Cowboy Boots 5
Cowboy Boots and Inexpressible Longing
His pain is far greater than his need for love
Master Drew Remington knows pain. He understands its fury. He has walked through its unrelenting terror and remembers the torment in his brother’s eyes as he lay dying in front of him.
His affliction is too vast to overcome
Oh yes, Master Drew knows heartache. He watched as his father was gunned down by a hired assassin and understands what it’s like to feel helpless, utterly consumed by a harrowing tragedy that left his family in ruins.
Only one woman can heal his soul and mend his wounded heart
A former lover, Suzy Matthews, reenters Master Drew’s life. Suzy is determined to win her Master’s heart, but as she plans to embrace the love she and Master Drew share, an emerging war finally erupts. Soon, Suzy is used as a pawn in a very dangerous game set to unfold between old enemies looking to settle one final score.
Genre: BDSM, Romantic Suspense, Western/Cowboys
Length: 24,066 words
COWBOY BOOTS AND INEXPRESSIBLE LONGING
Cowboy Boots 5
Natalie Acres
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
COWBOY BOOTS AND INEXPRESSIBLE LONGING
Copyright © 2013 by Natalie Acres
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62740-124-1
First E-book Publication: June 2013
Cover design by Harris Channing
All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
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DEDICATION
To Tymber Dalton with my sincere thanks.
Thanks to a suggestion you shared during a short email exchange, Drew Remington’s story materialized. This manuscript, and at least a half-dozen others, are because of your advice.
I lift my coffee mug to you, lady.
COWBOY BOOTS AND INEXPRESSIBLE LONGING
Cowboy Boots 5
NATALIE ACRES
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
“Brock Donovan is here to see you, Sir.” One of The Underground Club’s cocktail waitresses poked her head in Drew’s office. “Do you want me to send him in?”
“Not yet,” Drew bit out, studying the Las Vegas skyline lighting up the summer night. The dark heavens hovered over the bright lights and action, just loomed there like a black blanket waiting to swoop down over the city and smother out the excitement, maybe even hide that easy money gamblers assumed they’d win when they came to Sin City.
Brock Donovan wasn’t there for riches. Drew fully understood why Brock had traveled all the way from Virginia. He’d taken a late flight and called to let Drew know when he landed in Dallas. Impatient bastard wanted to make sure Drew was at the club when his plane touched down in Vegas.
Where else would Drew be in the middle of the night? The club was hopping, which was probably why Donovan chose the midnight hour to meet. Widely known for participating in the scene, Brock would undoubtedly appreciate Underground-Las Vegas.
Drew went to the bar and poured himself a drink. He slowly turned, sipping his aged Scotch. Releasing an “Ah,” he eyed the messenger and asked, “Why are you still here?”
“He’s persistent, Sir. He told me to tell you his return flight departs at two.”
“Return flight my ass.” He’d likely chartered a plane out of Vegas which meant it wouldn’t kill the SOB to wait a minute. “Tell him I’ll be with him momentarily.”
“You know what you can do with your momentarily, Drew.” Brock marched inside the expansive area. Glowering over the petite waitress, he snapped, “Give us some privacy, sweetheart.”
When they were alone, Drew turned on him. “Don’t talk to my employees like they’re beneath you.”
“I didn’t,” Brock said. “You are my employee, remember. Since when do you keep your boss waiting?”
“Former boss, Brock. I don’t work for you anymore.”
“Hell of a severance package you have here.” Brock glanced around the office. “If I’d known the Underground Unit had begun setting up former operatives like kings, I would’ve retired years ago.”
“Do you have a reason for being here?”
“Several.”
Drew couldn’t wait to hear the motivation behind number one, the truest purpose for Donovan’s visit.
“Yeah, friend, I have a feeling that boss thing is all in who you ask,” Brock drawled, narrowing his gaze and inching closer. “How ya been, Drew?”
“I’m getting by, just trying to survive like everyone else.”
“It’s been three years.”
“Since I laid eyes on you?” Drew snorted at that. “I could be so lucky.”
“You know how to make a guy feel welcome.”
“Maybe I know why you’re here,” Drew said, deciding they might as well cut to the chase. Downstairs, the crowd was rowdy and he didn’t have time to slow dance wit
h Donovan, let alone sway around the topic at hand.
“Who called you?” Brock asked.
“Does it matter?”
“So Sloane beat me to the punch?”
“Veronica.” Drew quickly corrected him.
Brock laughed. “Of course.”
“Fishing?”
“Veronica didn’t pick up the phone, but you’d protect your brothers—at least those you have left—if you needed to take your last breath to do it.”
“You heartless son-of-a-bitch.” Rage settled in Drew’s veins as he resisted the urge to crawl back in that dark hole and just let his grief have him once and for all.
“It’s been three years,” Brock said once again. “Have you stopped feeling sorry for yourself? Cried enough tears? Carried enough blame? See, I’m curious what kind of timetable we’re on here because I’d like to know when you plan on manning up to the responsibilities you have.”
Seething, Drew leapt across his desk like the renegade he’d become. He grabbed Brock by the collar and threw him against the wall. He quickly secured him by throwing his forearm against Brock’s neck. Other than a grunt and groan, Donovan never flinched.
“Do you honestly think I don’t know how long I’ve been a free agent?” He snarled as he flexed his arm, pinning Donovan against the panels. “Do you?”
Drew’s heart raced. His blood pumped harder and faster. His muscles tightened. He felt as if his chest would explode without much more provocation.
Brock sneered. “Esparza is alive.”
“I fucking heard,” Drew grated out, applying pressure to Brock’s neck. “Is there any other reason you came all this way tonight? If not, I’ve got a club to run.”
“A club founded and funded by the Underground Unit.”
Drew clucked. “Yeah, I wondered how long it would take for you to throw that one in my face.”
“I told you, Remington. You work for me. Until you walk away from the entire operation, and that includes the clubs we own, you can call yourself whatever you want. You can pretend to freelance and list free agent before or after your name for all I care. In the end, you have one purpose in life and that’s to please me.”
“Fuck you, Donovan.”
“Even a cheap screw isn’t entirely free in this world, Remington. You know that. You knew we’d come to collect a favor sooner or later.”
“And here I thought you just showed up with scrapbooks and pictures.”
The men swapped dangerous glares. There were really only four people Drew hated provoking and one of them stood in front of him. The others—his own brother Sloane, Manny Mancini, and Scott Zelmore were always on his side. They always had his back.
Brock, well shit, he might have his back, but he’d first paddle his bottom and tell him what a bad little boy he’d been.
Drew Remington was nobody’s fucking boy.
“You remind me of myself,” Brock told him, grabbing his forearms and pushing him away when he undoubtedly detected a chance for a clean break. “I was a lot like you when I was your age. Driven, determined, and hell-bent on taking things into my own hands, I had goals in life and pretty much only two when I was in your shoes. I wanted to right the wrongful acts committed against my family and I wanted to love a woman.”
“You can put that character flaw on somebody else,” Drew said, returning to the floor-to-ceiling window where he spent the majority of his evenings. “I have enough burdens to carry.”
“You can handle one more,” Brock assured him.
Thank God he didn’t elaborate on Drew’s connection with Suzy Matthews. The last time they’d spoken, Brock had tried to convince him to bring Suzy to Las Vegas, certain she was a liability since she had been his former lover, a woman who had seen too much and knew far more than Brock wanted her to know.
Before she aligned herself with her current husband, Suzy had been a bestselling author. Her husband had made it damn near impossible for her to work and meet her publishing obligations and last Drew had heard, she was waiting tables in a roadside diner. It was a catastrophic waste of a beautiful mind.
A resounding slap popped against his desk and brought him back to the present. Drew studied Brock in the window, watching his large form in the reflection. “What’s in the folder?”
“Everything you always wanted to know about Gomez Gustavo Esparza but didn’t know who to ask.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Me?” Brock shook his head. “No, son, this here ain’t me. This is all on you and your brothers. Veronica, too, I imagine. This is unfinished business, business that the Remingtons didn’t put to rest. This failure is yours to own.”
Surprisingly, he and Donovan could actually agree on something. He wouldn’t argue or defend himself when Donovan was speaking nothing but the truth.
The past came rolling back and Drew couldn’t help but latch onto the bitterness as he glanced down at the scattered photographs now cluttering his desk. “We buried three loved ones that year, Donovan. Maybe if we’d had a little backup and support, Esparza wouldn’t have been the one who slipped away. Better still, maybe if you had sent one of your brothers, my brother Benson would still be alive today.”
Brock stared at him a long time before he said, “Perhaps I was wrong about you, after all. You aren’t like me. I don’t point an accusing finger at the other guy and place blame where there aren’t any shoulders big enough or broad enough to carry the load. See, I operate a little differently.
“When there’s revenge to exert, I embrace the opportunity. I like to even old scores.” He stalked the window where Drew stood. His head turned from side to side as he undoubtedly took in the city below them, a town built on losers. “Hell, the fact is, Drew. I like to win.”
“This isn’t about winning, damn you!” God he was mad. He wanted to knock Donovan off his arrogant feet and punch his ever-loving lights out once and for all. “There are no winners here! There’s no way to recoup the losses, no way to come back from an unlucky streak and change the course here. Don’t you understand that?”
“What’s it about for you then? Is it survival? Are you looking out for number one and to hell with the rest of us?” Brock stood taller. “If not, are you interested in keeping the rest of your family safe? How about the teams surrounding you, the operatives who stood by your side and fought for you and your family, the men and women who went to Caracas and never came home? Do you ever think about them? Do you even worry about your family now?”
“My brothers take care of themselves.”
“Like Dusty did in Caracas?”
“Don’t mention Venezuela to me. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what went down and neither do you.”
“Are you really going to stand there and pretend your brother wasn’t raped in Venezuela?” Brock shook his head. “I debriefed him. When that mission was complete, I spoke to every operative who was over there. Your brother sustained the unimaginable because he was trained to survive. He was taught to press forward regardless of his dire circumstances.”
“So the authority calls Dusty’s situation a ‘dire circumstance’?”
“How would you describe his Venezuelan experience?”
“Experience?” Drew’s head pounded with his fury. The devil could’ve dragged him through hell kicking and screaming and he wouldn’t have been as pissed as he was then. Rather than give in to Donovan’s taunting, he took a deep breath and said, “The torture he endured isn’t anything I will discuss with you. Dusty survived. That mission is behind him and his past has nothing to do with my immediate future.”
“Is that what you’ve been telling yourself for the last three years? While you’ve been hiding out here, pretending you’re someone you’re not, is that how you’ve been able to cope with running a club when you should be out in the field?” Brock waved his hand at Drew’s desk. “Esparza is back, Drew. You can hide here in this office and shuffle papers, fill out purchase orders, and manage the payroll but it won’t change
your destiny. He’s back and there’s a lot of damage he can do. And you should know, if Esparza is here in Vegas, he has every intention of coming for you.”
“No one understands what Esparza is capable of better than I do,” Drew said, remembering a time when Esparza held a gun to his head and counted backward from ten. He had obvious intentions of pulling the trigger when the count reached one. “I watched my brother and father die because of this monster!”
“And you’re willing to walk away now?”
“You’re damn right.” Not on Donovan’s fucking life. “Esparza took enough from my family. If we don’t shake the sleeping bear, maybe he’ll stay in hibernation.”
Brock smirked. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yes.” Not at all.
Brock studied him through suspicious eyes. “You have a lot of anger, Drew. Rage lives inside of you. That’s not anything you can tuck away out of sight. Way I see it? You can keep running or you can own your career again. You can use those killer instincts that have kept you alive longer than the average operative and put down your father’s and brother’s killers once and for all or you can sit here and wait.”
“I’ll wait, thank you very much.”
Brock grunted. “And you’ll be a sitting duck here. Is that what you want? Do you really want Esparza to come here looking for you? He will, you know. He won’t rest until you and your brothers have paid the ultimate price.”
“I ain’t runnin’ here. If he wants me, tell him to drop on by anytime.”
Brock’s cold eyes set as if he were in deep concentration. “Either you really don’t give a damn anymore—about yourself or your family—or you’re a hell of an actor. Which is it, Remington?”
Cowboy Boots and Inexpressible Longing [Cowboy Boots 5] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 1