by Zoey Marcel
Winchester, Arizona 2
Under His Holster
When Jade Flowers learns that Doc McClellan has cancer, she insists on helping him cross off his bucket list. He agrees to let her and then makes her promise that they won’t fall in love, but it’s a promise neither of them can keep.
Jade’s bond with Sawyer and Kellan Brooks also deepens, but Stetson Brooks remains cold and distant. When she provokes him, she sees a dark side to him that scares and intrigues her.
Stetson secretly desires Jade and Doc, but the haunting demons in his past prevent him from expressing his feelings and growing close to them like he wants.
Jade’s fiancé, Bane Kennedy, searches for the man who attacked them in the desert, but what he learns leaves him unsettled. He soon realizes that Jade’s friend, Ivy Covington, is the killer’s current target, but his intentions with her are far more dangerous.
Note: There is no sexual relationship or touching for titillation between or among siblings.
Note: This is Book 2 of the Winchester, Arizona series. These books are not stand-alone. Each is a continuation of the previous book and must be read in the numbered order.
Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Western/Cowboys
Length: 77,674 words
UNDER HIS HOLSTER
Winchester, Arizona 2
Zoey Marcel
MENAGE AND MORE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage and More
UNDER HIS HOLSTER
Copyright © 2013 by Zoey Marcel
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-088-9
First E-book Publication: January 2013
Cover design by Harris Channing
All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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UNDER HIS HOLSTER
Winchester, Arizona 2
ZOEY MARCEL
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
Doc McClellan had cancer. Jade Flowers stood in the kitchen, completely dumbfounded as she held the page in her hand. According to the paper from the oncologist, he had lung cancer.
She’d seen him smoking cigars on occasion. Why in God’s name didn’t he stop? Didn’t he know that was likely what had caused his disease in the first place? Didn’t he know it could kill him?
She quickly folded the letter back up and stuffed it into the envelope it belonged in when she heard footsteps approaching. She had it returned to the drawer and turned just in time to see Stetson Brooks round the corner about a second later. He wore only a white T-shirt and plaid boxers. She might have become excited by his enticing state of undress had he not startled her and had she not been so shocked and depressed about the news she just read.
Stetson eyed her suspiciously when he saw her. “What are you doing up?”
She swallowed nervously. What was it about the tall, dark cowboy who derailed her senses like being hurled into the prickly, hostile embrace of a cactus? “I just got up to get a drink of water.”
He filled a glass of purified water for himself and drank it in silence.
She padded lightly past him, not wishing to linger in his unnerving presence any longer than she had to. The tough-as-nails horse rancher was intimidating to say the least, and he seemed to have the empathy of the desert for a weary traveler who thirsted for water. No wonder he wasn’t attached.
Although whenever she admired his handsome face and sculpted body in secret, she could scarcely believe he wasn’t already taken.
Stetson finally spoke without looking at her. “Doc thinks I behaved rudely toward you earlier.”
There was an awkward silence between them. He finally set his glass in the sink and then walked past her back to his room and shut the door.
What the hell was that? Was that his idea of an apology? Why even bring up the incident if he had no intention of apologizing?
Confusing, insolent man. She didn’t need him, but she sure as hell needed to talk to Doc about his cancer. At a guess she would say the three Brooks brothers were unaware of his disease, given the way none of them ever talked about it or coddled Doc. Perhaps he wanted it that way?
Jade returned to her room, but sleep eluded her. She couldn’t stop thinking about him all night. What if he died? Certainly she should be concerned for the poor man’s life, but it shouldn’t bother her as much as it did. After all, she had only known him for a few days. She hardly knew him at all. But that was precisely the point—she didn’t know Doc.
He could very well drop dead at any given moment from the awful disease, and he would have walked this earth and then parted from it without her ever having gotten a chance to get to know him better. The alarming possibility haunted her.
No. She simply wouldn’t allow it. Jade refused to let Doc breathe his last without learning more about him. She rejected the idea of letting him die without learning what his favorite color was and what made him laugh. What did he dream about? Had he ever been to another country? Had he ever been in love?
She must get th
e answers to these and a myriad of other questions. But most of all she wanted to know why he had kept something this tragic and devastating from her and, moreover, from his closest friends for so long.
* * * *
Jade awoke early, around dawn, and went out to the stable, where she figured Doc might be doing his morning chores. She found him in the stable tending to the horses. He fed them their morning rations of hay and grain and then mucked out their stalls while the steeds munched.
He was alone, just like she hoped he’d be.
“Mornin’, darlin’,” he greeted her with a heart-snatching smile. “Sleep well?”
“Not really, no. You?” She put her hands in the pockets of her jeans, feeling awkward and nervous about the confrontation she was about to initiate.
He shrugged as he scooped some horse crap up with a manure fork. “All right, I reckon. What’s the matter, darlin’? You look troubled.”
She loved it whenever Doc called her that. It always came out sounding like dahlin because of his sexy Southern accent.
How could she confess to snooping at his medical business? She took in a deep breath and exhaled suddenly, deciding to simply go for it. “Do you have lung cancer?”
Doc paused, and she could see the truth in his eyes, though he didn’t look at her. “What an odd question to ask. What motivated it?”
“I saw that paper you were reading yesterday in the envelope you hid in one of the kitchen drawers. It said your lung cancer had worsened and treatment wasn’t helping.” A lump of anguish formed in her throat.
He heaved a sigh and leaned the shit scooper against the wall of the horse’s stall. “You had no right to read my mail. That’s illegal, you know.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be nosy. I was just curious.” She stepped forward cautiously, needing to be closer to him. Not that she had any desire to stand in a pile of horse manure and urine-soaked sawdust, but if it brought her closer to him then it would be worth it.
He still wouldn’t look at her.
She took another step forward. “You got so pale and worried while you were reading it. I just had to know what was bothering you so badly.”
“I see,” was all he said in reply to this.
The quiet moment that followed was deafening. She gulped in reluctance as the next question surfaced and played on her lips against her will. “How bad is it, Doc?”
He sighed again, and this time his eyes closed. Jade could almost see the weight of the world balancing on his broad shoulders as he endeavored to walk this hard road alone. She wouldn’t let him, not anymore. She would hold his hand every step of the way, even if she had to one day kiss him good-bye as he passed on to the afterlife.
“It’s very bad. I’m in the later stages of the disease. You may have noticed me hacking like a dog that swallowed a chicken bone and coughing up blood,” he said quietly.
She nodded, feeling sorrow tugging on her heart. “Yeah, I noticed. I thought maybe you were just sick.”
He shook his head and picked up the tool again. His palm rested on the tip of the handle as he stared ahead of him as though the answer would become written on the wooden walls of the horse stall suddenly and save him. “I’m beyond sick. I’m dying, Jade.”
Her heart nearly stopped beating altogether at his words. Her eyes watered and her bottom lip trembled when he turned and looked at her with a solemn yet vaguely accepting expression on his pale and tired, yet oh-so-handsome face.
“I’m dying, and there’s not a damned thing anyone can do about it.”
Jade glanced down at the ground, searching for the cure, hoping that she could somehow find the right words to comfort if not heal him completely from his suffering, but alas they evaded her. The right words didn’t exist. There were no words to say in a moment like this. It was too terrible to fathom, let alone to try to talk through.
“Have you tried treatment?” She realized what a dumb question that was once the words slipped past her quivering lips, but she was utterly desperate for something to say to him. Then she remembered the letter had mentioned that he’d tried to be treated.
“No, Jade. I thought I’d just ignore the problem until it went away on me,” he quipped humorlessly. “Of course I have. I’ve tried everything. Radiation, chemotherapy, perfect diet and exercise, and giving up harmful vices. Nothing helped. The situation has only gotten worse over time.”
“What about surgery? Sometimes they can cut the tumor out.”
Doc shook his head sadly. “By the time I found out I had lung cancer it was already too late. It had spread from my lungs to other parts of my body. It’s bad.”
Her eyes welled. “Why didn’t you quit smoking?”
“I did. I gave up smoking and drinking and all that wild nightlife shit. It didn’t help. When they told me the cancer was terminal it didn’t make sense to keep torturing myself with juicing and raw foods and never get to enjoy a cigar or liquor once in a while before passing on.” He took a deep breath, seeming like just the simple function of breathing proved difficult and possibly painful. “I figured if I was going to die, I may as well go out like a man, taking what I wanted rather than clinging to a life that ain’t worth living.”
A tear trickled down her cheek. Doc was dying.
He must have noticed her misty eyes. “Now, now. None of that, little lady. I don’t want your pity.”
She swallowed down the achy lump in her throat. “Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it for you.”
“I need you to act normal. Don’t treat me like a dying man. I want to live like I’m dying from now on, but I want to be treated like a man who will get to live to be ninety.”
“Okay. I’ll try.” Her eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing cleaning out all these fucking stalls by yourself? You should be in bed.”
“Well, somebody has to tend to them so the horses don’t wallow in their own shit.”
Jade opened the fancy wooden door that slid across a built-in track and let herself into the horse stall with him, closing it behind her. “Give me that. Why aren’t those assholes helping you?”
“Stetson’s taking care of some horse-related business elsewhere, Sawyer is at Swifty’s Britches right now cleaning the place, and Kellan is taking care of some important errands in town.”
“Let me do this.” She tried to take the mucking tool from him, but he wouldn’t let her.
“I’ve got this.”
“Give it to me.”
Doc pulled it away so she couldn’t reach it, appearing annoyed with her. “Woman, would you get off my—” He started coughing. “Back.”
He coughed harder and pulled out a tissue. It was covered with blood when he pulled it away from his mouth and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“You stubborn fool, look at you.” Hot droplets trickled gently down her cheeks as she took the manure fork from him, pleased when he allowed her to this time. “You’re in no condition to be working this hard, or even at all.”
He closed his eyes and struggled to breathe for a minute. His countenance was poisoned with misery. “You’re a good woman, Jade, but I don’t want to be treated like this.”
She set the tool aside and touched his face, treasuring the cool feel of his skin beneath her caressing fingers. He was enthralling with his classic gunslinger good looks and the charming way he smiled.
Even now with his features clouded with the paleness of dying, he could put the average Joe to shame.
Jade wondered if she had only imagined the added leanness he seemed to develop over the past two days despite his healthy appetite. Was he just naturally lean, or was he losing weight rapidly? Judging by the medium build of his bone structure, she supposed the latter avenue to be the accurate truth.
Her fiancé, Bane Kennedy, had told her before he left to go and track down the man trying to kill her that she could sleep with all the Brooks brothers and Doc if she wanted to. He knew they were also her mates and he wanted her to get them out of h
er system before he took her away and kept her all to himself. Bane probably feared she might resent him if he denied her the chance to touch her other predestined mates, but she could never resent him for being jealous. If the roles had been reversed she likely would have felt the same way he did.
She hadn’t slept with any of the cowboys since Bane left. She’d decided to abstain in spite of the nagging temptation that endeavored daily and nightly to claw its way to the surface and steal possession of her better judgment.
She had never slept with Stetson Brooks, the oldest of the brothers. And she never would. Cantankerous cowboy. He could kiss her apple-bottom ass for all she cared, though hating him might be a hell of a lot easier if he wasn’t such a looker.
But Doc was dying, and she could tell by the way he looked at her that he liked her. He didn’t have a wife, a fiancée, or a girlfriend to satisfy his needs during what very well could be his last days on earth. She wanted to be that someone for him. She would pleasure him, let him touch her and fill her, and offer him peace and relief from his suffering like an oasis in the blistering heat of a desert.
Jade guided his hand under her shirt to cup the lace covering her breasts. She held the hungry gaze harbored in his mesmerizing, pale-green eyes and slowly lifted her top.
Doc seemed reluctant to pull his hand away from her tit, but he did so regardless and stopped her from pulling her top off over her head. “Keep your clothes on, Jade. Your offer is generous and appreciated, but I hardly want a sympathy fuck.”
“It’s not a sympathy fuck. Don’t you know how attracted I am to you? Sucking your cock was wonderful, and the pleasure of feeling your dick up my ass just about killed me.” She cringed inside, realizing how awful and insensitive it sounded to so flippantly use a word relating to death in front of a man who was dying. “I’m sorry.”