Cowboy Rescue [Men for Hire 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

“Excuse me.”

The sound of her voice ripped through him, flowing a heat to his cock so hot that his dick jumped to life.

Maria.

“No problem. Sorry to get in your way.”

He twisted around, careful to keep his leg in a position to hide his growing erection. She stood on a step a few feet lower than the one he worked on. She was dressed in a simple dress that came to her knees and covered her perky bosom that was in no way provocative, but she was still the sexiest woman he’d ever seen. Her legs traveled on for miles, and he wondered how much longer they’d look once he got her dress off her.

He swallowed hard.
Hell, yeah. I have to get her dress off her.

Gabriel would have his head, and his brothers might want to kick him for it, but she was worth any trouble he got into. And if she was amenable, he had no problem sharing her with Mike and Brad.

Dark, silky hair flowed around her shoulders to drape toward her breasts. She was the perfect size, not too skinny, too busty, or too curvy. Her mouth was slightly parted, and he couldn’t help but hope they stayed that way most of the time.

Kissable lips. That’s what people call them.

Her green eyes, deeper than the color of emeralds, sparkled as the sun setting behind her cast a hazy kind of halo around her. At that moment, his gut told him that she was meant to be theirs.

She passed by him, wafting a spicy fragrance he couldn’t name. It was probably one of those fancy perfumes women liked to wear, but on her it was the aroma of a goddess.

He ground his teeth and got a grip on his libido. He couldn’t reach out and touch her as he wanted to, but he could damn well get her to stop and talk to him longer. Yanking his shirt out of his jeans and pulling it down in front to hide his still growing cock, he stood, but not in time. By then, Mike had come up behind them.

“You’re Maria Franklin, right?”

See? Even Mike can’t bring himself to call her
Miss
Franklin.

He sought out his brother’s face and saw his emotions reflected there. He felt the same way about her. They hadn’t even met her and already she had them wrapped around her finger. He gave his brother a pointed look, one he knew Mike couldn’t misread.

That’s right. Check her out. She’s fuckin’ amazing.

“Yes?” Her gaze darted from Mike to him and back.

He sniffed, doing it in the subtle way that Mike had just done and that she wouldn’t notice. They didn’t know how or why, but they could smell fear. Maybe it was because they’d smelled it often enough in their work. If he couldn’t smell it, then he’d see it in her eyes and her body. But she wasn’t afraid. In fact, if he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was turned on. The way she tossed her hair over her shoulders and the fact that she’d taken a step toward them told him so. He lifted his eyebrows at his brother and smiled.

“Gabriel sent me.” Mike shifted from one foot to the other.

Jack heard her quick intake of air. But again he sensed that it wasn’t from fear, but from anticipation.

“That’s what the other man said.”

“Do you mean the man you saw at the fence? The second one you saw, I mean. He had dark hair and dark eyes, right? With a resemblance to us perhaps?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“That was our brother. He was the guy who tried to find the first man you saw.”

When she didn’t answer, he shifted his attention away from Mike and found her face pale and her arm outstretched as she pointed at something behind him and his brother across the street.

She whispered, almost too low for him to hear. “There he is.”

Mike whirled around in time to see a man dressed in light slacks and a dark shirt dash around the corner of one of the houses across the street. His adrenaline roared to life, and he was ready for a chase.

“Stay with her, Jack.” He tossed the order over his shoulder as he flew down the steps and jumped between oncoming traffic to reach the sidewalk on the other side. He didn’t slow down, but ran behind the first house, grabbing onto the building to swing his body around. But the man was nowhere in sight.

He slammed to a stop and searched that yard, then the next, but didn’t see a sign of him. He let everything else go except the sounds around him. Voices drifted to him from a nearby house, and he could smell someone cooking hot dogs on a grill. The pungent aroma of fresh dog poop in the yard assaulted his nostrils. Scents were plentiful when a man was trained to pick them out, but none gave him any hint to where the man had gone.

Where the fuck did he go?

He growled, the sound coming from deep inside him. When had he ever gotten this close to his target and not been able to chase him down?

“You!”

He whirled to find an old woman, her blue-gray hair thinning across the top of her head, scowling at him. She held a baseball bat as she pushed the screen door open, then brought her arm back, ready to hit a homerun using his head as the ball.

“What’d ya think you’re a-doing? Git out of my backyard.”

“Ma’am, did you see someone else back here? Another man? Possibly a stranger? He had on light-colored slacks and—”

“Boy, do you not understand American? Are you feeble minded? I told you to git off my land.” She lunged forward, her bony, brown-spotted legs and arms sticking out from under her housecoat as she waved the bat at him. “Git, or I’ll whack you upside the head.”

If she knew anything, she would’ve told him. Small town-ladies like her had a way of letting information sneak out. Even while threatening to whack someone upside their head.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m going. But if you see anyone like that, please come across the street and tell Maria Franklin.”

“What’s Maria got to do with you, boy?”

When’s the last time anyone called me
boy
? About twenty years ago?

“I’m just a friend looking out for her.” He risked getting closer her and did his best to appear nonthreatening. “Along with her neighbors like you, of course.”

She narrowed her eyes, and he had to wonder just how well she could actually see.

“You a friend or a gentleman caller of hers?”

She was digging for dirt, but he didn’t care. “Just a friend, ma’am. Me and my brothers go way back with the Franklin family. All the way back to Detroit.”

He’d read the dossier on Maria and knew her background. Being childhood friends with her family was their cover story. He cringed when the old lady scrunched up her wrinkled face into a scowl. It had to be the Detroit thing. A dislike of “Northerners” still lingered, years after the Civil War. But that was a detail that Maria had no doubt told some people in town, so they couldn’t change her hometown now.

“Uh-huh. Likely story. Damn Yankees. Now git!”

“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a wide berth as he headed back to Maria’s.

“Boy?”

Her features had relaxed. “You be sure to take good care of her. If there’s such a thing as a good Yankee, she’s it.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll do my best.”

He made one last glance around the yard even though he was sure it wouldn’t turn up anything, then headed back to find Jack standing just inside her apartment.

Jack’s gaze swept past him then back to give him a questioning look. He groaned, knowing what Jack was thinking, but he didn’t want to answer him. He hated admitting failure. Instead, he pushed past him and straight into the living room of Maria’s apartment.

Brad stood at the sliding glass doors, peeking out from between the blinds while Maria sat on her sofa with her head bowed. When he came in, she lifted her head, and what he saw slammed him in the gut.

She’s scared.

He’d seen that same expression on other women’s faces before, so why did her reaction hit him so hard?

Because it’s her.

For a moment, he couldn’t think of anything but how great her long legs would feel wrapped around his waist as he plunged his cock deep inside her. But suddenly the image was gone, replaced by her on her hands and knees as he shoved his dick into her sweet ass. Jack, pumping his cock for all it was worth, was on his knees next to her, holding her hair back as she sucked on Brad’s shaft. Brad’s face held the features of delirious ecstasy as he leaned over and slapped her bottom. Even in his imagination, Mike saw her flesh ripple under the blow.

“What happened?”

Brad’s hard tone jerked him out of the fantasy. He almost couldn’t get the words out. “He got away.”

Heat of a different kind flared into his neck as his brothers gave scowls of dismay. “What the hell? It’s not like you guys have never lost track of a target.” Yet he could count on one hand the number of times that had happened. He glared at them, daring them to rag on him.

“Okay then, until we get a better handle on things, we go on the defensive.”

He was thankful of Brad’s tendency to take charge. At least his failure to snag the perv was gone as the topic for discussion.

Mike eased closer to the sofa. The closer he got, the stronger her spicy scent hit him. He breathed in, long and slow, and committed it to memory. But when he started to take a seat next to her, his younger brother beat him to it. Jack’s smug expression was almost more than he could take, and if Brad hadn’t moved to stand in front of them, he might have whacked Jack upside his head.

“Are all three of you from Cowboys for Hire?” Her green eyes flicked from one to the other and settled on Brad.

Mike hated the name Cowboys for Hire because it made him think of handymen. Or worse, male strippers dressed in chaps and dime-store cowboy hats. But that’s the name Gabriel had settled on. It was a damn shame Gabriel had been drunk as a skunk at the time.

“Yes, Miss Franklin, we are.”

He had to give Brad props for being able to stay all business around her. But then again, who knew what was going on inside his brother’s head?

“Do you think you can help me?” Her hands were clasped in front of her, and her voice shook. “Mr. Gabriel—”

“It’s just Gabriel. No
mister
.”

She paused to take in his clarification. “Gabriel didn’t give me time to ask, but I can’t pay much. I don’t make a lot as a teacher, but whatever I can pull together is yours.”

“Don’t worry about that. We don’t do this for profit. All we ask in return is that, in the future, when you get the chance, you pay it forward. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes. I’m supposed to repay you by helping another person when I can.”

“Right. And it doesn’t have to be anything big. Even the smallest bit of help can make a huge difference. Donate your time to the church or a charity, something like that. The way I see it, you’re already doing your bit as a teacher.”

“I’ll gladly pay it forward. But do you really think you can help me?”

Her voice may have sounded weak, but to her credit, she held her head high. Mike settled into the chair next to the love seat. “We can and we will.”

“But how? According to the police, he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

He watched the rise and fall of her chest and longed to tear the dress away. Would her areolas be dark or more of a pinkish color? He forced his gaze away from her chest. Hopefully, she hadn’t noticed where his focus had gone. “We don’t do things the way the police do.”

Those mesmerizing eyes locked on to his and slammed him in the gut. “You’re not going to do anything illegal, are you?”

He didn’t want to lie to her. Some of what they did could be considered illegal. Whatever was necessary, they’d do. Laws be damned. After all, laws didn’t always ensure that the right person came out unscathed. They were often the last chance for the women who called them. The police and the courts had let them down, but they wouldn’t.

“I’m not going to answer that. It’s better that you don’t know.”

If things went the way they should, she’d never know what tactics they used. She probably wouldn’t like the fact that Fletcher had dug up every bit of information about her that could be found. Not that there was much in the way of anything bad aside from a few unpaid parking tickets. Her parents were deceased, leaving nothing for an inheritance, and she was an only child. She’d worked her way through college to earn her teaching certificate and hadn’t had any ex-boyfriends that had caused even the remotest glimmer of a problem. She was as clean and as good as they came.

She bit her lower lip, and he almost lost control. His cock twitched to life, and his blood surged though his veins. Lust, hard and fast, rocked him. If he had anything to say about it, she’d bite his lower lip before the night was over.

He couldn’t, shouldn’t think like that. She was their client and needed their help. To think of her in other ways was asking for trouble.

“We’re going to have to wait him out. Until then, one of us will stay with you.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean, here? In my apartment? With me?” A glint of fear surfaced in those beautiful green orbs. “But how do I know you’re not working with him? Maybe there’s more than one man.”

Mike took her hand and felt the blast of yearning zip back and forth between them. She’d felt it, too, judging from the way she tried to tug her hand from his.

“Maria, you know you can trust us. Just listen to that inner voice you have. Like Gabriel always says, there’s nothing better than a woman’s intuition. And I’ve never met a woman yet who’d gone wrong when she listened to that little voice in her head. They only go wrong when they don’t.”

She was about to answer, to open her pouty lips, when Brad bullied his way in again. “Miss Franklin, it’s our way, or we hit the highway. Either you let us handle this the way we see fit, or you don’t. But make up your mind right now. We have others who need our help if you don’t want it.”

Her hand tightened in Mike’s hand. “I do. Please, you have to help me.”

“Then one of us is staying here. Brothers?” He nodded, then paced into the kitchen. Jack hopped up and followed while Mike took the time to lean closer to her.