"Neon lights draw me like a moth to a flame. Mama raised me right so that just leaves me to blame. When i get a little sideways on a honkey tonk tear, I'm old enough to know better but i'm still to young to care. Cowgirls with an attitude. Boots and tight blue jeans, take my mind off doing right and doing other things. When the weekends gone, i won't have a dime to spare. I'm old enough to know better but i'm still too young to care!" Wade Hayes "Old Enough to Know Better"

"As I walked out on the streets of Laredo. As I walked in Laredo one day...." Ryder stopped his drunken singing when he caught sight of the saloon girl walking back and forth across the lantern lit porch of the saloon.

"Well hello, my future wife." he called loudly to her and she blushed and gave him a coy wave.

"No." his older brother Ty said sternly.

"No, what?" Ryder asked with an innocent grin.

"We are supposed to be going to Texas and we'll never get there if you stop at every damn saloon between Kentucky and Austin."

"I don't stop at every saloon." Ryder argued. "Why I skipped three right back there in Witchita." Ty shook his head.

"That's because you were passed out drunk in the saddle." he reminded his brother. "From the first saloon you stepped into."

"See! I'm due for some more fun."

"That was only three hours ago!" Ty exclaimed.

"Then it's about time we stop for the night and get some rest, don't ya think? Look at her, Ty, I think I'm in love."

"Ryder, you fall in love ten times a day. Now come on and we'll make a camp outside of town."

"Make a camp?" Ryder asked with a frown as they rode away from the pretty little saloon girl. "Brother, if you'd let me work my magic we could both be sleeping the night away at the saloon with a set of breasts for pillows." Ty couldn't help but laugh.

"And what would you be paying those women with for the use of their breasts? You lost the last of your money at the last saloon. Remember you lost several hands of poker, drank several bottles of whiskey and then spent the last of it on three whores at once... All of which you were desperately in love with."

"They were beauties." Ryder said with a sigh and then he shrugged. "At least I think they were... I was too drunk to really remember."

"Of course you were. Hell you still are. I'll tell you what, if you ever really fall in love with a woman you won't know what to do with yourself."

"I love all women." Ryder argued as he stood up in the stirrups to stretch out his long, denim clad legs. "Old, young, short, tall....."

"Do you have any standards?" Ty asked with a bit of irritation. Ryder gave him that grin that seemed to always get his younger brother out of any trouble he was in.

"I prefer them to be breathing." Ty couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Yeah, that's always a plus." he agreed. Ryder whooped loudly and pulled his gun, the three bottle of whiskey still flowing through his veins. He aimed his gun in the air and began firing off shots as he galloped down the dark, dusty street. He was whooping and laughing and thoroughly enjoying himself. Ty just shook his head and met his brother just outside of town where Ryder had stopped to wait on him.

"You're going to get yourself killed one day doing that." Ty warned his brother. Ryder smiled.

"We all gotta die someday, big brother. We might as well live a little before it happens."

"Well they say the good die young, Ryder, so if they're right you'll live forever." Ryder smiled and ran his hand over his smooth chin.

"That's what I'm hoping for big brother." The brothers rode in silence for a while and then finally Ryder spoke up again.

"So what exactly are we heading to Texas for anyway?" he asked.

"I'm heading to Texas because I'm going to join the rangers." Ty replied.

"And I'm coming because I'm such a good brother." Ryder said with a nod and Tyler shook his head and looked over at him.

"No, you're coming because you slept with the senators sister in Kentucky and the man told you that if he ever sees you again he'll make sure you spend the rest of your life in prison." Ryder frowned.

"Oh yeah... I loved that girl." he said wistfully. Ty sighed with irritation but he couldn't deny that his brother was charming in an annoying, pain in the ass kind of way. He had a grin that always got him out of trouble, deep dimples in his cheeks that caused women to swoon, and golden brown eyes that had the same women eating out of the palm of his hand. He had thick dark brown hair that was nearly black and no matter how drunk he got, he kept that boyish charm about him that endeared him to everyone. Well everyone except maybe the fathers and brothers of the women he fell in 'love' with.

Tyler knew his brother had never really been in love... Lust perhaps, but never love. Tyler felt sorry for the woman that would finally manage to capture his brothers heart. Ryder was an annoying pain in the ass and would surely make her miserable with all his antics.

""You loved her but yet you forgot about her?" Ty asked. Ryder shrugged.

"Love is hard." he replied simply.

"Sometimes I think I failed ma and pa... I mean I raised you after they died and this is what you turned into." Ryder frowned.

"If I wasn't still drunk, I think my feelings might be hurt." Ty grunted and looked around.

"Let's just find a place to camp so you can work off your liquor. If you go shooting up any more towns or asking any more women to marry you, you're going to get us both killed." Ryder looked confused.

"I asked a woman to marry me?"

888

Brody was about to go home for the day. It had been a long day and it was well past dark. He knew the twins and Nathan would already be asleep by the time he made it home and knowing Elizabeth she would be sitting on the porch swing waiting for him.

He was walking past the saloon when he heard a commotion come from inside, just before two men came flying out the swinging doors in a big tangle of pounding fists. Brody let out an irritated breath and thought about ignoring the two men but then one of the saloon girls hollered out,

"Sheriff Atkinson, do something!" in a high pitched whiney voice. "That's my fiance' getting beat up." This had the taller and more muscular of the two men, pulling away from the other one and looking up at the small blond saloon girl as if she'd lost her mind.

"Fiance'?" he demanded as he wiped some blood from his lip. "This man is your fiance?" She looked confused.

"No, you are." she said, stomping her high heeled foot.

"I ain't your fiance and he sure as hell wasn't beating me up!" the man argued. The girl frowned.

"Yes you are! You asked me to marry you just a little while ago. You called me your future wife." The tall man looked very confused and distracted and his opponent took advantage and landed a hard punch to his jaw. Again the men became a tangle of fists. Brody pulled his gun and fired a shot up into the air, shocking the men and breaking them apart.

Brody looked back and forth between them with irritation. He didn't recognize the saloon girls fiance but the other man was Garth Nemoy, a young ranch hand from one of the neighboring ranches and a usually cool headed and well mannered kid.

"What's going on, Garth?" Brody asked as the saloon girl ran from the porch and clung to the other mans arm, cooing in his ear as she tried to clean the blood from his face.

"This man was hogging every damn whore in the place!" Garth exclaimed. "I just wanted to have some fun of my own so I offered to buy Kaitlyn here a drink and that damn crazy man attacked me."

"The lady was with me." The tall man said with a shrug as he seemed to enjoy the saloon girls attention to his wounds.

"I'm his fiance'." she said matter of factly.

"About that...." the tall man said with a charming grin and a bit of a nervous laugh. Brody could smell the liquor and he figured that between this stranger and Garth, they'd probably drunk a couple of bottles.

"I don't wanna have to arrest nobody." Brody said with a tired sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "I just wanna go home to my wife and my dinner."

"Sheriff Atkinson, you better arrest that drifter!" Saloon owner Clarence Phelps said stepping out of the saloon, red faced and looking ready to kill. "He busted up chairs, broke bottles, destroyed a wall! He even shot a couple of holes through the ceiling and nearly hit the men and women upstairs in their rooms! He's cost me hundreds of dollars in damages!" The tall man smiled guiltily.

"I might have gotten a little carried away." he admitted. Brody nodded and grabbed the tall man by the arm.

"Let's go. You can't come into my town and start trouble." he said and then he looked at Garth. "You go on home. I don't want to see you around here no more tonight." Garth nodded and walked off toward the livery.

"I'll come see you tomorrow, my love." Kaitlyn said with a tear in her doe like brown eyes as Brody led the tall man away. The man looked back at her with a sad smile.

"Until then, my eyes will ache for you." he replied and Brody rolled his eyes and grumbled under his breath.

"What's your name?" he demanded of the stranger once they were at the jail and he had taken the man's gun belt and twin pearl handled .38 revolvers and locked him in a cell.

"Ryder Hampton." the man replied with a grin that Brody was sure the man thought was going to charm his way out of trouble.

"You're going to stay in here for the night and sober up and in the morning we'll see about your bail." Brody said. He turned to walk away and Ryder rose to his feet and came to the bars.

"Uh.. About that... I don't exactly have any money... I spent it all."

"Guess you'll be in here for a good long time then, won't you?" Brody asked and he walked out slamming the thick wooden door behind him.

Ryder banged his head against the bars several times and then flopped down on a hard cot.

"What are you in for?" A dirty man with rotten teeth and angry black eyes asked from the other corner of the cell.

"I fell in love with the wrong woman." Ryder replied with a sigh. "What about you?"

"I killed the wrong woman." Ryder nodded slowly and then scooted just a bit further over on his cot... The damn sheriff had locked him up with a cold blooded woman killer? For busting up a saloon?

"Guess you solved the whole 'women, can't live with 'em...' dilema didn't ya?" he asked and then he cursed liquor, cursed his brother for leaving him to go to Tortulla and cursed Kaitlyn for being so darn pretty! Then he remembered that she actually thought she was his fiancee and laughed out loud... Ty would get a kick out that. Ryder covered his face with his hat and decided to try to get some sleep. Hopefully he could talk the sheriff into letting him go in the morning.