Sophie Oak - Three to Ride

He turned back to Rachel, hoping their Peeping Toms hadn’t ruined her mood. He was surprised to find her laughing.

“Stella was right. Bigfoot does roam these woods.” She reached out underwater and stroked his cock. It was already getting hard again. “But, Max, Bigfoot’s got nothing on you.”

He pulled her close and proceeded to prove her point.

Rye Harper sat behind his desk and considered the numerous problems Rachel Swift had brought into his peaceful life. So peaceful it was boring, he sighed inwardly. Rachel was the most exciting thing to happen to him in a long time. The only problem was Rachel hadn’t happened to him. She’d happened to Max.

The phone rang out at his secretary’s desk. “Callie! Phone!” Rye yelled from the comfort of his little office.

A short figure with dark hair flew past the open door in her attempt to get to the phone. She was pushing her smart little glasses further up on her nose. “Got it!” she screamed before she answered the phone. “Bliss County Sheriff’s Department.” Her voice was now brisk and professional.

Rye listened for a second while drumming his fingers along the desktop.

“No, Mel, I’m so sorry. I really don’t have any CIA connections,” Callie was saying in a soothing voice. It could only mean one thing.

Rye let his head fall to the desk. He would have to go out to Mel’s and pretend to check for bugs again. If he didn’t, the old fellow would sit in Stella’s diner for hours telling anyone and everyone who came in that Bliss was a focal point for the coming invasion. The locals might ignore him, but he tended to freak out the tourists, and it was tourist season. The last thing he needed was to get called into another meeting of the Bliss County Chamber of Commerce, where he regularly got raked over the coals.

He thought back to last night, when Max had come home late with the dippiest grin on his face. Rye had known in an instant that his brother had fucked Rachel Swift, and probably more than once. Max had the look of a well-satisfied man. He also had the look of a man who’d fallen completely in love. Rye couldn’t help it. He was brutally jealous of his brother’s happiness.

Maybe it wasn’t the same for Max as it was for him. For as long as he could remember, Rye had always fallen for the same girls as Max. It was almost like there was a link between them. When Max saw something he liked, Rye was sure to follow. It explained the deep connection he felt to her the minute he’d met her. Rye had known the instant he looked at the pretty waitress that she was important. He might not be able to read Max’s every thought, but when his brother felt something deeply, Rye felt it, too.

Max had been serious about going the vanilla route. Rye had tried to get him interested in Janine, the hot brunette from Creede, but Max wouldn’t go for it. Now, it looked like Max was ready to start his life, and Rye was going to be left alone. It wasn’t the way he’d envisioned his life. Always in the back of his mind, he’d thought that they would find one woman and settle down. For a while he’d thought that woman would be Nina, but now, looking at Rachel, he knew that had been a mistake. Nina was too hard to ever be at the center of their ménage. She would have taken everything they had and given nothing back.

“Hey, boss.” Callie interrupted his thoughts, and he lifted his head off the desk.

Rye tried to look like he wasn’t moping. “Yeah, I know. I gotta get my ass out to Mel’s and look for alien technology. Get the Detector 3000.”

Callie snorted. “I’ll make sure to get that for you. I’ll also tell Stefan that we’ll need to move up to the 4000 model soon. Mel is worried because alien technology apparently changes often.”

Stefan Talbot was an artist who worked with everything from oils on canvas to metals. He’d been the one to come up with the idea of the Detector 2000. It was a Wii controller with some modifications. It had some lights and made some high-tech sounds. Mel had been impressed but after six months had wondered if there wasn’t an even more sophisticated device. Aliens were tricky little bastards.

“I’ll let him know,” Rye said. He reached out for his hat. “Anything else? Did Logan go out and talk to the nudists?” Max had pitched a small fit about it last night, and Rye had made a note to send his deputy out to handle it. Rye attributed the fact that the fit was such a small thing to his brother’s state of sexual satisfaction. He wondered briefly how he was going to handle it when Rachel started staying the night at their house. How was he going to stand sleeping alone when his brother was right next door, fucking the woman of their dreams?

“Yes, and they prefer to be called naturists.” Callie’s mother had run the naturist community for years. It was Callie who always reminded him to be tolerant toward the clothing-challenged. “Logan went out this morning, and it’s a good thing, too. We’ve had four reports of 503’s since yesterday afternoon.”

Rye groaned. A 503 was Bliss County’s code for a naked penis sighting. A 504 referred to naked females, but strangely, almost no one ever called that in. “Yeah, they’re all about the nature walk right now. It’s wildflower time. I just hope they don’t go too high into the mountains. I would hate for the damn bears to try to mate with one of them.”

Callie laughed. “I was talking to Bill, and he was really excited about all the activities they have planned for the summer. You should know that the men are planning a warrior-in-the-buff outing. There’ll be lots of chanting and drumming.”

The sheriff sighed. Bill Hartman owned the land the commune was on. Rye was just about to give him a call when he noticed how enthused Callie looked. Callie loved that commune and all the people who lived there. They had made sure her mother had been comfortable while she lost her long-term battle with cancer. Callie was perfectly comfortable spending a lot of her free time with the naturists. Rye shook his head as he looked at the woman who was as close to him as a sister. He always made sure he called before he showed up at her cabin to avoid getting a show. “Put it on the calendar, please. And remind me to buy some industrial-strength earplugs. If they keep Max awake, he’ll make the bears look soft and cuddly.” If he even noticed over all the noise Rye was sure Rachel made. She looked like a screamer. The quiet ones were always tigers in bed.

“I heard Max has a new girl.” Callie’s tone was soft, and Rye heard sympathy creeping into her voice. “You okay with that?”

Callie had been his assistant for five years. She’d taken the job when he became the sheriff. Rye knew not much got by Callie Sheppard.

“Sure,” Rye lied, plastering a smile on his face. “I think it’s great that Max is happy.”

He felt her eyes on him. It was the look of a too perceptive little sister figuring out exactly what her big brother didn’t want her to discover. Callie shook her head. “Do you really think this whole ‘dating apart’ thing will work out? Don’t you think you’re fighting your nature a bit?”

“Tell Max that,” Rye said morosely. He didn’t even try to keep things like that from Callie. She tended to see through him. “He doesn’t think I’ll ever find what I want as long as he’s around. Then he goes out and finds Rachel.”

“And you like her, too.” Callie’s brown eyes watched him, studying his responses. At times like this, she reminded him of a cute little owl.

Rye shrugged. “She’s okay, I guess.”

“Right,” she said, seemingly unconvinced.

Callie started to play with her shoulder-length brown hair. Rye knew that look. Callie knew something and wasn’t sure she should tell. Callie was the worst gossip in the county, and it looked like Rachel was already on her radar.

“Spit it out.”

Callie bit her bottom lip, and her eyes slid away from his face. “I don’t know if I should.”

Rye was unwilling to play games. He wanted to know what was up with Rachel. It was obvious she was in trouble, and he needed to be ready for it. She belonged to Max, and Max’s happiness was important to Rye. “Tell me, or you’re fired.”

Callie rolled her eyes. “I’m terrified of that threat. Fine. It isn’t anything bad. Rachel seems like a real sweet girl. I just think she’s lying about a few things. She told Stella she was staying at the motel on the outskirts of town.”

Rye shrugged and released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That’s not so bad. It’s clean, at least.”

“That’s just it, Rye,” Callie continued. “I talked to Gene just yesterday. He’d never heard of her. That motel is his baby. Even if he hadn’t checked her in himself, do you honestly believe he wouldn’t remember her name?”

No, he didn’t believe that for a second. Why would Rachel lie about where she was staying? He thought about the trace he’d put on her earlier this morning. He’d put her name into the system along with her plate number. So far he hadn’t turned up anything, and that was slightly disconcerting. Her Texas driver’s license had come up clean, but he’d gotten nothing else. She didn’t have so much as a traffic ticket. The license listed her address as an apartment in Houston, Texas. Rye was going to call the police there and check it out, but first he needed to figure out where she was staying here.

The phone rang again, and Callie went to answer it.

Rye walked to the closet and took out his soon-to-be obsolete Detector 3000. He made sure all the bells and whistles were working. He sighed while he straightened his tie. It was important to present a professional image when dealing with the crazies of the county. The key was to look like he took them seriously.

Callie was slightly breathless. She hung up the phone as Rye walked into the main office. “You might want to hold off heading to Mel’s.”

“Why?”

She winced. “It appears that Max showed up at the motel with a bunch of roses and was promptly told that Rachel didn’t live there. He’s been yelling ever since.”

“Shit. What’s his ETD?” It was Rye’s own code. It referred to Max’s estimated time of destruction.

“I’d give it about two minutes.”

But it was less than that. As the words left Callie’s mouth, Max walked by the windows of the sheriff’s office. He held a bunch of red roses in one hand, but they’d been through some trauma. Rye whistled as he caught sight of his brother. Big Brother looked like a bull stomping down the street. He plowed through a group of tourists ambling down Main Street.

Rye handed the Detector 3000 to Callie. “Send Logan out when he gets back from dealing with the nudists, naturists, whatever. I’ve got to go save my brother from himself.” Rye jogged out of the office and ran to catch up.

“Hey, buddy, let’s talk about this.” He would try to reason with Max first.

Max stopped in the middle of the street. Rye took a quick step back, not entirely sure his brother couldn’t breathe fire. He looked perfectly capable of it. “There’s not a damn thing to talk about. She lied to me.”

“She’s not staying at the motel. That doesn’t mean she’s shacked up with someone.” He knew exactly what his brother was thinking. Max wouldn’t ever consider more innocent options. He was a worst case scenario kind of guy.

“Then why would she lie?” Max’s mouth was a stubborn line. He shook his head, clutched his sad-looking bouquet, and started walking toward the diner. His boots thudded along the concrete.

Rye fell into step alongside him. This was a familiar place for Rye. He’d spent a good portion of his life being the voice of reason for Max. Of course, Max played his part, too. Whenever Rye got really mad, Max was the one who watched his back. “You need to calm down. Do you really want her to see this side of you?”

“If she didn’t want to see it, she shouldn’t have lied.” Max’s face was set in a mulish stare.

“You’re just going to let your freak flag fly, aren’t you, bro?” Rye asked more to himself than Max.

Max marched to the diner doors and blew through them like the hurricane he was. Rye sighed. There He had to hope Rachel could handle his brother. He kind of thought she could. Rye didn’t bother to follow Max inside. There was nothing he could do now except get in the way. The sight of her beat-up Jeep caught Rye’s eye. There was an awful lot of stuff in the back of that Jeep. He had a suspicion and walked over to confirm it.

A few minutes later, he knew his brother was going to feel really bad about yelling at his honey. She was living out of her car. She didn’t need Max walking in and announcing her lie to the whole town. She was ashamed.