Kimberly Raye - Texas Outlaws - Jesse

That was the real reason Jesse had come back to this godforsaken town. And the reason he had no intention of leaving until the vows were spoken, the cake was cut and the happy couple left for two weeks in the Australian outback.

Then Jesse would pack up what little he had left here and head for Austin to make a real life. Far away from the memories. From her.

He stiffened against a sudden wiggle of regret. “Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to haul ass out of here right now.”

“Good. Then we’re on the same page—”

“But I won’t,” he cut in. “I can’t.”

A knowing light gleamed in her eyes. “I’m sure Pete would understand.”

“I’m sure he would, but that’s beside the point.” Jesse shook his head. “I’m not missing his wedding.”

“But—”

“You’ll just have to figure out some other way to defuse the situation and keep the peace.”

And then he did what she’d done to him on that one night forever burned into his memory—he turned and walked away without so much as a goodbye.

2

WAIT A SECOND.

Wait just a friggin’ second.

That was what Gracie wanted to say. She’d envisioned this meeting about a zillion times on the way over, and this wasn’t the way it had played out. Where was the gratitude? The appreciation? The desperate embrace followed by one whopper of a kiss?

She ditched the last thought and focused on the righteous indignation that came with violating about ten different city ordinances on someone else’s behalf. Leaking private city business to civilians was an unforgivable sin and the memo from the production company had been marked strictly confidential.

But this was Jesse, and while she’d made it a point to avoid him for the past twelve years, she couldn’t in good conscience sit idly by and let him be broadsided by the news crew currently on its way to Lost Gun.

Not because she cared about him.

Lust. That was all she’d ever felt for him. The breath-stealing, bone-melting, desperate lust of a hormone-driven sixteen-year-old. A girl who’d dreamed of a world beyond her desperately small town, a world filled with bright lights and big cities and a career in photojournalism.

She’d wanted out so bad back then. To the point that she’d been wild and reckless, eager to fill the humdrum days until her eighteenth birthday with whatever excitement she could find.

But then she’d received the special-delivery letter announcing that her older brother had been killed in the line of duty and she’d realized it was time to grow up, step up and start playing it safe right here in Lost Gun.

For her sister.

Charlotte Stone was ten years younger than Gracie. And while she’d been too young—four years old, to be exact—to remember the devastation when their parents had died in a tragic car accident, she’d been plenty old enough at nine to feel the earthquake caused by the death of their older brother. She’d morphed from a happy, outgoing little girl, into a needy, scared introvert who’d been terrified to let her older sister out of her sight.

Gracie had known then that she could never leave Lost Gun. Even more, she’d vowed not only to stay but to settle down, play it safe and make a real home for her sister.

She’d traded her beloved photography lessons for finance classes at the local junior college and ditched everything that was counterproductive to her new safe, settled life—from her favorite fat-filled French fries to Jesse Chisholm himself.

Especially Jesse.

He swiped a hand across his backside to dust off his jeans and her gaze snagged on the push-pull of soft faded denim. Her nerves started to hum and the air stalled in her lungs.

While time usually whittled away at people, making them worn around the edges, it had done the opposite with Jesse. The years had carved out thick muscles and a ripped bod. He looked even harder than she remembered, taller and more commanding. The fitted black-and-gray retro Western shirt framed broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Worn jeans topped with dusty brown leather chaps clung to trim hips and thighs and stretched the length of his long legs. Scuffed brown cowboy boots, the tips worn from one too many run-ins with a bull, completed the look of rodeo’s hottest hunk. The title had been held by local legend Pete Gunner up until he’d proposed to the love of his life just two short years ago. Since then Jesse had been burning up the rodeo circuit, determined to take the man’s place and gain even more notoriety for the Lost Boys, a local group of cowboy daredevils who were taking the rodeo circuit by storm, winning titles and charming fans all across the country.

Wild. Fearless. Careless.

He was all three and then some.

Her gaze shifted to the face hidden beneath the brim of a worn Stetson. While she couldn’t see his eyes thanks to the shadow, she knew they were a deep, mesmerizing violet framed by thick sable lashes. A few days’ growth of beard covered his jaw and crept down his neck. Dark brown hair brushed his collar and made her fingers itch to reach out and touch.

“If I were you, I’d stop staring and put my tongue back in my mouth before somebody stomps on it.”

The voice startled her, and she turned to see the ancient cowboy who came up beside her.

Eli McGinnis was an old-school wrangler in his late seventies with a head full of snow-white hair that had been slicked back with pomade. His handlebar mustache twitched and she knew he was smiling even though she couldn’t actually see the expression beneath the elaborate do on his top lip.

“You’d do well to stop droolin’, too,” he added. “We got enough mud puddles around here already. A few shit piles, too.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Drooling?” he cut in. “While I ain’t the brightest bulb in the tanning bed, I know drooling when I see it and, lemme tell ya, it ain’t attractive on a fine upstanding public servant like yourself. Then again, you ain’t actually the mayor yet, so I guess I should be talking to your uncle when it comes to serious public-health issues.”

“Uncle E.J. already left for Port Aransas. He and my aunt just bought a house there.” Her brow wrinkled as the impact of his words hit. “A public-health issue?” The notion killed the lingering image of Jesse and snagged her complete attention. “What health issue?” A dozen possibilities raced through her mind, from a city-wide epidemic of salmonella to a flesh-eating zombie virus.

Okay, so she spent her evenings watching a little too much cable TV since Charlie had moved into the dorms at the University of Texas last year. A girl had to have some fun.

Anxiety raced up her spine. “It’s mercury in the water, isn’t it?” Fear coiled and tightened in the pit of her stomach. “E. coli in the lettuce crops? Don’t tell me Big Earl Jessup is making moonshine in his garage again.” At ninety-one, Big Earl was the town’s oldest resident, and the most dangerous. He came from a time when the entrepreneurial spirit meant whipping up black diamond whiskey in the backyard and hand-selling it at the annual peach festival. Those days were long gone but that hadn’t stopped Big Earl from firing up last year to cook a batch to give away for Christmas. And then again at Easter. And for the Fourth of July.

“You got bigger problems than an old man cooking up moonshine in his deer blind, that’s for damn sure.”

“Big Earl’s cooking in his deer blind?”

Eli frowned. “Stop trying to change the subject. We’ve got a crisis on our hands.”

“Which is?”

“Fake cheese on the nachos. Why, the diner used to put a cup of real whole-milk cheddar on all the nacho platters, but now they’re tryin’ to cut costs, so they switched to the artificial stuff.”