by Lori Wilde
He swallowed hard, closed his eyes, and crossed his hands in front of his swollen erection. Dammit, Flynn got under his skin in a way no woman ever had—and he feared that no other woman ever would. What was it about her that so beguiled him? It was more than her straight dark hair that went wild and curly with the humidity. More than those intelligent hazel eyes that tipped up when she smiled. More than those deadly gorgeous double dimples in her right cheek.
What was she doing to him with her sassy mouth and the sexy way she sashayed? His defenses were crumbling. His resolve was gone. The woman lit a fire in him that could not be quenched.
And he was so busy wanting her, he’d forgotten all about getting revenge.
Beau stood in the shadows watching the convict kiss his girl, fury spurting like hot lava through his veins. His hand went to the butt of his gun as he imagined himself pulling his duty weapon from his holster and shooting Calloway right through the heart.
The impulse terrified him, because he knew he was capable of it.
He’d killed before. In a war, yes, but he’d pulled triggers and men had died. Bad men, and the world was a better place without them, but anyone with a conscience felt regret when he ended the life of another. No matter how much he had it coming.
Revolt writhed through him. Devastation wrecked him. Loathing seethed in his gut. He felt betrayed and mortified. They were kissing underneath the Sweetheart Tree for everyone to see. Making a fool of him. Laughing at him. Deriding his office.
He didn’t blame Flynn. He knew she was hypnotized by Calloway’s evil charms. Seduced by the dark side. Lead astray by lust. Deceived by pleasures of the flesh.
And it was up to him to save her.
This was his mission. Rescuing Flynn by eradicating this delinquent force. In Beau’s mind, Calloway embodied every criminal who’d ever broken the law. Every evildoer who had gotten away with his crime. He was the biker responsible for Jodi’s death. In him, Beau even saw his father—lawless, arrogant, undisciplined. Calloway was a cancer growing on Beau’s beautiful little town, and he had to be stopped. Even if that meant Beau had to compromise his principles to achieve his goal. Just as he’d been forced to do back in high school.
And yet even as rage whispered this into his ear, part of him reveled in self-flagellation for entertaining such thoughts. Bad impulses were bad impulses even when they came from good people, and this impulse to destroy Jesse Calloway hunkered like a black monster in his soul.
Beau fisted his hands, struggled with his hatred. He could not let himself become obsessed with destruction. If he did, he was no better than Calloway. He closed his eyes and swallowed back the vicious bile choking his throat. Swallowed it and fought off the sinister brute threatening to consume him.
“Sheriff?”
Opening his eyes, he saw Sam Cheek standing in front of him, his dogs on leashes sniffing at Beau’s boots.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” Beau bit off the word, then swung his gaze to the Sweetheart Tree, wondering if Sam had seen his shame. But the park was empty. Calloway and Flynn gone.
“You sure?” Sam looked concerned.
Beau nodded curtly.
“You haven’t seemed yourself lately.”
Yeah, well, you catch your girl kissing a con and see how that makes you feel, he wanted to say, but of course he did not. Instead a twinge of fear ran down his spine as he whispered, “Maybe this is the real me.”
The next morning, Jesse was right in the middle of installing shelving on the walls for the boxes of inventory he’d just received when Sheriff Trainer darkened his door.
“Hello, scumbag.”
A chill shot up Jesse’s spine the same way it had when he was a foster-care runaway living in the Arizona desert and he’d heard a very distinct kind of rattling noise. He looked up, screwdriver in hand, the smell of fresh paint in his nostrils. His instincts urged him to leap across the room and pummel the shit out of the man responsible for ruining his life, but retribution had been ten years in the making. He wasn’t going to do anything to ruin that and send himself back to prison. Flynn’s love was at stake. For her, he would do anything.
“Hello, Sheriff,” he replied mildly, and slid him a narrow-eyed glance, part boredom, part threat, as if he was a fatted cougar, not hungry, but not opposed to toying with his prey for sport.
Trainer’s hand rested on the butt of his duty weapon, a trigger-happy expression glinting in his eyes. The past decade had been kind to him. Being sheriff had puffed him up, slathering meat on his bones. But he hadn’t gone to fat as many former athletes did. Rock-hard muscles bulged underneath the tin star on his chest. A white Stetson rode his head.
Jesse laid down the screwdriver and raised his palms. Easy, easy, don’t give him any excuse to play Wyatt Earp.
“I know what you’re trying to pull and it’s not going to work,” Trainer growled.
“Me?” He kept his game face firmly entrenched. He had street smarts going for him. All Trainer had were his badge and the gun. That’s all he needs to send you straight back to Huntsville.
“Don’t play me for a fool.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jesse stiffened his shoulders. Hell, he’d known this wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. You come messing around a beehive with a stick, you were bound to get stung.
Trainer trod toward him, the sound of his boots echoing loudly in the cavernous room.
Jesse didn’t shirk, didn’t blink.
Trainer invaded his personal space.
Jesse held his ground.
Trainer’s gaze smashed into his.
Jesse sent it flying right back with a powerful visual lob. This was how he’d survived in prison. He never started anything, but he never ran from a fight either. On the outside he stayed calm, but assertive. Quiet, with a deadly undercurrent. Don’t tread on me.
“She’s precious,” Trainer said.
“I know.”
“Special.”
“That she is.”
“She deserves better than you.”
“You too.”
“Granted, but she’s mine.”
“She might have your ring on her finger, but you don’t own her. Flynn has a mind of her own and she knows how to use it.”
“You don’t know her.”
If Beau only knew the things Flynn had confided in him. Jesse could say he knew her better than Trainer could ever possibly know her, but if he did, he was sure his face would end up as a stopping place for the sheriff’s fist. And more than likely he’d find handcuffs clamped around his wrists as well. Don’t give the bastard an excuse. He’s itching for you to give him an excuse.
“You need a bottle of water, Sheriff? You’re sweating.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, Calloway, still full of shit,” Trainer said, but he reached up to swipe his upper lip with the back of his hand.
They scowled at each other.
Jesse wasn’t afraid of him, but he felt that same razor-blade edginess he got in the penitentiary just before serious trouble broke out. It was that sharp, thin awareness of impending disaster that led to him saving Josh Green’s life and preventing a prison riot. But navigating that dark perimeter was precarious. Instinct wasn’t a sure thing. Rather, it was a whispering nudge that, if followed, could lead a man to the brink of reason. Intuition was too often like toeing a tightrope, stretched taut and narrow, over a yawning abyss. One shaky move in the wrong direction and it was all over.
“Something else you want from me, Sheriff? Something more than the ten years you stole?”
For the first time, Trainer looked a little uneasy, a little uncertain. Jesse saw the flicker of fear run across the man’s eyes, but he quickly shut it down. “You sent yourself to prison, Calloway. Don’t try and blame it on me.”
“Been denying what you did for so long that now you’re believing your own bullshit?”
Trainer’s jaw turned to granite. “I want to make one thing perfectly
clear.”
Jesse couldn’t stop himself from reacting. Not when it came to Flynn. He took a hard step forward, flattened his chest against Trainer’s, and stared the taller man squarely in the eye. Their noses were almost touching.
“Yeah?”
“You stay away from her.”
“Gonna be kinda hard to do, Hoss, what with her working right upstairs from me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You mean you want me to keep my hands off her?”
“Yes.” He snapped off the word like breaking peanut brittle.
“Or what?”
Trainer looked taken aback. “Or what?”
“You said to keep my hands off her. That implies an ‘or what.’ What happens if I touch her?”
“Do I have to spell that out for you?”
“Come on, Hoss, be man enough to come right out and say it. Keep my hands off Flynn or you’ll plant evidence on me again, just like you did the first time.”
Trainer’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “Just stay out of her way.”
“And if I refuse?”
Anger pulsed the distended vein in Trainer’s forehead. Jesse felt rather than saw him knot his hands into fists.
Duck! his mind yelled, but Jesse kept toeing the abyss. He was giving Trainer the rope, let the bastard hang himself.
“You touch her and you’re a dead man.”
“What if she touches me?” he asked. Couldn’t let well enough alone, could you?
“You son of a bitch.” Trainer cocked back his fist, threw a punch.
Jesse never raised a hand. He just let the beating happen.
“I saw Beau go into Jesse’s shop and then he comes stormin’ out five minutes later, fists all knotted up, face like a thundercloud. I go over to see Jesse, you know, to be neighborly, say hi.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“I took him some cranberry walnut muffins.”
“Well, of course you make the best cranberry walnut muffins in Twilight.”
“Thank you. Anyway, I walked right in, and let me tell you, girl, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Jesse’s right eye was swelling shut and his bottom lip was cut and bleeding.”
“My heavens!”
“I’m telling you, I’m pretty sure Beau smacked him a good one. I asked Jesse what happened, but he claimed he ran into the door. Ran into the door, my left foot! Let me tell you, something’s going on between those two.”
“You suppose it has anything to do with Flynn MacGregor? She finally accepted Beau’s ring, but I’ve seen the way Jesse looks at her. That man’s in love.”
“Or serious lust.”
“He has been ten years in prison. That’s got to put the starch in a man’s jeans.”
“Penelope! You naughty thing.”
“I’m just saying. Ten years without s-e-x…” She spelled it out.
Vida Lewis and Penelope Cantrell, two of the busiest busybodies in Twilight, stood gossiping at the fabric counter at Wal-Mart, while the checkout clerk flipped a bolt of forest green corduroy and measured off a yard. Flynn could only assume that the women didn’t see her perusing the yarn and knitting selections a few feet over. Either that or they wanted her to overhear their pernicious gossip.
She had the urge to give the old biddies a piece of her mind, but she held her tongue and slipped out through the automotive center where she’d been having the oil changed in her pickup. No sense in giving them added fuel to the fires of their rumor-mongering.
However, their conversation dug right down into her brain. Had Beau gotten into a fistfight with Jesse?
Over her?
But how could he? Beau was at his law enforcement convention in Dallas.
Or was he? Had Beau somehow found out that she had kissed Jesse and come home early? Shame burrowed into her head, snuggled up tight next to Vida and Penelope’s tittle-tattle. She’d cheated on Beau.
Her fingers fumbled the debit card as she paid for the oil change. She was shaking so much she had to slide the card through twice before it was accepted. But it was only when she was in the Ford Ranger and flew past the cutoff that she took every single day of her life that Flynn realized just how upset she was.
After circling back, she took her exit and drove to the town square. She found a parking spot not far from the theater and didn’t even take the time to feed the parking meter. Flynn sprinted around the back of the building—the front entrance was still boarded up with plywood—and dashed inside.
“Jesse!” she called.
Her voice echoed back to her in the empty, high-ceilinged room.
Jesse…Jesse…Jesse.
And then she saw it. Two drops of bright red blood spatter in the middle of the cement floor. Her body went at once icy cold and red-hot livid, and she knew what Vida and Penelope had said was true. Beau had beaten Jesse. She spun around, saw Jesse in the doorway, a cardboard box in his arms. The sun was behind him so she couldn’t see his face.
“Fancy meeting you here, Dimples.”
“Jesse.” Flynn breathed and rushed across the room toward him. She stopped when she saw his face and raised a trembling hand to her lips. “Omigod.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” He tried to grin, but only one side of his mouth crooked upward.
“Beau did this to you?”
“Who told you that?”
“Vida Lewis and Penelope Cantrell.”
“Those two busybodies?” He shrugged and stepped across the threshold and then balanced the cardboard box between a pair of parallel sawhorses. “When did you start listening to anything they had to say?”
“You’re telling me that Beau didn’t have anything to do with this? Oh, your poor eye.” His right eye was almost completely swollen shut. She raised a hand toward him. “And your lip!”
Jesse flinched, stepped back.
“I wasn’t going to touch your face.”
“Sorry, reflex.”
“It looks horrible.”
“No big deal. I’ve had much worse.”
“It was Beau, wasn’t it?”
“I ran into an immovable object.”
“And would that immovable object be six-foot-four with a fist like a bowling ball?”
“Bowling ball?”
“Figure of speech. Why are you protecting him?”
“I’m not protecting him, I’m protecting me. I have no desire to go back to Huntsville. Your fiancé is the one with all the power.”
“So he did hit you.”
“Look, I’ve got work to do…”
“Were you fighting over me? Did he find out that—”
“Cute as you are, Dimples, it’s not always about you.”
That irritated her. She sank her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
“Hey, you’re responsible for your own emotions.”
“You don’t want me to care if you got your face bashed in? Fine, I don’t care.” She snorted out a breath of frustration, turned her head. Men. Stubborn as hell, all of them.
“Liar.”
“What?” She whipped her head back around.
“You care.”
“Okay, I care, but for the life of me, I don’t know why.”
He grinned at her as best he could through the swollen eye and busted lip. “Because I’m simply irresistible.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” She slung the strap of her purse up onto her shoulder and stalked toward the door.
“Hey, Dimples, where you going?”
“I’ve got an immovable object to budge.”
Flynn marched from the theater across the street to the sheriff’s office. “Where is he, Madge?” she asked of the dispatcher seated inside the protective cage at the front desk.
“He’s in his office.”
“Buzz me in.”
“Sure.” Madge hit the buzzer underneath her desk that unlocked the door from the lobby to the back offices. Flynn pushed her way through
and barreled into his office.
“Flynn,” Beau said. “This is a nice surprise. I’ve been calling around to caterers for the wedding and—”
“Stop!” she commanded.
He blinked at her. “What’s wrong? Something’s happened. What’s happened?”
“You, you’re what’s happened. Why aren’t you in Dallas?”
“They switched the time of my speech. I gave it last night, came back home early to be with you.” He pushed back from his chair, came toward her, an expression of confused tolerance on his face. “You’re upset.”
“Don’t patronize me.” She raised both her palms, took a step back. “And don’t touch me.”
“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
She slipped his ring off her finger, held it out to him. “I came by to give you this.”
“What? Is something wrong with the ring? Isn’t it big enough?” he asked.
“Don’t play dumb. I know what you did and I’m breaking up with you, Beau.”
He looked like she’d socked him in the jaw. “Wh—wha—” he stammered. “Haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I been patient and understanding and—”
“You beat up Jesse Calloway.”
The guilty look on his face said it all. “He’s a convicted criminal, Flynn. Don’t believe everything he tells you.”
“Jesse never mentioned your name. He even denied you beat him up, but I know it was you. He’s served his time, Beau. He’s paid his dues. He has a right to live his life in peace. Why are you harassing him?”
“You’ve always had the hots for him, admit it,” Beau said. “Secretly you’re attracted to riffraff.”
Flynn hardened her jaw. “Take this ring right now before I throw it in your face.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, but I love you so much, Flynnie…”
“You’ve got a stupid way of showing it, Beau Trainer.” Rage and hurt burned her throat with unshed tears. She wasn’t about to let him make her cry.
“You’re my best friend.”
“No, I’m not. You treat me like I’m your possession. Like you’re a dog and I’m your bone.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then why did you beat up Jesse? He can’t fight you, Beau. He knows he’ll go back to prison if he does. And you know it too. You were trying to get him to fight with you. Admit it. You’re gunning for him.”
