Making Up: Last Stand Saloon

By Kameron Claire

Eight months ago they wed for convenience and now it's time to sign the divorce paperwork. One of them refuses and the other one is secretly pregnant. Can they work past the hurt and betrayal to find their happily ever-after?

 

Max: We have a code word at The Last Stand Saloon—Red Sonja—and the guys know to send up the alert on any six foot tall redhead that enters my bar. Only this time when they call it, I'm not expecting the woman who broke my heart to walk in eight months pregnant with divorce paperwork in hand. Yes, we had an arrangement that did not include forever, but I mean to change her mind.

 

Sonja: I didn't mean to bring this—motions to very round belly—to Max's door, but he refuses to sign the divorce paperwork and we have to settle this prior to the big day. We had an agreement, and he never wanted a girlfriend, much less a wife, anyway. So, even though I loved him long before I wrangled him into this farce of a marriage, why won't he let me let him off the hook?

Each book in the series is a complete, standalone story. This is a steamy short story romance, complete with instalove and a guaranteed happily ever-after. If you're looking for a great lunchtime read, or something to spark sexy dreams before bed, you'll want to pick this one up.

Last Stand Saloon: Round Up, Making Up, Cowboy Up, and Giddy Up

• Language: English
• Publisher: Snuggle Whore Press, LLC
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201336875

Kameron Claire

USA Today Bestselling Author Kameron Claire loves building worlds where heroes and heroines push, pull, and fight their way to the love and happiness they deserve. She writes full length and short, steamy romance with an emphasis on strong female characters—often in male-dominated roles—and the alpha men who know how to love and support kick-ass, take-charge women.  While she may not need him to save her, she wants him to love, support, and most of all, RAVISH her. ** Get up to date information and freebies as a newsletter subscriber: www.kameronclaire.com/newsletter ** Reach out and chat with her anytime on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kameronclaireauthor

Book preview

Chapter One

Max

There are many R&R locations within the region, but my team takes our three-days off in Qatar when we can get a flight. Three days off doesn’t sound like a lot to most people, but after six-months in the desert, I’m looking forward to a little downtime. I plan to spend all my time zoned out at the pool listening to music, but more importantly, not worrying about who or what is running around outside our compound walls.

At night, we’ll hang out at the camp’s R&R club. They allot us three beers each per night, which I guess is better than nothing. The military likes to ration our alcohol intake, because they think we’ve been without while deployed. Mostly, I’d say we have been without, but not because we can’t get it.

Honestly, it’s pretty amazing the amount of contraband available over here. You have to know where to look, and after five tours to this region in the last eight years, I know exactly where to go and who to ask, although I rarely do.

My team can’t afford fuzzy heads any hour of any day of any week, which makes the next three days even more important to us.

We need to decompress.

The R&R camp, as the rest of the US military, is co-ed. Meaning there are women here, but the ratio of women to men is abysmal. I’m talking like thirty to one. It’s a sausage fest. But that’s the military and in my career field you can multiply it by a factor of ten. I haven’t seen a woman not covered head to toe in fabric in months, but here we’ll see glorious female flesh walking around in bikinis at the pool. Fraternization on post is highly discouraged, and the military attempts to enforce this by providing us with no privacy while we’re here. We sleep in ten by ten plywood walled rooms with three bunk beds and no ceiling housed in giant airplane hangars that carry every fucking noise you make across the sixty by eighty steel structure. You can’t fart without some guy or gal hearing you on the other side of the building.

Therefore, you’d think a good fuck is out of the question, and yet, it happens all the time. When there’s a will, there’s a way. A guy who hasn’t been laid in over six months is usually willing, but he has to find a woman who will try.

I’m not here for that.

Sure, I miss the soft caress of a woman, but in another six months I’ll be stateside where I can indulge ever carnal need coursing through my body without having to cockfight thirty other dudes who might be besides me in the thick of some stupid shit in the next six months.

Nope, sorry ladies, but no three-day hookup is worth the headache of some stupid grudge match later in the field.

Freshly showered and in the only civilian clothes I brought over the pond with me, we walk to the R&R club where a couple dozen guys sit outside smoking cigarettes, bullshitting, and drinking one of their three allotted twelve-ounce solo cups of hopefully cold brew. I don’t even care what brand it is at this point. If it’s cold and bubbly with a hoppy aftertaste, I’m a happy man.

Me and the guys take a table inside the air-conditioned building because, for one, none of us smoke, and for two, we sit outside in the desert heat without air conditioning most of the time, so why would we do it now? That’s just stupid. We all have a cold brew in hand and Jack pulls a deck of cards out of his pocket, shuffling and dealing us a game of spades. We play a lot of cards, and we’ve learned each other’s tells. That’s what happens when you live with your brothers twenty-four seven.

The DJ is in the middle of a set of rock-n-roll music. I’ve been here enough times to know he’ll alternate genres throughout the night to give everyone a taste of what they like.

Me? I’m a country kind of guy, but I’ve developed an appreciation for all kinds of music over the years. And really, anything is better than gunfire.

In less than a year, I’ll be back home, out of the military, and taking over ownership of a roadside country bar in the middle of nothing along highway 24. I invested eight months ago while home on leave—becoming a forty percent owner in the hole in the wall bar—but I have big plans for the rustic establishment and will put down the money to take over primary ownership at the end of this tour.

We play two rounds of spades and are halfway through our second beers in no time. It’s hard to sip, but I’m savoring every drop while I can. There’s a small group of women on the makeshift dance floor, swaying back and forth to a set of top forty hits, and there are a shit ton of guys who have taken root around the floor watching them. They’re not encroaching, but I know the women feel their presence all the same.

I turn my attention back to the game and down the last of my beer at the same time as my partners. We take a break and get our third and last beer from the bar at the same time the DJ transitions to a round of country music. As we walk back to our table, I see an angel on the dance floor, two-stepping to Trace Adkins all by herself.

Not an angel of the white robe and halo variety, but a fallen angel with the seductive hip swing of a temptress in a pair of painted-on jeans and a simple, fitted tank top. Her hair is up in a long red ponytail pulled through the back of a John Deere baseball cap. She swings around and I see her face, and although I can’t tell the color of her eyes, the sensual pout of her lips is enough to turn