Big Bad John
By
R.G. Alexander
Big Bad John
Copyright 2013 R.G. Alexander
Cover Design by R.G. Alexander
Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
Dedication
For Cookie, love is the reason. In fact, love really is the reason for this particular cowboy, so thank you for being my inspiration in every way. Special thanks to my Smutketeers, Robin L Rotham and Eden Bradley, for taking me on a guided tour of kinky town, and showing me how much you love me via your pretty red pens. Eden...an extra thank you for letting me “borrow” your mojo for Caroline. And I’m sorry about that whole cowboy hat incident. (I’m not really sorry.)
One last shout out to my readers…Enjoy!
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Coming Soon: Burn With Me
Look For These Other Titles From R.G. Alexander
Bonus Excerpt: Truly Scrumptious
Bonus Excerpt: Three for Me?
Bonus Excerpt: Four for Christmas
Bonus Excerpt: Marley in Chains
Check out all the excerpts at the end of Big Bad John including a
Bonus Excerpt from Burn With Me,
R.G.’s newest Series from Samhain Publishing, coming out August 27th!
Available Now for Pre-order!
Plus Excerpts from Truly Scrumptious, Three for Me?, Four for Christmas, and Marley in Chains. Available Now!
Chapter One
“So when you said you grew up in Texas, you meant the third circle of Hell. You should have warned me. I would have known how to pack for that.”
Trudy bit her lip to hold back her chuckle, lifting one hand from the wheel of the rental car to turn up the air conditioning, pointing another of the small vents directly at her friend. “I think Dante’s third circle was gluttony, not humidity. But I did warn you, Caroline. Repeatedly. You simply chose not to listen.”
Caroline lifted her long dark hair and twisted it into a stylish knot on the top of her head, leaning forward so the icy blast of air went down the snug black tank top emblazoned with skulls and roses. “Don’t say gluttony, it makes me wish we’d stopped for ice cream in the last town and ordered enough to bathe in. And I thought you were exaggerating. It’s not like I haven’t dealt with heat before. Los Angeles is blazing in the summer. But this is so…” She pursed her glossed lips and narrowed her bright green eyes, as if searching for an adjective to do the weather justice. “…moist. Walking from the airport to the rental car was like a trek through the deepest, darkest Amazon.”
“Now who’s exaggerating?” But Trudy understood. Texas in the summer was not for the faint of heart.
She’d left this place thirteen years ago, only coming back once for her father’s funeral. With each mile marker that brought her closer to her family’s land, she was remembering all the reasons she’d had for her great escape. And while weather might have been on her seemingly endless list, it was closer to the bottom.
The reasons up near the top…she didn’t want to think about right now. But she couldn’t stop herself. Coming home brought everything back. Maybe that’s why she’d avoided it for so long.
“I’m old,” Caroline grumbled. “An old but soon to be infamous author of a weekly gossip column. Of course I exaggerate. Good lord, is that a rabid bear?” She pointed to a cow standing on the side of the road, calmly chewing its cud as it watched them pass. She snickered. “You see? I did it again.”
“Old, your smart ass.” Trudy rolled her eyes, but her mood lightened. She really was glad Caroline had insisted on coming along. It was fate, she’d assured Trudy, that had granted her ability to kill two birds with one stone—to be there offering moral support while she hunted down her story at the same time.
Caroline was chasing a mystery for a magazine piece, something that would increase her name recognition in the industry and possibly even result in a book deal. The clues to that mystery had all coalesced around one location.
The same spot Trudy had left behind all those years ago in a cloud of “I’ll show you” and dust.
La Grange, Texas.
Unlike the eternally youthful forty-five-year-old Caroline, this town really was old. A tired, quiet community whose only claim to fame was the closed-down brothel known as the Chicken Ranch and the song ZZ Top had written about it. La Grange had been going through its final death throes for decades now, long since killed by a highway bypass and trapped in time between Brenham and Bastrop. It was only a few hours away from the young, thriving city of Austin, but those hours might as well have been a century. The only excitement this forgotten town could look forward to came from people visiting for the antiques festivals…and the possibility that someday the burned down building that used to be the movie theater would be rebuilt.
Not exactly a thriving metropolis.
So why did you agree to come back?
She’d been asking herself that question all day. During the long flight from LAX to Austin and during the two-hour drive down highway seventy-one. Her brother needed her, the email had said. Headstrong, reckless Jefferson had broken his leg—something she was surprised hadn’t happened more often—but he’d assured her he was fine. Everything was fine.
But that email…
It had been from him. John Brown. The most ordinary, innocuous signature in the world, except that it was attached to this particular John Brown. The broad-shouldered mysterious John Brown who’d drifted into Trudy’s world when she was seventeen, won over her father and brother and never left. The quiet, hardworking John Brown who’d made sure the house was still left standing after her father died, despite all her brother’s harebrained schemes for expansion. The ones that always fell through.
The rugged, handsome and brooding John Brown who’d awoken something inside her years ago, something that had scared her as much as it had aroused her. Something that had sped up her plans to leave for California as if her ass were on fire. Before she gave in. Before she begged to give in.
That John Brown.
Jefferson had long ago made John a partner and put him in charge of the finances of the G&J. It should have bothered her since he wasn’t family, but it didn’t. Sh
e knew him. Trudy didn’t plan on moving home again, but the idea of the house she’d grown up in and the land she’d walked as a child being lost to strangers due to mismanagement was untenable. Leaving Jefferson in charge on his own would make that an inevitability. Like Trudy, her brother had always had a reckless streak. They’d gotten that from their mother.
John didn’t.
His email had been short and to the point, but then, he’d never been much of a talker.
Your brother needs you at home while he recovers. The ticket will be waiting for you at the airport.
John
She must have reread it a hundred times, giving in to her disbelief and anger at his highhanded, if succinct, order. She’d even allowed herself to feel curiosity and concern, all the while ignoring the hum beneath her skin. The electric jolt up her spine at the unexpected communication. The command.
She’d spent hours writing and rewriting her response, editing and deleting one chilly rejection after another. Erasing the questions about his nerve, along with a few choice feminist phrases that would have sent a lesser man running with his tail tucked between his legs. But the longer she worked on her reply, the more she wondered at why he’d sent it in the first place. She’d never gotten so much as a postcard from him, even on her birthday.
That hadn’t stopped her from thinking about him. Dreaming about him. Wishing they’d finished what they started and wondering why he hadn’t called. Why he’d never given any indication that he wanted her again.
Was her brother hurt worse than he’d let on? He must be or why would John have broken such a long streak of silence? Was he trying to tell her something?
In the end she’d kept her response as short and simple as his, hoping he’d wonder if there was any underlying message. Hoping it would drive him as crazy as his had driven her.
I can only stay for two weeks. I’ll rent a car when I arrive in Austin.
Trudy
It wasn’t true, the two week cut-off. Oh, it would have been. She’d saved up two weeks’ worth of vacation days at her job managing the trendy bistro in the heart of West Hollywood. She would have used them, if the boss’s new girlfriend hadn’t had a mile wide jealous streak strategically hidden by her weekly botox injections and fluffy collagen plumped lips. If she hadn’t been convinced Trudy was moving in on her territory.
Trudy grimaced. Restaurant management wasn’t exactly her reason for living, but it had paid the bills for the last six years—as well as studio time while she worked on her indie album—and she’d been damn good at it. She didn’t like the idea of starting over somewhere else. Starting over. Again.
Thanks to a few phone calls placed by her apologetic ex-boss, she’d get severance pay and have a job with better benefits at another restaurant waiting for her when she got back. They were holding the position open for a month for her. He owed her that much, he’d assured her, and she didn’t disagree.
Something to look forward to. But not the only thing. Right before she, left the label she never thought she’d hear from had called to make her an offer. One she’d been waiting on for more years than she could count. Too many years.
She had these few weeks to decide whether or not she’d take it. Then her life would change forever.
Caroline’s groan brought her back to the present. “It’s too hot for you to start getting quiet and introspective on me, sweetheart. Not unless you tell me exactly what you’re thinking and distract me from my current state of misery.” A loud beep in the car made her friend jump. “Trudy? Your GPS is telling you to take this exit. Are you sure this is where you were born? Totally certain? You’ve never struck me as the country mouse type.”
Trudy shrugged, turning on her blinker. “I never was. Well, before we sold off most of our horses in time for my twelfth birthday, I was going to be a singing, barrel-racing rodeo queen. That’s pretty damn country. But that was only a phase. I grew out of it.”
Out of her plans for the rodeo circuit, not out of her desire to sing. She’d started sneaking away to Austin with her friends when she was fourteen, roaming Sixth Street and befriending the musicians. Sneaking into the bars to sing on open mic nights and planning her escape.
“Rodeo huh?” Caroline chuckled. “That explains a lot. At least, it explains your fascination with rope.”
Trudy stuck her tongue in her cheek and made the turn that took them away from the gas station and the Walmart that appeared to be the only new addition to the town since she’d left. “Are you referring to the monthly demonstrations you’ve been on me to start giving at the club?”
“Only because you were born for the stage, and you won’t stop picking on the Doms who—in your opinion—get it wrong. I don’t think it’s that big a step. You’ve been a demo bottom for some of the best riggers in the country. And your online opinion posts are incredibly popular. If you weren’t such a phenomenal singer I’d advise you to write more than songs for a living.”
Trudy glanced over at Caroline, a wicked grin on her lips. “I do have a lot to say, I admit it. Though I don’t think I’d have to teach that Shibari master you played with anything. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
Her friend bit her lip and ran a hand over her damp neck, stretching it to one side. “He did, didn’t he? But I wish you hadn’t reminded me. He’ll be back in New York by the time we get home. Two weeks in Backwater Junction suddenly seems like a lifetime.”
Trudy’s smile widened. When strangers invariably asked her how she’d met and befriended the Caroline Aaron, daughter of the famous director and gossip girl to the stars, she told them they’d met at a club and hit it off.
She just never told them what kind of club.
Trudy understood the skepticism no one could hide whenever they were out together. On the outside they didn’t look like they had much in common. Hell, on the outside they didn’t appear to be from the same planet. If Trudy still had any lingering traces of country mouse, there was no denying that her friend was one hundred percent city through and through. Specifically Los Angeles. More specifically, West Hollywood. One look at Caroline was all it took to know she’d think glamping was too rustic a pastime.
And everybody looked.
Caroline was the kind of woman who drew the eye. Physically the exact opposite of the short, diet-resistant body Trudy had been born with, Caroline’s was long, lean and undeniably elegant. Whether she was on the red carpet cracking jokes with movie idols, backstage with a rock star’s latest supermodel girlfriend, or stripped down to her black and white skull and crossbones panties on the stage of her favorite fetish club, she was always perfectly put together. Polished and glossed and moisturized within an inch of her life, yet nothing about her was cool or distant. Caroline was…Caroline. The effortless warmth of the California sun itself, and men and women alike found themselves angling to get closer to her. To be near her.
It was something Trudy always marveled at but never envied. How could she? Her friend was a natural phenomenon. No surgery or personal trainers required. Caroline was as rare as a comet—rare because she was such a contradiction. Beautiful and kind. Confident and self-effacing. Pampered and compassionate. Most importantly, she was the best friend Trudy had ever had.
It was Caroline who’d spent nights holding her on her couch as she cried after the band she’d created decided they’d get more gigs with a sexy, shirtless male vocalist than a short, curvaceous songwriter with a chip on her shoulder. Back when she thought her music career was over. Before iTunes and YouTube had helped her to develop a healthy following online.
It was Caroline who’d brought her the most delicious gourmet chicken soup from an out-of-the-way place no tourist knew about when she was sick in bed and far from home. Who called her every evening, no matter where she was, to hear every detail of her ordinary day. And it was Caroline who’d come up to her the first night she’d entered the club nine years ago, introducing herself before looping her arm through Trudy’s and telling her they were g
oing to be the best of friends.
She’d been right.
Trudy nodded. “It might feel like a lifetime, but you’re the one who told me that there is no art without suffering. Luckily, the suffering should be minimal. In a town this small, your target hasn’t been too hard to track down. I even called in a favor from our old housekeeper Margery. She knows the woman you’re looking for. She’s going to see if she can convince her to have lunch with you next week.”
Caroline squeaked. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
Biting her lip, Trudy confessed, “I was waiting for the right time. You know, as soon as you were regretting your impulsive trip to the middle of nowhere with your needy friend and planning your escape.”
Caroline smiled and rubbed her hands together in front of the a/c vent. “Then I forgive you and applaud your genius, because despite my love for you, I was calculating cab fare back to the airport. Now? Bring on the heat. As long as I know I’ll get the chance to finally draw my prey out of hiding, I can handle anything.” She paused. “Now that we’re on this dirt road, do you think we can pull over so I can change into my shorts? My thighs are actually sweating. It’s a new and rather disgusting experience for me and I’d like it to end as soon as humanly possible.”
Trudy laughed and nodded, pulling over to the side of the road. Despite the car’s cooling system, she was still overheated as well.
John.
No, she huffed silently to herself. Just the weather. “Let’s hurry. The last time I did this I was a teenager and a Mennonite family rode past. I think I shocked their son into swallowing his tongue.”
Caroline laughed and lifted the trunk of the rental car, already foraging through a suitcase. She’d brought four to Trudy’s one. Caroline was nothing if not prepared. The Boy Scouts could learn a thing or two from her.
She found a pair of small, fashionably worn jean shorts and pursed her lips. “Too Daisy Mae? Or exactly the right amount?”
Big Bad John (Bigger in Texas Series) Page 1