Page 1 of Merry with a Ranger

CHAPTER 1

NASH

This assignment was an utter waste of time.

I stared at the waves slapping the shore where the turquoise waves crested into golden sands with pale foam, and pretended I loved frolicking in the fucking sand like everyone else at Love Beach.

Then I cursed myself as a liar inside my own head before I shoved my toes deeper in the sand, praying for a thousand paper cuts to end the monotony of the first four days of my case here. The assignment I begged for with a different workplace and had it handed to me on a sandy platter in a new one.

But I didn’t accrue the pain I needed as I linked my arms around my bent knees, letting my jacket hang around my body as I stared out the crashing waves. The cove would’ve been quieter than this overpopulated spot where tourists were desperate for a glimpse of heat in the midst of winter. A few days from Christmas, it seemed everyone in the destination hot spot tried to frolic in the waves while risking frostbite on occasion—okay, dramatics, but close enough.

But if I limited myself to a quiet area, my head would’ve been too loud.

Here, at least, I could hate on myself in the overbearing company of a hundred other cheery people who pretended to cover their own insecurities in brand names and out of season tan lines behind the shade of a giant, unlit Christmas tree that watched us from the boardwalk overlooking the ocean.

Love Beach was so far from Texas in every sense it wasn’t funny. A state I never thought I’d return to, and the fact I did miss that patch of dirt imbued with so much sin and blood it wasn’t funny that I almost laughed out loud. My heritage of that place disgusted me, but the job Rhys Archer offered me in return for a second chance at sanity on a place called home seemed like a good idea before a bomber blew himself back to hell with my grandfather’s name on his lips.

The not so perfect welcome home present.

My teeth ground together as I fixed my gaze on some innocuous point beyond the horizon. The strange things that came to light when I wasn’t looking. Or maybe it wasn’t funny at all. Instead of seeing the details of what I should be picking out for this case, the only thing I spotted was the one person who could make this day better.

Or so much worse.

Depended on how fucked up my mind was when I reflected on it later.

Because the thing wasn’t a thing at all, but a who.

Her. Bonnie Little.

I shouldn’t have looked. Not even after ten long years, but I would know her anywhere. Still, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from how her long, tanned legs peeked out from beneath the hem of her white sarong that flicked up every now and then to give me a tantalizing glimpse of her ankles.

No jewelry, because she never had been into that. It made buying her presents utter hell.

But I knew those legs. I knew those thighs, her waist, and hips, and everything else above her silky, filmy looking sarong that belonged to her. I didn’t need to, but I dragged my eyes up her body anyway, torturing myself further with the girl who left me ten years ago without so much as a single word of goodbye.

The way body curved should’ve been illegal, enhanced from the last time I saw her. Pale blonde hair hung straight past her shoulders and curled at the ends just enough for man to wrap his finger around and tug before he drove himself slowly insane over that body hidden behind layers of gossamer wrapped around her. The rest of Bonnie Little was hidden beneath a white cardigan she hugged tight around her. But it didn’t matter.

I remembered everything about the girl I fell for hard and fast and never recovered from.

What it felt like to kiss those soft, dusky lips that parted temptingly when she sighed. How she liked my thumb digging into her hip when I arched over her, and she submitted beneath me.

Everything.

Before she ran away and left me high and dry, wondering where the fuck she went at the end of our senior year.

The first girl I fell for. The only girl I ever loved.

I found her aqua gaze that matched the sea at the same time as she flicked a wayward glance over her shoulder.

Those lips I could almost feel on mine, despite being dozens of feet away apart, hitched on a breath, stalling her easy gait. The chattering crowd that had disappeared for me rushed back as her lips silently framed my name before she picked up the material wrapped around legs and whirled away up the beach, away from me.

Nineteen year old Nash would’ve chased after her. Nineteen year old Nash would have demanded where she went the nightshe disappeared. The night when she blocked all my calls, and changed her number.

The night she ran.

He would have asked why she broke my heart, and never came back. He would have cared.

Today’s Nash tipped his head back as I studied the way she darted away from me, already lost in a pensive memory of Bonnie Little I thought was long locked away behind wall with a plethora of clusterfuck of one-night stands with all the other blonde women who never matched up to the shade of who she should have been in my life. I never could replace her, no matter how hard I tried.

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