Hard to Handle (Caine Cousins #2)(3)

What the fuck Reagan ever saw in him, Lynx would never know.

“Y’all hear that?” Billy hollered, turning toward the other patrons filling the small bar. “Lynx Caine’s over here talkin’ ’bout my dick. Maybe he swings both ways like his cousin.”

Lynx fought the urge to roll his eyes. “If I did, I can tell ya, I’d have better taste than that.”

Billy flipped him off.

Take a swing at his family, Lynx would be the first to beat your ass.

Treat a woman with disrespect, Lynx would be the first to pound you into the ground.

Raise your hand to a child or an animal, Lynx would be the first to knock your front teeth out.

But talk shit to him … Lynx could take it. He wasn’t as reactive as he’d been as a teenager. If Billy Watson wanted to prove his IQ was the same as his boot size by talking smack, Lynx was more than happy to let him.

Waving him off, Lynx strode back to his beer. “There’s a reason assholes don’t have mouths,” he said, making sure his voice was loud enough for Billy to hear.

When Billy took a lunge toward him, Reagan intervened, coming to stand between them.

And a second later, when Billy grabbed her arm and jerked her out of the way, Lynx lost every single ounce of his sanity.



“Touch her again and you’ll be shovin’ your toothbrush up your ass to brush your teeth,” Lynx snarled at Billy, his emerald-green eyes spitting fire.

Lynx Caine was the ultimate badass.

Well, at least by Embers Ridge standards anyway.

Then again, Reagan Trevino was pretty damn sure that reputation would hold up anywhere he went.

But there was more to Lynx than most people realized. He’d proven that a minute ago when he’d walked away from Reagan’s ex-boyfriend when he started trash-talking. Lynx could tolerate a lot of shit. He wasn’t the same hotheaded guy he’d been back in the day.

Oh, sure, there probably wasn’t a Friday night that passed when the man wasn’t involved in some sort of brawl. Guys liked to rile him up just to watch him lose his shit. However, they didn’t usually do it twice.

In all fairness, Lynx wasn’t usually the one starting shit, but he was damn sure willing to finish it. And everyone in this town knew that a man should never touch a woman out of anger when Lynx was around. It was the fastest way to find yourself in the hospital.

Two seconds after Billy grabbed her arm, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh, Lynx ripped Billy off the floor and practically threw him out the door.

The one thing Reagan asked of her customers was that they take the fighting outside. She worked hard for what she had, and admittedly, she didn’t have much. Nothing more than the fifteen-hundred-square-foot bar and the permits required to sell and consume beer on the premises. Her personal effects were limited to mostly her clothes and a couple of shotguns. Reagan didn’t need much, but what she did have, she fully intended to keep.

Therefore, the boys who wanted to throw down had to take that shit outside.

The Caines had always respected that request. Always.

“Someone call the sheriff!” Billy hollered as Lynx picked him up off the floor with one big, tattooed hand.

“Call the sheriff and you’ll answer to me,” Wolfe announced, moving toward his cousin.

Since the sheriff happened to be Reagan’s brother, not to mention Wolfe and Amy’s lover, she figured people weren’t going to defy him. Didn’t matter anyhow, Rhys always managed to make his way to the bar about the time the boys decided to knuckle up.

Because this pertained to her, Reagan couldn’t help but try to calm the waters before the storm raged out of control. After all, she didn’t want to see Lynx go to jail. And if it was up to Billy, that was exactly where he’d spend the night.

“Lynx!” Reagan called after him.

The man stopped and turned around, his eyes hard as they narrowed on her.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He shook his head. “After.”

“No. Now.” Reagan wasn’t intimidated by Lynx the way most people were.

He didn’t scare her because she knew he would never hurt her. He wasn’t built that way.

In fact, because of that — and many other reasons — Reagan was probably more in love with him than anything else. Not that she would tell him that. She might have the hots for the sexy, tattooed country boy, but she definitely wasn’t looking to spend her days and nights with a man who went through women more often than he changed underwear. She’d spent far too long dealing with Billy and his bullshit, which wasn’t limited to his infidelity, either. However, he damn sure hadn’t been faithful. Not for a minute.

Not that Reagan thought Lynx was the cheating kind, but he’d proven his track record and love ’em and leave ’em was synonymous with Lynx.

Now that she’d been single for a whole whopping month, Reagan found it suited her just fine. Less bullshit, more time to watch Netflix.

Knowing he would follow, Reagan slipped down the narrow hall that led to the restroom. A second later, Lynx appeared in the dimly lit hallway.

Okay, so she probably could’ve picked a better location to have this conversation.

Lynx’s dark eyebrows were angled down and his emerald-green eyes glittered with anger. It wasn’t aimed at her, but it was there all the same.