by Cindy Dees
He gazed around in search of Jessica’s wavy golden hair but didn’t spy her. Last he’d talked with her, she’d been looking out a window. He didn’t see any windows on this side of the building. Damn. He was going to have to cross the dance floor. Taking a deep breath, he plunged into the writhing mass of sweaty, gyrating bodies and flailing limbs.
Instantly, hands were on him, pulling at him and blatantly groping him. He batted away the grabs at his crotch as best he could. But breasts and bellies and asses rubbed up against him suggestively in spite of his best efforts to slip through the crowd. Women shouted in his ear, but he ignored them, focusing his efforts on finding a path through the human maze.
All at once, he popped out the back side of the mosh pit. It was dark on this side of the floor, and the debauchery was even more pronounced as he picked his way through the partyers.
A new and improved layer of fear exploded inside his skull. He had to find Jessica, and soon. She was wild, but her brand of wild didn’t extend to this. He skirted around a guy snorting lines of cocaine off a girl’s bare stomach, and spied a flash of pale, golden blond against the far wall over the shoulder of a guy in a suit.
Wes charged forward, grabbing the guy by the shoulder a spinning him around.
“Get your own piece of ass,” the guy growled as Wes saw the girl’s face.
Not Jessica.
Wes spun away, moving quickly along the long wall containing a half-dozen floor-to-ceiling glass windows. He was almost on top of another couple—a huge, muscular man totally hiding the girl he had smashed up against the wall—before Wes caught a glimpse of a tear-streaked cheek.
He would know the classic elegance of that cheek anywhere.
A strand of wavy blond hair fell forward as she turned her head weakly from side to side. She was tall, but her head barely reached the shoulder of the guy pinning her to the wall.
“Hey!” Wes said sharply, grabbing the guy’s shoulder and yanking him back from her.
“What the—” the big man growled.
Jessica’s dress was pushed down around her waist, exposing her black lace bra and a whole lot of creamy, satin flesh that even now looked touchable as hell. Wes spied the hemline of her dress, and it was bunched up nearly to her waist, exposing Jessica’s long, slender legs and a scrap of black lace that passed for a thong. The bastard had been well on his way to molesting her, obviously. Wes appeared to have gotten to her in the nick of time.
“I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the lady,” Wes ground out, barely hanging on to his cool.
“And I’m going to have to ask you to take off, asshole.”
“She has been drugged,” Wes retorted. “You need to leave her alone and let me take her home.”
“Of course, she’s drugged. Bitch blew me off when I asked her nice. So I slipped her a little something to change her mind.”
Wes could’ve reasoned with the guy. Could’ve threatened the guy with legal action for taking advantage of a defenseless woman. Could’ve accused him of drugging Jessica and assaulting her and called the police.
But it was a hundred times more satisfying to punch the guy in the nose with all of his considerable strength.
“Sonofa—” the guy roared, holding his bloody face. The guy came up swinging, and Wes danced back from the larger man, who was faster than he looked and not nearly as drunk as Wes had hoped he might be. “I’ll kill you,” the big man growled. “She’s mine, and you can’t have her.”
For some reason, the assertion that Jessica belonged to this jackass infuriated Wes beyond all reason.
The guy charged Wes, coming shoulder first like a football player. Crap. This guy was going to be fully as strong as his bulk suggested.
But Wes had both righteous fury and a burning need to protect Jessica on his side. His rage transformed in a blink of the eye, becoming an icy calm that focused his senses and distilled his purpose into a single pinpoint to make this man pay for what he’d intended to do—hell, had nearly done—to Jessica.
The fight was brutal and one-sided. Despite the other man having easily fifty pounds on him, Wes was a combat-trained and battle-hardened Marine. And he was pissed.
By the time the bouncers heard the commotion, made their way past the mosh pit and finally pulled Wes off the guy, Jessica’s assailant looked more like hamburger than human.
Wes, still in the grips of adrenaline-enhanced strength, pulled away from the bouncers who had him by the arms and rushed over to kneel in front of Jessica where she’d slid down the wall and was now huddled on the concrete floor, hugging her knees.
“Jess?” he murmured. “Are you okay?”
She looked up, mascara streaking her porcelain skin. She launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck with a sob of relief. He stood, taking her with him, and her slender body plastered against his, trembling. Her head lolled against his shoulder and renewed fury coursed through him.
He held her close, doing his damnedest to make her feel safe and protected. Her legs gave out, but he supported her weight easily with an arm around her waist. Lord, he’d forgotten how good she felt in his arms. She tended more toward lean and angular than round and lush, but her body was soft in comparison to his, and she had all the curves he needed.
“You...came,” she mumbled against his neck. He felt wetness through his shirt. She was crying.
Holy Mother of God. Jessica Blankenship, force of nature and formidable femme fatale, was crying?
“I’ve got you, babe,” he murmured, comforting her as best as he could.
Hands grabbed at him, tugging him away from her. He fought as hard as he could, but there were a lot of hands, and they were collectively stronger than him. People were shouting about police coming, patrons ran in every direction and the chaos was incredible. In the middle of it, a pair of bouncers pulled him away from Jessica.
Wes locked stares with her, and she looked at him in fearful entreaty as the bouncers dragged him, still struggling violently, away from her.
He reached out for her, and her hands came up to reach for him. Then something cracked him painfully across the skull, and everything went black.
Chapter 2
Wes tugged his black dress uniform down, adjusting the white belt at his waist carefully. This hearing was just a formality, but the Marines followed the rules obsessively. He’d assaulted a civilian and was subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice for doing so. Of course, he’d been rescuing an innocent woman from assault or worse, and everyone knew he would walk away today with a slap on the wrist and an unofficial attaboy for saving Jessica.
He walked into the pale wood military courtroom and nodded at his boss, General Blankenship, who was seated beside his daughter and her lawyer. Oddly, the Old Man didn’t nod back. In fact, he was scowling rather thunderously at Wes.
He passed Jessica, who was staring down at her twined fingers in her lap, and took his place at the defendant’s table beside his own lawyer, murmuring a quick greeting, then asking, “Any reason why the general’s looking so annoyed?”
His lawyer opened his mouth, but the judge entered the courtroom just then, and the bailiff intoned in a rolling baritone, “All rise.”
Legalese passed back and forth between the government’s lawyer and Wes’s lawyer for a minute or so, and then the other lawyer stood up. “In the matter of conduct unbecoming an officer, we call Jessica Blankenship to the stand.”
Wes didn’t relish hearing the story again of her drugging nor her urgent call to him for a rescue. Still, he pasted the most supportive look he could on his face for her. He was just abjectly grateful he’d reached her before anything worse than some groping and embarrassment had happened to her.
He hadn’t been allowed to see her since he’d been hauled away in handcuffs that night a month ago. Which annoyed the hell out of him. He’d desperately
wanted to hear from her directly that she was okay. That she wasn’t scarred by her near miss with disaster. That he’d kept his promise to her and that no harm had befallen her.
She looked slightly ill as she raised her hand and swore to tell the truth. Worried, he studied her closely. She was too thin. She was wan and had chosen not to wear any makeup to relieve the purple smudges beneath her eyes. Her hair looked odd, tamed into a conservative twist on the back of her head like that. Its lush, long waves were her pride and joy. And for good reason. He’d spent hours trailing his fingers through the lustrous, silken strands.
The hairdo showed off her lovely, slender neck, though. A string of lustrous pearls competed with her skin to be paler and more luminescent. Her skin won.
The prosecution lawyer asked her to relay what had happened to her on the night of his arrest.
This was the part where she would tell about being roofied and calling him, and how he’d charged to her rescue. If Wes was lucky, she would remember how the guy had admitted to drugging her and had refused to leave her alone.
Her sultry voice sounded strained as she said, “Captain Morgan approached my...date...and demanded that he leave. Then Captain Morgan insisted that he wanted to take me home, himself. When my date refused, Captain Morgan, uh, assaulted him.”
Wes stared in utter disbelief. She was lying! Not to mention, he would never force any woman to go home with him, and she damned well knew it.
“Did you witness this assault by Captain Morgan on your friend?” the lawyer asked.
“Yes.”
“How would you describe it?”
“It was violent. One-sided.”
“Did your friend fight back?”
“He tried. But Captain Morgan is a lot stronger than him.”
“Of course he is. He’s a Marine. He’s trained in the use of lethal force, isn’t that right?”
“I guess so,” she answered.
“Would you say that Captain Morgan intended to harm your date?”
“I would say Captain Morgan intended to kill him, sir.”
Wes’s jaw dropped. She wasn’t wrong that an urge to kill the guy had certainly passed through his mind. But the guy had admitted to drugging her with the intent of forcing himself upon her sexually!
More to the point, he hadn’t killed the bastard, no matter how richly he’d deserved to die. He’d restrained himself, dammit. Wes was fully willing to face the music for beating the crap out of that jerk. But attempted murder? Not so much.
The prosecution lawyer pressed on. “I’m entering into evidence these photographs of the victim of Captain Morgan’s beating obtained from the emergency room where he was admitted. They are graphic and of a disturbing nature, and in deference to my client, I would like to ask the judge to view the images in chambers and not subject my client to viewing them.”
The judge nodded his assent to the request and rose to go into his office to look through a stack of photos the lawyer handed over.
Wes leaned over to his lawyer, whispering, “The guy was huge and said he was going to kill me.”
“I’ll cross-examine her about it and hope she can corroborate that.”
The judge came back, the look on his face grim to say the least. And he was refusing to make eye contact with Wes anymore. A sick feeling lodged in the pit of Wes’s stomach. He had pounded the crap out of the bastard, and the list of injuries he’d inflicted had included broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, broken wrist, separated retina and, of course, the broken nose. He expected the guy had copious contusions and bruises to go along with the major injuries, too.
Wes leaned over and whispered urgently to his lawyer, “Ask her about the phone call. She called me. Begged me to rescue her. Check the damned phone records!”
His lawyer whispered back, “She didn’t have a cell phone on her at the time of the raid. I can’t prove that she called you. If she won’t testify to it, the existence of a phone and of a call to you becomes a he-said-she-said.”
“She. Called. Me,” he ground out. “Surely the Pentagon has records of it.”
But she had likely called on an unsecured public line. No log was made of calls to or from those lines.
His own lawyer was gestured forward to cross-examine Jessica, and he asked, “Did you call anyone for help on the night in question, Miss Blankenship?”
“No.”
Wes stared at her. What in the hell was she doing? She refused to look at him and was staring fixedly at his lawyer instead.
“Did you contact anyone at all while you were in the nightclub?”
“No.”
“Did you ask Captain Morgan to help you? To rescue you from your date? To interfere in any way between you and the man you were with on the night in question?”
“No.”
“Did you have any communication at all with Captain Morgan prior to his assault upon the victim?”
Jessica did glance up at Wes then, for just an instant. Her gaze seemed agonized, and then it hardened. Became determined. Shifted back to the questioning lawyer. “No, I had no communication with him.”
Wes burst out, “You called me! Begged me to save you? How would I have even known where you were if you hadn’t called me and told me where to find you?”
The judge pounded his gavel and glared at him. Wes got the message loud and clear. This hearing wasn’t about justice. It was about railroading him in the name of protecting the reputation of Blankenship’s precious daughter.
Hell, didn’t it count for anything that the guy he’d beat up hadn’t pressed any charges against him at all? Didn’t that speak to the man’s guilt in drugging Jessica and trying to sexually assault her?
Wes sat back, flabbergasted. Jessica had just single-handedly destroyed his career. He was going to be thrown out of the Corps at a minimum, or even sent to Fort Leavenworth for assaulting that bastard. Was she really that pissed off that he’d broken up with her last summer? Or was Blankenship himself behind this travesty? What had he threatened Jessica with to get her to perjure herself like this?
Wes would refute her testimony, of course. But the fact remained that he’d beaten a civilian man half to death, and her word would be taken over his as to why he’d done it. Not to mention Daddy Dearest was one of the most politically connected officers in the entire Marine Corps. The Blankenships had thrown him under the bus but good. The general might be behind this, but Jessica was bloody well going along with him in this travesty.
What. A. Liar.
Cold rage built in his gut until it consumed his entire being. He literally shook with it. The hearing proceeded around him, and he heard none of it. Only the stark truth that Jessica Blankenship had destroyed him remained in his mind. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
The judge called a recess for lunch and they reconvened afterward in chambers. It was just Wes, the two lawyers and the judge in the meeting. There was no sign of Jessica or her father in the halls leading to the courtroom.
The judge informed him that, in light of his exemplary service record and heroic service to his country in time of war, he would generously be offered an opportunity to resign his commission before court-martial proceedings were initiated against him.
His lawyer looked at him in open pity. “Take the deal, Wes. Otherwise you’ll have a criminal record and a dishonorable discharge that will follow you the rest of your life.”
Numb, stunned and utterly devastated, he nodded. A couple of official documents were shoved at him. He signed where indicated and, just like that, his distinguished career was over. He was no longer a Marine. He was...nothing.
Chapter 3
Jessica drove her 1960 red Corvette into Sunny Creek, Montana, wearily. Main Street looked like a picture postcard of an Old West town, with square storefronts of various heights, some brick, some clapboard. Hanging signs w
ere labeled with old-fashioned lettering, hitching posts stood in front of some stores and wagon wheels stood upright in planting beds along the street.
She guided her little sports car down the broad avenue, and it banged along over what felt like cobblestones. How...quaint.
Sunny Creek actually looked like a friendly sort of place. She only prayed it was a friendly sort of place with a hotel. She was exhausted after driving for three days nonstop with only brief pauses for naps and to get more coffee. Her car was a classic, but it was not designed for long road trips.
The happening place on Main Street seemed to be a diner called Pittypat’s. She parked in one of the diagonal parking spaces lining each side of the broad street and headed inside. And entered a time warp from the 1950s. It was all turquoise and peach with vinyl booths and the front end of a vintage car coming out of the back wall. There was even a jukebox across from the soda fountain.
“You look ready to drop, sweetie,” a gray-haired woman said kindly. “Would you like a booth and a cup of coffee?”
“I’m all coffeed out. What I need is food.”
“We have plenty of that around here. Take a look at the menu and let me know what looks good to you. Everything’s tasty.”
“I could really use some comfort food. What do you recommend?”
The woman laughed. “My sister makes a mean beef stew. We could add some of her homemade yeast biscuits to that, and finish it off with a piece of pie, and you’d have a nice meal.”
“Sold.”
“What’s your favorite kind of pie? Petunia’s the best baker in these parts. Her pies are famous.”
She must have been more exhausted than she realized, for all of a sudden Jessica was back in the lake house, about age five, sitting at the kitchen table with her mother—who was only a vague, beautiful ghost of a memory—digging into a piece of made-totally-from-scratch lemon meringue pie, so tall and fluffy she could barely see over it.
“Do you have lemon meringue?” she asked wistfully.
