Page 17 of Protected By West (San Antonio S.W.A.T. #1)

TRACY

'Boy Howdy. Thank goodness I learned to swim early on.' Tracy chuckled to herself as she watched the party going on around her. 'Weston certainly threw me in the deep end.'

"Hey, beautiful."

The words had been whispered so Tracy turned to look at the man who'd walked up next to her. Written across his white T-shirt was the name OXY.

Weston had everyone put their team names on their shirts. He said it was, ‘so they'd get used to it,’ but really Tracy believed that he'd done the same thing they did in Pre-School or Kindergarten.

Why?

Well, if Oxy was any indication, that was the current mental age of most of Weston's swat team.

Tracy folded her arms across her chest and gave Oxy her best 'boss' look from work.

Rather than shrinking back or even looking a little sheepish, Oxy leaned in with a shit-eating grin.

Tracy shook her head. "Is this like a game?"

Oxy gestured to the backyard of Weston's house. "The whole thing is a game. I'm waiting for West to break out the 'Pin the Tail on the Donkey' game."

Smiling a little more than she'd intended, Tracy lifted her chin toward the corner of the yard where Duval and Myles were arm wrestling. "I guess you could just pick one and go for it."

Oxy winked at her. "I like your style."

"Oxy?"

Tracy bit into her bottom lip as Oxy beamed his shit-eating grin at Weston who was about ten feet away with his back to them.

"Yeah, boss?"

"You flirting with my woman?"

"Hooow did you know?"

"I," Weston sighed, "am all-knowing and all seeing." West moved something around on the grill and a moment later he lifted a heavy-duty set of tongs up in the air with a burning coal held between the two halves. "You'd best remember that before I throw this to you for you to catch."

Oxy leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the bench seat along the side of the picnic table. "I'm not all that afraid."

Dally looked up from where he was building a fire in the pit. "Are you that stupid, man?"

Oxy pinched both sides of the front of his shirt and held it out so they could all see. "The name is OXY, my good sir."

"Yep," Dally snorted a laugh. "Stupid."

"I know that the boss isn't going to fling that thing over here." He reached out a hand toward her and Tracy laughed. "Because I'm sitting next to this beeaaauuutiful woman."

The patio door slid open, and Fox stepped out with two bottles of beer and handed one to Tracy. "There's one thing you need to know about West, Oxy."

Oxy reached his hand out for the beer, but Fox walked right past him and over to the grill.

Oxy's expression said he was hurt. Well, it was a mock hurt, but at least he was trying.

"What's that, Silver Fox?"

Fox and Weston shared a look at the grill and Tracy couldn't help the shiver that played over her arms. She didn't know what was about to happen, but something was about to happen.

Fox put the beer he was carrying on the table beside the grill and reached down for the metal bucket filled with water.

He lifted it and walked it over to the table where Tracy was sitting.

Fox placed the bucket beside Oxy's chair.

Before Fox had taken more than a couple of steps away a coal flew through the air and fell into the water bucket with a hiss of steam.

The look on Oxy's face was priceless.

Tracy clapped her hands together and turned to look at Weston who was smirking. She pointed at him. "That was awesome!"

He used the tongs to salute her. And gave her a wink.

When Oxy picked up his mouth from the floor, he looked at Weston, too.

"Boss! What the-"

"Watch it around my woman, Oxy."

Weston's voice gave her more than a little thrill. The look he turned back in her direction made her skin prickle all over.

Oxy held up his hands in surrender. "It's like you have spidey-sense or something like that." He turned his head and gave Tracy a wink and a smirk before he looked back at Weston. "Dally and I had a bet that we could sneak in behind you and you wouldn't notice."

"Eyes," Weston glared at Oxy. "I have them in the back of my head, too."

Tracy groaned at that. "It's like you're a parent. And these crazy people are your kids!"

Weston shrugged. "I guess I have to look forward to a whole bunch of Father's Day gifts." He nodded, his smile growing. "I think I could handle that."

The man, who Tracy was quickly likening to that handsome Mounted Police officer on Hallmark, walked up the steps to the deck. "Need me to do anything, Major?"

His name was on the tip of her tongue.

Just as Weston asked him to grab the platter from the table, she snapped her fingers. "Bonnet, right?"

Looking every inch the 'awww shucks' guy, the officer shook his head and gave her a wincing smile. "No, ma'am. Bonner."

Tracy nodded her head. "That's famous, right?"

The State Trooper looked a little uncomfortable at the question, but before she could come up with her own answer, they were joined by the one female on the team, Jack.

Just remembering her boyish name made Tracy smile.

"You're thinking of Billy the Kid. William Bonney, I think."

"Yes!" Tracy pointed at the other woman, thrilled to have that blank filled in. "I was trying to remember it. My dad was the Western fan in the..." She shook her head trying to get the thought out of her brain, but it didn't quite work. "Billy the Kid."

Tracy was struggling to fix her mind on something that wasn't upsetting for her.

She saw the trooper's blank white T-shirt. "I don't think KID would work for you."

She saw the tips of his ears redden at that.

"Yeah, you don't look like a kid."

Oxy sighed with a big 'ol grin on his face. "That's what she said."

Weston looked over his shoulder. "Even with more people around, I can still nail my target."

Oxy leaned closer to Tracy. "Is that what you say, beautiful lady?"

Fox clapped a hand down on Oxy's shoulder. "Are you really trying to get yourself killed?"

Trying to look innocent, Oxy failed miserably. "Someone has to be the life of the party."

Tracy had been ready to ask him how he got his nickname, but she was suddenly afraid to ask.

Instead, she kept her focus on the trooper. "Billy doesn't fit either. That sounds... trivial?"

Jack shrugged her shoulders. "Or it sounds like billy club. Not a good thing for LEOs."

Tracy remembered that it stood for Law Enforcement Officers. "Yeah. Probably not."

Dally ambled over to take a seat on the bench opposite Tracy. "Or it could be Billy as in goat."

Goats?

Tracy knew she hadn't managed to hide her instinctive facial expression at that.

Fox chuckled as he carried the water bucket back to the grill. "Not a fan of goats."

Myles and Duval made it onto the deck with the rest of them.

"Goats?" Myles looked around at the group. "Stubborn nature." He pointed a finger at Duval who was standing beside him. "He's stubborn and gruff, too. He can be Goat."

Duval shoved him and he stumbled back, laughing as he went. "Can you read?"

Jack leaned over to look at Duval's shirt. She pointed at his chest. "Where'd you get that?"

Duval pointed at the picnic table. "It was on the table with the pens and-"

Jack lifted up not one, but two middle fingers in his direction.

"I lived with my grandma in Florida for a while. Around Jacksonville. So that's one reason people called me that. When I was in the academy one of our instructors had a bone to pick with me, something about a bad fucking attitude."

Tracy kept her smile as hidden as she could.

"When something went wrong, even when I wasn't responsible, he'd look at the group and yelled, 'Where's that guy from Duval!"

Tracy nodded in understanding. "Over time it just shrunk down to 'Duval.'"

Duval folded his arms across his chest. "If you ask my mom, she would say that it was destined from my first name."

Dally was the one to say it. "McCrae."

Fox added in the rest, dusting off her long hidden Western knowledge. "Robert Duvall played Gus McCrae on Lonesome Dove."

"I thought that was Steve Zahn." Oxy looked back and forth. "Right?"

Fox answered again. "When the other guy was played by Karl Urban, yeah. But, Robert Duvall was with Tommy Lee Jones, I think."

Tracy's memories were starting to pop up again and she didn't like the feelings that were coming up with them, so she tried to move the conversation slightly. "So what's your last name?"

Duval pulled up a chair and sat in the gap between Oxy and Dally. "King."

That made her smile. "Like the King Ranch?"

"Like," Duval replied, "but not closely related."

Jack reached into the cooler and pulled out a couple bottles of water, handing one to the State Trooper before she turned back to Duval. "Any relation to Sloane King?"

Tracy's interest was piqued. She'd heard about the socialite who'd formed charities to help women and children in need.

Duval lifted a hand and twisted it back and forth. "Sort of. Distant, I think. We've met a time or two at events where they needed security."

"Ah..." Tracy grinned at that. "She sounds pretty cool."

Jack took a sip of her water and then cupped the bottle in her hands. "When I can fit it in with my other jobs, I teach self-defense at a few of the Women’s Centers."

After she said the words, she looked like she wanted to shrink into herself.

What little she knew about the deputy, Tracy couldn't see Jack being anything but the bold and brassy person that she'd met a few hours before.

Jaclyn, or 'Jack,' as people seemed to call her, was the kind of woman that Tracy liked seeing in movies. Princess Leia? Ripley? Those are the characters she'd been thinking about as she watched Jack do some drills with the other Rangers.

Seeking to put a close to this conversation, Tracy leaned on the edge of the table to talk to Jack. "Could we pay you to come to the Credit Union and teach us some self-defense skills?"

Jack slid a glance over at Weston who'd walked up to the other end of the table.

"You want to handle this, Boss?"

Weston looked up at Jack and then Tracy. "It's up to Tracy. Whatever you think your people would want."