Merry with a Ranger (Love Beach Holiday Collection)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

N ASH

This assignment was an utter waste of time.

I stared at the waves slapping the shore where the turquoise waves crested into golden sands with pale foam, and pretended I loved frolicking in the fucking sand like everyone else at Love Beach.

Then I cursed myself as a liar inside my own head before I shoved my toes deeper in the sand, praying for a thousand paper cuts to end the monotony of the first four days of my case here. The assignment I begged for with a different workplace and had it handed to me on a sandy platter in a new one.

But I didn’t accrue the pain I needed as I linked my arms around my bent knees, letting my jacket hang around my body as I stared out the crashing waves. The cove would’ve been quieter than this overpopulated spot where tourists were desperate for a glimpse of heat in the midst of winter. A few days from Christmas, it seemed everyone in the destination hot spot tried to frolic in the waves while risking frostbite on occasion—okay, dramatics, but close enough.

But if I limited myself to a quiet area, my head would’ve been too loud.

Here, at least, I could hate on myself in the overbearing company of a hundred other cheery people who pretended to cover their own insecurities in brand names and out of season tan lines behind the shade of a giant, unlit Christmas tree that watched us from the boardwalk overlooking the ocean.

Love Beach was so far from Texas in every sense it wasn’t funny. A state I never thought I’d return to, and the fact I did miss that patch of dirt imbued with so much sin and blood it wasn’t funny that I almost laughed out loud. My heritage of that place disgusted me, but the job Rhys Archer offered me in return for a second chance at sanity on a place called home seemed like a good idea before a bomber blew himself back to hell with my grandfather’s name on his lips.

The not so perfect welcome home present.

My teeth ground together as I fixed my gaze on some innocuous point beyond the horizon. The strange things that came to light when I wasn’t looking. Or maybe it wasn’t funny at all. Instead of seeing the details of what I should be picking out for this case, the only thing I spotted was the one person who could make this day better.

Or so much worse.

Depended on how fucked up my mind was when I reflected on it later.

Because the thing wasn’t a thing at all, but a who.

Her. Bonnie Little.

I shouldn’t have looked. Not even after ten long years, but I would know her anywhere. Still, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from how her long, tanned legs peeked out from beneath the hem of her white sarong that flicked up every now and then to give me a tantalizing glimpse of her ankles.

No jewelry, because she never had been into that. It made buying her presents utter hell.

But I knew those legs. I knew those thighs, her waist, and hips, and everything else above her silky, filmy looking sarong that belonged to her. I didn’t need to, but I dragged my eyes up her body anyway, torturing myself further with the girl who left me ten years ago without so much as a single word of goodbye.

The way body curved should’ve been illegal, enhanced from the last time I saw her. Pale blonde hair hung straight past her shoulders and curled at the ends just enough for man to wrap his finger around and tug before he drove himself slowly insane over that body hidden behind layers of gossamer wrapped around her. The rest of Bonnie Little was hidden beneath a white cardigan she hugged tight around her. But it didn’t matter.

I remembered everything about the girl I fell for hard and fast and never recovered from.

What it felt like to kiss those soft, dusky lips that parted temptingly when she sighed. How she liked my thumb digging into her hip when I arched over her, and she submitted beneath me.

Everything.

Before she ran away and left me high and dry, wondering where the fuck she went at the end of our senior year.

The first girl I fell for. The only girl I ever loved.

I found her aqua gaze that matched the sea at the same time as she flicked a wayward glance over her shoulder.

Those lips I could almost feel on mine, despite being dozens of feet away apart, hitched on a breath, stalling her easy gait. The chattering crowd that had disappeared for me rushed back as her lips silently framed my name before she picked up the material wrapped around legs and whirled away up the beach, away from me.

Nineteen year old Nash would’ve chased after her. Nineteen year old Nash would have demanded where she went the night she disappeared. The night when she blocked all my calls, and changed her number.

The night she ran.

He would have asked why she broke my heart, and never came back. He would have cared.

Today’s Nash tipped his head back as I studied the way she darted away from me, already lost in a pensive memory of Bonnie Little I thought was long locked away behind wall with a plethora of clusterfuck of one-night stands with all the other blonde women who never matched up to the shade of who she should have been in my life. I never could replace her, no matter how hard I tried.

Today’s Nash let her go.

I dug my toes into the sand and finally achieved some of those tiny cuts I’d been trying for. Most of them were hardly scratches on the surface of my skin, but it was a start.

The corner of my mouth curled into a sadistic smile.

Bonnie Little could run, but in a town like Love Beach, she couldn’t hide. Not for long. She had no chance. Not with me.

Not with an obsession that had been brewing since I last saw her ten years ago. No, this assignment just got a whole lot more interesting. Maybe Love Beach wouldn’t be as boring as I expected.

I mentally flipped over the ring that had lived in my pocket since she ran away. Since I never got to give it to the girl who should have been my prom date, but when I went to get her, she wasn’t there.

No, Texas could wait.

Sand etched its way along my ass crack despite the three showers I’d taken since I got back from the beach where I spotted my ghost girl who should never have been there in the first place.

The waste of water ingrained in my blood still got to me despite the years I spent outside of Texas. It didn’t matter how much of the stuff floated around me or that I was back on the coast, for now. What had been bred into me couldn’t be cancelled out on a whim, even for particles as annoying as the tiny grits that seemed determined to mine their way into every unavailable orifice.

But a few grits didn’t change my focus as I sifted through files I knew by heart. Photos and names printed in blacks and whites, as well as color covered the resort bed. For the umpteenth time I worked back through the final night of a man’s life laid out in front of me, but nothing could change the death of the bomber who knew information about my grandfather he took to the literal grave, albeit in several pieces.

When he blew himself back to hell in County, he left me with a message about the KKK grandmaster I hated who was still attached to my bloodline. I spent a decade away from Texas just to remove myself from the taint of my grandfather’s actions, alienating myself from the family who still claimed me despite my pushing them away.

Even with the bomber dead and my grandfather whiling his final years away in respite care, I still scrubbed his sins from my skin daily even though they weren’t mine.

Archer, my new boss at the Texas Ranger unit I’d become attached to when he offered me a position after the FBI failed to provide me with what I needed, had a penchant for manila folders and hard copy files. The resort coffee table and oversized, overstuffed and unsupportive bed was covered with beige cardboard.

The man might be the cream of Texas Rangers down south, but right now I cursed him for his lack of ability to file a digital report like any other human in this century.

Not that Archer was old by any means; I was lucky if he had a decade on me. But from the moment I walked into his office, wary yet keen to accept a second chance and a reason to be back on Texas home soil, I could see the pain etched in his face that haunted the stocky Texas Ranger, his chestnut hair shot with occasional strand of silver.

His office was bare. Not in a rustic sense but stark enough to show he had no personal attachment to anything in it.

But I knew instinctively that it wasn’t the things in his office, the tiny little space filled only with a scarred desk as old as the man seated behind it, and a row of equally marred filing cabinets that were the important things in the bigger picture to him. No, that would be the team that sat outside his office. Those were the critical factors in Rhys Archer’s life, and that small fact instinctively told me this was a man I wanted to work for.

Especially when the first thing he did was hand me the one case we both knew I had chased for years, and would never refuse.

My grandfather’s eyes stared up at me from the bed in a black-and-white photo. There were color ones of him that existed, sepia even, but I preferred this one. It showed a man in his prime, carrying that hideous white sheath in his unmarked hands. Glowing cheeks that, like so many psychos out there, didn’t reflect the insanity festering within.

An insanity I feared might be contained inside me, too.

Not racism. I didn’t give a fuck what my grandfather stood, or what sort of twisted moral PR agenda he pushed. That part disgusted me to the worst degree, and I wanted no part of it. No, the part of him that terrified me was that perhaps his darkness somehow passed down to me in some sick gene, and that no matter what I fought for, that part of him would always be a part of me.

That concept terrified me every damn day.

The rest of the local contingent of assholes pictured around him were either dead for the greater majority, or well into their eighties and nineties, living in nursing homes scattered about the state, unable to leave Texas if they wanted to. On the rarer occasion, the pictures weren’t as pleasant, and some of my grandfather’s cohort stared at the lens with accusing eyes like they expected the technology to steal their souls.

Okay, so for some of them their brand of insanity sat closer to the surface. I didn’t glance at my own reflection in the small resort mirror, unwilling to see if my own insanity peeked through just yet.

My phone buzzed beside me. I tapped the screen without looking at it. A picture popped up in my periphery. Flicking the folder closed on my grandfather’s face, I glanced across.

Archer: He left you a message.

The single line message accompanied the photograph. I stared at the collection of memorabilia spread across Archer’s desk as bile rose into my throat.

Trophies were displayed in one image. My grandfather's personal collection. Proof of his life, his twisted successes , delivered courtesy of a dead man. Jewelry, a perfume bottle. Feather fans taken from someone’s house he no doubt burned to the ground.

One of his favorite methods. I wanted to retch, but my eye caught on a picture of a pale hair comb just out of focus, similar to a gift I gave to a pretty girl once. But there were more. A diary, pens with men’s names engraved on them.

Bowls of crosses, some with burn marks on them. A sickening orgy of evidence, more than I needed.

Everything I needed, beside the witness I’d come to Love Beach to find.

The case I’d tried to get myself assigned to for so many years and now I had it…the magnitude of the sins of my blood floored me. My skin wanted to walk off my bones as I stared at decades of destruction. No man, regardless of his age who had curated this much destruction in his lifetime, should be allowed to recline in a private nursing home with comforts denied by the lives of those he destroyed.

Swearing softly, I closed my phone, flipped all the manila folders over and tossed them into the box beside the bed away from the windows and threw a jacket over the top.

If this was what the assignment was going to be like, then I needed to find the bar. And maybe, my contact.

Two days later I was no closer in discovering the contact I’d been sent to Love Beach to find though I had created an intimate relationship with the bartender. It wasn’t remotely close to dinner time, but there was a bottle of Mclellan on the back shelf I had a vested interest in, even if it bankrupted me by the end of the evening.

Throwing on a fresh shirt and grabbing my jacket, I ran my fingers through my hair and grabbed a piece of dragon fruit the housekeeper left in my bowl as an apparent imported Christmas treat. A weird pink and yellow thing with sweet, squishy innards, I’d become accustomed to them.

I headed for the exit, knife in hand ready to peel, when the heavy door shut behind me. I checked belatedly for my keycard —I hadn’t locked myself out prematurely, bonus—and flicked the blade out, my mind already running back through the case that stagnated on me days in.

And breathed in a lungful of moonflower.

Bonnie.

That had been the scent she wore the last year we were together. My senses shut down, except maybe one. The single one attuned to her.

The same fingers searching for my key card in my pocket dug a little deeper, confirming the presence of something else there before I ripped my hand free and twisted around, but the hallway stood empty.

She’s been here.

Fuck me, we were staying in the same place. The chances of that were… Well. In a place with a holiday floating population that swelled around this week and a limited number of resorts, the chances were high, to be honest. Somehow, I doubted my ex-Texas girl was a local. My heart kickstarted in my chest.

Discarding the desire to write myself off down at the bar for another unproductive evening, I leaned my back against the wall. Uncaring if I had to wait until she finished her dinner and drinks, I work on peeling my fruit no matter how long it took to find her again.

Fifteen minutes later she emerged on her own from a room across the hall from mine. A straw handbag hooked over her arm that looked like a basket decorated with seashells sewn on it. Bonnie wore a white dress that brushed the back of her calves and left a big scoop across her bare back. Risky with night falling, as the chill air picked up outside. Summer it might feel at Love beach year round, right up until the sun set.

The tiny edges of a tattoo peeked out beneath her white dress. I didn’t need to see the full picture it represented to know the rest depicted half of a butterfly.

I knew, because the other half was tattooed on my hip. The two together matched to make the butterfly taking full flight. Individually, they perched on their branches, awaiting their other half, unable to fly alone. It was cliche, it was cheap. We were drunk, and teens when we had them done, and for the second time I emptied my bank account for this girl.

But of all the ink I later put on my body, that butterfly was my absolute favorite. No matter what happened between us, I’d never tattoo over it.

Rifling through her handbag and delving arm deep as though she was Mary Poppins, Bonnie didn’t see me until it was too late. I finished paring my fruit and put my knife up at the last minute as I stepped into her, my keycard in my hand as though I was heading for my room, not away from it. The deception should have eaten at me, but I was too desperate to have her body contact mine to care, already drunk on the idea of her.

“Heads up, okay, love?” I notched the flat of the blade under her chin, lifting her gaze to meet mine.

And stopped.

Azure eyes found mine and held for the second time in three days, and the floor might as well have dropped out from underneath me. The resort, too.

Christ. It’s not meant to be like this.

Or maybe it is.

Somewhere in the crevices of my brain I recognized that I was supposed to be an adult, talk to her, etc., etc., But I was too far gone in her already to care. Her cheeks flushed the prettiest pink, her recognition instant as though my touch and voice was enough to set her off.

She didn’t twist away, and I couldn’t break my hand from her face, either.

That single point of contact, despite our proximity, stole my breath. Hers too, from the look of it. The sweet scent of moonflower drifted around us with her hair, a golden halo that brushed my shoulders with her momentum. One of her spaghetti straps fell down while she stared up at me.

All I wanted to do was lean and taste her, but that right disappeared the night she ran away from me. From everyone.

Where did you go? Why did you run?

Every question I once screamed at the night sky that never answered back sprinted to the forefront of my mind. But more than that, a flicker of something else darted about in those beautiful turquoise eyes a second before she shut down again, but I saw it.

I knew what to look for with her, because I knew this girl soul deep who was still etched into my bones as well as I knew Texas soil.

Fear.

Bonnie Little was afraid.

Of me.

“The fuck did I do you?”

Ten years apart, and that was the first thing I could think to say to her?

I expected her to run. I expected her to slap me.

Shove me aside, and run away screaming.

But Bonnie Little did none of those things. She shook her chin free of my blade, and stared up at me with those glossy pink lips still parted. Whatever she painted them with had a flicker of glitter in it I wanted to swipe away, get that shit off her. Underneath I could see the dusky color of her mouth underneath, the color I always loved.

But yeah, I lost that right a while back.

We were strangers to each other now.

And all I could think about was that she wasn’t afraid of me in this moment.

“What on earth are you eating?”

I huffed at her. “I swear at you, and that’s the first thing you say?”

She raised one shoulder, and dropped it. “I mean, it’s been a weird day.”

“Damn right.”

A sweet smile creased her lips, but the expression was gone as fast as it came on with a practiced blankness I hated on her.

“It’s dragon fruit.” I sliced into the bright flesh to expose its monochromatic insides. “I shouldn’t have asked what I did. I had no right. Not anymore.” A tightness lodged in my throat I couldn’t get past.

Bonnie nibbled on her bottom lip, took half a step back and fixed her dress strap, her fingers playing across her skin in a way that mesmerized me. “I was heading down to the bar before dinner.”

“Drowning yourself when the ocean gets too much?” I didn’t know where that came from. It was a stupid line.

“Something like that. Join me?”

I sliced off a piece of the fruit and passed it to her on the flat of the blade. She considered me for a moment before her lips parted. The dragon fruit disappeared as she licked my fingers when I pressed the offering between them, though I knew she wouldn’t bite me.

Or maybe she would.

Strangers, remember?

A sharp breath sucked into my lungs. “Little Bonnie. Look at you, all grown up.”

Her tongue flicked out to catch a drop of moisture that beaded across the lip gloss, missing my fingertips, though I wish she hadn’t.

“Sweet,” she acknowledged, stepping away from me and walking away down the hall. She didn’t look over her shoulder to check that I followed her, nor did she need to.

She knows I’m all in.

I always was with her.