Playing With Fire (Whittaker Ranch #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

MADDOX

“You gonna change your attitude, or you gonna get out of my bar, Pat?” Cedar Creek’s bratty, red-headed bartender asks the town drunk as she pours whiskey into a cocktail shaker without measuring. Her eyes flick up to Patrick with an amused half-smile on her face.

“It’s Dale’s bar,” Pat sneers.

She twists this way and that, looking around long enough to make her point before turning back to the man. “You see Dale around here anywhere?”

Pat starts up on his usual tirade about how she’s overcharging and under-serving because she doesn’t measure the liquor, but Austin shakes the cocktail mixer, drowning him out. She’s been behind this bar almost every night since her twenty-first birthday over a year ago.

Her eyes finally rake over me, as though she’s just now noticing I’m waiting at her bar. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite grumpy cowboy,” she jokes, pouring the drink through the strainer and into a glass before sliding it over to Pat. “Quit your bitching.”

I snort as Pat takes a sip of his Whiskey Sour, walking away from the bar as he continues to grumble about it being weak.

“You all planning on getting rowdy tonight?” she asks, leaning over the bar in front of me. Her eyes leave mine only to gesture with her head over to where my brothers sit in our usual corner booth.

She shouldn’t be this close, and I shouldn’t be this aware of how taut the scrap of material she’s trying to pass off as a shirt is around her tits, but the red letters spelling out ‘Cowboy Pillows’ across them makes it hard.

Her bra strap peeks out from the collar of the shirt, matching the color of the font and the lipstick spread on her full lips exactly.

Even if she wasn’t a good ten years younger than me, she’s Kenny’s best friend.

Despite how much I think she needs to be put on her knees and given something to do with that mouth besides running it, it won’t ever be more than a fantasy.

Any of our little sisters’ friends are off limits to my brothers and I.

I clear my throat, realizing I’ve been quiet for too long. “Colt, probably,” I grumble, frustrated at the reminder of my youngest brother’s immaturity. He’s twenty-six, but the way he acts, you’d think he was five years younger.

Austin looks at me with her eyes squinted and head tilted just enough to make me feel like she’s looking through me.

Just as I’m about to tell her to get her mind off Colt because he doesn’t need another woman chasing after his cock and kissing his ass, she spins on her heel and heads to the fridge under the bar.

Her shirt is tied up and tucked under in the back, cropping it so her soft stomach and its piercing is on display. The denim shorts she’s wearing look intentionally tinier than they need to be, showing off the curve of her ass cheek through the leg holes.

I don’t usually give a shit about sex, so why can’t I get the image of her bent over in front of me out of my head?

Her soft stomach indenting beneath my fingers as they grab her hips, pulling her back on my cock while I plow into her.

How I’d leave behind ten dime-sized bruises on her pale skin that would remind her for days of how well I filled her and how good I made her feel.

How that sexy little butterfly charm would bounce with every thrust.

She holds the four bottles of Coors she grabbed from the fridge with one arm against her chest, reaching into her back pocket with the other hand for the bottle opener as she walks back to me.

As though it’s nothing, she pops the tops off each bottle in seconds, setting them down on the bar in front of me.

“First round’s on the house ‘cause I know your brother’s about to head out and you’re saying your goodbyes, but if he fucks around in my bar and starts another brawl, you’re all getting 86’d for a month,” she tells me.

I grin back at her. “The whole ‘my bar’ thing is a bit much, Tex. You were still just a little thing when I started coming here to sweep the floors for Dale in exchange for a free dip. It’s Dale’s bar. He just lets you sling the beers.”

It’s not true in the slightest, but it pisses her off, which is damn near my favorite pastime. I grab the bottles by their necks—two in each hand—winking at her as she glares at me, and walking off before she can respond.

Colt cheers like I’ve just brought back a twelve-point buck instead of some shitty beers, his middle finger and thumb between his lips.

I wince before his shrill whistle even echoes through the bar, but as much as Colt grates on my nerves, having him home makes me feel a lot more settled than when he’s on the road.

I just wish he’d cut this shit out and stay home permanently. Retire from the circuit and settle down, or whatever the fuck he needs to do. As long as it keeps his ass in Cedar Creek and Mama from crying on the nights he has his eight seconds.

We all handled Dad’s death differently. It was sort of sudden.

He was a stubborn man, never one to go for any annual exams or vaccinations.

He didn’t have a regular doctor and would only go to the hospital if something worried him enough to warrant a look from a professional.

That had been his downfall, just like Mama always worried it would be.

In the weeks leading up to his death, he was hard on himself about the fact that he’d be leaving her behind.

Mama worried about all six of us constantly, now even more than before Dad died. She’d end up worrying herself into an early grave next if she weren’t careful. But Colt would probably beat her there.

It was like he’d seen how easily and randomly life could end, and instead of being more cautious about risking his own, he’d gone the complete opposite. I couldn’t figure out if he was trying to tempt death to come for him sooner or just trying to live life to the fullest.

He’d left the ranch shortly after he graduated high school, always dreaming of being a big rodeo star, but it had gotten worse after Dad died. Now, he partied hard and fucked around harder and rarely came home.

Meanwhile, Jameson and I had to become the reliable ones. I was twenty-seven at the time and I’d been handling the ranch by Dad’s side for years by then, so it just made the most sense for me to take over the ranch.

I’d also taken on keeping Mama from obsessively watching Colt’s rides, watching them for her instead and turning off the TV as soon as I saw his feet touch the dirt.

Jamie had stepped up to make sure the girls had everything they needed so Mama could mourn.

Luckily, the girls were pretty much self-sufficient by then—only our youngest sister was still in school.

Besides making sure Tate crawled out of bed each day, ate, showered, and got her ass in Tyler’s truck in time for the first bell, it was mostly emotional support—which was why Jameson took over.

He was great with all of that. I’d rather eat a box of nails than handle one of my sisters crying.

“Bartender said not to start a fight,” I warned the table, passing each of them a bottle.

Jameson’s friend, Theo, snorts, taking a swig of his beer. He looks tired as fuck, but I guess I would be too if I were raising a toddler on my own. “Bartender’s got a name, you know?”

“Yeah, Maddie. You think you’d remember the name of the gal who asked you for birthday spankings a couple months ago,” Colt teased.

I tipped the bottom of his bottle up when he went to take the next swig, making it dribble down his chin like he’d just learned how to drink.

It didn’t phase him, but then again, nothing ever did.

Nothing ever made him grow the fuck up, not even for a second.

When I was his age, I was running an entire ranch on my own.

“She was drunk as fuck,” I grumble as he pulls up the bottom of his shirt to wipe his chin, flashing his abs and a new tattoo on his side. “She had to be carried out of the bar that night. Probably thought she was talking to one of the ranch hands.”

Jameson hid his smirk behind the neck of his bottle. He wouldn’t say it, but we were both thinking it. She had to be carried out of the bar, but I didn’t have to be the one who did it.

I had, though—carried her out of the bar and straight to my pickup before someone I didn’t trust could do it.

I held the rat’s nest she calls hair with one hand and drove with the other while she upchucked out the window and down the side of my truck.

I’d even been nice enough to plop her down in bed with Kenny instead of taking her back to her dad’s.

My sister had dipped out on her best friend’s party early since she had to go to class the next day, but I’d promised one of us would make sure Austin got home safe.

I’d stopped seeing Austin as a kid that night and it had a lot to do with the way she’d drunkenly pressed her body up against mine on the dance floor and made the very request Colt was going on about. We’d all danced with her that night, but she didn’t ask any of the others to spank her.

Granted, she hadn’t been a kid in a long time, four years legally, but the ten years I had on her and her friendship with my little sister hadn’t helped.

“You should probably take her up on it,” Jameson added, teaming up with Colt, pulling me from my thoughts and my eyes from Austin’s ass.

It wasn’t until I had to tear my eyes away to look at Jamie that I even realized I’d been staring at her in the first place.

I took another sip of my beer to ignore how wide his smile had grown.

It was the only one I could have tonight since I was driving.

“Mama’s gonna go crazy if she doesn't get a grandkid out of one of us soon.”

“She’s got Callie,” I said, gesturing with the rim of my bottle to Theo.

Theo snorts and rolls his eyes, but grins after.

He always seems so happily surprised when we treat Callie like part of the family.

“Besides, the only one of us with any chance in hell of making that happen for her is Tatum, and that’s only if she can get her head out of her ass long enough to realize Tyler thinks she hung the moon. ”

“I can’t believe he still follows her around like a lost little puppy,” Colt says, a wry grin on his face. “I always forget how whipped he is till I’m home to see it for a while.”

Jamie’s eyes cut over to me and I know he hears the opening Colt gave me as well, wondering if I’ll take it.

I want to tell Colt he wouldn’t have an issue remembering what goes on around the ranch if he came home more often, but we’re having a good night and there’s no sense in bringing down the mood.

“Nah, it’s not you. He has been worse lately. I think he’s getting restless waiting on her. If he wasn’t such a good worker—when he is working—I’d fire his ass for how often I’ve gotta go looking for him. It's always easier to just text Tate and ask where she’s at.”

Colt laughs, but Jamie agrees with me. “Shit, I always call before going to look for them. I’m half-scared I’m gonna end up walking in on them one day and find out they’ve been going at it like rabbits for years and fooling us all.”

My lip curls at the thought. I’m not some idiot that thinks his little sisters should stay virgins until they’re forty or anything like that, but I still don’t really want to think of them ‘going at it like rabbits’ with anyone.

“Well, that’s the first step to getting Mama a grandkid and getting her off the rest of our asses, so if they are, I support it,” Colt says, which doesn’t improve my mood in the slightest.

“Too bad Bailey and Chase broke up. They would’ve definitely had one by now,” Theo says and my jaw clenches.

“Cheating dickhead,” Colt grumbles, still taking his twin’s heartbreak personally even though it’s been five years. Sometimes I wonder if he knows the whole story, but it’s not my place to tell him. I promised Bails I’d take it to the grave.