by Debra Webb
“You need some hot cocoa.” Dan kissed her forehead and ushered her from Bea’s room.
He looked back one last time before turning out the light. The princess night-light kept the room from being completely dark. Jess had always been afraid of the dark. She hoped her children weren’t, but just in case she intended to make sure they felt safe.
“We have to finish decorating your son’s room soon. He’ll be here before we know it.” She was feeling a little overwhelmed lately. The agency was off to a great start and even Sean had turned out to be a top-notch member of the team. Still, there was just so much to do, and she felt tired all the time.
Dan guided her to her favorite chair in their family room. Toys were scattered all over the floor. Jess groaned. She had sworn she would never be one of those people—the ones who spoil their children with far too many toys. And look at their home. Toys were lying about in every room.
“You sit tight, and I’ll make the hot chocolate.” He backed toward the door and stumbled when the stuffed animal he stepped on made a high-pitched sound. He swore under his breath and snatched up the pink bear to ensure it still worked. It did not.
“You killed it,” Jess warned. “You better get rid of it before she notices.”
Dan nodded. “Good idea.”
He hurried away, damaged pink bear in hand.
Jess huffed out a big breath. This was her mother-in-law’s fault. Katherine spoiled Bea endlessly. “Like you don’t,” she muttered.
With much effort and no shortage of groaning, Jess hefted herself out of the big plush chair and followed the path Dan had taken to the kitchen. He’d just put the milk in the microwave. She slid onto a stool at the island and watched as he readied the instant cocoa mix. It might be instant, but it tasted like the real thing. With a toddler in the house, they had both learned to appreciate plenty of instant fixes.
“What’s on your mind?” Her handsome husband leaned on the island and studied her. “I can always tell when you’re unsettled.”
It was true. They had been in love since they were teenagers and could read each other like a book.
“This case reminded me of the one that brought me back home.” The similarities were disturbing.
Dan nodded. “Me, too. I was terrified Andrea would end up dead, like the two women in this case.”
Jess placed her hand on his arm and smiled. “But she didn’t. She’s in her senior year of college and doing great.” Andrea was Dan’s stepdaughter from a previous marriage. Though the marriage had been over for years, Dan still loved Andrea. Jess did, as well. She was a wonderful young woman.
“She didn’t because you found her when no one else could.” He touched Jess’s cheek. “I am so thankful you came back to me.”
“This is where I was always supposed to be.”
The microwave dinged and he straightened away from the island. “First you had to go catch all those serial killers for the FBI.”
She rubbed her belly as Dan prepared her cocoa. One of those bad guys had followed her back to Birmingham and no matter that two years had passed since she ended his reign of terror, he still haunted her sometimes.
The steaming cocoa appeared in front of her, marshmallows floating on top. “Drink up before it gets cold.”
She arranged her lips into a smile. “Thank you. Where’s yours?”
“I—” he reached into the fridge “—am having a beer.”
She made a face. “Don’t brag.”
He twisted the top off the glass bottle. “The case brought up memories of Spears and Holmes.” He traced his fingers over her forehead. “Whenever you’re worried about a case you frown. And since the big case B&C was investigating is closed, it has to be about those two bastards.”
He knew her too well. “Spears is dead. I don’t worry about him. It’s all his sick followers that keep me awake sometimes.” Ted Holmes had tried his best to reenact Spears’s obsession with her. He’d gotten far too close to her child. “I’ve had my moments since leaving the department,” she confessed, “when I thought I’d made a mistake. That maybe I couldn’t do as much to stop the evil out there.”
Dan held his tongue and allowed her to continue in her own time.
“This case showed me I made the right decision.” She held up her mug. “To the future.”
Dan tapped her mug with his bottle of beer. “Hear, hear.”
One more face of evil down. Jess sipped her hot cocoa and relished the victory.
* * * * *
Every cowboy has a wild side—
all it takes is the right woman to unleash it...
Keep reading for a sneak peek of
BLAME IT ON THE COWBOY,
part of USA TODAY bestselling author
Delores Fossen’s miniseries
THE McCORD BROTHERS.
Available in October 2016
only from HQN Books!
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Blame It on the Cowboy
by Delores Fossen
LIARS AND CLOWNS. Logan had seen both tonight. The liar was a woman who he thought loved him. Helene. And the clown, well... Logan wasn’t sure he could process that image just yet.
Maybe after lots of booze though.
He hadn’t been drunk since his twenty-first birthday, nearly thirteen years ago. But he was about to remedy that now. He motioned for the bartender to set him up another pair of Glenlivet shots.
His phone buzzed again, indicating another call had just gone to voice mail. One of his siblings no doubt wanting to make sure he was all right. He wasn’t. But talking to them about it wouldn’t help, and Logan didn’t want anyone he knew to see or hear him like this.
It was possible there’d be some slurring involved. Puking, too.
He’d never been sure what to call Helene. His longtime girlfriend? Girlfriend seemed too high school. So, he’d toyed with thinking of her as his future fiancée. Or in social situations—she was his business associate who often ran his marketing campaigns. But tonight Logan wasn’t calling her any of those things. As far as he was concerned, he never wanted to think of her, her name or what to call her again.
Too bad that image of her was stuck in his head, but that
was where he was hoping generous amounts of single-malt scotch would help.
Even though Riley, Claire, Lucky and Cassie wouldn’t breathe a word about this, it would still get around town. Lucky wasn’t sure how, but gossip seemed to defy the time-space continuum in Spring Hill. People would soon know, if they didn’t already, and those same people wouldn’t look at him the same again. It would hurt business.
Hell. It hurt him.
That was why he was here in this hotel bar in San Antonio. It was only thirty miles from Spring Hill, but tonight he hoped it’d be far enough away that no one he knew would see him get drunk. Then he could stagger to his room and then puke in peace. Not that he was looking forward to the puking part, but it would give him something else to think about other than her.
It was his first time in this hotel, though he stayed in San Antonio often on business. Logan hadn’t wanted to risk running into anyone he knew, and he certainly wouldn’t at this trendy “boutique” place. Not with a name like the Purple Cactus and its vegan restaurant.
If the staff found out he was a cattle broker, he might be booted out. Or forced to eat tofu. That was the reason Logan had used cash when he checked in. No sense risking someone recognizing his name from his credit card.
The clerk had seemed to doubt him when Logan had told him that his ID and credit cards had been stolen and that was why he couldn’t produce anything with his name on it. Of course, when Logan had slipped the guy an extra hundred-dollar bill, it had caused that doubt to disappear.
“Drinking your troubles away?” a woman asked.
“Trying.”
Though he wasn’t drunk enough that he couldn’t see what was waiting for him at the end of this. A hangover, a missed 8:00 a.m. meeting, his family worried about him—the puking—and it wouldn’t fix anything other than to give him a couple hours of mind-numbing solace.
At the moment though, mind-numbing solace, even if it was temporary, seemed like a good trade-off.
“Me, too,” she said. “Drinking my troubles away.”
Judging from the sultry tone in her voice, Logan first thought she might be a prostitute, but then he got a look at her.
Nope. Not a pro.
Or if she was, she’d done nothing to market herself as such. No low-cut dress to show her cleavage. She had on a T-shirt with cartoon turtles on the front, a baggy white skirt and flip-flops. It looked as if she’d grabbed the first items of clothing she could find off a very cluttered floor of her very cluttered apartment.
Logan wasn’t into clutter.
And he’d thought Helene wasn’t, either. He’d been wrong about that, too. That antique desk of hers had been plenty cluttered with a clown’s bare ass.
“Mind if I join you?” Miss Turtle-Shirt said. “I’m having sort of a private going-away party.”
She waited until Logan mumbled “suit yourself,” and she slid onto the purple bar stool next to him.
She smelled like limes.
Her hair was varying shades of pink and looked as if it’d been cut with a weed whacker. It was already messy, but apparently it wasn’t messy enough for her because she dragged her hand through it, pushing it away from her face.
“Tequila, top-shelf. Four shots and a bowl of lime slices,” she told the bartender.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only person in San Antonio with plans to get drunk tonight. And it explained the lime scent. These clearly weren’t her first shots of the night.
“Do me a favor though,” she said to Logan after he downed his next drink. “Don’t ask my name, or anything personal about me, and I’ll do the same for you.”
Logan had probably never agreed to anything so fast in all his life. For one thing, he really didn’t want to spend time talking with this woman, and he especially didn’t want to talk about what’d happened.
“If you feel the need to call me something, go with Julia,” she added.
The name definitely wasn’t a fit. He was expecting something more like Apple or Sunshine. Still, he didn’t care what she called herself. Didn’t care what her real name was, either, and he cared even less after his next shot of Glenlivet.
“So, you’re a cowboy, huh?” she asked.
The mind-numbing hadn’t kicked in yet, but the orneriness had. “That’s personal.”
She shrugged. “Not really. You’re wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and jeans. It was more of an observation than a question.”
“The clothes could be fashion statements,” he pointed out.
Julia shook her head, downed the first shot of tequila, sucked on a lime slice. Made a face and shuddered. “You’re not the kind of man to make fashion statements.”
If he hadn’t had a little buzz going on, he might have been insulted by that. “Unlike you?”
She glanced down at her clothes as if seeing them for the first time. Or maybe she was just trying to focus because the tequila had already gone to her head. “This was the first thing I grabbed off my floor.”
Bingo. If that was her first grab, there was no telling how bad things were beneath it.
Julia tossed back her second shot. “Have you ever found out something that changed your whole life?” she asked.
“Yeah.” About four hours ago.
“Me, too. Without giving specifics, because that would be personal, did it make you feel as if fate were taking a leak on your head?”
“Five leaks,” he grumbled. Logan finished off his next shot.
Julia made a sound of agreement. “I would compare yours with mine, and I’d win, but I don’t want to go there. Instead, let’s play a drinking game.”
“Let’s not,” he argued. “And in a fate-pissing comparison, I don’t think you’d win.”
Julia made a sound of disagreement. Had another shot. Grimaced and shuddered again. “So, the game is a word association,” she continued as if he’d agreed. “I say a word, you say the first thing that comes to mind. We take turns until we’re too drunk to understand what the other one is saying.”
Until she’d added that last part, Logan had been about to get up and move to a different spot. But hell, he was getting drunk anyway, and at least this way he’d have some company. Company he’d never see again. Company he might not even be able to speak to if the slurring went up a notch.
“Dream?” she threw out there.
“Family.” That earned him a sound of approval from her, and she motioned for him to take his turn. “Surprise?”
“Crappy,” Julia said without hesitation.
Now it was Logan who made a grunt of approval. Surprises could indeed be crap-related. The one he’d gotten tonight certainly had been.
Her: “Tattoos?”
Him: “None.” Then, “You?”
Her: “Two.” Then, “Bucket list?”
Him: “That’s two words.” The orneriness was still there despite the buzz.
Her: “Just bucket, then?”
Too late. Logan’s fuzzy mind was already fixed on the bucket list. He had one all right. Or rather he’d had one. A life with Helene that included all the trimmings, and this stupid game was a reminder that the Glenlivet wasn’t working nearly fast enough. So, he had another shot.
Julia had one, as well. “Sex?” she said.
Logan shook his head. “I don’t want to play this game anymore.”
When she didn’t respond, Logan looked at her. Their eyes met. Eyes that were already slightly unfocused.
Julia took the paper sleeve with her room key from her pocket. Except there were two keys, and she slid one Logan’s way.
“It’s not the game,” she explained. “I’m offering you sex with me. No names. No strings attached. Just one night, and we’ll never tell another soul about it.”
She finished off her last tequila shot, s
huddered and stood. “Are you game?”
No way, and Logan would have probably said that to her if she hadn’t leaned in and kissed him.
Maybe it was the weird combination of her tequila and his scotch, or maybe it was because he was already drunker than he thought, but Logan felt himself moving right into that kiss.
* * *
LOGAN DREAMED, AND it wasn’t about the great sex he’d just had. It was another dream that wasn’t so pleasant. The night of his parents’ car accident. Some dreams were a mishmash of reality and stuff that didn’t make sense. But this dream always got it right.
Not a good thing.
It was like being trapped on a well-oiled hamster wheel, seeing the same thing come up over and over again and not being able to do a thing to stop it.
The dream rain felt and sounded so real. Just like that night. It was coming down so hard that the moment his truck wipers swished it away, the drops covered the windshield again. That was why it’d taken him so long to see the lights, and Logan was practically right on the scene of the wreck before he could fully brake. He went into a skid, costing him precious seconds. If he’d had those seconds, he could have called the ambulance sooner.
He could have saved them.
But he hadn’t then. And he didn’t now in the dream.
Logan chased away the images, and with his head still groggy, he did what he always did after the nightmare. He rewrote it. He got to his parents and stopped them from dying.
Every time except when it really mattered, Logan saved them.
* * *
LOGAN WISHED HE could shoot out the sun. It was creating lines of light on each side of the curtains, and those lines were somehow managing to stab through his closed eyelids. That was probably because every nerve in his head and especially his eyelids were screaming at him, and anything—including the earth’s rotation—added to his pain.