Rustling Up Trouble

by Delores Fossen

  Until she was plastered right against him.

  All the memories came flooding back to her, too. The ones she’d tried to push aside of just how good, and hot, Blue could make her feel.

  Even when it wasn’t a good idea for her to be feeling these things.

  There was the whole issue of him being nearly naked. Her blasted hormone issues, too. Plus the investigation they should be doing.

  But did any of those things stop her?

  Nope.

  Rayanne just stood there and took everything he was giving her, and it didn’t take her body long to start wrestling to bring him even closer, to deepen the kiss even more.

  To make sure this mistake was one worth making.

  She felt herself moving and realized that Blue was maneuvering them toward the wall. Her back landed against the smooth, cool surface, and even though he stayed gentle, the hunger she could feel inside herself was the exact opposite of gentle.

  Rayanne ached for him.

  Ached to have him take her the way he had that night five months ago.

  And Blue didn’t disappoint.

  “Just kisses,” he repeated.

  He moved those kisses to her neck. Right to the spot that he knew would make her melt. And it did. Rayanne couldn’t stop the sound of pleasure that escaped from her mouth.

  That sound must have been like an invitation to Blue. That and the fact that she wasn’t doing a darn thing to stop this. She certainly didn’t stop him when Blue caught on to the bottom of her T-shirt and shoved it up.

  “You weren’t lying about the panties,” he mumbled, his mouth now against her breasts. He slid his hands into the back of the panties, to her bottom, inching down the panties in the same motion.

  “You said just kisses,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t limit them to your mouth.”

  With that, he dropped to his knees and gave her a kiss that had Rayanne making more than just a little sound. She had to clamp her teeth over her bottom lip to stop herself from letting the rest of the house know what was going on.

  Blue slid her knee on his shoulder—thankfully, the one without the bandage—and he just kept on kissing.

  Rayanne gave up any thoughts of stopping this and instead anchored herself by sliding one hand against the wall. The other she sank deep into his hair.

  It didn’t take much before she felt her body clench. Before the ripples started and turned to a full-blown earthquake. The pleasure swooshed through every inch of her, and she would have fallen if Blue hadn’t been right there to catch her.

  Rayanne was still trying to gather her breath and come back to earth when Blue took hold of her and eased her to a sitting position on the bed.

  “No,” he said, following the direction of her gaze to the hard bulge behind the partly open zipper of his jeans. “You’re not going to do anything about that.”

  “Why not?” she blurted out. It wasn’t a good question, especially since she knew the answer. This wasn’t the time for “one good turn deserves another.”

  “Because it won’t stay just a kiss. I’ll have you on that bed, and those little lace panties won’t be much of a barrier to stopping us.”

  She was having a hard time remembering why that wouldn’t be a good idea. Oh, yes. Because it would be a major distraction. And maybe make his injuries even worse. Blue wasn’t in any shape for sex, even if her body was trying to convince her otherwise.

  Rayanne shook her head. “Are you in pain?” And now her gaze shifted to his shoulder.

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “Not that kind of pain.” He finally did something about that flapping zipper. He closed it, not easily, but after some wincing, he got himself fully covered.

  Peep show over.

  Something she shouldn’t have been so disappointed about. But she was.

  “Why’d you do that?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t stop myself. I should apologize, I know, but an I’m sorry would be a lie. I’m not sorry, and we didn’t get a chance to do that the night we were together.”

  No, that night had happened in a heated rush. The culmination of weeks of hot smoldering looks and lust-filled thoughts. Well, on her part, anyway. Judging from what’d just gone on between them, it’d been the same for Blue.

  “You didn’t tell me what you wanted to say,” she reminded him. Best to move this conversation from well-placed kisses to something safer.

  He stared at her, and his jaw muscles stirred. “It’s personal...”

  “You’re married,” she blurted out.

  He laughed. It was smoky and thick and brought back some wonderful memories. “No. Not married.”

  Blue didn’t get a chance to tell her what he’d wanted to say, because his phone rang. Rayanne groaned not just because of the interruption but because a call this time of morning couldn’t be good news.

  “It’s Caleb,” he said after fishing his phone from his jeans pocket.

  Definitely not good news. Except that maybe Blue and she would finally learn what the heck was going on with Caleb.

  “Where are you?” Blue demanded the moment he answered and put the call on speaker.

  “Look outside. We need to talk.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Don’t go near that window,” Blue warned Rayanne.

  He put Caleb on hold and hurried back across the hall to grab the rest of his clothes.

  And his gun.

  A weapon wasn’t something he’d ever thought he would need just to talk to his former boss, but Blue wasn’t taking any chances. Especially since he’d already taken a huge one just with the morning kissing session with Rayanne.

  Talk about the fastest way to lose focus, and this call from Caleb was a gigantic reminder that what Blue should be focusing on was unraveling this dangerous puzzle that could get Rayanne and the baby hurt.

  While he kept Caleb on hold, Blue dressed and went to the window. Rayanne did, too, and she took her gun from the nightstand, but she stayed behind him when Blue eased back the curtains and opened the blinds.

  Yeah, Caleb was there, all right.

  He was standing on the road that led to the house and was surrounded by three armed ranch hands, exactly as they’d been for Wendell’s and Woody’s visits.

  Caleb had his phone sandwiched between his ear and shoulder, and both hands were in the air. A black four-door sedan was parked about twenty yards behind him, and the passenger’s-side door was open. He’d likely parked there and walked.

  But why?

  Maybe because the hands hadn’t given him a choice, but if so, then had the hands allowed the man closer to the house? Blue made a mental note to instruct them not to do that again. Caleb, or any of their other suspects, could be dangerous.

  “Tell the men to back down,” Caleb insisted when Blue took the call off hold.

  “Not until I get some answers, and they’d better be good answers, too. I know what’s going on with you. By the way, Hale said to give you a message—either come in or give up your badge.”

  Caleb cursed, and even from a distance, Blue could see the frustration on the man’s face. He could also see that Caleb was disheveled, his clothes wrinkled. Definitely not the polished agent who’d visited him in the hospital just two days earlier to move him to a “safer” location.

  Or maybe move him so he could kill him.

  “I was set up,” Caleb immediately volunteered.

  That would explain why his former boss was suddenly on the wrong side of the law.

  Well, it would explain it if he was telling the truth. Of course, Blue knew a thing or two about being set up since someone had tried to do the same to him with that hit order on Rayanne.

  “Tell me about those weapons that I confiscated earlier this year,” Blue said to Caleb. “The ones that got back into the wrong hands.”

  “I will, but I’d rather not talk about that while standing out here in the open at gunpoint. I’m not armed. My gun’s on the ground.”
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  It was. Blue could see it next to one of the hands. But that didn’t mean Caleb didn’t have a backup weapon on him somewhere, and even if one of the hands had frisked him, Caleb knew how to hide a gun.

  “We’ll stick with this arrangement for now,” Blue informed him. “I want to know about those guns and why Hale thinks you might be dirty.”

  Caleb looked up at the house, and his gaze rifled across the windows until he spotted Blue. The muscles in his face tightened. Blue knew pure anger when he saw it. But why the heck was that anger directed at him?

  “Hale thinks I’m dirty,” Caleb finally answered, “because like I said, somebody set me up.”

  Blue’s next questions were simple. Maybe Caleb would have simple, believable answers. “Who and how?”

  Caleb shook his head and gave a weary sigh. “I don’t know who did it, but they used a hacker to get into the Justice Department files and plant info about me.” He paused. “I thought it might be you.”

  Well, that explained the angry face. “Me? Why the hell would I do that?”

  “To stop me from arresting you,” Caleb snapped.

  “You’ve got no cause to arrest me. And besides, I haven’t exactly had time to set anyone up. Someone’s been trying to kill me, remember?”

  “Yes.” That was all Caleb said for several moments. “I remember. Do you?”

  Blue debated what exactly to tell him and decided to go with the truth to see how Caleb would react. “I remember everything.”

  For just a moment he thought he saw a flash of concern in Caleb’s eyes, and Blue wished he was closer so he could figure out what it meant.

  “Good,” Caleb answered, after that unexplained flash. “Then you know I’m not dirty.”

  “Sorry, the only thing I know is someone’s trying to kidnap or kill Rayanne and me, and you’re on a short list of suspects.”

  Now he got more than a flash of a reaction. Caleb cursed. “That’s why I wanted this meeting. I put my neck on the line, maybe literally, and I did that so both of us could get answers. Rayanne, too. It’s not a good idea for the baby and her to keep dodging bullets.”

  Rayanne groaned softly. Neither of them had told him about the pregnancy. Of course, now that Rayanne was showing, he could have noticed it or even heard it around town. Still, coming from Caleb, it sounded a little like a threat.

  “Do you agree we need to end the danger and clear our names?” Caleb asked.

  “My name’s cleared.” Blue hoped. “And how do you plan to end the danger?”

  “For starters, this meeting. I didn’t come alone.” Caleb tipped his head to his car. “I thought it was time we all sat down and talked.”

  Oh, Blue didn’t like the sound of that. And he really didn’t like it when the back doors of Caleb’s car opened.

  And two men stepped out.

  * * *

  JUDGING FROM BLUE’S mumbled profanity, Rayanne figured she wasn’t going to be pleased with whomever Caleb had brought with him.

  And she wasn’t.

  When Rayanne looked over Blue’s shoulder, she spotted the unholy pair.

  Wendell Braddock and Rex Gandy.

  Coupled with Caleb, they represented all their suspects, gathered practically right at the doorstep. She hadn’t wanted them in the same state with Blue, her and her family, much less this close. The only one missing was Woody, and with the way their luck had been running, he might just get out of that car, too, and confess that all four of them were working to kill Blue and her.

  “Stay to the side of the window,” Blue told her.

  She did, but Rayanne positioned herself so she could still see the men. She wanted to watch their expressions in case they showed any signs of guilt. Of course, in Gandy’s case, he was probably a sociopath and therefore too good at hiding what was really going on in his head.

  “You shouldn’t have brought them here,” Blue said, his voice a low, dangerous warning and his attention nailed to Caleb.

  “Trust me, I didn’t want to do that,” Caleb answered, adding yet another surprise to this meeting. He took his phone from his ear and pressed a button, no doubt to put it on speaker so the other men could hear the conversation. “They didn’t give me much of a choice.”

  “I don’t see you being held at gunpoint,” Rayanne remarked. “That means you had a choice. Plus, Wendell accused you of being a dirty agent, so I have no idea why you’d let him get in your car.”

  “Wendell’s accused people of a lot of things,” Gandy volunteered, earning a glare from Wendell.

  Strange bedfellows indeed.

  “I was on my way out here,” Caleb said, “and these two were stopped at the end of the road.”

  “And when the agent here said he was coming out to visit y’all,” Gandy continued, “we decided to all come together and speak our piece at once.”

  “You decided,” Caleb corrected. “And you threatened to call my boss and tell him where I was if I didn’t cooperate. That’s the only reason I let you in the car.”

  Interesting. Or maybe just a flat-out lie. Rayanne really hoped they weren’t all in this together. If they were, then at best it was a tenuous partnership since there wasn’t a shred of trust among them.

  “You weren’t afraid one of these stellar citizens would kill you?” Rayanne asked Caleb.

  Caleb eyed them both like a pair of rattlesnakes. “Like I said, I didn’t have much of a choice. I came because I need to do something, anything, to save my badge.”

  Rayanne didn’t intend to feel any sympathy for him, at least not until Caleb was totally cleared as a suspect. She seriously doubted that would happen with this meeting.

  “And Blue didn’t give us a choice, either,” Wendell insisted. “You’re fueling an investigation and dragging us all into it.”

  “Because one of you likely hired that trio of killers who came to the ranch,” Blue fired back.

  Gandy rolled his eyes. “Always trying to get in your jabs, aren’t you? And where have those jabs got you so far? Nowhere. You’ve never uncovered a single piece of evidence that could lead to my arrest.”

  “The day’s not over,” Blue mumbled.

  Gandy chuckled. “Never liked your methods, Blue, but I gotta say, I always admired your persistence. Except in this case, persistence is causing a whole bunch of cops and such to pester me with questions. I want it stopped.”

  “Yeah,” Wendell agreed. “And that’s why we need to sit down and talk. Caleb here wants to save his badge, but I’ve got a reputation to salvage. I do business with a lot of important people who wouldn’t be happy to learn I’m the subject of an investigation, even if it’s a witch hunt.”

  “It’s not a witch hunt. And you’re not getting in this house,” Blue informed them. “Talking won’t help...unless one of you plans to make a full confession.”

  “Nothing to confess to,” Gandy said, and the other two mumbled some form of agreement. “Now, the person you should be looking at is your old pal Woody Janson. I’ve heard rumblings of some confiscated guns making it back into criminals’ hands. Who better to do that than Woody?”

  Blue and she just stared at Caleb.

  “Blue thinks I’m responsible for that,” Caleb volunteered. “And since I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to Woody, I can’t question him about it. But my money’s on him, too.”

  “Yeah, especially since Woody survived the attack and all,” Gandy tossed out there.

  That got her attention.

  Rayanne moved so she could get a better look at the man. Gandy was gloating, probably because he knew he’d just dropped a bombshell.

  Even Caleb and Wendell seemed surprised by Gandy’s comment. But it could be fake. She still wasn’t sure they were here only to convince Blue to back off an investigation that could save their lives.

  “How’d you know that Woody survived?” Rayanne asked.

  Gandy lifted his shoulder as if the answer were obvious. “Word gets around fast when a former employee
of questionable integrity turns up dead.”

  Blue and she exchanged a glance. “What would that have to do with Woody?” Blue asked, obviously not volunteering anything about Woody’s visit.

  “Plenty and you know it,” Gandy fired back.

  “Why don’t you fill me in on the plenty that I know,” Blue said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Gandy smiled as if he was getting a lot of pleasure from this. “A friend of a friend told me that a guy named Ace Butler turned up in a hospital down in Floresville. Ace had been shot, didn’t make it through surgery, but his lawyer showed up and tried to pay the doc to stay quiet about it.”

  “His lawyer?” Blue questioned.

  Gandy shrugged. “Or maybe it was just an acquaintance, but the point is—check out Ace and see if he’s the clown who tried to kill you two days ago. And if he was, then I’m figuring he had a little run-in with Woody yesterday.”

  Blue and she had already seen the photo of the man by Woody’s car and knew that he was the same idiot who’d come to the ranch to kill them. There’d also been the blood found near Woody’s car, and it was still at the lab for DNA testing. If it proved to be a match to this Ace Butler, then it meant Gandy was telling the truth.

  Or at least a partial truth.

  But why?

  Gandy wasn’t the sort to volunteer anything unless it benefited him, and in this case, he was probably hoping that the info would put the blame for the attacks on someone other than himself.

  “I’ll call Seth,” Rayanne whispered to Blue.

  While Blue stayed at the window, she stepped to the other side of the room to make the call. She filled her brother in on what Gandy had just told them so he could check out the hospital in Floresville.

  “How exactly did you come by all this information?” Blue asked Gandy when Rayanne finished her call.

  “I’d rather not say,” Gandy answered.

  “I’d rather you did,” Blue snapped.

  Gandy’s mouth stretched as if he was about to smile or stall them again.

  But he didn’t get a chance to do or say anything.

  Caleb pivoted, his attention rifling behind them. “Get down!” he shouted.

  Just as a shot rang out.