I rubbed my arm and surreptitiously glanced down at it to see if it was red.
And it was, of course.
Goddammit.
I shifted in my seat, trying to hide it as best as I could, then decided that I would need to cover it up completely.
Reaching for the simple shawl that was draped over the chair, I picked it up and draped it over my shoulders, arranging it perfectly so that it covered my arm.
When I looked up from doing that, it was to see Hayes’ eyes on me. Or, more specifically, the red mark on my arm that his brother had caused.
His eyes flicked to mine, and I all but pleaded with him not to say anything.
He gritted his teeth, the muscles of his jaw flexing in annoyance, then went back to staring at the table as he took a drink.
I breathed out a sigh of relief and reached for the whiskey that’d been placed onto the table in my spot.
Taking a short swig, I nearly cried as fire licked down my throat following the liquid.
When I looked back up, it was to see amusement in Hayes’ eyes.
I looked away and contemplated pulling out my phone to pass the time, but quickly dismissed that idea.
The fastest way to get my brother to pay attention to me was pull out my phone.
So instead, I sat there like a good little girl, laughed at the appropriate times, and finished off my whiskey before the meal started.
When the meal was finished, I’d only eaten a quarter of what they’d served. The rest had gone to my brother or father.
I was a very picky eater.
I didn’t eat fish—because gross.
I didn’t eat green stuff—because double gross.
And I didn’t eat anything that resembled snot—triple gross.
Sadly, the main course was fish. There was a salad. And then the followup was a yellow custard concoction that really did resemble phlegm.
I’d passed the majority of the meal off to my brother and dad, who happily took the food because the portion sizes were too small.
I really couldn’t see how they got off charging two hundred bucks for this.
Five courses was nice and all, but the portion sizes were jokes.
I could eat a Whataburger meal with a large fry and still be hungry. And they thought a piece of meat the size of four Double A batteries was going to cut it? Yeah, no.
I made a mental note to stop by Whataburger on the way home from my parents’ and returned to the meal.
Luckily, the night went off rather smoothly after that.
The auction was a success, and Ryan upped the winning bid to almost a quarter of a million dollars before a football player ended up winning the painting done by a local artist for this event specifically.
In the end, I wasn’t the least bit sad that the night was coming to a close.
“Well,” Ryan said as he stood. “It’s been fun. But I have a game tomorrow in Atlanta. Hope y’all have a great rest of your evening.”
Saylor was the only one to say goodbye to Ryan.
The rest of us said goodbye to Brooke.
Well, all of us but Hayes, who leaned back in his chair and watched them go without a word.
I breathed a sigh of relief and felt my shawl dip, exposing my likely-bruised arm.
When I yanked it back up and glanced around to see if anybody had seen, the only person I saw staring was Hayes.
And he looked pissed.
Even more pissed than before.
“I gotta go, too,” Hayes mumbled. “Have a good one.”
Ryan hadn’t even made it all the way across the floor yet, having been caught by another baseball player.
Hayes slipped past him easily and kept walking, disappearing into the darkened corridor that led to the parking lot.
I yawned. “I really should be going, too.”
Dad reached into his pocket and stood.
Lock did as well, my mother having taught them manners that when a lady stands, boys did, too.
“Go. I’ll catch a ride home with Lock and Saylor,” Dad said, handing me his keys.
I blew out a relieved breath. “Thanks, Dad. Tomorrow is a testing day, and you know how those days are.”
Dad nodded and gestured for me to go. “If you hurry, you can catch up to the group already walking out. Then I won’t worry about you.”
The ‘group’ was a few members of his old SWAT team and their wives.
I smiled and waved, punched my brother in the butt as hard as I could, and hauled ass to catch up to the group.
Only, when I got to them, they were caught at the door and had to talk to the coordinator of the ball.
I grimaced and slipped around them, avoiding eye contact so they wouldn’t be tempted to pull me into the conversation.
Luckily, I got out of the room without a word.
I even slipped out into the chilly night air without notice as well.
When I got outside, I decided that my heels had to go because there was no way I would be making it across the cracked parking lot in one piece if I didn’t.
Slipping them off one by one, I started around the building toward my dad’s truck, taking the long way which enabled me to stay on the concrete for as long as possible.
It was that act right there that enabled me to sneak up on Hayes and Ryan as I turned the corner.
“…put your hands on her and left a mark,” Hayes growled, getting up into Ryan’s face.
Brooke, who was staring stunned beside them, took a step back.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hayes.” Ryan jerked himself away from Hayes. “Get off me.”
“You left a mark on her arm. You followed her to the bathroom,” Hayes said. “She has a mark on her arm from you grabbing her that’s likely gonna bruise.”
Speaking of bruise, I could feel the mark throbbing right then.
“I did not,” Ryan growled, pushing Hayes.
Hayes let himself be pushed. “Don’t ever touch her again, Ryan.”
Hayes’ lethal voice had me shivering as a jolt of something not altogether unpleasant powered through my veins.
Turning on my heel, I hurried in the direction of my dad’s truck, cutting through the flower bed to do so.
By the time I arrived at his truck and had it unlocked, I chanced a look at the corner of the building.
The only ones I saw there were Brooke and Ryan.
No Hayes at all.
If I’d only looked behind me, not two car lengths away, he sat on his bike in the shadows, watching me look for him.
Disappointed not to catch a last glance of the man, I got into my dad’s truck and started it up, chancing one more glance around the parking lot for the man who made my heart skip beats.
Sadly, I didn’t see him.
He saw me, though.
What Else is Next?
Get Bucked
Book 4 of The Valentine Boys Series
4-21-20
Chapter 1
Women will never know the dread of when your dick touches the inside of a toilet bowl.
-Text from Darby to Waylynn
Darby
“I’m not going to give you shit.”
I would’ve rolled my eyes had I not known it would just piss the woman off in front of me.
“Listen, Linda,” I said.
“My name isn’t Linda, jerk wad,” Not-Linda said. “It’s Kasey.”
I knew what her name was, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying things to piss her off. Seriously, doing it was just too much fun.
“Kasey,” I corrected myself, trying not to put too much sarcasm into my words. “I’m here to make the bank drop for you.”
“You’re going to have to allow me to check with Candy or Desi, then,” Kasey snarled. “I don’t want you stealing it.”
I sighed.
“I’ve been a good boy for years now, Kasey,” I said. “You’re being
much too dramatic.”
Kasey stiffened and turned away from me as if I’d just pissed in her cornflakes.
Then again, maybe I had at one point.
I’d been a dick in my younger years.
In fact, I was still a dick.
I just wasn’t a prick that did shit just to piss people off and fuck up peoples’ lives anymore.
Now, I just did what I wanted, tried not to piss people off in the process, and kept my nose clean.
Kasey had been a mistake.
A mistake I’d made when I was ‘asshole Darby’ and not ‘has his shit together Darby.’
Kasey and I had dated in high school. It’d gone south when I’d left, trying to leave my shitty past behind. And Kasey still hated that I’d let her go when I’d left.
Meaning, now that she worked for my sister-in-laws, Candy and Desi, I had to see her and deal with her crap a lot more often than I wanted to.
The woman who’d entered the store behind me, who’d been listening to the entire thing since she’d walked in, finally broke the silence of Kasey leaving.
“Is that your superpower?”
I turned and looked at the woman.
It wasn’t really a surprise to find Waylynn Jennings standing there.
I’d, of course, seen her enter the store.
What I hadn’t expected her to do was to actually talk to me.
“What?” I asked, confusion lacing my features.
“Pissing people off,” she said. “Is that your superpower?”
I rolled my eyes.
“You’re hilarious,” I found myself saying. “Why are you talking to me?”
I’d met Waylynn Jennings when I’d started working for the rodeo circuit as a bullfighter.
A bull fighter was the crazy man that chased the bulls around the rodeo ring when the bull riders either fell off the bull, or jumped off when they had completed their ride.
To keep the bull rider safe, the bullfighter would then catch the bull’s attention to ensure that the bull rider could make it out of the ring without harm.
That was where Waylynn’s father, Jude, came in.
Jude was a six-foot-four powerhouse that could run like the wind.
He’d taken me under his wing and shown me the ropes when I was just a kid looking to make a buck. And, after eight years of being a bullfighter, I finally could see the end on the horizon.
Originally, I’d taken the job as a bullfighter because it paid a pretty decent chunk of change.
Then I’d kept the job because it gave me money, worked well with my schedule at the Valentine Ranch, and I could pick and choose where I wanted to go and when I wanted to work. Which was a necessity when it came to going to college full-time.
Which led to how I’d first met Waylynn.
Jude Jennings had brought his daughter, Waylynn, with him to the first rodeo.
At the time, Waylynn hadn’t liked being there.
Her mother and Jude had recently divorced, and she’d been a bitter little bitch to anyone that showed her any kindness.
And me, who hadn’t really cared who she was at all, hadn’t shown her even the least bit of attention when she was around.
Which, in turn, pissed her off even more.
Now, eight years later, she still had a hard-on when it came to causing me trouble.
To make matters worse, she’d even started going to the same damn school as me. Attending the same damn classes.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure if she’d started the classes because of me, and wanted to piss me off even more, or because she genuinely wanted to be an architectural engineer.
Whatever the reason, to this day she still disliked every bone in my body.
And I thought she was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
Even though I’d never act on the feelings she invoked in me.
“I’m talking to you because I know it annoys you,” she said.
I frowned.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Kasey came out of the back room, phone to her ear, and the bank bag in her hands.
She looked like she’d swallowed a lemon.
“Sure, fine,” Kasey said, holding out the bank bag to me. “Here.”
I took it, offered Kasey a smile, then turned around to walk out of the coffee store.
Kasey grumbled something under her breath as we left that sounded suspiciously like ‘fucking asshole,’ but I didn’t turn around to make sure.
“She’s sweet,” Waylynn said. “What did you do to her to piss her off?”
I grumbled something underneath my breath and took a left onto Main Street, the road that the bank was on, and started walking quickly.
It was a vain attempt at getting Waylynn to stop following me.
It didn’t work.
She just sped up.
“What was that?” she repeated, easily keeping pace at my side.
Thinking that it couldn’t hurt for her to know, I decided to tell her.
“We met when I first got back to Kilgore,” I said. “I was in a bad place. Did some bad shit. Fucked around. Kasey was with me for most of that time. When I finally got my ass back on the straight and narrow, Kasey had to go. I broke up with her, then left for college shortly after that.”
Waylynn hummed in understanding.
“So you pissed her off because she was in love with you and you broke up with her,” she guessed. “And now, you have to see her every day, and she’s still in love with you.”
I had no idea if that was the case or not.
I did know that she disliked me immensely, though.
“No idea,” I said as I made my way to the bank door. “But I don’t see her every day.”
When I opened it, I was unsurprised to find her still at my side.
She came to a stop beside me as I started to fill out a deposit receipt and then started counting the money that I would be depositing for Desi and Candy.
“That’s a lot of money,” Waylynn said. “I…”
“Hands in the air!”
I felt my heartbeat slow to an almost crawl and looked over my shoulder at the man that’d just entered through the bank’s front doors.
I felt like a fucking moron for not carrying today.
Normally I did.
I’d been doing it since I was old enough to hold a license to carry concealed.
And now, the one fucking time that I needed it, I didn’t have it on me.
I looked over at Waylynn as I raised my hands into the air, feeling helpless.
She didn’t have her hands in the air. She had one in her purse and the other one at the small of her back.
“Here,” she said, slapping a piece of cold metal onto the table I was standing in front of. “You can hold my purse gun.”
Then she pulled the biggest goddamn gun I’d ever seen right out of the waistband of her pants.
Knowing that she was about to engage the robber, I dropped my arms and picked up the ‘purse gun’ she’d handed me.
Then turned around just in time for the man to come stalking toward us.
“I said hands in the air!” the robber bellowed.
In answer, Waylynn flipped off the safety.
It was the loudest thing I’d ever heard in my life.
“Do you really want to see whose gun is bigger?” she asked. “Because mine is a 500 Win Mag. It’ll blow a hole in your chest the size of a watermelon.”
The man was stunned to stillness.
He gaped at Waylynn.
As did everyone else, me included.
“I’ll give you to the count of ten to get onto the floor before I shoot,” she said. “One. Two. Three…”
The robber threw his gun at Waylynn, which was when I realized that it was plastic.
It hit Waylynn in the face, then clattered to the floor and shattered into a million, tiny plastic pieces.
Wa
ylynn didn’t bother shooting the moron, though.
Before anybody, even me, could react, she was tackling the man before he could make his escape.
She took him down in one well-placed tackle, doing better than eighty percent of the professional linemen for the Dallas Cowboys could’ve done.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, watching it all go down in a sort of distant surprise.
I bent down and picked up her gun that’d fallen to the floor, stuffed it in the back of my pants, then stepped on the man’s arm that he was about to use to nail a blow to the side of Waylynn’s head.
When he went to hit her with the other arm, I stepped down hard, feeling the audible crack of the man’s arm breaking.
He screamed bloody murder and Waylynn scrambled off of him.
I offered her my hand, which she promptly pushed away.
Standing on her own two feet, she smoothed her hands down her pants and stared at the now-crying robber.
A scattered and winded teller made her way over with a phone to her ear.
“The police are on their way,” she said breathlessly.
I nodded once and handed Waylynn back her hand cannon.
She took it, replaced it in the holster against her right kidney, then threw her shirt back over it.
When she was done with that, I handed her back her ‘purse gun,’ too.
With both safely stowed, I couldn’t help myself.
I had to see how I’d not seen the gun beforehand. I knew for a fact that I’d snuck a peek at her ass at one point during our walk to the bank.
I leaned backward , catching the attention of a man now standing and brushing his neatly-pressed pants off, and took a look at her ass.
I could see the barrel of the gun—now.
“How the hell…” I said. “I should’ve been able to see that.”
Waylynn snorted.
“Would you like to go out to dinner with me?” the nicely-dressed man asked.
Waylynn turned to study the man that’d just asked that.
Just about that time, the man on the ground pulled a knife and lunged at Waylynn.
I reacted first and kicked the knife out of his hand just about the same time that Waylynn pulled her gun back out.
The little spitfire aimed it at the bank robber’s face and said, “Don’t touch that knife!”
The man stopped trying to scramble for it and froze.
Chute Yeah Page 19