CHAPTER ONE

HUSDON

One week into my job as the latest recruit in Rhys Archer’s elite Texas Ranger Unit out of Austin and I used to be sitting on a seaside in Tijuana, sipping cocktails adorned with fairly umbrellas and plastic crimson cherries.

Hudson Whittington, Texas Ranger.

Who would have thought it?

It wasn’t a nasty solution to begin a brand new job, if I didn’t say so myself. Not solely did I pull undercover work as my first task, however I additionally acquired to wrangle the floating eye sweet vacationer inhabitants for a stable seven days.

My first wasn’t an extended task, however I knew the gig for what it was: a check.

Make contact, get the product, and swan round for a full week. Don’t journey your self up, and don’t break your cowl. Come again house if you’re completed.

These have been the foundations I used to be given to earn a shiny brass star and a white hat. My sandbox to play in. Do the job, and do it nicely, or haul my ass again to California the place I spent the final 9 years as a fixture within the LA Hearth Division.

I’d by no means had an issue with my profession decisions and I liked my job, however now that Archer had given me a style of what I might do on this facet of the border, I wasn’t certain I might return.

Which made this a go/fail activity with an ultimatum on the different finish. It was form of simpler, to be truthful.

And three days into my allotted time on the seaside, I used to be midway there. I made the contact, tasted medicine for the second time in my life—the primary time throughout faculty and I fucking hated the dearth of management over my physique and ideas—and made a pretend good friend for all times in my Tijuana vendor, Tag. The title had a … good ring to it. I used to be scheduled to choose up the product I used to be purported to faux to distribute again house in Cali in a couple of days, then head house.

Provided that I had my means, I wasn’t going again to Cali. Austin, Texas, can be my new/old-to-me baseline. The grime I grew up tasting.

Recollections of my childhood tried to flood again: the home I used to stay in, the household that fell aside. That was how I ended up on a distinct facet of the nation. My chest closed on the emotional deluge I rejected on sight, and I sucked in an extended, gradual breath.

Not the time. Or the place.

As a result of proper now I had a date with a seaside.

I sank into the divot my physique made in my borrowed seaside towel, the sand accommodating my mass gracefully, heating my again within the sun-warmed sand. It wasn’t noon but, and the additional endorphins already flooded my physique. Being a Texas Ranger may not be like this every single day, however proper now, I’d take it.

In fact, the singular doubt in my intestine remained that possibly I wasn’t as worthy as Archer thought.

Strolling into his workplace was the singularly most nerve wracking factor I might ever completed. The quiet man with rust colored hair and a scarred face stared throughout the desk at me whereas I attempted to not fidget like a teenage child known as in to see the principal.

I’d at all times been pleased with being a firefighter, however that profession alternative appeared flimsy the second I walked into the Austin unit’s workplace. The house was stuffed with males in pressed shirts and white hats, that little star badge displayed someplace on their individual.

Wearing light denims, boots I did up on the entrance lobby, and an outdated grey LA Hearth Dept. tee, I stood out within the worst of how.

Not that I felt lesser in any bodily sense; I used to be greater than a match for the staff when it comes to muscle and top, however ego smart… I used to be born and bred in Texas and made the transfer to LA chasing solar and surf.

And a bit pleasure.

These profession decisions acquired me laid, paid and in entrance of Archer, or at the least that was what he informed me. How he picked me out of the inhabitants of earlier and present Texan residents I could not say, solely that I used to be grateful for the prospect.

That, and my intention to not fuck up.

That seed of doubt dissipated with a advantageous spray of sand and salt water dripping on me. I cracked one eye open to discover a visage of tanned and toned pores and skin in a sapphire blue bikini standing earlier than me in a sarong. One muscular thigh slipped out from beneath the gold and blue filmy materials.

The lady perched on her towel she positioned proper beside me, nearer than any stranger ought to be, drop useless beautiful or not. My abdomen tensed, and never by design, simply from her proximity. One slim arm reached out behind her. She arched her again barely with one leg bent, and the opposite straight out as she seemed down on the imperiously.

“You are my bodyguard for the following 4 days.”

“I am your what?” I raised each eyebrows and tried to not waggle them, however holy shit on a seaside ball was she beautiful. “I did not know they made them such as you in Tijuana.”

She smirked, nary a giggle in sight, flicking beachy blonde waves over her shoulder. Every thing about this lady was onerous, in a goddess type of means. From the set of her mouth to the fiery blaze behind deep blue eyes, her straight backbone, the way in which she sat…every thing was utter perfection to my eyes.

Supply: www.seynovel.com