***
On the day of the move, the dense armor-plated van pulled up behind her in her latest car, and she slipped out of the front seat with nothing except her purse. She didn’t bother to accumulate possessions anymore; they were nothing but baggage. It was the same with personal relationships. She kept her distance from people because she never knew how long she would be around, or if the person she was talking to was an assassin sent by the Koloffs. She wasn’t going to end up like Jonathan, no way, no how.
As she buckled in, Agent Kelly handed over her latest set of IDs and a plane ticket. She read the destination: Phoenix, AZ.
“You’re moving me to Phoenix?” she said, and edge of panic in her voice. “Isn’t that a little too close to L.A.?”
“We’re not moving you to Phoenix. We’re moving you to a small town just outside of Tucson called Mount Lemon. Besides, we’re going to trial in the next three months, so it’s better we have you close.”
A chill passed through her at the prospect of exposing herself by taking the stand, but she pushed it out of her mind and instead thought about what Arizona might be like. Maybe she would finally meet the handsome rancher that she dreamed about as a little girl.
Chapter 2: Sam, Mount Lemon, Arizona
Sam Collins had been waking up at 4 a.m. for as long as he could remember. Most days—particularly on winter mornings when the sun doesn't come up from behind Mount Lemon until after eight—he wished he could just turn over and go back to sleep. When he first joined up with the Border Patrol and he wasn't tied to the ranch for the first time in his life, he had tried his damnedest to sleep in, but after a lifetime of having to deal with cows and horses and their early morning routines (along with his father's hard-nosed, zero-give lifestyle), his body simply wouldn't allow him to just roll over and bury his head under his pillows. It demanded he get up and do something, anything, other than simply lie in bed wishing for sleep to come back.
In the bad-old good-old days of his first years of independence, he would climb out of bed, start the coffee, and take a shot of Jim Beam and a snort of coke while waiting for it to brew. He kept up with this routine for nearly ten years, and then one morning it felt like his chest was about to crack in two. The pain dropped him to the kitchen floor and kept him there for two hours, writhing in agony until he finally passed out.
A couple of days after the spell (Sam wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the box in the good-old bad-old days), he went to the doctor thinking that he'd had a massive heart attack and was at death's door. But what it actually was was his gallbladder going to pot thanks to a lifetime of fried foods and his breakfast ritual. But along with the rotten organ, the doc also discovered that his liver was fat, spongy, and just a few years away from killing him if he didn't knock off the shit.
So for the first time since he'd joined the U.S Border Patrol fifteen years earlier, he decided to knock off the shit, and the morning after he scheduled to have his gallbladder removed, instead of downing a shot and snorting a line, he held his nose, gulped down a glass of grapefruit juice, and went for a mile-long walk. The juice churned in his stomach with each long, painful step, and he ended up throwing it up on his front stoop as he gasped for breath. Fifteen years of sitting in his government-issued F-150 and near-constant partying had turned his once-steely body into a bloated meat sack. He could just imagine the look on his father's face if he’d seen him during that period. The old man had always been thin and wiry, his muscles seemingly carved out of granite, and all of his sons had taken after him, including Sam, at least until he joined up with the Border Patrol.
Like his old man, who'd been the Sheriff of Apache Junction, Arizona, Sam needed action. But Sam didn't cotton to traditional law enforcement. He could never see himself pulling over speeders or dealing with squabbling neighbors. None of it seemed to have any importance or weight to it. The Border Patrol, however, that was something else entirely. With the Border Patrol, he knew he would be saving lives on a daily basis. The Arizona desert was harsh and unforgiving, particularly near the border where temperatures could reach the 120's.
Unlike so many Arizonians (at least the completely batshit crazy ones, which were actually a slim minority in his native state), Sam held no animosity for Mexican people. In fact, it was the exact opposite. He fully understood what drove a person to risk their life to make sure that their family was taken care of. Hell, if he were Mexican, he'd probably cross the border illegally too. Those Mexicans knew that all that mattered was blood, and they'd risk everything and anything for it. But because of this overwhelming desire to provide for their loved ones, they didn't always make the wisest of decisions. More often than not, they'd find themselves stuck in the middle of the desert without any food or water, and in Sam’s opinion this was actually where the Border Patrol mattered the most. The fact was, they'd never be able to stem the tide of illegals streaming across the border. But they could, at the very least, make sure that some of those people didn't have to die for their poor choices.
But you also had the potential for making equally poor decisions when you were part of the Border Patrol, because people weren't the only things that came across the border illegally. The people who transported these things had a lot of money and influence to spread around if you turned a blind eye to what they were doing.
At first, Sam turned the other cheek to the agents who did business with the cartels and the coyotes who transported illegals across the border and the desert for a fee; he was your typical Arizonan, after all. He didn't believe in sticking his nose in anyone's business as long as it didn't hang him out to dry. But there were more than a few occasions where he simply couldn't stand idly by and watch something he knew was wrong. So in his first two years, he stepped on a few toes, made a few enemies. Not with anyone on the Patrol directly, but with the people they protected. If he caught people carrying drugs, he busted them. That was his job, and he took it seriously.
But in his third year, he discovered what most agents did: There was a lot of risk versus reward when it came to the job. He'd risk his neck on a daily basis, and all he got for it was $30,000 a year, with little or no chance of advancement without knowing the right people or shaking the right hands.
Not that he needed the money—his part of the Collins family fortune paid for his house and vehicles, but it was the principle of the thing. And the fact of the matter was, he wasn't an ass kisser, and he didn't play politics worth a damn (at least, back then he didn't; now it was almost second nature), so there was a better chance than not he would be doing nothing but breaking the heads of coke- and pot-runners and pulling Mexicans out of the burning desert for the rest of his career until he became so bored with it he went running back to the ranch with his tail tucked between his legs, which he didn't want to see happen.
It's not that he didn't love the ranch. It was his childhood home, after all, but it just wasn't his world. The ranch was Henry's little fiefdom now, and Sam felt all he would be doing by returning was stepping on his toes.
So Sam made a decision in his third year. He would keep pulling illegals out of the desert. He would make sure people stayed alive and safe, but everything else, he'd turn a blind eye to while keeping his hand out for donations and the occasional handshake of people who could do something for his career.
Of course, this all led to him collapsing on the kitchen tile. At that point he could still turn his health around, but not his faith, not his reputation. There were things he'd done to advance his career and personal fortune that could never be forgiven in the world of man.
But at least he could repair his body, and he did. Within two years of the gallbladder operation, he'd dropped twenty-five pounds and ran an average of seven miles a day. And thanks to all his eating right and exercising, something else returned that he'd thought was long dead: his sex drive. Sure, he'd been with plenty of whores over the years, but he hadn't maintained a normal adult relationship since his twenties, and it was largely due to the dope, booz
e, and shitty food. Now, though, it was a different story.
Since getting back in shape, he'd been in two serious relationships. The first was with a little Mexican gal who knew exactly how to treat a man both in and out of the bedroom. The problem with her was that, even though Sam fell hard for her, she didn't feel the same. Not that he could blame her. She was twenty years his junior and had a few other male playthings, and a few others lined up to take the places of the ones who either started taking things too seriously or grew tired of only being considered second-best behind all the other men in her harem. Sam eventually saw where life with the girl was headed and gave her up like a two pack a day habit.
His second gal, though, she was something different; she was something special. Sure, they'd only been dating for a couple of months. But for one reason or another, she was all he ever thought about, and she'd become the reason why he didn't mind waking up at 4 am., because he could have coffee with her at her job after his morning run.
Chapter 3: Sam and Angela, Mount Lemon, AZ
There had been a time in Angela's life when she would never have imagine having to do manual labor. Sure, she'd waitressed a bit in college for beer money, but the whole reason she went to college was so she wouldn't have to hustle her ass off for pennies on the dollar. But ever since she'd been in protective custody, the only jobs she'd had were so-called "working-class" jobs. The Feds basically thought she would be too easy of a target if she went back into an accounting-based profession. They closest she'd come to practicing her chosen profession was working as a night auditor for a middle-of-the-road hotel when she was first moved to Omaha. With that particular job, you couldn't exactly call it accounting; it was more like data entry combined with customer service. But even then, the Feds found that there were still way too many similarities between the two, and arranged for her to work as a cashier at a truck stop. Now that was a miserable job.
The fact was, she actually found waiting tables at the modest Mountain Top Cafe to be somewhat satisfying. Despite its small size—the restaurant only had twenty tables—it was always busy and she was constantly moving. Her shifts would start, and in the blink of an eye they were over and she was prepping for the dinner shift and waiting for Sam to come and pick her up and take her out to lunch, or back to his place for a quickie.
That was the other bonus of the Cafe—she'd met Sam here, and he'd become a staple in her life over the last six months. It had been so long since she'd been in any kind of relationship that she'd almost forgotten how good it felt to be with someone.
Not only that, but she’d forgotten how it felt to be loved and adored by one person, and not be his dirty little secret. Despite her long ongoing relationship with Jonathan, it was still nothing more than an affair. Even though she was his near-constant companion, she was still nothing more than the "other woman". She was only a plaything, a disposable woman who was used for nothing more than her sex. After a point, there was no romance or love to their arrangement. In fact, for the entire span of Angela's romantic history, she had more or less always been the other woman, the home wrecker, the damaged goods. But with Sam, she was the only one, and he was the only one for her.
Of course, Sam didn’t know her as Angela Miller. To Sam, she was Diana Smalls from Springfield, Illinois. As Diana, she gave the impression of being a small-town girl, even though Springfield was actually the second largest city in Illinois. Her mother's family was all originally from Springfield, so she was able to recite details about the city and its history so that she made a believable native (she'd been from Springfield in every single one of her placements, and it was almost becoming a running joke for her). Like her last three federally mandated personalities, Diana was a working class girl with a semester of college under her belt and a couple of bad marriages. She had moved to Mount Lemon, like 90% of its new residents, for a fresh start.
But most long-time residents of the small Arizona town didn't consider hooking up with Sam Collins to be much of a fresh start. They considered it to be an invitation to a possible lifetime of misery and widowhood. Working for the Border Patrol wasn't exactly what you would call a dangerous job, but the people Sam was rumored to be involved with were dangerous.
She'd heard all the rumors about Sam being involved with the Sonoran drug cartels, coyotes, and a handful of corrupt politicians who profited from them just as much from illegal activities across the border as Sam did. But the thing was, it was all nothing but rumor, and considering the Spartan way that he lived, she had a difficult time believing he was taking money from anyone. Besides, the one thing most of the residents of Mount Lemon didn't know about was that Sam and his family were one of the wealthiest families in the state, so if he was on the take, he was doing it because it was how he got his rocks off, and she'd been with him long enough to know that money wasn't what got him off.
Just before dawn, like clockwork, Sam walked through the front door of the cafe and plopped his long cowboy body down at table #7. Whenever he was in town—which was most weeks, unless the Feds were putting on a big show at the border for the press—he would come in every morning when the Cafe first opened at 5 a.m. right after his run. Then, he'd usually stop by again at the end of her shift to see if she wanted a ride home (she only lived a few blocks from the restaurant in a faux-adobe track house, so most mornings she walked to work), which she would gratefully accept after nine hours on her feet.
She finished refilling the ketchup, mustard, sugar dispensers, and salt and pepper shakers while giving him small secret glances. She used to think that he didn't notice her stares when she was wrapping up her day, but it only took her a few weeks of dating him to figure out that there wasn't much that Sam missed. The man was a natural hunter, and he was aware of everything that was going on around him. One night at dinner, when they first started going out, he’d amazed her by telling her exactly how many people were in the restaurant, what they were eating, and how many of them were carrying guns. It was both amazing and frightening how observant he was; amazing because it was almost like he had a super power, but it frightened her because she often wondered how much he knew about her real life. Did he somehow know that she was actually Angela Miller, and he was pretending just as much as she was? The question sometimes kept her up at night, so she tried her best to avoid it entirely.
Once she was finished with her after-shift work, she sat down across from him with a Diet Coke for her and a coffee for him, and they stared into each other's eyes, grateful for the other’s presence and the simple pleasure of their daily routines.
"So, how was your shift today?" he asked as he took a small sip from his steaming cup.
"It was good. I ended up making a little over $120."
"That's real good. Do you need a ride home?"
"What do you think?" she asked with a touch of laughter to her voice. "By the way, do you have anything going on this afternoon?"
"Not a damn thing. What did you have in mind?"
"Oh, I was thinking that once we get back to my place, you could fuck my brains out?" She took a long, flirtatious drink from the straw of her drink and watched as her lover practically melted from the force of her words.
***
The minute the two of them stepped into Sam's truck, Angela couldn't take her hands off of him. As he made the short trip to her little house, she nibbled at his neck and earlobe and massaged the bulge of his cock through his jeans. If she were just a tad bit younger and wilder, she would have had him pull down some back alley and fuck her silly in the bucket seat of the truck like some teenager. She knew it was impulsive, but that's exactly how he made her feel. Even though Sam was the gentlest man she'd ever known, there was something dangerous and animal about him. She brought that animal out in him, and made her want to do things that she never would have with her lovers in the past.
Luckily, she was able to keep it in her pants long enough to make it to the house, because her body was now wound up with the anticipation of having him inside of
her and it was driving her absolutely crazy. They tumbled inside of the house, their mouths locked together, their tongues intertwined. Once the door was closed behind them, she began tearing off his clothes with reckless abandon. Buttons popped and he stumbled over his jeans as they coiled down his thighs.
God, but his body was amazing! Sam was forty-seven years old, and his body had seen its fair share of wear and tear, but it was like he was carved out of granite. Each muscle was clearly defined and resembled some kind of well-oiled machine. Whenever she felt his arms around her, she felt safer than she ever had in her life. She knew that no matter what dangers he faced, he could handle it. She'd never been with a man like him before, and she doubted she would ever be able to find another one like him. For a brief moment, that made her a little sad because she knew this would all eventually come to an end once the Feds pulled her from Mount Lemon and relocated her to Florida or Washington or Idaho. She pushed the morose thought out of her mind and instead focused on the here and now
Once he was stripped down to nothing but his shapeless boxer shorts, she pushed him down on the couch and stripped down to her lacy black bra and underwear. Then she went down on her knees between his legs and yanked away his boxers. The sight of his erection never failed to take her breath away. It was particularly large, but like the rest of him, it was almost machine-like and elegant. She took him into her mouth and felt his entire body tense with pleasure, while she had already begun to taste the salty tang of his semen on her tongue.
Married To The Cowboy (Love In Collin's Ranch 3) Page 63