Hot Texas Sunrise

by Delores Fossen

  Mercy would bust his balls when he needed it and always answer his calls no matter what time of day or night. In his own way he loved her. Well, as much as anyone could love a foulmouthed, chain-smoking former porn star.

  “What did one eye say to the other?” Mercy asked, but she didn’t wait for him to give her a blank stare, groan or attempt a lame answer for a lame joke. She just went for the punch line, as she usually did. “Between you and me, something smells.”

  She hooted with laughter, slapping her hand on her thigh so loud that they drew the attention of folks passing by on the sidewalk. He didn’t even want to speculate about what people would think of her. Or who they thought she was.

  “We didn’t have an appointment,” Judd said, ignoring the attempted joke. He’d learned it was best not to encourage Mercy when it came to her incredibly bad sense of humor.

  “Nope. It’s not until day after tomorrow,” Mercy said. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it with the toe of her stiletto. “But I got a hot date tomorrow night with my main man these days. A former wrestler who’s hung like a horse and can move like a jackhammer. I figure I’d be too nookied out to meet with you.”

  Judd huffed. “Mercy, remember when we talked about you sharing too much? Well, you just shared too much.”

  She laughed as if that was a fine joke, and followed him around to the driver’s side of his truck. Mercy studied him. “Just checking on my favorite cowboy.” She laid a hand on his arm. “How are you, Judd?”

  Mercy’s tone changed. It softened. And despite the thick gobs of mascara she was wearing, she managed to make direct eye contact without her lashes sticking together.

  He didn’t lie to her. Couldn’t. Mercy had seen him at his worst, when he’d been coming off a three-day bender. She’d held his head when he’d puked. Like taking Cleo’s virginity, that had created a bond between them, and it was there whether Judd wanted it or not.

  “I’ve been under some pressure,” he said. “But I’m handling it.”

  Her sliver-thin, unnaturally red eyebrow rose. “No burning yen to climb back in the bottle?”

  “The yen’s always there,” Judd admitted.

  “What about the burning part?” She winked at him.

  He didn’t think it was a good sign that the first thing he thought of when it came to burning was Cleo. But there it was. The woman had been his burning source for years and apparently continued to be.

  “You need a nookie night,” Mercy declared when he didn’t say anything. “And no, I’m not offering. You need a nubile young woman who’ll lick you in places you’ve never been licked.”

  Since he didn’t want to encourage that kind of advice, he just gave Mercy a blank stare that caused her to hoot again. “Never underestimate the power of a good licker,” she added.

  “Or of a short conversation,” he countered. “I need to get home and check on some things. Text me, and we’ll work out another time for a meeting.”

  “Will do,” she said, but she kept her hand on his arm. “You haven’t even had to use our safe words or the distraction object since we last talked?”

  “No.” And Judd hoped that would be the end of this particular part of the conversation.

  It wasn’t.

  “Good. You do remember what the words are, don’t you?” Mercy asked. “It’s dick inches,” she disclosed before he could spell out—again—that he wasn’t sure he needed safe/code words. Or if he did, he wanted ones that didn’t take a swipe at his gender. Because according to Mercy, dick inches referred to grossly overestimating the length or size of something—as in a man claiming he had more inches than he actually did.

  The “distraction” that Mercy had come up with was almost as bad. Instead of thinking about or visualizing a bottle of whiskey, she had insisted he come up with an actual object that he could hold. A stupid one. She’d suggested everything from cock rings to edible underwear. When Judd had nixed those, Mercy had instead gotten something from Rosy’s taxidermy shop. No way would anyone think the dead stuffed thing was cute.

  She gave his hand a pat. “Use the words if you need them to draw you out of a dark mood and then call or text me. Don’t pull a reverse dick inch and make something smaller than it is. If it troubles you, it’s not small.”

  That was the reason she was still his sponsor. She cared about him, and nothing she’d just said was lip service.

  Mercy turned and headed for her car, but then she stopped and looked at him. “Say, why don’t men like to go down on comedians?” Again, she didn’t wait for him to guess the punch line. “Because they taste funny.”

  The woman was howling with laughter as she got into her car. Judd frowned, wondering how she could be so profound in one breath and in the next have such bad taste in what she considered humor.

  Ignoring the folks who were still milling around, Judd got in his truck and headed for the ranch. He steeled himself for whatever he would face there, but he knew at least the boys had gotten home all right, because as he’d told Cleo, he followed the bus home. No incidents. However, it was only 6:00 p.m., and there were still several hours when something could crop up.

  Something that wouldn’t be his concern.

  That reminder didn’t help with steeling himself. After all, he had turned down Cleo’s fostering request, and now she was probably wondering why the heck he was doing things like following a bus, hunting down Beckham and chatting with principals. Those had taken far more time and effort than merely signing foster papers. Still, refusing had been the right thing to do. And he was almost certain of that.

  Almost.

  One certainty that didn’t have an almost attached to it was Mercy’s suggestion of him having a nookie night. He thought having a woman in his bed might help his mood. Not Cleo, though. Despite the heat between them, being with her would complicate things. Too many strings attached.

  He frowned. Because when he pictured a woman in his bed, it was Cleo. An image he needed to shed fast. The shedding turned out to be a lot easier than he’d thought when he saw all the vehicles parked in front of Buck’s house. Four trucks and Cleo’s car. Hell. He hoped nothing else had gone wrong.

  Judd parked and breathed a little easier when he saw Leo in between his cabin and the house. The boy was grinning and holding something that was dangling from his hand.

  A green snake.

  Judd glanced around to make sure Leo wasn’t out here on his own, and he soon spotted a surly-looking Beckham peering out from the barn. Isaac was peering, too, from the loft.

  “His name is Wiggles, and I’m gonna keep him,” Leo said. “He can sleep in my bed.”

  Judd hated to burst his grinning bubble, but he shook his head. “Have you ever heard Miss Rosy scream?”

  Leo stayed quiet a moment, considering that. “Nope.”

  “Then if you want to keep it that way, don’t bring the snake in the house. Sorry, buddy, but he’ll have to live in the barn.”

  Leo gave that some thought, too. “You’re sure?”

  “Trust me on this. My brother Nico brought a snake inside when he was close to Isaac’s age, and Rosy’s screams are still echoing in my head.”

  Leo’s face bunched up, and he sighed. “Okay. You got more than one brother named Nico?”

  “No. Why?”

  “’Cause that’s who’s inside. Nico said he’s gonna be watching me some and giving me riding lessons.”

  Judd frowned again. Nico was the irresponsible Laramie brother, and that didn’t sound like something he would offer. Besides, Nico was rarely around because he was on the rodeo circuit and often away on business trips.

  “Has anybody gone over the rules with you about snakes?” Judd asked the boy.

  Leo nodded. “Mr. Buck said I could only get close to the green ones, but to stay away from the other colors. I gotta stay away from the ones that ra
ttle, hiss or look mean.”

  Good advice. Obviously, Buck was doing right by the kids.

  While Leo took Wiggles to the barn, Judd went inside Buck’s to find out what was going on. And he soon discovered that what was going on was some kind of meeting.

  Buck, Rosy, Kace, Shelby, Callen and, yes, Nico, were all at the kitchen table. So were Cleo and Kace’s best friend, Wyatt Cutler, who owned a ranch near Shelby and Callen’s. Everyone had coffee or some other kind of drink, and there was a huge plate of cookies in the center of the table. Shelby was tapping out something on a laptop. The others had pencils, colored pens and hard copies of what appeared to be spreadsheets.

  All of them spared him a glance, some muttered hellos, but they continued what they were doing.

  Judd moved closer, looking at the stuff that was scattered on the table. There was a plastic sandwich bag of gold stars, which was probably slated to be taped to the fridge next to the chore chart, and also a stack of “get out of jail free” cards. Not the hand-printed ones that’d been around when he was a foster. These were printed with a little armadillo on them.

  “Aren’t those the cutest things? Thought we could use some new ones,” Rosy explained. “That’s my Billy.”

  Yes, it was. Billy, the armadillo, that’d been roadkill before Rosy had given him the taxidermic treatment. Cute wasn’t the word Judd would use, but Rosy must have been proud as punch because she handed out one to everyone at the table.

  “I can take Wednesday and Friday mornings to see the boys off to school,” Shelby said, tucking her card in her pocket. “That way, Cleo can go into work early on those days.”

  “Thanks. I’ll need it. I’m getting behind,” Cleo answered as Shelby typed that into the laptop.

  The others added it to their spreadsheets, and that’s when Judd realized they were working out a schedule. A very detailed one that appeared to include every hour of every day that the boys would actually be on the ranch. When one of them wasn’t on the schedule, the sitter, Lissy Tate, was.

  “Then I’ll take Tuesday evenings.” That from Wyatt. “It’ll give Kace a break and time to catch up on work.”

  Sounds of agreement went around the table.

  “Put me in for Monday and Tuesday afternoons for the next four weeks,” Nico volunteered. “I’ll fix my schedule so I can be here when the boys get home from school. Then I might have to shift the days.”

  More sounds of agreement, and Judd moved closer to look at Cleo’s spreadsheet. Buck, Rosy, Cleo, Kace, Callen, Shelby, Wyatt and even Cleo’s business partner, Daisy, were on the schedule.

  Judd wasn’t.

  There was a list of backup names at the bottom, an assortment of Buck and Rosy’s friends. His name was there, but someone had put a line through it.

  “So, that’s it,” Shelby declared. “I think we have it all covered.” She gave Kace a high five and Callen a kiss—one that was hot enough to remind everyone that they were newlyweds.

  “I can never thank all of you enough.” Cleo got to her feet and went around the table, giving hugs to everyone. Including Kace. It took her a while to work her way to Judd. No hug for him, but she smiled and whispered, “Thanks so much for what you did today.”

  For some reason her thanks riled Judd. Actually, the spreadsheet riled him, too. And the easy way everyone seemed to be accepting the extra heapings of work that would be added to their weekly routines. But what riled him the most was that he hadn’t even been penciled in anywhere on the damn schedule.

  “We need to talk,” Judd said to Cleo at the exact moment she said to him, “We need to talk.”

  Okay, that was a little easier than he thought it would be to get Cleo away from the others. “Excuse us for a minute,” Cleo told the group, and Judd and she went out the back door and into the yard.

  “Aunt Cleo, wanna see my new pet?” Leo called out.

  “It’s a snake,” Judd mumbled, and that halted the big smile that was forming on Cleo’s face. “Not poisonous,” he assured her. “But still a snake.”

  “Uh, I need to talk to Mr. Judd right now, but maybe I’ll come out and see it soon.” She shifted her attention to Isaac, who was now by the chicken coop and in hearing distance. That’s probably why Cleo took Judd by the arm and led him around the corner to his front porch.

  “Otto came to see me at the bar this afternoon,” she blurted out, keeping her voice low.

  Good thing the boys couldn’t hear him because Judd cursed. “What the hell did that sonofabitch want?” He looked at her face and wrists to make sure there weren’t any bruises.

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she said when she followed his gaze. “He came to warn me that Lavinia was as mad as a ‘pissed-on possum’ and that she was going to try to do something to get back at you.”

  Judd huffed, and his hands went on his hips. “Do what exactly?”

  “Otto didn’t have specifics.” On a heavy breath, she pushed her hair from her face. “Judd, I’m so sorry about involving you in this. I’ll do whatever I can to get her to aim her venom at me, not you.”

  He was still simmering from the other stuff, and that only added to it. “I can take care of myself, especially from the likes of Lavinia.”

  Cleo smiled, but he could tell she had to try really hard to eke one out. “If you get in a fight with her, be careful of her loose, swinging breasts.”

  That was worth him mustering up his own smile. “You could have put me on the schedule, you know,” he said. But it seemed to be the day for them to talk at the same time because Cleo asked, “What did you want to speak to me about?”

  “Oh,” they both answered in unison.

  It was Judd who continued. “Beckham said something about a guy giving you some trouble.”

  She blinked, then groaned softly. “Harmon Hawthorne, someone I used to date, but we broke up months ago. Why would Beckham tell you about him?”

  “It just came up in conversation.” Best not to mention that Beckham thought Cleo wasn’t very smart when it came to men. “What kind of trouble did he give you?”

  “Nothing recent. Like I said, we broke up. But afterward, he’d call and text me. A lot. That’s when Daisy started the Stupid Shit Men Say board. A lot of the first entries came from Harmon. One of the more recent ones, too.”

  “When’s the last time he contacted you?” And Judd was well aware that he sounded like a cop with a smidge of jealousy.

  She glanced away from him. “It’s been a couple of days.”

  “Days? And what did this clown say?”

  “Nothing that screams red flags. His ego just can’t seem to accept that I’m not the woman of his dreams. And I don’t mean that as some kind of cliché. Harmon claims that he dreamed about me before we ever met and that he spent years looking for me.”

  Whatever Judd had been expecting her to say, that wasn’t it. Hell, that was creepy.

  “He believes we have this whole soul-mate thing going on,” she added. “And that I’ll accept it when I see all the signs.”

  “Signs?” Judd persisted.

  She huffed. “Dumb ones. Again, that apparently came to him in the dream.” She waved it off and switched topics. “As for the schedule, I didn’t want to bother you.” She paused. “While we were in the family meeting, Kace got a text from Liberty, who said you were meeting with a woman in the parking lot. Liberty thought you looked more intense than usual when you were talking to her.”

  Shit on a stick. That hadn’t taken long at all. Nor did it take him long to connect the dots with what had been the thought process that’d gone on in the meeting. They’d decided not to put his name on the schedule because they thought the pressure of being around the boys had sent him running to Mercy.

  “The woman Liberty saw was my sponsor who came to check on me and reschedule our regular meeting. I’m fine,” he growled, but his tone
was so rough and mean that he repeated it in a much calmer voice.

  Cleo stared at him, blew out a massive breath and smiled. This time there was no mustering involved. “Thank God. I was just so worried after this hellish day. And that kiss. I thought when Liberty said you looked intense that maybe the pressure had gotten to you.”

  Hell. That made him sound like a wuss, but the truth was going to sound even wussier. “It’s not pressure that triggers the problem. Present-day hellish is fine. It’s the old stuff that gets to me.”

  She moved closer, no trace of a smile now, and she put her hand on the front of his shirt, flattening her palm over his heart. “Promise me that you’ll come to me if it starts to get bad.”

  It was a generous offer, and one that he hated she felt the need to make. “You can’t fix this.”

  A small part of her smile returned. “Maybe not, but after that kiss in my car, I think I know a way to distract you. Hard to drink if your mouth is on mine.”

  A certain part of his body tuned into every word she was saying. Tuned in, latched on and galloped with way too much interest.

  Her hand wasn’t exactly touching a hot spot for him, but it suddenly felt that way when her fingers moved a little, and her index fingers touched his shirt button. She made slow circling motions while her eyes stayed on him.

  “I’ve seen your schedule,” he said. “You don’t have time for kissing or sex.”

  “I could work you in on Tuesday morning at nine fifteen.”

  Judd laughed before he could stop himself, and he caught onto her hand to stop the touching torture. Or so he told himself. But he didn’t let go of her hand, which would make it very easy to pull her into his cabin, back her against the door and nail her.

  Maybe it was a sign from the gods that nailing should be the last thing on his mind because Judd heard someone on Buck’s front porch. Wyatt, Shelby and Callen came out of the house, and only then did Judd let go of Cleo.

  “I need to say goodbye and thank them again,” Cleo said, but she took something from her pocket and handed it to him.

  One of the new “get out of jail free” cards.