Chapter 1 #2
“You get off talkin’ shit about a woman? That make you feel like a big boy?” I glared down at him, the rage building inside me. “Make you feel like your dick’s bigger’n it is?”
“You been thinkin’ ’bout my dick?” Billy countered with a grin that showed off yellowed teeth and the lip full of dip he was known to have.
What the fuck Reagan ever saw in him, I would never know.
“Y’all hear that?” Billy hollered, turning toward the other patrons filling the small bar. “Lynx Caine’s over here talkin’ ’bout my dick. Maybe he swings both ways like his cousin.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “If I did, I can tell ya, I’d have better taste than that.”
Billy flipped me off.
Take a swing at my family, I would be the first to beat your ass.
Treat a woman with disrespect, I would be the first to pound you into the ground.
Raise your hand to a child or an animal, I would be the first to knock your front teeth out.
But talk shit to me … I could take it. I wasn’t as reactive as I'd been as a teenager. If Billy Watson wanted to prove his IQ was the same as his boot size by talking smack, I was more than happy to let him.
Waving him off, I strode back to my beer. “There’s a reason assholes don’t have mouths,” I said, making sure my voice was loud enough for Billy to hear.
When he took a lunge toward me, Reagan intervened, coming to stand between us.
And a second later, when Billy grabbed her arm and jerked her out of the way, I lost every single ounce of my sanity.
Reagan Trevino
“Touch her again and you’ll be shovin’ your toothbrush up your ass to brush your teeth,” Lynx snarled at Billy, his emerald-green eyes spitting fire.
Lynx Caine was the ultimate badass.
Well, at least by Embers Ridge standards anyway.
Then again, I was pretty damn sure that reputation would hold up anywhere he went.
But there was more to Lynx than most people realized. He’d proven that a minute ago when he’d walked away from my ex-boyfriend when he started trash-talking. Lynx could tolerate a lot of shit. He wasn’t the same hotheaded guy he’d been back in the day.
Oh, sure, there probably wasn’t a Friday night that passed when the man wasn’t involved in some sort of brawl. Guys liked to rile him up just to watch him lose his shit. However, they didn’t usually do it twice.
In all fairness, Lynx wasn’t usually the one starting shit, but he was damn sure willing to finish it. And everyone in this town knew that a man should never touch a woman out of anger when Lynx was around. It was the fastest way to find yourself in the hospital.
Two seconds after Billy grabbed my arm, his fingers digging painfully into my flesh, Lynx ripped Billy off and tossed him to the floor. He wouldn’t be there long, I knew.
The one thing I asked of my customers was that they take the fighting outside.
I worked hard for what I had, and admittedly, I didn’t have much.
Nothing more than the fifteen-hundred-square-foot bar and the permits required to sell and consume beer on the premises.
My personal effects were limited mostly to my clothes and a couple of shotguns.
I didn’t need much, but what I did have, I fully intended to keep.
Therefore, the boys who wanted to throw down had to take that shit outside.
The Caines had always respected that request. Always.
“Someone call the sheriff!” Billy hollered as Lynx picked him up off the floor with one big, tattooed hand.
“Call the sheriff and you’ll answer to me,” Wolfe announced, moving toward his cousin.
Since the sheriff happened to be my brother, not to mention Wolfe and Amy’s lover, I figured people weren’t going to defy him. Didn’t matter anyhow; Rhys always managed to make his way to the bar about the time the boys decided to knuckle up.
Because this pertained to me, I couldn’t help but try to calm the waters before the storm raged out of control. After all, I didn’t want to see Lynx go to jail. And if it was up to Billy, that was exactly where he’d spend the night.
“Lynx!” I called after him.
The man stopped and turned around, his eyes hard as they narrowed on me.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He shook his head. “After.”
“No. Now.” I wasn’t intimidated by Lynx the way most people were.
He didn’t scare me because I knew he would never hurt me. He wasn’t built that way.
In fact, because of that—and many other reasons—I was probably more in love with him than anything else.
Not that I would tell him that. I might have the hots for the sexy, tattooed country boy, but I definitely wasn’t looking to spend my days and nights with a man who went through women more often than he changed underwear.
I'd spent far too long dealing with Billy and his bullshit, which wasn’t limited to his infidelity, either.
However, he damn sure hadn’t been faithful. Not for a minute.
Not that I thought Lynx was the cheating kind, but he’d proven his track record and love ’em and leave ’em was synonymous with Lynx Caine.
Now that I'd been single for a whole whopping month, I found it suited me just fine. Less bullshit, more time to watch Netflix.
Knowing he would follow, I slipped down the narrow hall that led to the restroom. A second later, he appeared in the dimly lit hallway.
Okay, so I probably could’ve picked a better location to have this conversation.
Lynx’s dark eyebrows were angled down and his emerald-green eyes glittered with anger. It wasn’t aimed at me, but it was there all the same.
“Don’t fight him,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “It’s not worth it.”
“Oh, it’s worth it,” he countered, reaching down and lifting my arm so he could inspect the spot where Billy had grabbed me.
I jerked out of his hold. It was a survival instinct.
The man had put his hands on me once and I had never forgotten it.
My body had never forgotten how freaking good it felt for this man to touch me.
And my heart had never forgotten just what being with him could be like.
I seriously doubted I ever would forget it, either.
“Just leave it alone,” I snapped.
“Why?” He put one hand on the wall above my head.
He was significantly taller than I was, a hell of a lot bigger, too.
But I still wasn’t intimidated by him. He could offer a pissed-off glare to any asshole in a five-mile radius, but the moment he turned his eyes on me, there was always something softer in them.
Something I'd fought to ignore for longer than I cared to admit.
“’Cause I have no intention of bailin’ your ass outta jail.”
“Aww, darlin’,” he crooned, leaning in so that he was far too close. “You worried about me?”
I rolled my eyes and tried not to inhale through my nose. The man smelled so freaking good. He always did and it drove me absolutely crazy. Like sawdust and Irish Spring soap. No, it wasn’t something expensive from a bottle, but it affected me all the same.
Another thing that drove me crazy was his lack of respect for my personal space. As he leaned in closer, I had no choice but to back up against the wall. My entire body hummed as he stood there, staring down at me as though he wanted to eat me for dessert.
I wanted him to. There was no denying that.
But I wasn’t an idiot. If I thought I could get away with a short-term fling with Lynx, I might be up to the task.
Well, except for the fact that he’d slept with damn near every woman in this town and a shit ton more who weren’t from around here.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure his divorce was final.
Yep, and wasn’t that the shit. Ol’ Lynx Caine had up and married some two-bit hussy from fucking Austin, of all places.
The memory of him coming back to town, announcing that he’d gotten hitched to that crazy bitch was like an ice bath to my nerves. It shocked me back to reality and caused me to slip out from under his arm.
“Just let it be, Lynx,” I told him, not looking back.
Making my way to the bar, I searched the room until I found Billy. Wolfe was keeping him corralled in the corner.
I locked eyes with my ex-boyfriend, then pointed to the doors. “Get out. You’re not welcome in my bar.”
“Oh, come on, Reag—”
“You heard the lady,” Wolfe said, his tone ringing with amusement as he grabbed Billy by the shirt and shoved him toward the exit.
“You’ll be sorry you did this, Reagan! Goddammit!”
I shook my head. “No. I’m sorry for a lotta things I’ve done”—mainly wasting nearly a decade of my life with a piece of crap who treated me like shit—“but not this.”
Billy’s eyes strayed to something over my shoulder at the same time I felt the warmth of Lynx’s body as he pressed up against me.
Even from here I could feel how hard his body was, how freaking warm his skin was.
My traitorous heart skipped a beat and my belly fluttered.
“I ain’t worried,” Billy told Lynx. “You’ll be tossin’ her out like last week’s garbage in a week tops,” he snarled. “Like me, you’ll get tired of fuckin’ the skank.”
Yeah. Okay.
For about three seconds there, Billy had been home free. He could’ve turned around, head held high, and walked right out that door…
Unfortunately for him, the asshole never did know when to shut up.
This time when Lynx went after him, I didn’t bother to stop him.
In fact, I silently egged him on.