Their Ex's Redrock Midnight (Texas Alpha) by Shirl Anders Page B

it was just Vega dissed Tess a few times. Once at a WTSF get-together when Vega had tried to flirt with Vincent right there where Tess could see, then once in Cha-Cha’s Vega was in there and she’d told Tess, “All the plus sizes are all on sale, hon.”
    She and Tess had both seen red over that one.
    “I gotta go, but I knew you’d wanna know, babe,” Tess said, then the line went silent. Tess knew Rusty shouldn’t talk with a customer in her cab. But Rusty felt pretty guilty not informing Tess of her renewed and further interest in Cabe for real.
    But she just couldn’t.
    Because if she did, then she’d have to share everything. Then they’d have to analyze everything. Thereby making it real and making Rusty have to think about what she was doing and how stupid it might be falling in lust with a man that was still so tangled.
    “Thanks. The rest is your tip.”
    Rusty nodded as her fare stepped out and another got in behind him. This one was a local, a woman, and a gossip. So that was when Rusty heard more about Cabe, without it being from him, because Yvonne of Beauty World Cuts and Nails told her the hottest new gossip as Rusty drove her to her salon because her car was in the shop.
    “Vega Santos was doing a car salesman from one town over. Heard he was hot, but still. Vega got beat up, and now she wants back home with her husband. I heard Cabe Santos is not having it. Finally. How such a hot hunk of man can let his wife go all nympho and he still keeps her, I’ll never know,” Yvonne said.
    Looking in the rearview with her heart leaped up into her throat, Rusty could see Yvonne studying her pink jewel-studded nails. Ready to spill more as her chartreuse lipstick-coated lips pursed. Rusty cringed, half hating what would come and half breathless to hear more.
    “Tammy saw that Cabe in Richard and Son Law Office.” Yvonne nodded in the rearview with her slightly pudgy lower chin spreading out in an unkind way. “You know what that means,” she declared. Then she mouthed the word “divorce.”
    Rusty sucked in a breath, feeling very weird, as if she might faint or leap into cheers at the same time. The end of a marriage was tragic ... the end of Cabe’s marriage was—what she wanted.
    Thank God, Yvonne was getting out of her taxi. “See you, hon! You come in for your nails here and I’ll give you a discount,” Yvonne said, waving as she walked to the front door of her salon.
    Rusty left quickly after that, trying to get her mind back on work and away from thinking any more about Cabe and about whether he was going to come back and give her some more bossy sex. But twenty minutes later found her thinking about if she should invest in some new sexy lingerie while she was trawling Redrock for another fare when another strange person jumped into her cab. It ended up being more about Cabe in the end too. But first a mysterious adventure ensued.
    “Rusty Jean, I need you to hit the pedal like now , babe,” Finn O’Neil ordered. And it was not a request but a heavy-handed demand that had her startled, but doing as he commanded. She saw a big man with a comb-back head of black hair that had to be in a ponytail, which was typical Indian style. But what was weird about him was that he was an Indian wearing a sports coat over jeans and a button-up, plus he was big and she’d never seen him before. His broad face turned to look at her cab—
    “ Don’t look at him, babe. Just go,” Finn ordered.
    Rusty did what Finn told her with her mind whirling on why Finn was evading a big and mean-looking Indian dude. Couldn’t be good, she decided, checking her security panel, which she’d not really spent any time getting to know better yet.
    Finn’s really hot electric-green eyes looked at her in her rearview as he leaned forward and clasped her shoulder over the seat and through the new partition window Cabe had installed, while the masculine smell of Irish spring wafted her way.
    “I’m thinking cab drivers