Herd That ARC

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  I came out of the bathroom and glared at the woman.

  “I’m not following you,” I told her bluntly. “I was here about thirty minutes before you, and I’ve been talking with a friend.”

  She sneered at me. “Yeah, because I’m going to believe a liar and a thief.”

  I tilted my head and stared at her. “I never lied, and I never stole anything. In fact, if you want to know the truth, your husband was the one who stole the car, not me. Yet, he probably didn’t tell you that, did he?”

  Marie scoffed. “My husband would never do that.”

  “Actually,” I heard Jace say. “That was me. I was the one who took the car. Dad just didn’t want that getting out to the public.”

  Marie gasped and turned. “You did what?”

  Jace shrugged. “I was a rebellious kid who hated that his father told him what to do all the time. Are you ready? I have the tickets, and I have to pee.”

  Marie nodded her head and reached for their child, giving Jace the freedom he needed to head to the bathroom.

  I chose that moment to head back, despite Marie still talking to me—or trying to.

  I just couldn’t handle her shit today.

  I also couldn’t handle her shit any day.

  It’d be super if she accidentally fell and broke her jaw, rendering her unable to screech at me every time I passed her.

  Sadly, my day didn’t improve. Mostly because I found myself not wanting Ace to leave.

  Not even when I had Ace’s hand on my face as he dropped a chaste kiss on my mouth as he was leaving me at my front door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, darlin’.”

  Chapter 12

  My brother told me to have a good day. So I went home.

  -Ace to Codie

  Ace

  “Hey,” I said softly to my brother-in-law. “Can you talk to Luke for me?”

  Nico looked over at me with a raised brow.

  “What for?” he asked curiously.

  “A couple weeks ago, Codie put in her application to work at Kilgore Police Department as a crime scene tech,” I explained. “She hasn’t heard anything back, and I read in the newspaper today that the department was in desperate need of one. If they were really desperate, they’d have called her back at least.”

  Nico frowned. “Really? You’re sure she applied?”

  “One hundred percent,” I agreed. “I talked to her about it yesterday on the way home from the movies. She applied and hasn’t heard anything back.”

  Nico frowned and pulled out his phone.

  Seconds later his fingers were flying over the keys.

  “I texted him, we’ll see what he…” He trailed off as his phone beeped in his hand. “That’s weird. He’s coming over.”

  My brows rose.

  “Luke’s coming over here?” I asked in curiosity.

  Nico nodded.

  I looked around his living room and grinned. “You gonna clean up?”

  Nico looked at the mess his kids had left in his house and shrugged. “Luke has his own kids. I’m fairly sure he isn’t going to notice the crumbs on the couch.”

  He was right.

  Ten minutes after his declaration, Luke came in without knocking, walked to Nico’s fridge as if he’d done it before, and sat down on the couch with his beer, crumbs and all.

  “You should probably vacuum before your wife gets home,” Luke suggested as he sighed and leaned his head back against the couch. “I’m so tired.”

  I looked at the big blond man and grinned. “You look like you just got in a fight.”

  “That’s because I did,” he sighed. “I’m off duty as of five minutes ago. I thought I’d use your bathroom to clean up so my wife doesn’t see me and freak out like she did last time.”

  Nico snorted. “You’re more than welcome. I think your clothes are still under the sink from last time, too.”

  Luke held up a thumb, then turned his head on the couch and looked at me. “You’re the guy who knows the woman who applied to be a crime scene tech?”

  I nodded once. “Ace Valentine.”

  I held out my hand, and Luke took it, shaking it once before dropping my hand.

  “You have her number?”

  I blinked. “Yeah. She’s mine.”

  He grinned. “Let me take a shower. Can you call her over here and I can just interview her now?”

  The surprise must’ve shown on my face because he grinned.

  “I’ve been looking for a new crime scene tech for months,” he said, reading my thoughts. “As long as she doesn’t have a record, and she’s hard working, I’m willing to interview her.”

  I shrugged. “She was a problem teen, but I don’t think she actually has a record,” I felt it prudent to point out. I didn’t want to call Codie all the way over here and get her hopes up if Luke didn’t know what he was in for.

  “What’s her full name?” he asked as he headed for the bathroom.

  “Codie Spears,” I answered.

  He paused and turned. “Is she the one that stole the old assistant chief’s cruiser?”

  Nico snorted. “One and only.”

  I shook my head. “She didn’t steal it. Her boyfriend, who happened to be the assistant chief’s son, did. Yet Jace didn’t correct his father when he blamed Codie.”

  Luke shook his head. “I remember her vaguely through a few stories. Call her up. Get her here. Give me ten.” He paused and looked over his shoulder at Nico. “Call Ricky and ask him to run a background check on her. Give her the full name and address. You know the address, Ace?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  Luke nodded once and walked into the bathroom, slamming it shut behind him.

  “I don’t miss all these goddamn toys,” he called out loudly.

  Nico grinned. “Welcome to toy hell!”

  I rolled my eyes. Toy Hell was an understatement. There were so many toys in the bathtub that I was fairly sure he’d have to stand on them. Even if he did take most of them out, he wouldn’t be able to step out of the shower once he was done.

  “You really do need to get that under control,” I pointed out. “Tell your wife to stop buying them shit.”

  Nico’s brows rose. “Yeah? Well, how about you pass that along to my sisters and yourself first. It’s not us buying them shit. It’s y’all.”

  He did have a point. I’d had the twins with me just that morning before dropping them off at school. They’d conned me into toys at the gas station of all places when I’d stopped to get them something quick to eat.

  “I guess that’s true,” I said as I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed Codie’s number. “Now shut up.”

  Nico flipped me off and went back to thumbing through his reloading magazine, casually turning through the pages and then writing a number down every so often.

  I waited for Codie to pick up, and grimaced when it went to voicemail.

  Determined, I called Callum who answered on the first ring.

  “What?”

  “Will you ride over to Codie’s place and tell her to answer her phone?” I asked politely.

  “No, go fuck yourself,” he quipped back.

  I snorted. “Please?”

  “Why?” he challenged. “I literally just got in and I smell like shit because a cow was stuck in the pond and I had to help her out. If I ride over there it’ll take another fifteen minutes of me being in wet, shit-covered clothes.”

  I sighed.

  “Is Darby there?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He sounded like he was grinning now. “Give me a minute.” He sounded like he set the phone away from his face. “Hey, you little asshole!”

  I sighed and put the phone on speaker, grinning when Nico’s brows rose at Callum’s colorful language toward our baby brother.

  “Ace wants you to ride to his crush’s house and get her to call him!” Callum bellowed.

  I pinched the bridge of my no
se while Nico straight up laughed.

  There was a shuffle, then Callum was once again talking to me.

  “Darby said he’d drive over there on the way to his night class.” Callum paused. “He also said that he couldn’t get his toilet to flush and wants compensation for doing your dirty work.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed.

  “How about you tell him to stop using so much goddamn toilet paper and to start taking shits more than just once a week. And if I come home and have to deal with his shit, I’ll make him eat it in his sleep,” I suggested.

  I would, too.

  I’d dealt with his shit—literally and figuratively—for a long fuckin’ time now. There was a point that the little fucker had to grow up and deal with it himself.

  Even though he was at the point where he was.

  He still acted like a little asshole every once in a while, though.

  Callum snickered. “I’ll tell him that. But you may not get your girl…”

  “You can do it or he can,” I suggested. “I know shit on both of you. Don’t make me use it.”

  Callum sighed. “We’ll get it done, party pooper. Don’t worry.”

  Then he was gone, leaving me with Nico still laughing his ass off.

  “And I thought my sisters were bad,” he grinned. “Are you staying for dinner?”

  I thought about that, then shrugged. “I’ll ask Codie what she wants to do. She doesn’t like your kids.”

  Nico’s brows shot up. “That’s not an excuse. I don’t like my kids, yet I’m still here.”

  Grinning, I got up and went for another beer.

  Fifteen minutes later, Codie finally called me back.

  Thirty minutes after that, dinner arrived and so had Codie.

  She looked worried as well as hesitant the moment she walked up to the door.

  “You so owe me for this, Ace Valentine,” she hissed when she saw all the kids looking in her direction.

  All the kids that were staring at her as I opened the door, thinking it was the pizza delivery.

  “The food is right behind me,” she said. “There is food from two places. One from a Chinese place, and one from a pizza place.”

  I looked at the two men who were walking up the front walk almost in unison and grinned.

  “I think my sister is pregnant again,” I murmured. “She came home and declared that Chinese wasn’t going to touch the day she had, and that pizza had to be ordered as well.”

  Codie’s lips twitched.

  “I had two apples with about half a cup of peanut butter about half an hour ago,” she paused. “That was what I was doing, contemplating my circumstances, when you called. My phone was charging in my room. It’s acting up today. I had it off the charger for all of five minutes when it said that it was at ‘twenty percent battery life’ and then I had to plug it in again.”

  “Huh,” I said questioningly. “You’ll have to get that looked at tomorrow.”

  “Kinda have to have a job to buy a new phone and all that jazz,” I commented. “What’s going on? Are y’all having a party?” she asked, changing the subject.

  I gestured for her to take the pizza, which she did without comment.

  I took the Chinese and gave each man a five-dollar tip.

  They turned and walked away without another word, leaving both Codie and I with our hands full.

  I stared into the glass screen door and raised my eyebrows at the twins who were staring at us laughingly.

  “They’re the devil,” she whispered. “Why did you say that you wanted me here again?”

  I grinned. “I swear, you’ll like the reason.”

  Setting the Chinese food on top of the pizza boxes causing Codie to groan, I pulled out the box marked ‘noodles’ and a pair of chopsticks.

  “What are you doing?” she asked curiously, not complaining about the weight of the food in her arms.

  “Waiting them out,” I answered, opening the box and digging in with my chopsticks.

  Both twins narrowed their eyes, and I took my first bite.

  “Oh, they don’t look happy,” she teased.

  “The noodles are theirs,” I said around a mouthful of their dinner.

  “That’s mine!” twin one, better known as asshole one, said.

  I shrugged.

  “Just open the door,” asshole two said.

  Asshole one did and held out his hands.

  I shook my head. “You go wash your hands and get to the table, and if you hurry there might be some left.”

  Both twins huffed but ultimately left to do my bidding.

  “So that’s how it’s done,” Nico said.

  Codie gave Nico a sheepish look.

  “Ace was showing me how it was done,” she said. “He told me that you can’t show them fear or they’ll attack.”

  Nico burst out laughing. “Honey, you have no idea how true that really is.”

  With that, he led the way to the table, and Codie and I followed in his wake.

  It was only when she arrived at my side, her hand on the first available chair to pull it out, that she realized that it wasn’t just Nico and Georgia, that there was another person there as well.

  “Ch-chief.”

  Chapter 13

  Will give you crime scene advice for tacos.

  -Text from Codie to Ace

  Ace

  I wanted to leave her about as much as I wanted a root canal, but her grandfather had called needing help, leaving me with nothing else to do but allow her to leave after enjoying dinner and her talking to Luke.

  It was hours later now, and I was lying in bed, wondering if I could just show up and it be all right.

  I was already on the verge of heading her way when the text messages started. The more I got, the more worried I became.

  The first one, I didn’t mind so much because it was a picture of her wall, which made me chuckle because she still had a boy band poster tacked up there—LFO it said.

  Codie: Attachment

  Codie: Srjdk hdhd J J J J Q

  Codie: Attachment

  Codie: Attachment

  Codie: Attachment

  It was after the fourth picture of her wall, this time from the floor, that I started to get worried.

  Then the FaceTime calls started coming.

  The first one I missed.

  The second one I caught just as I was stepping out of the shower.

  I answered it without a thought or care to my nakedness, and waited for her to come on the line, but the only thing that I saw was the whirring of her fan and the soft ‘thump-thump’ of something in the background.

  I hung up, thinking she’d done it on accident, but then the FaceTime call came again.

  That was when I started to think that there was something actually wrong.

  Throwing on a pair of sweatpants, I stepped directly into my most worn pair of cowboy boots and darted for my window, completely bypassing the front door completely.

  One, I didn’t have time to explain to my brothers what was going on.

  Two, the window was the fastest way out of the house—I would know, I’d done quite a bit of sneaking out in my younger years.

  Hauling ass to the barn, I pulled the closest horse out of his stall and mounted him bareback.

  Used to me by now—I rode bareback quite a bit when I was too lazy to saddle them—I practically raced him out of the barn and straight through the front yard to the back that butted up against the Spears’ land.

  I had to hop off twice, once to lead Jude through the backyard gate that separated our back yard from the pasture behind our house, and the second time to open the gate that separated our land from the Spears’ land.

  I passed a pissy Scooby who wasn’t happy about having any intruders on his stake of land and continued riding until I was at Codie’s window.

  All in all, it took about five minutes.

  If I’d gon
e by truck, it’d have taken ten.

  But when I arrived, it was to find her… not there.

  At least initially.

  When I got off the horse and climbed in her open window, it was to find steam coming from the bathroom.

  The door was barely shut, and my heart started to thump.

  I couldn’t hear anything but the spray of the shower.

  No movement. No nothing but water hitting tile.

  “Codie?” I called loudly.

  There was a squeak, and all of a sudden, she was throwing the shower curtain open and staring at me in surprise.

  Before she could get pissed at my abrupt arrival, though, she took in the worry on my face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, uncaring that she was naked.

  That was when her nudity hit me.

  Seeing her healthy and whole, I forgot to be worried and remembered that I was highly attracted to the girl.

  I bent over at the waist and allowed my breathing to return to normal.

  At least, I would have had Codie not stepped out of the shower and placed her wet hand on my bare back.

  “Oh God, Ace,” she breathed. “You’re freezing.”

  Now that she mentioned it, her hand did feel exceptionally hot over my overly cool skin.

  I really was freezing.

  Shivers wracked my body now, and I knew that the coolness to my skin wasn’t sweat but water from the shower that I hadn’t completely dried off from.

  My balls were also sucked up tight to my body, and I was trying to convince myself that I wasn’t that cold.

  “Take your pants off and get in the shower with me,” she ordered softly.

  That’s when I finally allowed myself to see her fully. To take in her nakedness. And I about died.

  She was beautiful.

  So. Fucking. Beautiful.

  She was shorter than me by at least a foot. And with her face only inches from my chest, I knew I could pick her up, force her to wrap those pretty toned legs around my hips, and press her against the wall so we were face to face.

  Her breasts were pebbled and goosebumps peppered her chest and belly, letting me know that I wasn’t the only one cold.

  And God, those nipples.

  They were pink and sweet and I just wanted to wrap my tongue around them and pull the tiny morsels into my mouth.