Page 1 of Texas Hold Em'
CHAPTER 1
JAMESON
Beads of water rolled off my shoulders as I stepped out of the shower and wrapped my towel around my waist. Gone were the days of being able to air dry buck-ass naked in my own damn house. Now, because of Jackson, I had a guest.
A blonde-haired, blue-eyed, gun-slinging, southern belle, bad-ass guest.
Carrie Hart.
The Texas Ranger had only been crashing with me for three nights and I already felt terribly displaced in my own home. I’d always fancied myself a lone wolf. Sure, I ran with the Devil’s Luck, but when the sun went down and the day closed out, I liked coming home to an empty apartment that smelled like tobacco and leather.
Now it was already beginning to smell like woman.
Carrie had more fucking shower products than any one person had any right to. My shower had four corner shelves, three of which had been empty ever since I moved in four years ago. Now they overflowed with multicolored bottles of products I couldn’t pronounce the names of that were supposed to fix problems I never knew existed, like frizzy hair, uneven complexions, armpit hair, dull complexions, color-treated hair, and oily complexions.
With a sigh, I padded quietly across the main living space of my apartment and shouldered open the metal door beside the fridge. It led out into what I called the pit: a tiny courtyard accessible by my unit only. Still wrapped in my towel, I plucked my package of cigarettes from where it rested on a jutted-out brick in the wall. Inside the box was a lighter that was damn near out of fuel, but it had just enough to light me up. I took a long drag and tilted my head back to exhale, letting the plume of smoke rise over my head and curl up, thinning out and disappearing overhead as it went. The skies were blue, and as I smoked, an airplane roared overhead.
Carrie didn’t smoke, but she claimed to like the fresh air, so she’d already made some changes to my little courtyard.
Before her arrival three days ago, the place had been barren. Broken slabs of concrete had been filled in with loose gravel and that suited me just fine. There were no chairs and I didn’t need any. I came out there to smoke and clear my head and that was all. But Carrie claimed she saw potential in my smoking sanctuary, and once I had all her boxes unloaded from the moving truck, she dragged two patio chairs out there and set them up.
The chairs would have been fine if she’d left it at that, but she didn’t. She brought out a small collapsible side table too. It was neon yellow, a stark contrast to the dull gray bricks. She put a leafy plant with little pink buds beginning to blossom on the table as well as two small candles and a pack of matches. After coming home late last night from a long day of work in the sun on Sam’s bar, I’d come out here eager for a quiet smoke and found Carrie reading by candlelight with a glass of wine in hand.
So I smoked in the bathroom with the window cracked.
The woman was a nuisance. Everywhere I went, there she was.
And where was she sleeping, one might wonder?
Well, in my bed of course.
I didn’t need the bells and whistles of a big place. My apartment, along with the other units in the building, used to be nothing but a giant spacious warehouse located down a long road out of town. There wasn’t much else around besides a pizza joint and a gas stationand I liked it that way. Eight years ago a developer bought the warehouse, cleared it out, and sectioned it off into rental units. I rented for the first year until my landlord put it up for sale, and I bought it off him. I had no reason to leave. The place was cool, quiet, and secluded. Nobody bothered me here.
Until now.
Carrie had initially insisted she sleep on the couch since she was putting me out, and even though I’d been inclined to accept her offer, I slapped on my best gentlemanly smile and insisted I’d sleep on the couch. This was temporary, after all, and a lady deserved a room with a locking door for privacy and security.
She’d been grateful and wasted no time changing my sheets to replace with her own—atrocious pastel yellow things with little white flowers all over the place. The woman was a walking and talking contradiction. A mere week and a half ago she was on her hands and knees beside Mason, doing everything she could to keep him and Suzie alive. She was tough as nails. Hardcore, relentless, and, as Mason had said, completely fearless.
And yet she liked bedsheets with little flowers on them.
Maybe it was the southern girl in her.
I took another long drag and resented that my smoke was almost done. I had another long day ahead of me at the bar. Things were slowly coming together but we were getting to the nitty-gritty shit now before we’d have to bring contractors in like electricians, plumbers, drywallers, tilers, and all that shit. We could have done it ourselves, but Jackson reasoned out that we needed to make sure we didn’t get too caught up in busy work when Bates was watching from the sideline.
Mason’s brush with death at the hands of Bates and his new enforcer, a bastard named Moss, had been the wake-up call we all needed.
I flicked my cigarette on the pavement stones and watched the ember die before I went back inside and locked the door behind me. I tightened the towel around my waist as I moved through the kitchen and looked up when the bedroom door opened with a soft click.
Carrie stood in the doorway wearing an oversized T-shirt and her blonde hair in a messy knot on top of her head. She reached her arms up and indulged in a stretch that lifted the shirt up over her thighs and hips, showing off a pair of purple underwear cut high on her hips.
Her cheeks turned pink when she spotted me. “Oh. Morning. I didn’t see you there.” She tugged hastily at the end of her T-shirt.
“Morning.”
Her blue eyes followed me as I went to the sofa and collected my jeans and black T-shirt. She chewed on her bottom lip and folded her arms, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe. “I was going to run out and get coffee and bagels.” She cocked her head to the side as I shrugged into my shirt. “Can I bring some back for you?”
“I’m not that much of a breakfast person.”
