be?”

  “Houston Callaghan.”

  “Irish name, Mexican skin.”

  “Mexican mother, Irish father,” I replied tightly. It wasn’t so long ago both were labeled as a worthless breed.

  “Where did Amelia find you at?”

  “Amarillo.”

  George turned to his granddaughter. “You went looking for your brother.”

  “We need help Grandpa. Tate is a damn good rancher.”

  “Tate was a damn good rancher! But he chose not be!”

  “And since he left he’s only gotten tougher.”

  “Rougher you mean. I assume he wears a cut like this one?”

  I hadn’t expected the warmest of welcomes, but instinct was to beat the shit out of anyone who looked down on my patch. But George was an old man and he was Tate and Amelia’s grandfather and that meant something. For some reason. Maybe because I never had grandparents of my own. Hell, I barely had parents of my own.

  Amelia looked at a loss for words. The look on her face told me that her grandfather’s opinion of her meant as much as this ranch did and by looking for her brother she had already upset him.

  “Yes, sir. Tate is my second. My Vice President of the Nomad chapter of the Devil’s Bastards MC.”

  The old man looked me over once more. “Patch you wear says you’re the president. Guess that means something?”

  “To some people in Texas and other places. Means respect to some.”

  “Not around here it don’t boy.”

  Just then I heard someone else coming through the house. “Amelia, George I got dinner on the stove and…” a stout, yet small statured woman about George’s age with more silver in her hair than anything, walked through the house and onto the back porch with them.

  “Grandmother, this is a friend of Tate’s. Houston Callaghan,” Amelia said as an explanation.

  “Oh God not…” the woman started and put a hand to her heart. Fear flashing through her face.

  “No, no ma’am. Tate’s fine. He’s working on the oil rigs right now. Amelia said you guys were having some trouble with cattle rustlers. Tate couldn’t be here, so I thought I would come down in his place.”

  “And you had nothing better to do?” the old man huffed.

  “Grandpa!” Amelia scolded.

  “Not currently.” It was a small lie. There were a lot of things I could be doing. Things that made money, things that were less work, things that were probably a hell of a whole lot more fun. But boredom had struck, and since I couldn’t find Tate I felt like I needed to come down. Amelia was desperate or else she never would have come looking for her big brother. And there was nothing about me that would let her go after rustlers, common outlaws, alone.

  She was Tate’s sister, even if their relationship wasn’t the best Tate would want her safe. And Tate was my best friend, my brother. Family looked out after each other where I was concerned. That was the point of the Devil’s Bastards.

  “Look. I may not know a hell of a whole lot about ranching, but based off what little I have been told, you have issues with rustlers. Cattle thieves. I know a thing or two about stopping men like this. Where I’m from, no one comes and takes what isn’t theirs. Not without a fight.

  “I’ve known Tate for years. Just after he turned twenty-one. I know the kind of man he is. And while you might not think much of how he has lived his life, about our club, he’s still my brother. He wouldn’t let a thing like this go without a fight. Right now, he can’t be here, but I can be. Half-Pint here seems to think she’s going to face off with a bunch of rustlers, she ain’t doing that without backup and I’m the best she’s gonna find.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about ranching,” Amelia snapped, she was still a few feet away, but she turned her body and her attention fully to me as she crossed her arms.

  “Darlin’ I know a lot of things you wouldn’t think I did. But like I said, I know a thing or two about common criminals. Let’s just say protection services are a specialty of mine. And I have a lot more resources to track rustlers and then fight them off than you do.”

  “And what’s that? An army of bikers on Harleys?”

  “To start with.”

  Amelia pulled her lower lip into her mouth, chewing slightly on it. God, I wanted to taste that lip. Dammit Houston!

  “I’m guessing if I told you to leave, that wouldn’t happen?”

  “Not likely sweetheart.”

  “Fine,” she caved.

  “Fine,” George agreed.

  “Fine?” M
rs. Charlon questioned.

  “Bunkhouse is same as empty anymore. You can bed up there. I’m hitting the trails soon. Better figure out a way to get that Harley out there,” Amelia called as she stormed off the porch.

  “What, don’t think I can ride a horse?”

  Chapter Five

  Amelia

  What in God’s green earth? I asked myself for the fifth time in about three minutes. Houston Callaghan, the damn President of the Devil’s Bastards just walked happy as you please into my grandparent’s house and proclaimed that he was here to help.

  I didn’t doubt he could help. Muscle, strength, the ability to put the fear of God into a bunch of outlaw thieves, that’s what I had been telling Grandfather we needed. And Houston Callaghan with his muscles, tattoos and that gun he holstered screamed all of those things.

  But dealing with cattle rustlers meant dealing with cattle and that was something I doubted Houston could handle. I also questioned his reasoning for driving ten hours to my family ranch. Questioned why he would show up and even offer. No one’s loyalty was that great to just drop everything and help someone else’s family. Especially when that someone else wasn’t even likely to give a damn.

  Houston had an ulterior motive, I just didn’t know what it was.

  “Those two bags on the bike, that’s all you got?” I asked nodding to his Harley in the drive next to my truck.

  “I travel light.”

  “No shit. I can’t pay you very much for this. I’m sure whatever protection fees the Bastards are usually paid, are out of my price range,” I confessed. He had to know that, I told him we were to risk losing the ranch and despite everything I could figure that Houston Callaghan was, a con man wasn’t on that list.

  “I’m here free of charge. Just a bunk and some grub. We can work something out for any men I have to bring in.”