Page 3 of Texas Hold Em’ (The Devil’s Luck MC #3)

JAMESON

“ D oes she snore?” Abel threw an arm around my shoulders and jerked me back and forth as we walked across the gravel in Grant’s backyard. “Or does she whisper sweet nothings in your ear all night long?”

Gabriel, who walked alongside us, cracked his back with a sharp twist to the right before scratching at stubble under his chin. “The Ranger’s a good girl, Snake. She wouldn’t get in bed with the likes of our Tex.”

Abel grinned and released me with a playful shove. “Yeah, do you suppose she’s more into lawyers or realtors, huh?”

I waved them both off. “Beats the hell out of me. All I know is she takes up more space than she’s worth.”

Gabriel threw his head back with a snort. “All five feet and two inches of her? I know you’re a particular motherfucker who likes his shit a certain way, but you can’t convince me a chick with a body like that is in the way. ”

“Look, Joker,” Abel said, “we know you wish Jackson sent her home with you, alright?”

“I’d treat her right,” Gabriel said innocently.

“You’d send her running right back to Austin,” Abel said .

We hit the back steps to Grant’s porch, where all the others lounged on old wooden chairs with their boots kicked up on the coffee table. Jackson played absently with the dog tags around his neck while Grant twirled a toothpick around his tongue and pinched it between his teeth.

Suzie and Mason sat in one corner, wedged between cushions with their fingers knit together. Brody and Knox chuckled about some joke muttered under their breath and looked up when we reached the top of the stairs.

Abel nodded around at the others. “Good news is Tex hasn’t run the girl out of Dodge yet.”

“Unless she’s packing her shit to hit the road as we speak,” Gabriel added.

“She’s not running,” I grumbled. “She’s comfortable. She’s been spending every night in my bed, in fact. I’m a better host than I look.”

Jackson looked up at me from beneath his brows before leaning forward in his chair to rest his elbows on his knees. “You’re fucking her already?”

“What? No.”

“You just said she was sleeping in your bed,” Jackson said.

“Yeah,” I said, “and I’m crashing on the couch.”

Brody snickered. “Ouch.”

Abel smacked my shoulder. “You’re letting her walk all over you, man.”

I saw a flash of Carrie’s yellow bedsheets pulled tight over my mattress and grimaced. “She’s been through a lot. I wanted her to have a room she could go to and close the door. You know, for privacy.”

Suzie chimed in. “I think that’s sweet.”

Mason chuckled. “You hear that, Tex? She thinks it’s sweet. Has anyone ever used that word to describe you before?”

Jackson laughed.

I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. “Just your mom, Mace.”

Everyone laughed, including Mason. Suzie pushed up out of her seat with him and brushed past me with a sympathetic look. “Ignore them. There’s a reason Jackson asked you to take her in, not one of these guys. She’s better off with you.”

Maybe she had a point there.

“Does she at least make you breakfast?” Abel asked.

“Has she asked you to help her paint her toenails yet? You’ve got a real steady hand, don’t you, Tex?” Gabriel said.

“I’ve got a real steady fist too, dickhead,” I said.

Suzie patted my arm. “Ignore them.”

I sighed and slumped into one of the open chairs. Bastards.

“Anyway, she’s not going to sit still much longer,” I said. “She’s getting antsy. I can feel it.”

“Well, she’s going to have to deal with being uncomfortable for a little while longer,” Jackson said.

“She’s not used to waiting,” I said. “She’s used to being in on the action. She’s used to calling the shots.”

Jackson shrugged. “Now isn’t the time for her to get too big for her britches. She knows what she got herself into. If she doesn’t want to take orders, she can take her ass back to Austin.”

None of this felt that simple to me. For starters, I didn’t think Carrie was getting too big for her britches at all.

I thought she was a strong woman who could handle her own shit, and from where she was standing, she probably thought we were the dipshits standing around with our cocks in our hands not having a damn clue what to do next.

She was capable. Very capable.

“Maybe we should cut her some slack,” Mason suggested.

Jackson shook his head. “Now isn’t the time. We lie low while Hogey’s trial moves ahead. Carrie keeps her head down. We let the dust settle.”

Luckily, things were moving ahead after Hogey’s arrest the way we all had hoped. Our efforts to move the corpses of two of Bates’s men into Hogey’s storage facility to frame him had been a success, and we no longer had the full heat of the police’s attention on our backs.

We had room to breathe. To recalibrate .

I didn’t know exactly what was going on in Jackson’s head, but I knew what was going on in mine.

This fight was getting bigger than the Devil’s Luck. Much bigger. As Treasurer, it wasn’t my place to step up and tell Jackson what I thought he should do, but one of these days, the other shoe was going to drop and we weren’t going to get out of the fire without being burnt.

If we wanted to get out of this alive, we had to be as ruthless and relentless as Bates. I wasn’t sure if we even had that in our blood.

He was a fucking psychopath.

Jackson stood and nodded toward the shop in the yard. The bay doors were open, exposing the shop’s insides and the half-dozen bikes inside. The rest of our bikes were out on the driveway. “We should head to the Well,” Jackson said. “We have work to do.”

More construction bullshit. More nails. More splinters. More tedious work that didn’t bring us any closer to putting Bates six feet under.

Regardless of all that, we followed our President down the steps and to our bikes. Suzie kissed Mason goodbye before heading into the shop to tinker with some of the bikes that belonged to paying customers.

We rode for the Well. The engines of our bikes growled in unison as we traveled in a pack. Cars kept right for us and other riders on the road didn’t dare turn down the same street as us.

The wise ones pulled over and let us pass.