Hard to Handle (Caine Cousins #2)
Nicole Edwards
1
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With the song blaring through the speakers, a Friday night with absolutely nothing to do but chill laid out before him, Lynx Caine was feeling no pain. He was minutes away from a cold beer with his name on it and good friends to hang out with.
“When the line froze, what did I see?” Lynx belted out loudly.
There was nothing better than a little Machine Gun Kelly rocking it out with Kid Rock.
“A bad motherfucker standin’ next to me.”
With September officially underway and August finally behind him, Lynx was ready to get his drink on, and he damn sure wasn’t opposed to getting his knuckles scraped a little if some smart-mouthed fucker wanted to go a round or two. With all the shit going on, it was safe to say, stress was a prominent word in his vocabulary. Between some crazy psychopath terrorizing his cousin’s girl, and said girl gearing up to blow the whistle on that asshole, Lynx didn’t think it was going to get better anytime soon.
But what the hell did he know?
Bad, bad motherfucker ‘til the day I die.
Pulling into Reagan’s Bar, Kid Rock screaming about being a bad motherfucker, Lynx felt some of the strain ease from his shoulders. This was his fucking theme song. It rang true and he’d damn sure earned the reputation in this small town.
To make it even better, when that song ended, good ol’ Brantley Gilbert started rasping about being hell on wheels. Lynx sang along, hopefully doing the song justice. He’d heard more than once that he had the same raspy tone as the kickass country boy who had rednecks everywhere kickin’ it in the sticks. Not that he intended to change his career or anything. A singer he was not.
However, Lynx couldn’t deny the redneck part. That was a part of who he was and he was damn proud of it.
He drove his big Ford F-250 around to the side of the building.
“Damn. Gonna be a good night.” After all, the parking lot was full.
Not at all surprising. Not in Embers Ridge on a Friday night. Reagan’s was the hangout for the low-key crowd. She served only beer and pretzels, a few tunes cranking out of the jukebox, and the entertainment consisted of darts or pool. Truth was, no one there needed more than that. Hell, they usually needed little more than some good conversation.
And he suspected there were quite a few people who had come out tonight to get the scoop.
According to the rumor mill, his cousin had officially hooked up with one sweet little filly and the big, tough sheriff of their little backwoods town.
Not one or the other.
Both of them.
Little did everyone know, but it wasn’t a rumor. Lynx knew it to be true.
And in the small ranching community of Embers Ridge, that was some serious headline news. Lynx had figured Wolfe would go balls to the wall when he did finally settle down. Although he’d never witnessed it, Lynx had always suspected his cousin went both ways.
“Good for him,” he muttered to himself.
As long as Wolfe was happy, Lynx didn’t give a fuck whose boots were beside the man’s bed.
Of course, the town was abuzz with questions, everyone wanting to know how it had happened and what it meant. No one seemed to believe that their little triad was real. Didn’t it figure? If it walked like a duck, quacked like a duck, most people just assumed it was a duck. Here in Embers Ridge, it seemed that if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was probably a cow in costume. The obvious couldn’t possibly be real, but the bullshit they made up was.
Granted, Lynx wasn’t sticking his nose all up in his cousin’s shit, and he damn sure wasn’t about to contribute to the gossip pool. He had more important things to worry about.
Namely, the hot little number who ran his favorite bar.
She’d been avoiding him like the plague as of late. Not that he could really blame her. Ever since he’d established residence outside her house a couple of weeks ago, Reagan Trevino hadn’t been happy with him. Shit, his body hadn’t been happy with him. At six foot three, he wasn’t at all comfortable sleeping in the front seat of his truck. But Reagan and his tired-ass body would have to deal because Lynx wasn’t going to sit back while the crazy fucker who’d killed a detective not even three weeks ago was on the loose. He didn’t give a shit if his Walker cousins were now leading the charge against the fucking chief of police of Houston. Lynx wasn’t taking any chances. If that fucker thought for one second he was going to do harm to someone Lynx cared about, the asshole would have to go through him first.
Realizing there was no parking to be had, Lynx pulled his truck into the field adjacent to the building, shut off the engine, and hopped out.
“What’s up, Lynx?”
Turning toward the sound of his name, Lynx grinned. “Hey, Jimmy Don. How’s the ol’ lady?”
“Hella good, man.” Jimmy Don’s smile went wide as the man continued to move toward his truck. “Baby’s comin’ any day now.”
“Congrats, bro!” Lynx made his way to the front doors, continuing to face Jimmy Don across the parking lot. “Holler when she pops that one out. We’ll grab a beer to celebrate.”
“Sure thing.”
With a quick wave, Lynx turned toward his destination.
Stepping inside, he took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.