Page 1 of Hard to Handle
ChapterOne
Friday, September 1, 2017
Lynx Caine
With the song blaring through the speakers, a Friday night with absolutely nothing to do but chill laid out before me, I was feeling no pain.I was minutes away from a cold beer with my name on it and good friends to hang out with.
“When the line froze, what did I see?”I 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 me, I was ready to get my drink on, and I damn sure wasn’t opposed to getting my 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 my vocabulary.Between some crazy psychopath terrorizing my cousin’s girl, and said girl gearing up to blow the whistle on that asshole, I didn’t think it was going to get better anytime soon.
But what the hell did I know?
Bad, bad motherfucker 'til the day I die.
Pulling into Reagan’s Bar, Kid Rock screaming about being a bad motherfucker, I felt some of the strain ease from my shoulders.This was my fucking theme song.It rang true and I'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.I sang along, hopefully doing the song justice.I'd heard more than once that I had the same raspy tone as the kickass country boy who had rednecks everywhere kickin’ it in the sticks.Not that I intended to change my career or anything.A singer I was not.
However, I couldn’t deny the redneck part.That was a part of who I was and I was damn proud of it.
I drove my 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 I suspected there were quite a few people who had come out tonight to get the scoop.
According to the rumor mill, my cousin had officially hooked up with one sweet little fillyandthe big, tough sheriff of our little backwoods town.
Not one or the other.
Bothof them.
Little did everyone know, but it wasn’t a rumor.I knew it to be true.
And in the small ranching community of Embers Ridge, that was some serious headline news.I had figured Wolfe would go balls to the wall when he did finally settle down.Although I'd never witnessed it, I had always suspected my cousin went both ways.
“Good for him,” I muttered to myself.
As long as Wolfe was happy, I 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, I wasn’t sticking my nose all up in my cousin’s shit, and I damn sure wasn’t about to contribute to the gossip pool.I had more important things to worry about.
Namely, the hot little number who ran my favorite bar.
She’d been avoiding me like the plague as of late.Not that I could really blame her.Ever since I'd established residence outside her house a couple of weeks ago, Reagan Trevino hadn’t been happy with me.Shit, mybodyhadn’t been happy with me.At six foot three, I wasn’t at all comfortable sleeping in the front seat of my truck.But Reagan and my tired-ass body would have to deal because I wasn’t going to sit back while the crazy fucker who’d killed a detective not even three weeks ago was on the loose.I didn’t give a shit if my Walker cousins were now leading the charge against the fucking chief of police of Houston.I wasn’t taking any chances.If that fucker thought for one second he was going to do harm to someone I cared about, the asshole would have to go through me first.
Realizing there was no parking to be had, I pulled my truck into the field adjacent to the building, shut off the engine, and hopped out.
“What’s up, Lynx?”
