Desert Angel (Family Justice Book 2) (53 page)

“Stop fucking wiggling,” an angry, muffled voice demanded.

Parker. Shit. It all came rushing back. Dinner with his folks. Uncle Matt’s deadly margaritas. Driving back to the Villa. Sneaking around in the barn. Polishing off more tequila. With Parker.

Why did it seem like she was cocooned in some sort of man-shroud with half his body covering hers and the other half weighed down by something else. Struggling to untangle from him, she started pushing at his dead weight. Feebly, but she tried.

“Get off me!” she groaned. “You snore and I need to pee.”

It took a couple of minutes of heavy effort to get them both upright where she realized they’d passed out cold on the big round table in a bed of riding blankets. Nice.

But the icing on the cake? Although they were both dressed, when she managed to pry both eyes open at the same time and looked at him, she was horrified to see that dangling from his arm were the pink panties she’d worn last night. Somehow, and she shuddered to think how, they’d gone from being on her body to his entire arm in a leg opening as the pale pink against his cowboy heartthrob denim mocked her.

She and Parker seemed to notice those damning panties at the exact same moment, both of them letting go simultaneously with a tortured sounding groan.

“What did you do?” she croaked—the words causing shards of hung over agony to pierce her brain.

“What did
I
do?” he ground out indignantly. “I’m not the one with no underwear on,” he snapped.

She needed a bathroom—like stat. Not only did she desperately need to pee, now she had to hope she could tell just how fast she was going to hell. The suspicion that they might have succumbed to an interlude of drunken sex made her stomach gurgle.

With a strangled, “Ugh,” she slid carefully off the table relieved to discover that yes she actually could feel her feet. Unfortunately, the room chose that moment to spin. Clutching her head, Angie closed her eyes and swallowed down the embarrassing vomit threatening to join the proceedings.

Unable to deal with Parker while she felt like the walking death, she wobbled carefully toward the door only to find him hot on her heels.

“Move it or be carried,” he grunted, crowding her from behind with his big body.

Instinctively, just like when she was a kid, Angie shoved him with her shoulder. “You’re not the boss of me,” she gritted out, not caring that she sounded like a peeved five-year-old.

Thinking she could stomp away, leaving him in her high-and-mighty dust, was a joke. Instead, she stumbled and lurched awkwardly, her hand on the wall of the barn for support as she made her way along.

At the door, she fumbled with the heavy latch and snarled when it didn’t immediately open.

“Move,” he scolded on a throaty growl pushing her hands away and attacking the latch himself. “Don’t want you to break a nail.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she scolded.

His response was a husky croak.

Note to my bad self,
tequila was most certainly not our drink. Maybe a couple but not enough to get falling down shitfaced because the other side of that? Well, she didn’t know about separately, but together they were one snarling, mean-spirited unit of tequila excess. Not their best look.

Angie tripped over the door jamb but managed to keep from face planting as the door swung open and bright sunlight smacked ’em both dead on.

Groaning, she covered her eyes and headed for the house on auto-pilot until he practically knocked her down in his haste.

“Back off, counselor,” she ground out.

“Move your ass or . . .” he drawled then gave her a shove along the path.

How they made it into the house was a blur, but they had with Parker quickly dropping onto a stool at the kitchen island, his head cradled in his hands.

“Do I smell coffee?” he mumbled to no one in particular.

Leaving him to figure that part out himself, she scuttled away as quickly as she could and barricaded herself in the powder room to assess the damage.

W
HAT FUCKING DAY WAS IT?

Ugh.
His head felt like Satan’s crypt. Full of dark shit and ready to burst into flames at any moment.

Coffee. He needed coffee. And some Advil.

Luckily, he knew the kitchen well so he was able to bumble through the steps of pouring a generous mug of the hot brew without making too much of a mess. Back on the stool, Parker kept one foot on the floor as an anchor and hunched over the mug of steaming coffee while massaging his temples.

Slowly, the fog cleared. It was Saturday. That was good. No one would be looking for him. That was one problem out of the way. Which left that other thing, the waking up with Angie pressed against him and her underwear looped around his damn arm.
That
thing
. Ugh.

The hot coffee tasted bitter as it washed over his tongue and down his throat leaving behind a burning trail of leftover tequila vapors. The only thing keeping him sane at the moment was the relative certainty he was clinging to that he hadn’t done anything too horribly stupid despite the evidence of the pink silk presently pushed into his back pocket.

Nothing much from the end of their drunken frolic remained in his memory, but he was pretty damn sure there was no fucking way he’d had the ability to perform considering how trashed he was. That and the fact that he awoke fully dressed, boots still on, and as far as he could tell, still wearing his briefs, went a long way to keeping him from overreacting.

The panties, though. That bothered him. How the hell had her panties ended up wrapped around his arm? He suspected they’d never know for sure.

“Thanks for pouring me one, too,” he heard a voice gripe.

Slamming a mug onto the counter loud enough that he grimaced at the jarring sound, Angie got herself a coffee and joined him, only from the other side of the island.

“What time is it?” she asked before taking her first sip.

With his head still in his hands, Parker peered between his fingers at the clock on the wall. “Nine ten,” he told her.

She nodded but didn’t say anything else or look in his direction.

Parker looked her over, searching for clues. She’d done a damn good job of pulling it together although the buttons on her blouse were out of sync, making the fabric gap at just the right spot to give him a clear glimpse of the sheer bra she had on and a peek-a-boo vantage point for a dusty pink nipple.

He should probably tell her, but the view was so enticing and offered a distraction from the bass drum pounding in his head so he said nothing—just sat there, sipping his coffee, slowly coming back to life while flat-out fantasizing about licking the tiny nub and nibbling at it while she thrashed and moaned.

“I want my undies back,” she snapped. Was that indignation he detected in her voice? He didn’t know exactly how he came to be the one in possession of her panties, but he was certain he hadn’t wrestled them off her. She had nerve playing the outraged innocent.

“The fuck you say,” he drawled sarcastically to her stupid request. “You gave ’em to me and I’m keeping them.”

He had no idea if any of that was true. He just liked needling her.

“You’re an asshole when you’re hung over.”

He snickered. Yeah. He was. “I’ll make it up to you tonight.”

“How ya figure?”

“’Cause I’ll be the one cheering the loudest when y’all take the stage at Pete’s.”

Flashing her his very best although decidedly hung over, Tom Cruise style toothy grin, he added, “And if you’re a good girl,” he paused when he saw a flare that threatened the safety of his testicles move across her expression and grinned broader, “I’ll invite you to the mic at the end of the night.”

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

“Because Pete asked Desert Thunder to close out after karaoke.”

“You’re playing tonight, too?”

“Uh-huh.”

He watched a slew of emotions shift on her face and waited for her comeback. Would she sing with him in public? She had to know the significance of him making such an offer. There’d be no doubt what his fucking intentions were if he ever got her next to him on stage.

A soft but getting louder by the second commotion was building behind him making Parker swivel in his seat to see what was going on. He heard Red’s voice and someone else.

From a different angle, he saw that Alex, Cam, and Drae had appeared, standing off to the side across from him and Angie and away from where Meghan was coming from.

What the hell was going on? Those three looked mighty suspicious over there—almost like they were waiting for something. And how the hell had they managed to creep up on them without being noticed?
Fucking hangover.

Meghan’s gentle laughter filled the air. As she came closer, he heard her say, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Some water? We can wait in the kitchen. I’m sure Carmen will find her shortly and . . .”

As she rounded the archway into the big open room, Meghan stumbled to a halt when she caught sight of him and Angie, a look of worried tension all over her face.

“Oh, my! Angie. There you are. We were looking all over for you.”

The look Meghan gave him made his skin prickle. Parker sat up straighter. Red’s tone signaled something was up. He glanced sharply at Angie, her mouth hanging open and a look of pure shock that slammed into him.

What the fuck?

Following the direction of her gaze, he turned back toward Meghan and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding.

“Uh, Angie,” Meghan tittered nervously. “You’ve got a visitor.”

Last year, an up and coming turd in the D.A.’s office had blindsided Parker with a surprise witness at the eleventh hour of a trial that left him flabbergasted and flat-footed. Two things he did not like. This, right here, felt a little like that.

For Angie’s part . . . she became a statue. One made of cold marble because whatever color she’d regained after washing up and having some coffee had quickly disappeared. She was pale as death and looked like she saw a ghost.

Not surprisingly, this so-called visitor had a slimy sounding, unctuous voice that set his nerves on edge.

“Querida. Why do you seem so surprised? Surely you knew how impossible you are to give up.”

Was this douchebag kidding?

“A-Aldo,” Angie sputtered. “What are you doing here?”

A deep, red haze seeped into Parker’s vision. So this little fucker was that Esperanza prick. Prepared to hate him on sight, the puny hipster didn’t disappoint. Wearing a blazer so blindingly white it looked fake, he had a fucking navy blue pocket square that matched his slacks and the polka-dotted tie that perfectly complemented the medium blue of his dress shirt. The red haze turned dark and dangerous. Fucker was wearing skinny jeans. Who the hell wore those things? They were fucking undignified if you asked him.

All in all, Parker thought he looked perfect for target practice. What in the fucking fuck had she ever seen in this pretentious poser?

He watched silently as the one-dimensional stick drawing masquerading as a dude, skirted around the island and went to a still speechless Angie.

“Darling.” He chuckled.

Parker already hated the asshole’s heavy accent.

“What is this you are wearing? Is this how the horse girls dress?” he asked as he went in for a two cheeked Euro-hug. “You do know there’s a hole for every button, hmmm?”

The minute the shithead touched her, Parker was on his feet. Uh, he didn’t think so . . . but before he could take a step, Meghan was right there with her hand on his shoulder and a warning look in her eyes.

She gasped and looked down. Seeing her blouse gaping open, she glared at Parker as she fixed the damage. When Angie found her voice, she took a hasty step backward and crossed her arms in front of her. She couldn’t say back off any louder, but the stick figure didn’t seem to notice.

“Um, it’s cowgirls and I am not your darling.”

He’d had enough. Moving from Meghan’s restraining grip, he started in Angie’s direction only to find Alex coming at him from behind. He felt him yank on his pocket, sending him off balance so he had to plop back down, followed by his hand doing something else in the area of the pocket.

Whispering so only Parker could hear, Alex drawled, “Pink isn’t your color, shithead.”

His hand immediately swung to his rear and slid inside the pocket where Alex had stuffed Angie’s panties deeper where they wouldn’t be seen.

He glared at his friend with frustration and escalating possessiveness that he knew Alex would understand. Was he really expected to just sit here and let that limp-wristed pansy ass touch his woman?

Once Alex made his presence known, Meghan dragged him forward for an introduction.

“Ronaldo Esperanza, this is my fiancé and Angelina’s brother, Major Alexander Valleja-Marquez.”

That she used his formal title said a lot. Meghan wasn’t going to take this guy’s shit either.

Transforming before everyone’s eyes into the undisputed Big Daddy of Family Justice, the Major—and Parker used that term snidely—extended his hand and spoke in a voice he’d known him to use when scaring the agency’s recruits.