Their Ex's Redrock Dawn (Texas Alpha Biker)

by Shirl Anders

  “I am the judge that can ban you from the pageant, if you don’t let go of him right now.”

  “But. But—” Tula stuttered, but she did let go of him, and he could have swung Carly up and kissed her, because he was that damn thankful.

  “You might not know this, Miss MintLeaf,” Carly said, with a haughty hand on her hip—and now he could see looking hot in her light sundress that did all kinds of things to her he-wanted-to-lick breasts. “But contestants that fraternize with pageant personal can immediately be disqualified.”

  Tula’s wail was piercing as Carly looked at him with a glint in her gray eyes.

  “I don’t fraternize!” Tula exclaimed. “Zebbie’s my husband!”

  Carly grimaced at the nickname, and Zeb shook his head slightly, stepping back from Tula. “That,” Carly declared, “is cause for immediate banning from the entire circ—”

  Carly didn’t get the word circuit out before Tula wailed, “We’re divorced, though!”

  Carly gave Zeb a sexy little side smile that Tula didn’t catch, because she was so upset. Just like Tula wasn’t catching much, to ask questions like how was Zeb affiliated with the pageant.

  “Oh,” Carly said. “Well, that might not engage the ban, but this other stuff in a motel room, when we at the pageant need him right now—”

  “He’s going!” Tula wailed. “You’re going, Mr. Andersen, right.”

  Zeb kind of coughed and groaned at the same time. “Need to check on my part, so the pageant can be a go,” he muttered.

  One minute later, they had Tula out of their motel room (that she had no clue they were sharing) and looking dazed on the front sidewalk, while they walked to the WTSF truck he’d been using. Carly waved off her ride, who was another well-built dude with a buzz cut Zeb did not know, and they got into the truck.

  Exactly sixty seconds later and out of the sight of prying eyes, he grasped Carly’s arm to tug her against him. He latched on, and at the stoplight he had her head tilted back and her mouth beneath his for a kiss that was not passionate but fierce and hotly possessive on both their parts.

  Carly was clutching the back of his tee shirt when he lifted his head, and she breathlessly said, “The light, Zeb.”

  He glanced at it and moved the truck forward, but he didn’t let go of Carly. “My sweet’s back,” he pronounced, glancing down into Carly’s eyes, before he turned his gaze back to the road.

  She hugged him closer. “I have to go to the pageant today, and when I realized I needed someone to take me and stay with me and have my back, I thought of you and only you, right away. Made me realize what a pain I was being, baby, and I’m so sorry.”

  Zeb squeezed her. “I have my woman’s back, mad or happy. Got to say I’m very happy you only thought of me when you needed someone to back you up, sweetness.” Then he turned down a road that he knew would take them back in the direction of the fairgrounds. “But, Carly, how come I’m not dead meat over fucking Tula?”

  Carly chuckled, with some curvaceous contact of her breast against his side, as she tilted her face up to him. “Zeb, that had to be the first time I could read what you were thinking all over your face, and it quite clearly said, ‘Ew.’”

  He laughed. “I thought I was hiding it. Not that she damn well noticed anything about me or the room, with your bra and panties flung on the headboard. I love red, by the way.”

  Carly’s eyes widened, and she whispered, “They were?”

  He nodded. “That whole shit was unreal.”

  “I heard some of her shrill life plans, right before I opened the door. Like ‘We can be together and you can write a song about it.’ Unbelievable,” Carly muttered.

  Zeb’s brow drew down. “Not sure why the hell she’d do that when she’s doing Shaw? Maybe just the surprise of bumping into me.”

  “I wonder how long it will take for her to call you and ask what you’re doing for the pageant,” Carly mused. “Not to be unkind to you, but since I do not like her one freaking bit, that girl is seriously addicted to winning beauty pageants, isn’t she?”

  “Still can’t believe it was all about that, and nothing else, after she leaves my ass and I show up out of the blue,” Zeb muttered.

  “What are you going to do?” Carly asked quietly.

  Zeb instantly replied, “Divorce her and hope I never see her again.”

  Carly hugged into him as he drove. “I need to do that too.”

  “Yeah, baby,” he said, then he gave her what she deserved and what he should have given her before. “Supposed to talk to Justice Walkinghorse later today to figure out what to do about Shaw.” Zeb looked down into Carly’s silver-gray eyes. “Need you along, to figure it out.”

  Carly hooked a tooth over her bottom lip and added a melting look in her eyes, and Zeb knew they had made up.

  SIXTEEN] Un-Freaking-Real

  Zeb took her to lunch before the pageant’s talent day started, and they finally really talked. Lunch consisted of getting a bag of burgers from the drive-through to take out to the pier, because they were still keeping their togetherness off the radar of the locals. They turned the truck around to face the river, and Zeb lifted her to sit on the tailgate he’d dropped down. They sat touching thighs as they ate burgers and drank Cokes.

  “This is exactly the kind of place I was thinking I wanted to settle, Carly.”

  Carly smiled, with a happy tingle rushing through her. “Really?”

  Zeb transferred his burger to one hand so he could lift his other to tenderly curl a strand of loose hair over her ear. “Yeah, baby, absolutely.”

  “I just came back to town because Vincent’s charity was here, but I realized I really like it,” she murmured.

  “I’ll always do the songwriting gigs ... but I can do that anywhere,” Zeb said, then he rested his hand with burger attached on his thigh, as she swung her legs and he locked her gaze with his. “But what I’ve been thinking I wanted to do was open a motorcycle shop that puts graphics on them.”

  Carly’s eyebrows rose. “That sounds very cool,” she whispered.

  Zeb angled his head at her. “No lip about it? You just going to say that’s cool?”

  Carly got the idea he wasn’t used to no lip about his major ideas. “No lip.” She smiled. “Other than kissing lips, that is.” Zeb’s gaze instantly went heated, and she felt it like caresses in intimate places. “Zeb, I want to stay here, I want you to be here,” she said. “I want you happy, which means I’m happy, and yeah, I think it sounds very cool.”

  Zeb’s burger-free hand slid around her back, and he pulled her closer for a squeeze.

  “Excellent,” he murmured, looking like he was kissing her with his eyes.

  But he did not actually kiss her, and she understood it was because they were working things out. Important things not needing that distraction. But the definite promise of it was there for later, and she started thinking she was going to be able to fill up her master bedroom suite really soon.

  “Small business owner,” Carly said, with light in her eyes.

  Zeb nodded, and lifted his head to take a bite of his burger. While chewing, he looked out at the river, and she looked at the edges of his sexy and very masculine jaw line.

  When he’d finished chewing, he said, “I’d like being a small business owner. I thought the name Badass Custom Chopper Skins had a nice sound to it.”

  Carly laughed. “What a name, ranger.”

  When she called him “ranger” she felt the rise of sexual interest immediately as his eyes glinted sideways at her.

  “Little girl, we get cool, and then we have some makeup sessions that are owed me that involve your sassy ass getting bare and my hand on it, plus other things you’ve inspired me to think up.”

  Carly blushed, and it wasn’t all embarrassment, but sexual heat and interested arousal that flared through her. She knew she’d been bad and she knew Zeb would get creative on it. She had no intentions of arguing, because she wanted his dominance ... it tur
ned her on like nothing she’d felt before.

  So all she could say was, “Okay, ranger baby.”

  He smiled at her positive acceptance, but his facial features were lean and aroused. Then he shifted his face and she saw him get serious.

  “New subject,” he said lowly.

  Carly immediately thought: all the fun was over. But this time she knew it would be back, and she was ready to face her terrible problems head-on ... and, she reminded herself, with Zeb firmly at her side.

  “I don’t know what Justice is going to suggest we do, but it has to involve catching Shaw trying to do something. I think we should still keep the fact there is a ‘you and me’ from our ex’s’ ears. That thing with Tula makes it chancy ... she is so wound up in winning a pageant she might not start wondering deeply what went down.”

  “But,” Carly interjected, “I’d bet she’ll call you to see if you can help her win. Now she thinks you are working for the pageant.”

  “Yeah,” Zeb muttered, rubbing his jaw.

  Carly leaned in to him. “If she manages to get a hold of you and ask, just say you are doing security for the pageant through Whitehorse Security.”

  Zeb’s smile was a little evil, and she wanted that same smile from him sometime when he was on top of her, thrusting slowly into her.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Now, I’ll take you to the pageant today and keep my eyes on you, while I stay out of sight so no one knows I’m doing it.”

  “Okay,” she agreed. “I really hope I don’t see him. I’m not sure I can take that.”

  Zeb’s brow furrowed, and he pulled her into an embrace that lost the ends of their burgers to the top of the tailgate as she hugged him back. “You’re strong enough. I know you are, baby. We want to catch him, right?”

  Into Zeb’s neck, she fiercely said, “We so want to catch that bastard.”

  On the drive back to the fairgrounds, they talked over theories on just what the hell Rick was up to and why. Zeb told her a few things she hadn’t noticed that blew her away; like there was an insurance policy on her she didn’t know about, where Rick was the freaking beneficiary.

  “They can’t just do that!” she exclaimed. “Make a policy on me without my permission.”

  Zeb was driving as he glanced at her. “Forged,” he growled, and he obviously was very unhappy about it.

  Carly felt shock slice through her. Of course she knew this was for money, but still ... she was stunned. “Even when I hide my money like Daddy told me, I still get taken.”

  Zeb grasped her hand as he drove, and he intertwined their fingers with a squeeze. “I think he could be forging your name to withdraw from your bank accounts he knows about. Be good if you check that.”

  “God,” she moaned. “So it is about money.”

  Zeb nodded slightly. “I think so, baby. If you divorce him, what’s he going to get?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Zeb sneered. “So he needs money and he starts to scheme and realizes if you divorce him he loses, so he comes back, or maybe he was following Tula on the circuit and when he realized he was coming this way, he tried to throw a plan together.”

  “To get rid of me,” Carly said with a shudder.

  “Baby, next to me,” Zeb ordered, and she gladly scooted over so he could put his arm around her. “I’m not letting him hurt you.” She nodded and curled into him. “Carly, I know this has got to be devastating. But it’s his crazy shit, not yours, and baby, I think Tula is pushing him. Not to do his wife in, if she even knows he has one, which looks like she doesn’t, but pushing him for cash to fund her extravagant wardrobe and accessories for the pageant circuit. The allowance I gave her did not get her those tits or that several-thousand-dollar dress she was wearing today.”

  “She’s on an allowance?” Carly asked, surprised.

  “She’s bad with money,” Zeb muttered. “Always has been.”

  Carly really liked that—a grown woman that had to be on a freaking allowance ... Tula might be a knockout, but she didn’t have much else going for her.

  Zeb nudged her. “See you like that, by your secret little smile, but it was hard to deal with.”

  “Sorry, Zeb,” she said, contrite, and she leaned up to kiss his jaw. On the way back down, she said, “What were we thinking with these two?”

  Zeb made a sound, then said, “We weren’t. But I’m not taking their shit on. I married in good faith, and I’d still be married if Tula was the same girl I’d married. But now she’s not ... and not even close.”

  Carly sighed and leaned her head on Zeb’s shoulder. She shouldn’t be able to tell him what she was going to say next, but she was sure he wouldn’t judge her. “Well, I did marry for all the wrong reasons. I just thought if I didn’t that I might miss ever getting married and it would never happen for me. I kind of just picked anybody, since I couldn’t get who I thought I wanted.”

  Zeb didn’t look at her when he asked, “Thought you wanted?”

  “I had a crush on Cabe, Vincent’s best friend, for a long time ... too long,” she said, knowing her voice tightened with worry. “It’s before I figured it out.”

  “Figured it out?” Zeb asked, glancing at her, with his arm still warm and holding her close.

  She made sure he was looking at her when she said, “That you know when it’s right. That you really know for sure when it’s real.”

  “Hell, you are so right, sweetness.”

  See, now she knew.

  Before had just been a crush.

  With Zeb it was real. So real, it took her breath away.

  Before Zeb let her out of the truck at the fairgrounds, he gave her some instructions should she run into Tula or Shaw, then he kissed her in a way he’d never kissed her before. It was tender and slow ... and very thorough.

  “So sweet,” he murmured against her lips. “We get this day done and your pussy is mine in that big bed of yours.” He kissed her breathless, then added, “All night.”

  Zeb had a way of taking her terrible problems and wiping out the anxiety, fear, and apprehension she should be feeling, and replacing it with anticipation and wet panties.

  She kissed his bottom lip. “’kay, ranger.”

  She so wanted to just go and do that with him, but it was there and real and it was coming, but right then she needed to take care of business to get back to that and maybe make “that” happen for the rest of her life.

  As Zeb followed Carly, he felt lucky the pageant’s talent show portion was drawing a crowd and making the fairgrounds busy. It made it harder for anyone to make the fact he was keeping close to Carly. And he tailed her sexy swaying ass into the stage area, where he sat in the rows directly behind the judges’ platform. That got him two things: out of line of sight from the stage and anyone hanging around back there like Shaw, and out of sight of Tula when her turn came. But it still left him with eyes on his babe.

  He’d just done a scan of the area, as Carly took her seat, when he felt someone sit next to him. One glance had him looking into the face of a guy that looked like he had something to say.

  “I’m Cabe, a friend of Carly’s and Vincent’s.” The guy’s hand came out, and Zeb looked at it. “Vincent described you, man. I’m on watch for this shit.”

  Zeb took his hand for a quick grip, well aware this was the dude Carly said she’d had a mistaken crush on. Zeb didn’t get any jealous twinges; instead he was very glad for the backup. This dance they were doing was dangerous, and what Shaw was up to—what Shaw had already set up—was a fucking unknown quantity that had Zeb very edgy.

  “Zeb,” he said, then he asked, “You see Shaw?”

  Cabe looked around with a hard look and shook his head. “Not yet, but I’ll be sitting right next to her.”

  Zeb nodded. “Good.” Then he said, “We need to not spook his ass so we can catch him.”

  “I hear you,” Cabe replied, then he added, “Vincent’s got other eyes watching. He’s not taking any chances.”

/>   Zeb felt better. “Got a meeting with Walkinghorse after this.”

  Cabe nodded as he stood, then he made his way to sit beside Carly, while Zeb’s eyes swept the area again. He’d be glad when the damn pageant was over the following night.

  Carly watched in horror as Rick climbed up the aisle steps toward her.

  “Shit,” Cabe swore, next to her, as her heart pounded.

  She knew she couldn’t run, and she didn’t even dare look back at Zeb as she looked at Rick’s face, trying to understand how he could be doing what he was doing. She wanted to jump up and scream at him, but she couldn’t.

  She wanted him surrounded by a swat team of officers, handcuffed, and taken to jail. But that wasn’t going to happen either. At least not yet. At least not until she helped make it happen, she thought. She knew Zeb was watching her, so she put her hand to the back of her neck, exposed by her long ponytail, and she slowly crossed her fingers, hoping Zeb would see her sign. Then she flipped up her ponytail in a haughty manner and squared her shoulders.

  So Cabe could hear, she said, “Let’s take this bastard on.”

  Cabe squeezed her hand quickly, then removed his hand to turn, as if he wasn’t paying attention to Rick approaching her. Rick not only approached her, he came around the judges’ platform and stepped up on it to move right to her side. Just like a husband might do.

  “Carly, baby,” Rick said, pushing between Carly and Cabe. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  She had to take his hug as much, as it made her cringe, but she did it turned to look over Rick’s bent shoulder right at Zeb, whose charged eyes got her through it. Then she kept turned so she could see Zeb past where Rick crouched to talk to her.

  Rick looked dressed up in slacks and a collared shirt, which she thought was strange because he was a jeans and boots man. His eyes were intent and his face showed signs of a forced smile, especially around his mouth ... she could tell.

  She didn’t let Rick lay any more false crap on her, and under her breath but so he could hear, she blurted, “I’ve called a lawyer, Rick, and I don’t have time for this. This isn’t the place.”