Angus (Western Smokejumpers Book 3) Read online

  ANGUS

  Copyright © 2021 by Tess Oliver

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  1

  It was one of those weird-ass dreams when you knew you were asleep but everything seemed to be happening for real, like the revving of a motor, female laughter, the annoying buzz of a phone. In my bizarre, half-conscious dream the motor was the chainsaw I was holding, only instead of cutting down a tree to make a fire break, I was cutting a couch in half because for some fucked up reason my sister, Willow, told me it had to be done. In the dream it seemed a perfectly legit request. The female laughter was not coming from an actual female but from a mouse behind the refrigerator. Not sure what the hell he was doing there, but I figured he had his reasons. And yes, it was a he because even though his laughter sounded feminine, his voice was deep like James Earl Jones. The buzz was from a phone that I just couldn't reach because I was holding the damn chainsaw.

  "Oh my gosh, how did you end up out here?" The question started in my dream and ended with a pair of heavily glossed lips right in front of me. The lips pressed against mine, leaving behind the greasy gloss.

  I opened my eyes and instantly squinted. Sunlight glinted off the lake and landed like blinding spears on the deck overlooking the water.

  "You poor baby, you look like you need some aspirin." Jolie surveyed me head to toe. I shut my eyes against the bright light but opened one long enough to make sure I'd pulled on some clothes. Underwear was as far as I'd gotten, though I did have a black, lacy bra dangling from my big toe.

  Jolie laughed. "Oh my gosh." I'd discovered halfway through sex that Jolie liked to say 'oh my gosh' a lot. "How did my bra get out here on your toe?" She yanked the bra free. "That's the last time I take tequila shots."

  "If I had a dollar for every time you said that," another woman's voice floated through the screen door leading to the deck.

  Two women? I had to flip back through the last twelve hours to remember just what the hell had happened. I remembered Jolie, mostly because of the oh my gosh thing and because she loved to be spanked.

  Jolie disappeared inside, slamming the screen door shut so loudly it made the ache in my head turn into a raging spasm. I was thinking the same thing as Jolie. No more fucking tequila shots.

  "Here." A hand with long fingers and pink nails handed me my jeans. "Your phone has been buzzing like crazy." I glanced up and squinted into a pair of dark brown eyes. Nicole, I thought. Or was it Mandy?

  "Becky," she said as if reading my mind. "But that's all right. I'm not good with names either. Yours is just easy to remember because my dad owns a chain of steakhouses, and Angus beef is their best seller."

  Some of the night was coming back to me. Becky was the more serious of the two. I sat up, which made the hammering in my head worse.

  "Sorry, right, Becky. This is your place. It's sort of coming back to me now." I glanced around at the massive deck with the hot tub and outdoor kitchen. The empty tequila bottles and glasses were still sitting on the tile counter.

  "I'm making some coffee. No hurry putting on those jeans. I hate the bitch next door, and she's been watching you through her binoculars all morning. Jealous as hell, I imagine." Becky stared down at me and made no effort to hide her main point of interest. "Don't know who invented those boxer briefs, but they should be given some kind of medal." Becky strutted inside on a long pair of legs. The hangover was messing with my recall, but those legs had definitely been wrapped around my head sometime between the bottles of tequila and third round of strip poker.

  A boat pulling a wakeboarder raced past the deck, helping me make sense of the chainsaw motor in my dream. The woman being pulled behind the boat sprayed up some impressive fishtails as she carved side to side. I sat up higher as the boat jetted across the lake. The wakeboarder hit a ramp, arced through the air and landed easily back on the water.

  My phone buzzed again. I glanced toward the deck next door as I pulled the phone from my pants. I waved to the woman behind the binoculars. She lowered them and scurried inside.

  "What," I said, too loudly for my own head. I pressed my fingers against my temple. "Fuck, why are you calling so early?"

  "It's ten," Kaos said. "And is that any way to talk to your bestie? Just wanted to know what you're up to on your week off. We've been repairing parachutes, cleaning and oiling equipment and harassing the crying newbies at boot camp in case you were wondering how my week's going."

  "Nope, haven't even thought about you once." The boat headed back toward the deck.

  "Is that a boat?" Kaos asked.

  "Yep. I'm sitting on the deck of a fucking awesome lake house. Met some rich girl whose dad owns a chain of steakhouses. Anyhow, that's about all I remember except there was a lot of tequila, a hot tub and a whole lot of spanking." I wriggled on the chaise lounge and groaned. "Think I might have been on the receiving end of some of it because my ass hurts."

  "Fuck you, in fact double fuck you. I'm stuck here at base camp while you're out there with a rich girl and her steakhouse funded lake house and spanked ass."

  "Actually, I think her roommate was the one who liked to be spanked. The rich girl preferred my face between her thighs."

  "Fuck you, I'm hanging up now. The highlight of my day is going to be the pizzas we ordered for lunch."

  The wakeboarder let go and drifted toward the dock below the deck. I sat up to watch her remove the board from her feet and hoist herself out of the water.

  I rested back.

  "When do you start the new gig?" Kaos asked.

  I rubbed my forehead. Most of my brain had started back up, but my skull was regretting the whole night. "Tonight. It's some place called Handle Bars. Not sure how Tommy got us hooked up there. Guess the pay is good and the right band can bring in a big crowd. But we've got to go to some dumbass meeting with the owner, Chase. I think that's the dickwad's name. Something about going over the rules . . ." My comments trailed off as the wakeboarder climbed onto the deck from the stairs below. She had her short hair smoothed back off a face that nearly made me forget my name. Big dark eyes, a tiny nose with freckles and lips that were fashioned for sin.

  "Rules?" Kaos asked. "Sort of lost you there. Maybe it's a bad connection."

  The woman ignored me entirely as she unzipped her life vest. There was no bikini top to match the bright blue bikini bottoms. Her rose colored nipples, two of the most perfect I'd ever seen and I'd seen plenty, were still taut from the cold wa
ter. She picked up a shirt from the next chaise lounge and pulled it over her head.

  "Yep, bad connection. Talk to you later." I hung up the phone.

  She smoothed her hair back, a gesture that lifted the short t-shirt enough to once again expose the bottoms of her breasts. How fucking badly I wanted to see those nipples again. Fucking masterpieces.

  For the first time, she glanced my direction. "Put your eyeballs back in their sockets, cowboy. It's just a pair of tits." She disappeared inside. I stayed on the lounge, feeling like a gawking idiot, a gawking idiot with a hard-on.

  2

  Just yanking on a pair of jeans made my head throb as if every movement was smacking my brain against my skull. My phone buzzed again. How the hell was vibrate so fucking loud? Tommy, the lead guitarist for the Blue Janes, the band I'd joined for the season, had a habit of calling and checking in with me every few hours. He seemed to think I was going to bail on them at any moment, which, given my track record with bands was probably not a farfetched thought.

  "Hey, Tom, what's up?" I always asked, and he always answered with the same response.

  "Just checking in on our fucking amazing singer. Don't forget the meeting at the bar at one. I texted you the address. Should I text it again?"

  His response was a few words longer than usual, something about an address and text. I'd stopped listening when my gaze caught the wakeboarder with her 'just a pair of tits' walking through the front room toward the hallway. Was she living at Becky's? Was she part of the fun the night before? Nah, tequila or not, I would have remembered her. And those were definitely not 'just a pair of tits'.

  "Angus?" Tommy's voice came through sounding a little panicked.

  "Yeah, I'm still here. You don't need to send the address. I've got it. And stop worrying. I'm in this for the season. You guys are the least annoying band I've worked with in a long time."

  "That's cool of you to say, Angus. I'm just glad we found you."

  The aroma of coffee drifted through the screen along with feminine laughter, another dream mystery solved. The laughter came mostly from Jolie. I'd lost sight of the wakeboarder, but I was sitting out on the sun drenched deck instead of inside with coffee and feminine laughter and those tits.

  "Yep, you bet, Tommy. See you at one." I hung up and pushed the phone into my pocket.

  I was still buttoning my fly as I reached the screen door.

  Jolie laughed. "The last thing a girl wants to see outside her screen door is you buttoning up your fly."

  Even a smile hurt my head. I opened the screen door, a door that was far too fucking loud, in my opinion.

  "Coffee?" Becky was holding up a mug.

  "You're an angel of mercy," I told her as I took the cup.

  "Yeah? Don't get that too often," she quipped. More of the night was coming back to me. Becky was a woman who knew what she wanted. She'd ordered me around like a drill sergeant while I had my head between her thighs. Too rough, not hard enough, faster. It was the most stressful oral sex I'd ever performed, and all with my mind sloshing in tequila.

  At least she made a slamming cup of coffee. I drank it like it was the nectar of life and was just starting to come out of my fog when the wakeboarder strolled past in a pair of khaki shorts and a black tank. And yes, the tits looked amazing in the tank. Not wanting to be accused of gawking again, I pretended to be focused on my cup of coffee.

  A hand slapped my ass. The coffee cup nearly shot from my grasp. I managed to save it, but most of the coffee splashed on my hand.

  "Oh my gosh, sorry," Jolie chirped. "I was just going to take a shower. Interested?"

  "Jolie, you know the rules," Becky chided. "One night stands are out before noon."

  Jolie had round blue eyes and a sort of sweetly blank permanent expression. "Well, I wasn't going to stay in there for hours." She huffed like a scolded child and turned to leave. At least I was pretty sure she had left the room. My main focus was on the black tank top, which was now leaning into the refrigerator. Her bottom was in full view. I noted, instantly, that the ass that went with the tits was equally incredible.

  She emerged from the refrigerator with a bottle of juice, the green kind that Kaos loved to drink but I found too ugly to consume. Not once did she look my direction, which irritated me plenty.

  "Becky, thanks for letting me use your shower. The plumber said mine would be ready today, so I can pull all my crap out of your bathroom when I get a break from work."

  "No problem. I'll leave the sliding door unlocked." Becky sat down at the counter with her coffee and a piece of toast.

  I was starting to feel like a complete idiot standing in the middle of the room with my half-spilled cup of coffee. It was time for me to find my shirt and shoes and get out. Becky made it clear that she was up for that plan. But because I was already feeling like an ass, I figured what the fuck. I didn't want to leave the house without at least an introduction.

  I held out my hand as the woman walked around the end of the counter with her juice. "Angus, nice to meet you. Sorry about earlier."

  Long black lashes spiked around her big eyes. She blinked up at me, seemingly deciding whether it was worth her time to return the introduction. I'd stuck my asshole neck out and now I was going to be left looking like a bigger ass. It was a good thing it was the last time I was going to see all of them. I was going to take my humiliated ego and head back to the hotel for aspirins and a nap. Before I managed to lower my hand, she took hold of it.

  Her grasp was firm, warm. "Chastain, but some people call me Chase. Other people call me dickwad, but you know, to each his own." She released my hand, waved to Becky who was smiling behind her piece of toast and walked out the door with her green juice, tight ass and those incredible tits.

  I looked over at Becky. It seemed she'd heard my phone conversation and my moment of humiliation on the deck. She knew the entire dynamics of what'd just happened. Her grin assured me of that.

  "So she's Chase, the owner of Handle Bars?" I asked, just to make sure. Maybe by some miracle it had all been a terrible coincidence.

  "Chastain Brooks, aka Chase, the owner of Handle Bars." Becky wiped a crumb off her lip. "Last night was sort of a blur but didn't you tell me your band was playing at Handle Bars this week?"

  "Yep, that's where we're supposed to play." I plodded to the kitchen to wash out my cup. Tommy was going to wish he'd never hired me. I wondered just how long it would be before we got a group text that said the gig was cancelled.

  3

  After an especially shitty morning, a shower, nap and breakfast burrito brought me back to life. I'd gotten ready for the meeting at the bar, but I was still expecting a text telling us the show was cancelled. The only thing working in our favor, after my big mouth misstep, was that it would be hard to find another band to fill in at such short notice.

  I crumpled up the wrapper from my burrito and cleaned off the crappy little hotel table. That was the one big drawback of being on the road and singing in a band, at least a band that didn't have a big enough budget for nice accommodations, a lot of time sitting in shitty hotel rooms. At least on this trip, I got my own room. Only thing worse than spending time in a shitty hotel room was spending time with a bunch of Rolling Stone wannabes in a shitty hotel room.

  The phone rang. "Fuck, this is it." I snatched the phone from the nightstand and was relieved to see it was Willow. Willow was five years younger than me. After our mom, a single parent, died of cancer I'd taken over as guardian. It wasn't easy for a guy of twenty, just trying to find his way and figure out where he belonged in the world, to be responsible for a fifteen-year-old girl but we managed. She was in her early twenties now, but I still hadn't dropped the parenting act.

  "Hey, sis, everything all right?" It was always the first thing I asked and the last thing I texted her in the evening. She was living in an apartment with three other women near her college, a college that was halfway across the country. The worst part about my job as a smokejumper was occasion
ally having to be off the grid with no way to contact her or vice versa.

  "Yes, big brother, everything is peachy. How old do I have to be before you stop asking me that first thing?"

  "Hmm, probably when you're forty. Then I'll have to start back up again when you're seventy."

  "Except then, you'll be really old, so I'll have to ask you that. Anyhow, I wanted to hear how your night went?"

  "Huh?" I asked, terrified. "What do you mean? What did you hear?" Suddenly, it occurred to me I might have been drunk enough to have been videotaped without realizing it. My ass was still sore, so it seemed somewhere during the night I received one hell of a spanking. I was beginning to think it came from Becky. She seemed like the type who would take great pleasure in hurting me.

  "The gig? How was the show? Did you sing 'Human Touch'? That one always gets the girls in the crowd swooning."

  I sat down with a relieved sigh. "We don't start until tonight, and yeah, I've got a few Springsteens up my sleeve, including that one. Like you say, they swoon, and I do like a bunch of swooners."

  "I thought you started last night." She paused. "Wait, so what the hell were you so freaked out about?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked, casually. "I wasn't freaked out."

  "Oh, there was definitely some freaking. You asked me what I'd heard? Should I be Googling my brother's name? Or maybe I don't want to know."

  "Yeah, stick with the last part." There was nothing I loathed more than discussing details of my personal life with my little sister. On the other hand, in a major dose of hypocrisy, I pretty much insisted on knowing everything about hers. "So, that guy James, what's going on with him?"