Their Ex's Redrock Four (3 page)

“Right,” he admitted. “Morning, beautiful.”

“Morning, handsome.” She smiled back, hoping he liked the endearment. He looked a bit surprised, and she said, “You are handsome, devastatingly hot.
Hot.
”

She turned away, hoping to hide her blush as she searched for her purses, finding them, then starting to transfer the things from her clutch purse of the night before with her head down.

“Take you to your shop. How’s your work today?” he asked.

Good, he was going to let her gushing about him go. “Hmm, I have to go in and arrange any orders, but schools on break all week so I have Shannon there all day.” Then she took a breath to broach the next subject. “It’s a good thing because this afternoon, I need to go get my things from Rowdie’s.”

Problem with this... seeing Finn again and where to put her things. It seemed so bold to just bring them to Vincent’s

“I’ll take care of it, beautiful.”

Her purse transfer finished, she raised her head. “I unpacked everything over there.”

“I’ll pack,” he stated firmly, and she saw he was setting a plate with toast and eggs on the island counter. His side.

She wandered over and he handed her a fork. “Umm, I really want to pack my own stuff.” She was surprised Vincent made toast. That was two things he could make in the kitchen.

Vincent left, then returned with a mug of coffee to set by her breakfast … Coffee he’d made her.

“We’ll both go,” he finally decided.

Tess got some eggs on her fork, then watched Vincent set his plate next to hers. Breakfast
together.
Things she’d not felt in a long time … maybe like since the beginning of her marriage or maybe never quite like this, began warming inside her.

“Umm,” she muttered. “I just don’t know what to do with all my stuff.” She paused chewing, then said, “Maybe I should get a storage unit, then I can fit stuff from the house in it too.”

“I have shit too,” Vincent agreed. “Lots at the big house.”

“Big house?” Tess questioned, then biting into her toast.

Vincent glanced at her, and after he looked back at his meal, her eyes roved over him. He was wearing a long sleeve dark blue thermal that hugged his muscular upper body and he had on faded jeans with a belt and big silver buckle of a flying hawk. She’d like to get a closer look at the hawk, but she’d have to bend over to do it. His feet were bare and it was a sexy male look.

“In Silver Canyon estates,” Vincent muttered.

Tess was in an appreciative Vincent daze, but that got her attention. Rich people lived there. Like
really
rich. She knew many of the tribe members, especially ones on their council lived out there. There hadn’t even been a Silver Canyon Estate, until after the Indian Casino was built. Making many of them rich.

Wow,
Vincent must be wealthy. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Of course, she knew he just ran charities … something only rich men did. But it appeared he was also partially in charge of Redrock. They’d been too busy in bed and dodging ex’s fire for her to really register all those things about him.

She was just going to ask him if he would maybe lose that big house, when he asked her the same thing. “You won’t keep the house, baby?”

“Umm,” she muttered, kind of stuck on Vincent being rich. “Maybe, but I don’t trust him with my stuff.”

“How much stuff?”

That attracted her gaze back to him. He sure didn’t dress like a rich man. Boy, she was glad. Vincent in a thermal and jeans was so hot she could just stop everything and look at him all day … but in a suit, maybe not so much. Steven wore suits and come to think of it she really didn’t like that.

“Baby?” his voice sounded again. “Where you at?”

“Just slow in the morning,” she lied. “Enough stuff I am going to get a storage unit,” she decided. “Oh, and movers too.”

He turned to face her, leaning closer. “Now that part I really got. I’ll take care of moving you.”

She searched his face for what she didn’t know. Did he really mean it? Lugging her stuff was quite personal and well kind of boyfriend like, at least. “Okay.” She decided she really liked the idea.

“Just going to end up here eventually,” he declared, then lifted his coffee mug to his lips. His eyes stayed on her, judging her reaction, which was surprise.

Vincent watched how cute Tess was avoiding what he’d said. But it was true, and he was just going to move her stuff to his place without telling her. He had a modern barn out back that had his motorcycle, quads, a big motorhome he used sometimes, and lots of space for both their things. He’d smooth it over later. After she found out.

She kept her head down, fiddling with her coat and purse, until he got her out the door and he’d turned back from locking it. He caught her wrist right before she was going to take the first step down off the porch. He tugged, until he had her where he wanted her … pressed full frontal.

“Waited long enough.” His voice, always rough, sounded uncompromising.

“Waited for what ...” she exclaimed with a softness that always aroused him. Her purse banged his hip as he pressed the small of her back keeping her tight and keeping those breasts of hers nicely pillowed on his chest. She had on some sort of jeans skirt. She wore skirts a lot, and he liked it a lot, but it took concentration to keep his hands from going under the hem.

“For morning tongue,” he told her startled blue eyes. Then he dipped his head. Glad a second later when she rose up on her cowboy boots to meet his mouth.

He tangled his hand in her silky, red hair and kissed her until she was practically climbing up his body to get more. Then he broke their searching lips apart. “Every morning. Kiss,” he ordered her.  

“It’s hard to just kiss you and stop,” she admitted, fiddling with his hair as she spoke. “I guess that is your way of telling me I need to initiate stuff more,” she muttered.

He pressed his lips near her ear. “Maybe,” he muttered back.

With Luna he was a dog lapping around her and all the sexual attention had to be on her and how
she
liked it. With Tess this was all new and it felt fucking fantastic. He’d known he was a tough thinker, but he’d not known he had all this, “bossy” as Tess called it, in him.

No way was he going back. And he was pretty certain his woman liked it that way.

He didn’t answer her, just guided her to his truck and drove her to her shop with the plan he’d come back to get her in a couple hours.

They kissed lightly before she got out. She initiated it, and he smoothed his knuckles down her cheek once. “Call your lawyer about your ex’s financials.”

She nodded. “Okay.” Then she started to get out, but paused partially out the door to look back at him. “And, Vincent, I really like this... Us.” She whispered the last part, then she was swinging her stellar ass, covered by a short skirt, up to the back door of her shop. While he watched every move.

FOUR /
WANT THAT SWEETNESS FOR ME

Vincent headed to the Silver Canyon house intent on getting his personal stuff, getting the rest ready to be picked up, then getting out. Last time he would have to be in the place, would be the best.

When he got there, he got sideswiped. He’d been hauling up the grand staircase, intent on getting to his upstairs office to pack the few things he’d left there, when the master bedroom door opened just as he was set to walk by it. He braced himself expecting to see Luna, but fuck him, Coronado walked out. He should have damn well checked the five car garage for cars, but he’d been certain Luna would be camped at Corondao’s ... not the other way around.

He got a close look at him for the first time and he saw that Coronado was a tall Italian with black curly hair interspersed with some gray. The prick was in a blue, floor-length robe and at least he was as surprised to see him as Vincent was.

“Unbelievable,” Vincent uttered, stopping, and then backing up.

Coronado would have been handsome but for a severely broken nose that had not been set right.

“She’s too thoroughly screwed right now to see you,” Coronado clipped with a curled upper lip.

Vincent didn’t utter a word — he just turned and headed back down the staircase. Coronado blurted behind him. “
What
kind of pussy man lets his wife be screwed by another man, in his own home.”

Vincent hit the foyer without comment, but when he reached the front door and pulled it open he looked back and up at Coronado. “Man, I hope you like her, I really do. I’ll give you the fucking house if you’ll just keep her.”

Vincent didn’t wait for a reply; he just left, shutting the door. He walked to his truck assessing the events … seemed his blackmail of Luna was shot. It’d been Coronado in those pictures. Seeing him up close and personal had proved the grainy picture ID. But he wasn’t going to give up. He would come up with a way to keep Luna on a short leash if he had to toss all his money at it to do it.  

Since he was stalled getting his belongings, he went to WTSF for a few hours to catch up on paperwork. He wasn’t officially back, but time off or not, paperwork never stopped. When he walked into the main reception area, he saw WTSF’s office manager, Carly, sitting behind the reception desk.

“Hey, Olive-Oyl,” he greeted, walking toward her. They had a running joke.

“Hey, Popeye,” she called, smiling back at him.

“We lose another teenage receptionist?” he asked, leaning on the side of the desk beside her.

Carly looked up at him with sparkling gray eyes. She had wavy, long blonde hair, and an asshole husband she’d dumped earlier that year. “One a week, I swear,” she muttered. “But this last one was pregnant and she’s having her baby.” Carly filled him in, then they talked about a security gig he was going to have to be the lead on, when he came back.

“You bill for the wife I caught with the masseuse?” he asked, watching Carly’s gaze track someone in the offices to the right side of them.

He knew by the look in her gray eyes who she was looking at. It had to be Cabe. Cabe never saw or maybe never “got” the looks she gave him when she thought Cabe wasn’t looking, but Vincent did. He didn’t have to turn to look and know Cabe was back there.

“Yeah, I did,” Carly answered his question, then she whispered, “Cabe took her back.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow, seeing the sadness reflected on Carly’s face. If Cabe hadn’t been married, Vincent sure as hell would have informed him that Carly, who Cabe had known since their oil days, always had, still had, and always would have a thing for him.  

Vincent shook his head disappointed … for his friend. But he’d keep his opinion to himself. It just took a man as long as it took him, to give up on the promise of what was really
not
there.

It was noon when Tess heard the bell on the door ring to her shop. She swiped at her eyes, looking up to see Vincent striding toward the front counter. Wow … he was in her shop, she should be excited.

“Beautiful, what is it?” Dang, she couldn’t hide anything from him. She glanced over her shoulder to see that Shannon was in the walk-in cold locker as Vincent rounded the counter and arrived next to her. For a second she thought about fibbing, because he had enough problems with Luna.

But Vincent curled her into his embrace and the words just fell out of her mouth. “I’ve lost the shop, unless I want to send Steven to prison.” Then, horribly, she burst into tears and burrowed into Vincent.

“Let me guess,” he said. “He forged your name and double mortgaged it.”

She nodded against him, crying harder, while praying Shannon or even worse a customer wouldn’t walk in. Then Vincent rocked her world, shaking it to the core and rearranging it.

“It’s
you,
baby, not the damn building.
You’re
the business.”

Why that made her cry harder, she didn’t know, but Vincent took it all with his hand cupped to the back of her head, while holding her tight. She didn’t know what she’d do without him.

Her sobs finally quieted into the shoulder of his thermal, wet from her tears. Then he did a pure Vincent thing. “Here, use the end of my shirt to wipe your eyes.”

That’s how Shannon found them with her pulling up Vincent’s thermal, exposing his ripped abdomen, while she bent forward as if she were drooling over his six pack abs.

“Sorry!” Shannon squeaked. She was a tad shy.

Tess unbent from Vincent and the bottom of his shirt. “It’s okay, Shannon. This is Vincent.”

“Hey, Shannon,” Vincent said, pulling her back into his side, where his arm crossed her back, then his hand fitted into the waistband of her jeans skirt.

“Hey, Mr. Whitehorse,” Shannon answered.

Okay, so Shannon did know Vincent. “I’ll be back in time to close, Shannon. You call if you need anything, okay.”

“Sure, Tess.” Shannon did a small wave, then marched back into the cooler.

“Good kid,” Vincent said. “Know her dad.”

Ah yes,
Tess thought, she remembered then that Shannon’s dad might work at Redrock. She picked up her purse from under the front counter, and then Vincent guided her outside. Once in his truck they sat to talk.

“So if you sell the building, you get out from under?” he asked quietly.

She sighed heavily, nodding as he reached over and clasped her hand, and she answered, “It should sell for at least the amount of the mortgages.” She tilted her head, glancing at him. “I’m surprised you aren’t advocating I send him to prison.”

Vincent squeezed her hand. “Thought about it. But it’d break that sweetness you got and I want that for me.”

Oh my god.
Tess sucked in an amazed breath. “Okay,” she whispered. She never thought she could find a man that would make her feel so good even in the midst of an awful situation.

“Got space at Redrock. For a bigger flower shop.”

“Vincent!” she gasped, then he pulled her across the seat, until he had his arm around her and his hand on her chin lifting her gaze to his. He studied her astonished gaze for long moments.

“Give you a really good break on rent, until you sell this place.”