Page 11 of New Rules
On one level, it was refreshing and exhilarating. On the other…it made me nervous…because Ray was exactly the kind of man you could get addicted to.
FOUR
RAY
It was hard to concentrate. All my thoughts kept going back to Tammy snuggled up next to me in her soft bed.
I never would have taken Tammy for a snuggler, but that woman was full of surprises, and I wanted to find out every single one of them.
That was not me—at all.
I was divorced with no plans to get married again. I didn’t even really feel up to having a relationship at this point in my life. I was fifty-one years old with one failed marriage under my belt and another bad relationship since then.
Over the last few years, I’d gone on an occasional date, maybe a one-night stand here or there, but that was it.
At that thought, my mind went back to Tammy. She was feisty, funny, and gorgeous. She was also incredible in bed. I wasn’t sure if it was because it had been more than six months since I’d last had sex or if she was just that great, but the sex had been phenomenal.
I wanted to kiss her, taste her, have her all over again.
She was short, especially compared to me, with a muscular build, but she didn’t lack curves. The woman had more than a handful of both boobs and ass. Her dark-brown hair wasaccented by a few lighter strands—a combo of blonde and gray—and the slight wrinkles around her eyes suggested she was in her forties. Yet, everything else about her gave the impression that she was ten years younger.
I’d left her place early this morning and gone back to my hotel room to shower and change before heading over to my meeting.
I was only planning to be here for a week, but I knew I was going to try to make time to see her again before I left.
I’d been around enough women in my five decades to think I understood them, but Tammy had proved that theory wrong. She’d sparred with me like she enjoyed the challenge, yet blushed whenever the attention was put back on her. And despite the brush-off vibes she’d given other men I’d seen her interact with, she’d clung to me like a magnet the moment I had her in my arms.
It was just after ten in the morning, and I was in a conference room at the Ranger Shield Security office next door to the pub I’d gone to last night.
The memory of meeting Tammy in that bar and then leaving to go back to her place put a small smile on my face. Just the thought of touching her had me fighting hard to keep my dick under control. It wouldn’t do very well to have a raging hard-on in this meeting.
My old Army buddy, Frank, had called me Monday morning, asking if I’d fly into town and help with a burglary for his son’s business. His son and his buddies had started a private security and investigations group a couple of years ago. Frank said someone had broken into their building, and despite the fact that they had a security system and multiple cameras, this thief had been able to navigate around all of it.
“There he is,” Frank Fletcher hollered from the doorway.
I got up from my chair and made my way over to him.
“Holy hell, Ray. Good to see ya,” he said, coming in for a hug.
Frank and I went on an annual fishing trip, but I was planning to come see him more often now that I was retired. He and his wife, Susan, had even come out to Texas to see me a few times.
“Frank! Good to see ya, old man,” I replied.
“Who you calling ‘old man’?” he teased. “You’re only a year younger than me.”
“Yeah, but I’ve aged like fine wine. You look more like a prune,” I shot back, but I was lying.
Frank was still in good shape, even though he’d retired from bounty hunting a few years ago.
A few chuckles and snorts could be heard from the other men who’d entered with him.
“Good to see you, Ray,” Frank’s son Vince said from beside me. “I hate to interrupt this reunion, but we’re all here now, so let’s get this going so we can come up with a plan.”
Frank took a seat next to me at the large oval table. It was a windowless room with a dry erase board and TV monitor on the far wall, but it was otherwise simple for a meeting room.
“Ray, you know Dad and me, but I’ll go around the table and make some introductions so you know who the rest of us are,” Vince said. “To my left is my cousin, Archer, who I believe you met a few times when we were younger.”
I nodded, though I hadn’t seen the kid in probably more than a decade, so he didn’t exactly look the same.
