Something Sinful This Way Comes [McQueen Was My Valley 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (4 page)

“My dear toots! I just now heard about the robbery! We’ll get the lowlife scumbag who did this!”

Toots?
Nathan had seen plenty of men like this in his time. He instantly knew the fellow was engaged in some lowbrow, back alley dealings, and it wasn’t just because of his canary yellow tie and his comb-over.

“That’s Sol, the lodge’s lawyer,” Cass explained as they zipped down the hall.

That explains it
.

“He was going to fly back to Provo in a couple of hours, but now I expect he’ll stay around.”

“Is Xandra…”

“Hooked up with him? Nah. I don’t think she’ll hook up with anyone for awhile. Not after that last asshole in Charleston. One of the reasons her father bequeathed this lodge to her was to give her something to take her mind off that skeezeball. Listen. Why don’t you stay in my suite? I’m never in there, anyway. Especially dealing with this latest cardkey debacle, I’m sure I won’t get a second’s worth of downtime in the next twenty-four hours.”

“That’s thoughtful, Cass, but—has it occurred to you this skeezeball might be involved in the ransacking of Miss McQueen’s room?”

Cass stopped cold in the middle of the lobby, although at least three people had been trying to get her attention for several yards now. She looked up at an antler chandelier that hung three stories above in the cathedral ceiling. “Skeezeball…Nah,” she decided, and continued walking. “Hey, let me give you some restaurant vouchers for being so nice to Xandra. Are you fishing in tomorrow’s events? Where have you kept all your equipment? Not now, Clark. Can you wait five minutes? I have to take care of this gentleman first.”

Nathan just smiled, and went with the flow. He knew he wasn’t leaving McQueen Valley until he’d succeeded in helping its delightful namesake.

Xandra McQueen was exactly the luscious, curvaceous damsel whose distress would take Nathan’s mind off his own.

“‘Oh dear, that must have been terrible! What a huge fish that must’ve been!’”

The president of the bass federation had the mic now. Xandra politely waited for the punch line before pretending to laugh.

“‘Yes, it was, but you should have seen the one that got away!’”

The room of two hundred fishermen erupted in laughter that was way out of proportion to how funny the joke was. Xandra sighed. If this was five years ago—if she wasn’t such a burned-out, fossilized, decrepit chick—Xandra would have been highly stimulated to be in this room of one hundred and ninety men. All right, maybe a hundred and fifty—many men had brought their spouses. But there were easily at least twenty hot, studly outdoorsmen in the ballroom, probably single, that could easily be narrowed down to a few premium stallions.

Only…Xandra had no interest.

She loved her new life! She loved the Triple Play Lodge. Work was her new life. With Javier she’d been a trophy wife, a girlfriend with a perfect smile glued onto her face. She had been so grateful that Javier, a successful businessman, had not thrown her away for a younger model, she had tolerated treatment that she later discovered was unacceptable to most sane women. She was thirty-three, only eight years younger than Javier—he should have traded her in for a twenty-something with a boob job, but he didn’t.

Probably because the twenty-something might have a clue that his treatment was intolerable. A gal that young and hot would hopefully have better self-esteem than Xandra apparently had.

The fish president continued, “A fisherman returned to shore with a giant marlin that was bigger and heavier than he was. On the way to the cleaning shed, he ran into another fisherman who had a stringer with a dozen baby minnows. The second fisherman looked at the marlin and said, ‘Only caught one, eh?’”

Over the uproarious laughter that rolled through the room like thunder, Xandra heard the crackling of the security guard’s radio. He stood in the back near the double doors, and she saw him cup his palm to his ear and exit the ballroom to hear what was being said.

Instinctively, Xandra grabbed her slim purse and rose, too. She knew she’d become addicted to knowing exactly everything that went down at the Triple Play. Everything other than the cattle part of the operation. Luckily she’d avoided that.

As she approached the guard, all she heard the other person say was, “Disturbance in the Neon Cocktail.”

“I’ll come with you,” she told the guard, and they jogged down the hallway together. “Did they say what the disturbance was? Drunk angler?”

“Yeah,” said the guard. “Inebriated guy punched another fisherman.”

“Oh, dear. Do we have to have him arrested? I don’t look forward to having police cars out front.”

“It’s a Class B misdemeanor, unless he did grievous bodily injury,” said the knowledgeable guard.

Luckily Xandra didn’t even have to venture into the Neon Cocktail, for the blitzed assailant was already heading their way.

Nathan Horowitz was puffed up with rage as he strode from the Neon Cocktail. Three or four pissed off sportsmen stuck their heads and torsos beyond the doorway, shaking their fists and yelling intelligent things like, “You asshole!” and “Hey, douche bag!”

Xandra knew she should have entered the Neon Cocktail and attended to the whaled-upon fisherman, but she was literally swept the opposite way down the hall by the force of Nathan’s stride.

“Where are you going?” Last she’d heard, he had nowhere to go.

“Don’t worry,” he barked. “I’ll get my things and get out of your hair.”

“I don’t think you should be driving. Where are your things?”

“Cass has them.”

Xandra jogged along to keep up with Nathan. He made a beeline for Cass’s office behind the front desk. It was, of course, locked because Cass was also in the ballroom. Xandra swiped her cardkey and Nathan barreled past her to grab a bag from under Cass’s desk.

“Come to my room,” Xandra found herself begging.
Under ordinary circumstances, that wouldn’t have sounded right.
“You don’t want trouble. I don’t want trouble. Please, Mr. Horowitz. Come to my room.”

For the first time, Nathan paused. Huffing and puffing from anger, the fight, and his brisk walk, his intelligent eyes quickly scanned Xandra’s face. She tried to look even more sincere than she felt, and it worked. With his free hand he took her upper arm with authority, as though he were arresting
her
, and shuffled her out of Cass’s office.

“All right,” he muttered as she closed the door. “Just for tonight.”

That was more than satisfactory to Xandra. She had to finally admit to herself she found the policeman incredibly attractive. Probably pushing forty, he carried his beautifully muscular build with the confidence and arrogance of a man who always got his way. His dazzling arctic eyes were the shade of icebergs, and she could see where he could put the fear of God into someone. Indeed, she could easily imagine him strangling a prisoner barehanded without breaking a sweat, that’s how brutal and ferocious he came across.
Horowitz.
He had that stately, aquiline Jewish nose Xandra had always admired.
Tall, dark, and handsome.
That was her type.

And yes, as Cass had noted, he possessed an impeccably hot ass. She had checked it out when Cass had dragged him down the hallway earlier. She had never seen such a luscious, shapely ass. And even her mortification over Nathan eyeballing her vibrator in her nightstand hadn’t prevented her from using it again.

She was treading in dangerous waters, she knew. The last thing she needed as she recovered from Javier was another epic asshat. And this belligerent cop had already whaled upon two poor fishermen in the past twenty-four hours. Why was she drawn to such savage beasts? She needed to fight her carnal urges for this fierce brute.
Cass wants him. I shouldn’t step in between my best friend and the man she wants.

“May I ask why you once more were walloping a fellow angler?”

“He deserved it.” Nathan had a deep voice, resonant of Texas. “He said something about Afghanistan. Disparaging fellow servicemen.” He said something that sounded like “
Bala’a il a’air
.” That probably meant “dickhead” in Arabic.

“Oh, you served overseas? I thought you were a policeman in Abilene?”

“I am. Was. Now I’m just a humble fisherman.”

They were at her front door. “Oh, really? You fish for a living?”

“Yeah.” At last he looked at her as she swiped her cardkey. Maybe he was just too drunk, but he appeared to be sad about something. Or sad in general. His sensitivity about the military overseas convinced her he had served there in some capacity. “Fishing. I’m a fishing guide now that I’ve retired from police work. Fly fishing,” he added, as though trying to convince himself of it.

They entered her suite and she closed the door behind him. “In Abilene?”

“Was. I was hoping to do a startup around here. Do you think there are enough people in McQueen Valley who want to fly fish?”

“Doug or Cass would be the ones to ask about that. I know I inherited an entire cattle operation along with this lodge, but I haven’t even ridden out once to take a look at it. I’m hoping it will just run itself, I guess. It has so far. But obviously some of the land encompasses the Colorado River and some of its tributaries.” It had occurred to Xandra that some unscrupulous guy might pursue her simply because she was now wealthy, so she normally didn’t discuss this freely with potential stalkers. But for some reason she felt comfortable with Nathan, maybe because he was in the law enforcement field.

“I know you’re too busy to come, but maybe tomorrow you’d let me take a horse down to the river.”

Xandra tossed her purse onto the couch’s end table. She should offer Mr. Horowitz a drink just for something polite to do. He was allegedly already drunk, but he sure didn’t seem it. “Sure. We don’t offer horseback riding for guests because they’d get in the way of the cattle, but we’ve got a small stable for ourselves and the ranch hands. You ride those things?”

Dear Lord, was he handsome when he smiled. His icy eyes glittered, although the sad undertones stayed. “Doesn’t everyone? Everyone from Texas, of course. Oh, you don’t need to make me a drink. I’m sure everyone thinks I’ve had enough.” He held out a warning hand, but she’d already gone to the sideboard.

“That’s all right.
I
want one.” Xandra poured two glasses of the California cabernet she’d come to love so much in Charleston. “I’ll drive you to the stables tomorrow, after I show you your new cabin.”

Nathan sat on a couch and casually wove his fingers together at the back of his neck. He’d stripped off the windbreaker that was supposed to hide his shoulder holster, and Xandra did a classic double take, nearly giving herself whiplash as she cranked her head to view his exquisitely sculpted torso. He didn’t seem to be displaying himself arrogantly even though he’d squeezed his wide shoulders into a miniscule black T-shirt. He just gazed distantly at Xandra’s far wall, blank aside from a tolerable sandstone panting she’d hung there. She needed to make this suite her own if she was going to spend the rest of her life here. “Cass can show me both the stables and the cabin.”

A stab of self-loathing followed the jealousy that seeped into Xandra’s stomach. She tried to look casual as she took the two wine glasses to the couch, but she was seething. Churning with spite that Cass might nab this stud and not her.
What am I thinking? Who cares if Cass nails him? I don’t want a man anyway, not even a trivial hookup.
And then
we don’t even know if he’s single
. She handed Nathan his glass and asked lightly, “Your wife doesn’t mind if you lose yourself for weeks at a time waist-deep in a river? She’s not interested in fishing either?”

He shook his head. “No wife. No children either.”

Xandra was embarrassed that he’d predicted her next question. So already today he’d seen her leopard skin handcuffs and vibrator and now was reading her mind. He was many steps ahead of the game—as a proper policeman should be, she supposed. “I think you’ll make a fine living fly fishing around here.”

“Do you get many BASE jumpers around here?”

“I think so. We’ve had a few stay here off and on. My land fronts onto Bureau of Land Management land and that’s where they do it. There are some spires that are a thousand feet tall and it’s fairly unobstructed to the bottom of the valley. Wait. You don’t—” Suddenly her heart stopped, to think this stunning example of masculinity would launch himself off a giant spire. He did seem to have a self-destructive streak.

He cut her short. “Yes. It’s a high that keeps me satisfied for a week or so, until I have to do it again. The brain floods with endorphins. Don’t worry. I haven’t found a jump buddy yet. And won’t, if I keep punching all these damned fishermen.”

“Don’t like one in six BASE jumpers, ah,
die
while BASE jumping?”

A grin lifted one corner of his mouth. “One in sixty. Now, about this skeezeball in Charleston.”

Xandra’s hand froze, her wine glass touching her lips. “Skeezeball,” she repeated.

Nathan leaned forward, setting his glass on the coffee table. “Yes. Cass told me about your ex in Charleston. Is it possible he had anything to do with this break-in?”