by Shirl Anders
Their Ex’s Redrock Twilight (Texas Alpha)
By Shirl Anders
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book maybe be reproduced, scanned, or printed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction. Indian casinos; Redrock; Prada; Cuervo Reserved; Jovanni; Sherrie Hill; Elton John; Neil Diamond; Trace Adkins; Louboutins; Jeep; Cadillac; Rascal Flatts; Jimmy Choo; Desperado Dolly’s; Penthouse, Playboy bunny;
Copyright © 2015 by Shirl Anders. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Their Ex’s Redrock Series In
One] Tangled Up
Two] Officer Finn, Bad Boy, O’Neil
Three] Sexy In A Way, He Felt Deep
Four] Want You Five Ways
Five] It Burned In His Crystal Green Eyes
Six] She Blindsided His Life
Seven] I’m The Man Who Has Your Back
Eight] I’m Taken, Sugar
Nine] Naughty, Naughty
Ten] She Was Starting A New Life
Eleven] Girls Gotta Shop
Twelve] On Edge
Thirteen] He Branded Her Deep
Fourteen] I’ll Be A Good Girl
Fifteen] Just Played Bad For So Long
Sixteen] He Had Sweetness Cuddled Up To Him
Seventeen] Couldn’t Keep My Hands Off Her Curves
Eighteen] Smoking-Hot Men Everywhere
Nineteen] Love Takes Flight
Twenty] Meant To Be
Tangled In Redrock: Worth It
Their Ex’s Redrock Series In
Their Ex’s Redrock (Texas Alpha)
Their Ex’s Redrock Midnight (Texas Alpha)
Their Ex’s Redrock Dawn (Texas Alpha Biker)
Their Ex’s Redrock Twilight (Texas Alpha)
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(Tangled In Redrock: Worth It.
Is a short story at the end of this book, about Tess and Vincent Whitehorse.
Chronological, it is before this book, if you care to read it first.
It starts here.)
One] Tangled Up
Finn checked the clock on the wall behind the front desk of his motel called Rowdie’s: ten twenty-one in the morning. He looked down at the gun he’d just finished loading and pulled back on the slide of his Glock, hearing the loud sound of a load hitting the chamber. Finn checked the safety again, and then stuffed the gun into the back waistband of his jeans, pulling his black Henley over it as his gaze rose.
Almost over.
“Damn it,” he swore, seeing his ex-wife’s car entering the parking lot. He’d called her last night, after months of not speaking to her, and told her not to come to Rowdie’s that morning. He’d not been nice about it. He thought he’d made an impression on her that that morning of all mornings she needed to stay the hell away. She knew what he did and she knew he was undercover, so why did she never listen?
“Jesus, help me,” he muttered, moving from around the counter. He couldn’t stop her, because he’d break his cover. Finn clenched his fist, thinking she probably wasn’t going to get hurt, just swept up in the trouble about to start. He could break her free of it, after it all went down.
Then he watched a tall dude in a suit get out of the car with her. Finn thought that maybe a little damn justice would be served, to Katie and her new lay, by them getting tangled up in shit, which was likely to scare the hell out of them.
“Yeah,” Finn muttered, as he checked the police tactical positions around his sleazy motel. They were all locked, loaded, and ready to go. Finn could hear it in his earpiece. The call came through the ranks that the tall dude was not one of the tangos they were looking for.
But Katie and the guy lingered outside, while Finn’s eyes narrowed, watching Katie roll up on her toes to kiss the guy. The guy liked it, stupid dick, and he grabbed her ass with two hands, bending down from his height to do it.
“Fuck,” Finn growled, prowling in a circle, feeling edgy and wrung tight. Katie was deep-throating the guy for Finn’s benefit, because she knew he’d be looking. Finn didn’t really give a damn about that, about her games; he was wired because he was ready to go.
“Where is fucking Creed?” he uttered.
Then he saw her.
And he’d never seen her before.
He knew that, because he sure as hell would have remembered. She had tits and ass like a fucking wet dream, with thick, dark hair and lips that even at a distance looked curvy, attractive, and extremely feminine. But the lady ... and Finn paused in his perusal a second to wonder what the hell a lady like her was doing by his motel and creeping by his side window.
Her eyes were all for Katie and the dude making out. Then, because the window was right across from him, Finn saw her hand lifting to her lips to stifle an obvious wail. Finn’s gaze jumped from the babe to the couple, doing the hot and heavy, then back to the babe with tears now running down from her incredible dark-lashed eyes.
Then it slammed him: who she had to be.
Coco nearly collapsed. She’d been looking for her husband for weeks, afraid he was murdered in a ditch or backroom somewhere, looking for him and just holding back her hysteria. And now to see Gordon finally. But Gordon had a slender blond woman hauled up his tall body and they were kissing passionately.
“Oh my Lord,” Coco groaned into her palm.
Passion? Gordon was not passionate. How could this be the outcome of Gordon’s disappearance? Maybe her mind had cracked looking for him for so long? Maybe she was hallucinating that her husband was making out with another woman. Coco knew that her marriage was on a thin edge, but this!
She placed her hand out to steady herself on the window of the motel office beside her. Maybe this was part of Gordon’s nefarious business dealings lately. Maybe the woman was forcing Gordon to—
“Don’t be an idiot,” Coco said to herself.
But she deserved an answer and she was going to find one, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how much it devastated her to run up on her long-lost husband, while he was groping and kissing the blond.
Coco had just reached the driveway when a big SUV squealed into it and past her, making her exclaim and totter backward on her heels, it was that close. The noise from the SUV started to lift Gordon’s head, and Coco opened her mouth to scream at him.
But she never got a word out, because a very strong man grabbed her from behind, clamping a hand over her mouth, and then he hauled her backward. Coco could feel a strong, muscular body like she’d never felt before, and she was so stunned, she forgot to scream.
She could barely believe the man could lift her, because she was not a slender woman. Then her survival instincts kicked in and she began to struggle as the man carried her right in the motel office’s front door. She was screaming bloody murder under his hand, when she heard sirens and saw flashing lights starting up a commotion out front of the motel.
The man—and she c
ould only see the lower half of his face—had a pitch-black goatee and straight white teeth; those she could see because he was gritting them while he set her down quite gently against the wall. They were right by a large window looking out into the parking lot of the motel, but slightly concealed by a small portion of the wall.
His very large hand was still over her mouth while his tightly muscled body was pressed against her. It was making her mind twitch between the feelings of a man built like he was, touching her, while her stunned gaze was tracking events outside.
Then her captor, in a voice that made her shiver, growled, “That your man out there?”
She nodded, watching in horror as a team of police grabbed Gordon and the blond, but more of the police kept going toward the swerving SUV, which had nowhere to go.
“Hell,” her captor muttered. “Are you a part of this fucking shit?”
Coco vehemently shook her head, while he kept her mouth covered and she clutched the dark shirt hugging his muscular waist. No, she wasn’t a part of any freaking shit. What did he think? That she, Gordon, and the blond were a threesome or something?
“With eyes like that, I almost believe you.”
Coco’s gaze darted upward; electric-green irises filled her vision, and then they made her moan for some insane reason. Could charged irises do that? Could they make a woman moan with one look? Then, because she was totally freaked out and she really had a right to be, she bit him. Then she shoved.
Finn moved a step back at the unexpected shove, while he hissed between his teeth at the pain Sweet Tits was giving him with her pearly white teeth clamped into the meaty heel of his hand. Her eyes were like pools of brown, with the shape around them drawn in a challenge. He was surprised when she realized he wasn’t going to budge. No matter how much his fucking palm hurt.
He drew his brow down and challenged her back as she pounded on his sides several times.
“That’s my fucking wife out there with your dick husband being swept up in a multi-agency law enforcement sting, Brown Eyes,” he rasped at her.
Her teeth loosened suddenly on his palm, but he kept his hand over her lush lips. That dickwad outside messing with his wife Katie was a fucking fool to want any woman over Brown Eyes, he thought.
“If the agents find out about you they will take you in immediately,” he informed her, to her return shudder.
When he removed his hand, Finn expected her to scream questions at him about the takedown or accuse him of molesting her.
But her pretty lips softly whispered, “You must be devastated. I’m so sorry.”
Finn opened his mouth to tell her he wasn’t sorry over anything his crazy wife did, since they’d been separated for over a year and he really didn’t give a shit, but the hollow banging sound of shots fired popped. Finn slammed against Brown Eyes, grabbing her to turn her away from the wall, while he bear-hugged her from behind.
“Shots,” he growled, to her frightened whimper, while her really fine ass was cradled between his hips.
His split-second thought was that it had been too damn long since he’d had a babe in his arms, right before he got to business. His earpiece was blaring with updates, which he said out loud for Brown Eyes’ benefit.
“Two suspects in the vehicle. Shots fired from room one-ten. They’ve thrown a spike strip to pop the tires. Our cheaters are out of the immediate area. Both cuffed.”
“Gordon’s handcuffed?” Brown Eyes asked on an exclamation. Then she muttered, “I’m not sure I mind.”
Finn held her tight, but bent to her ear. “Fucking righteous, babe. They deserve it.”
More of her ass pressed around him, hardening fast under his jeans, as she leaned back to catch him with one brown eye.
“Righteous,” she said with a small smile.
Another shot popped off, and Finn moved them in case it punched through the wall, but it hit glass somewhere that shattered, as Brown Eyes exclaimed in fear.
“Just took down the driver and the shooter,” Finn reported, then he moved them so he could peer out the corner of the window on the other side. He saw part of the SWAT team herding men with their hands raised out of one of the motel rooms. He turned so Brown Eyes could see, and that put him behind her with his head right above hers.
“Gordon picked a bad day to come here and cheat,” she muttered below him.
“You sure him being here is random?” he asked her.
From his vantage point above her, he saw her catch her plump bottom lip with her teeth; she smelled like lilies and some other scents he didn’t know, but really liked.
She leaned into him and glanced back and up at the bottom of his goatee. “It is strange Gordon picking a motel like this one. I’d think he’d go to the casino hotel.”
When she looked back outside, Brown Eyes made a strangled sound, because then they both saw the three frightened and battered women coming out of one of the motel rooms.
“Human trafficking,” Finn muttered. “I fucking knew it.”
“Gordon can’t be involved in something like this!” Brown Eyes exclaimed.
Finn hauled her around and grabbed her chin, making her look up at him. Man, he could get lost in the brown of her eyes, he thought, right before he said harshly, “Me keeping you out of this and out of going in with the rest of them”—he chin-nodded outside—“means you and I have to talk.”
Coco was freaking out on the inside, while on the outside, she was trying to suppress the signs that all pointed to the fact she was losing it. All the things that had been happening just didn’t happen in her world. She lived in a suburb, drove a sedan, and was a boring housewife who tried to make gourmet dinners as a hobby to impress her not-so-impressed husband.
Multi-agency stings, human freaking trafficking, and men that said “fucking” all the time and looked like sinfully attractive bad boys did not happen in her world.
Two] Officer Finn, Bad Boy, O’Neil
Coco found out what it was her captor, who could be a good guy, but definitely looked like a bad boy, had meant by saying they had to talk, and it was to pull her into a rowdy biker bar. She didn’t think official officers pulled innocent ladies off the street and into questionable bars to talk to them. But with the threat of being “taken in” hanging over her, she went.
Still, it had to be said that she’d really had no choice, because her abductor was forceful and very hot in a rugged and a very masculine way. Maybe that was why he was so arrogant in the way he bossed her around ... and maybe that was why she had followed him ... fascinated.
She tried not to be ... she didn’t want to be fascinated by him. She decided it was the goatee that framed his attractive mouth. She didn’t know any men with goatees or men with tattoos curling like black flames out the open collars of their shirts. Except Zeb had tattoos, and she thought maybe they were the same cut of men.
“Finn O’Neil, you old bastard!”
The shout from across the half-filled, rather rowdy bar was the first Coco knew his name. So she was finally able to use it.
“Officer O’Neil, I think this is—”
“Babe.” Officer O’Neil interrupted her with a sharp growl over his shoulder. “Do not call me that here or anywhere.”
Before she could comment on that, a large hand groped her behind, making her squeal in outrage and throw herself at Officer O’Neil, who reacted quickly and caught her. Once again, she was pressed to muscle that she was beginning to covet as he turned them toward her groping attacker.
“You fucking do not touch my woman,” Office O’Neil snarled at a lumbering man who was wearing a blue bandanna and a denim shirt with the sleeves ripped off, which showed slack muscles and tattoos from his fingertips to his shoulders on both sides. He had missing teeth when he grinned, and he was already drunk at about eleven thirty in the morning.
“Finn, dude!” the man hollered. “Tits and ass, man, sweet shit.”
Coco blushed to her fake-colored roots, while she thought maybe eleven thirt
y was a great time to be drunk. Her Officer Finn growled under his breath and very succinctly said, “Everett, hands the fuck off.”
Everett raised his hands as if he was innocent, and he winked at her. “You ever need a real man, sweetheart, come sit on my lap.”
“If I had the damn time,” Officer O’Neil muttered.
Then Coco found herself transported to a booth and set down on the seat with a one-word command from either her bad man abductor or rescuer; she could decide.
“Move over,” he growled.
So Coco moved her butt, clutching her purse until she was in the corner, turned to face him as if she was a caged person, while he glanced grimly toward her and “my woman” kept ringing in her thoughts. But it was better than that, because of the remembered sound of his deliciously deep voice saying it.
Oh please, Mr. Officer, say something else sexy with that deep, rumbling voice of yours.
Coco shook her head at her wicked inner thoughts, but please—he was so, well, so everything hot-alicious.
“Officer O’Neil,” she whispered, because he seemed to need his official-ness kept quiet, and he really hadn’t acted like any officer she’d ever seen. Except maybe one or two on a TV show where they were like those bad-guy officers who you knew were bad, but then they went and did something amazing, so you were conflicted on whether they were the good guy or the bad guy.
But like before, as she’d said his name, his body whipped toward her and he moved in closer to her. His brow was deep and his eyes intense as the earpiece he had been wearing was out and flopped against the top of his shoulder.
“Don’t,” he uttered, then he leaned in close, until he was all she could see, “call me that, bella. You call me Finn.”
She nodded, internally quivering and mesmerized by his command.
Then he added, “Or you call me for a date ... if we figure out you’re not really messed in this.”
Ohmylord
Oh.
My.
Lord.
Coco couldn’t believe she was nodding slowly and totally entranced in his gaze and hot masculine aura.