Page 14 of Summer with a Ranger

Shit. Archer really pulled the wool over my eyes with that one and I was far from proud of it. Not that he seemed fazed that I slept with the newb, even though it horrified me more than a little bit. I assumed I’d be able to sweep the whole situation away as a summer fling in undercover work. That shit happened all the time. Then I'd transfer to another unit and the intimate skin-on-skin moments we shared would become stuff of urban legend.

Instead, my fling was my partner, confessing all sorts of flowery bullshit I didn’t believe in and now we were headed to...

Ba da ba boom–

A place called Love Beach. Hello, South Carolina. Where we were supposed to be newlyweds and keep an eye on a target that should never be part of our scope.

On the dash sat the plain gold band I was supposed to wear but couldn’t bring myself to face the confining feeling, even if it was fake as fuck.

Hudson, the show off, put his on hours ago before we headed into Love Beach after our road trip.

No fucking lie. That’s what the place was called, and we were headed there right now, with a fresh change of panties in a packed truck. The manilla folder sat in my lap and I once again sat gunshot in Hudson’s truck heading into the stupidly-named town in South Carolina.

Instead of trying to even things with Hudson, or deal with the way he kissed me back in the office, I opted to ignore the huge beefy Ranger in the driver’s seat and chose instead to study the small town’s main street. Not overpopulated, it was still obvious which of those wandering along the row of shops and service providers was a local and which were the tourists purely by their dress.

The locals were much more laid back, and the travellers donned enormous floppy hats as their weapon of choice that had the locals dodging back on more than one occasion as they shared a sidewalk together.

The shops looked clean, if brightly coloured, as if a family or PG rated movie vomited all over the place. And here we were, supposed to watch for a smuggler who escaped Texas Rangers on their own turf, study the target’s habits, and bring back all our observations without doing a single thing to apprehend the man who took three lives on Texas land not a month before.

Was I impressed?

No ma’am, I was not.

Apparently, Archer hadn’t got his ass in gear enough to get the man himself, but Hudson was as gung ho with this little test as he had been in Tijuana.

I wondered if his tastes in women and relationships fluctuated as fast as his attention. I rather suspected they did and I was simply a fast and furious summer passion in a long line of fling-like conquests reaching from California to Texas, no matter what he said back in the office, or any day since.

He kept insisting we were fine and it wasn’t a week long thing.

Fine, two weeks, then.

The blur of color along the main street melded into a rainbow of pastels, and as soon as I noted the ice cream parlor on one end of a block, my stomach rumbled.

Hudson laughed, his deep voice reverberating around the cab in a far too appealing sound.

“Don’t do that,” I snapped.

“Do what?” He affected a wounded look, all puppy dog eyes, downturned mouth and wrinkly forehead.

I slapped the arm he slid across my shoulders, pushing him back. I sighed. The man was relentless, and not in a good way. Or maybe I did like his ways, and just hated that about myself, too.

I had a whole lot of hate for a stack of things right now.

I spotted something I didn’t hate and threw out a hand, slapping the passenger window with my knuckles. “Stop here.”

Hudson slammed on the brakes, eliciting a stream of honks behind us and dived into a space way too small for his monster of a vehicle. “This good?”

I pried open a squinted eye. “Do I need to order a funeral service for any small animals or grannies?”

“Hey, that’s not nice. And you never know. Grannies in Texas be badass.” He smirked.

I nodded at his nonsense and hauled my ass out of the truck. “Stay.”

His laugh followed me as he bounded to the sideway and fell into step at my side. “Not a dog, Skye.”

“But you’re still my bitch.” The barb was hollow and meaningless. A wave of tiredness hit me. “Where are we staying?”

“I mean, I’m happy to be your bitch but my girl’s gotta tell me what’s up, otherwise I can’t take care of her. ‘Kay?” He nuzzled my temple.

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