Page 1 of Summer with a Ranger

CHAPTER ONE

HUSDON

One week into my job as the newest recruit in Rhys Archer’s elite Texas Ranger Unit out of Austin and I was sitting on a beach in Tijuana, sipping cocktails decorated with pretty umbrellas and plastic red cherries.

Hudson Whittington, Texas Ranger.

Who would have thought it?

It wasn’t a bad way to start a new job, if I didn’t say so myself. Not only did I pull undercover work as my first assignment, but I also got to wrangle the floating eye candy tourist population for a solid seven days.

My first wasn’t a long assignment, but I knew the gig for what it was: a test.

Make contact, get the product, and swan around for a full week. Don’t trip yourself up, and don’t break your cover. Come back home when you’re done.

Those were the rules I was given to earn a shiny brass star and a white hat. My sandbox to play in. Do the job, and do it well, or haul my ass back to California where I spent the last nine years as a fixture in the LA Fire Department.

I’d never had a problem with my career choices and I loved my job, but now that Archer had given me a taste of what I could do on this side of the border, I wasn’t sure I could go back.

Which made this a pass/fail task with an ultimatum at the other end. It was kind of easier, to be fair.

And three days into my allocated time on the beach, I was halfway there. I made the contact, tasted drugs for the second time in my life—the first time during college and I fucking hated the lack of control over my body and thoughts—and made a faux friend for life in my Tijuana dealer, Tag. The name had a ... nice ring to it. I was scheduled to pick up the product I was supposed to pretend to distribute back home in Cali in a few days, then head home.

Only if I had my way, I wasn’t going back to Cali. Austin, Texas, would be my new/old-to-me baseline. The dirt I grew up tasting.

Memories of my childhood attempted to flood back: the house I used to live in, the family that fell apart. That was how I ended up on a different side of the country. My chest closed at the emotional deluge I rejected on sight, and I sucked in a long, slow breath.

Not the time. Or the place.

Because right now I had a date with a beach.

I sank into the divot my body made in my borrowed beach towel, the sand accommodating my mass gracefully, heating my back in the sun-warmed sand. It wasn’t midday yet, and the extra endorphins already flooded my body. Being a Texas Ranger might not be like this every day, but right now, I’d take it.

Of course, the singular doubt in my gut remained that maybe I wasn't as worthy as Archer thought.

Walking into his office was the singularly most nerve wracking thing I'd ever done. The quiet man with rust coloured hair and a scarred face stared across the desk at me while I tried not to fidget like a teenage kid called in to see the principal.

I’d always been proud of being a firefighter, but that career choice seemed flimsy the moment I walked into the Austin unit’s office. The space was filled with men in pressed shirts and white hats, that little star badge displayed somewhere on their person.

Dressed in faded jeans, boots I did up at the entrance foyer, and an old gray LA Fire Dept. tee, I stood out in the worst of ways.

Not that I felt lesser in any physical sense; I was more than a match for the team in terms of muscle and height, but ego wise... I was born and bred in Texas and made the move to LA chasing sun and surf.

And a little excitement.

Those career choices got me laid, paid and in front of Archer, or at least that was what he told me. How he picked me out of the population of previous and current Texan residents I couldn't say, only that I was grateful for the chance.

That, and my intention not to fuck up.

That seed of doubt dissipated with a fine spray of sand and salt water dripping on me. I cracked one eye open to find a visage of tanned and toned skin in a sapphire blue bikini standing before me in a sarong. One muscular thigh slipped out from beneath the gold and blue filmy material.

The girl perched on her towel she placed right beside me, closer than any stranger should be, drop dead stunning or not. My stomach tensed, and not by design, just from her proximity. One slim arm reached out behind her. She arched her back slightly with one leg bent, and the other straight out as she looked down at the imperiously.

“You're my bodyguard for the next four days.”

"I'm your what?” I raised both eyebrows and tried not to waggle them, but holy shit on a beach ball was she gorgeous. "I didn't know they made them like you in Tijuana."

She smirked, nary a giggle in sight, flicking beachy blonde waves over her shoulder. Everything about this woman was hard, in a goddess sort of way. From the set of her mouth to the fiery blaze behind deep blue eyes, her straight spine, the way she sat...everything was utter perfection to my eyes.

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