by Sandra Owens
“I’d bring it to you, but then I’d disturb my friend here.”
“Thanks.” She crossed the room and took the bottle, careful not to touch his fingers. How did one stop loving a man who didn’t want to wake up her cat? There must be a way, and she’d have plenty of time to puzzle out the answer in the days ahead.
“Where was I?” she asked after returning to her chair.
“There was no one home to care.”
She’d rather his voice didn’t sound so gentle, as if he cared. “Right. Well, it went along like that until I turned fifteen. For the first time since my mom died, daddy remembered my birthday and decided to treat me to a night out to dinner at . . .” Unable to resist, she let the moment draw out until Jamie lifted a brow. “Crazy Zollie’s Roadside Eats But There’s No Seats.” Turned out, that had been the only thing funny about that night.
Jamie’s lips twitched. “I’ll have to put that on my bucket list.”
Lips she’d thought would never smile again curved upward. She resisted the urge to touch her fingers to her mouth to know for a fact she was smiling. “That really was the actual name of the place, even had a hand-painted sign saying so. Crazy Zollie had an outdoor grill, and the tables were cement blocks piled atop each other with a wood plank across them. He claimed he tried picnic tables and chairs once, but people kept stealing them.”
It hadn’t mattered to her. All she’d cared about was that her father had remembered her birthday and was spending time with her. If she’d known the outcome of that night, however, she’d have begged to be taken anywhere else, or nowhere at all.
“So . . .” More than anything, she didn’t want to tell him the rest, would rather parade naked in front of a convention of Southern Baptists. “So, there we were, eating our pulled pork and Hoppin’ Johns when this man walked over to our standing-up table and asked if we’d mind if he joined us. There was only me and my daddy there before the man arrived, and there was another table he could’ve gone to.”
She set the root beer on the floor and hugged her knees. “I wish my father had said ‘yes, I do mind. It’s my daughter’s birthday, and I want her all to myself.’ But he didn’t. The next thing I wish is that I’d left, just started walking down the street and kept going. But I was Hannah Conley then, and Hannah was too dumb to recognize the evil in Rodney Vanders’s eyes when he looked at her.”
“So he fixated on you, Hannah?”
She jerked her gaze to his. “Don’t call me that. Hannah’s dead. Buried. Never coming back.” Hannah was no longer capable of facing the world.
“Good. I’ve grown used to Sugar, but help me understand why you feel you have to live a lie.”
Hearing her name spoken aloud after two years sent rogue-sized waves of regret flowing through her. So many things she could’ve done differently if she’d only known. Her only excuse was that she’d not understood how very clever the devil was. I’m sorry, Mrs. Lederman. I’m so Goddamned sorry.
Stupid, stupid hot tears rolled down her cheeks despite her effort to stop them. Jamie wanted her to explain why she lived a lie, but how did she explain her part in a murder?
“Sugar?”
So she was Sugar again. But not for long. As soon as she got his interrogation over with and sent him on his way, she’d be Nikki Swanson. She decided Nikki would get lost somewhere in Arizona and never look at another man. They just weren’t worth it. You either hated them or loved them and either way led to heartbreak.
“Okay. I just need a minute.” She soaked in the sight of him, imprinted on her brain how his eyes had softened with the telling of her story so far, knowing that was about to change. He still stroked Junior’s chin and neck as if he knew exactly where a cat wanted to be worshiped. I love you, Jamie Turner, even though you’re fixin’ to rip my heart out of my chest and stomp it to pieces. Because he would, this man of honor who hated liars.
“Turned out Rodney took one look at me and decided I belonged to him no matter what I wanted. I didn’t understand that until it was too late. He and my father started talking, and before the night was over, Rodney Vanders, chief of police in a town his family had ruled with an iron fist for decades, offered my father a job. Daddy was thrilled to be back as a cop, a job he thought he deserved. Rodney isn’t stupid, not then and not now. He eased his way into our life, and when my father thought he hung the moon, Rodney asked for me as payment for all he’d done for us. My father agreed.” She waited for Jamie’s reaction. Did he think it was okay for a father to give his only daughter to a man who lusted after a girl not yet sixteen?
“Jesus.” Junior gave a little growl when Jamie’s fingers dug into his neck. “What . . . what kind of father . . .”
He seemed at a loss for words, and she could sympathize. Yeah, what kind of father? That Saint even uttered Jesus’s name told her how shocked he was. Well, he’d yet to hear the worst of it.
“Anyway, from then on, Hannah’s life was monitored by Rodney. Where she went, who she saw, who she talked to. Mostly, she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, or see or talk to anyone but him. She . . . she was weak and inexperienced and didn’t know how to say no to bad cop and bad cop. That’s what I call them, and if it had been me, Sugar, I would’ve told them both to go straight to hell and to drop dead on their way.” The tears stilled flowed, both from anger at having to lay herself open to Jamie and the remembering.
If she could somehow manage to curl up and die right then, she would.
Jamie had prepared himself to listen to her lies, and then he thought he would be able to walk away for the last time. Instead, the woman with the tears streaming down her cheeks broke his heart, and he was going nowhere.
He picked up Junior and moved him to the bottom of the bed. “Come here, Sugar.”
“But you haven’t heard the worst.”
“I don’t care.” And he didn’t. Whatever she told him next, he now understood she’d been the victim of a man who preyed on the people he was charged with protecting. Even worse, her own father hadn’t kept her safe from a pedophile. Sugar—she’d always be Sugar to him—had been a pawn in a game no young girl could understand, nor stop.
With the wariness of a kitten creeping up to a rottweiler that might eat it, she came to him and crawled onto his lap. Although he wanted to assure her he wouldn’t bite, he still wasn’t sure how he felt about her, nor what he wanted from her. That she was finally telling the truth, he believed. It was beyond his comprehension how a father could give his young daughter away. When he had a daughter, he’d love and protect her with every fiber of his being. He’d love her the way his parents had loved him.
“Tell me the worst,” he said after he had her safely tucked into his arms. He pressed his nose into her hair and inhaled the scent of her, one he’d recognize a hundred years from then. In this world or some other.
“I don’t want to.”
“Tell me anyway.” He didn’t imagine she did. If it was beyond what she’d told him so far, something to do with her involvement in stealing seven hundred thousand dollars, it would be a hard thing for her to admit. Had she been forced into it, or had she willingly participated? Afraid of the answer, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. They had come this far though, and he suspected the last part of the story was why she was running. Wrapping his arms around her, he waited for her to speak.
“Are ya sure you’d not just rather leave? Go back to Brown Jill, and forget you ever met me?”
With his lips pressed against the top of her head, he smiled against her hair on hearing her description of poor Jill. “I’m sure.”
The sigh she heaved pressed her breasts against his chest, and he willed his erection to go away . . . at least for now. Later? Depended on what she had to say.
“Damn you, Jamie Turner. I was supposed to be rid of you by now.”
There was no force to her words, and he didn’t take offense. �
�I got that when you disappeared. But I found you, didn’t I? That should tell you something.”
She lifted her head, and her eyes searched his as if looking for what he wasn’t saying. He wasn’t ready for such truths and lowered his gaze to her mouth. The one he was going to kiss if she didn’t start talking.
“All right. The worst is that Rodney stole seven hundred thousand from a very nice woman, Mrs. Lederman. I was the one who recommended the attorney when she wanted to change something in her will. The man was indebted to Rodney and would do anything Rodney asked. Hell, half the town owes him this favor or that, and the other half is too afraid to cross him. I suspected he was up to something bad, and I didn’t try to stop him. That makes me guilty, right?”
“Let me get this straight. Did Vanders tell you who to recommend?”
“Yes, he made me.” She clamped her teeth down on her lower lip, her eyes going distant, to some other time. “You remember I said he tried to drown me? He did it to make sure I understood his power over me and what he could do if I didn’t obey. At first . . . well, at first Hannah refused to go along, but she wasn’t strong, and when he showed her what he could do to her, she gave up.”
Jamie wondered if she understood how much she distanced herself from the girl she’d been, as if she couldn’t bear to think of herself capable of doing those things. Not that he blamed her from what he’d heard so far. She’d basically been a child, and a lonely, hurting one at that. If he had one wish, it’d be ten minutes in a room with Rodney Vanders, followed by another ten with her father.
Still, there had to be more to the story for her to feel so guilty. “Why is he so determined to find you, Sugar?” Her gaze fixated on the middle of his chest, and he lifted her chin. “Why?”
“Because I stole the money back. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t keep it. She didn’t know they’d changed her will, but she told me once where she wanted her money to go. So, I made sure it went to the right places. The Wounded Warriors because her only son died in Viet Nam, and two animal shelters because she loved animals.”
From the beginning, he’d judged her and found her lacking without ever giving her a chance to prove otherwise. As for lying about her name, he now understood why she’d changed it. Not that she’d owed it to him to tell him. He’d given her little reason to think she meant anything to him beyond a few hours of mutual enjoyment.
“Does he think you still have the money?”
“I don’t know. Probably, but it doesn’t matter. He’d want me back with or without it so he could properly punish me. He-he thinks he owns me.”
Her voice trembled, and the tears pooling in her eyes had his burning. He blinked them away and did some fast thinking. If the man had near-drowned her and put a whiplash scar on her back, he was clearly dangerous. But—and it was the big but—she couldn’t, nor shouldn’t, have to run and hide the rest of her life. She had him and K2 to protect her, and a small town chief of police would be no match for them.
That was part of the reason for the decision he came to. The other part: he just couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. The beautiful, wounded woman was his, flaws and all.
“Get your stuff ready. We’re going home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
No. I won’t put you and your friends in danger.” Sugar scrambled to the end of the bed. “I have a plan and enough money. You don’t have to worry about me.”
Jamie exhaled a long breath, as if she was trying his patience. “I’m not giving you a choice, sweetheart. And before you get all huffy, consider that you have me and the K2 team on your side. We are badass bad, and your Rodney Vanders, cop or no cop, doesn’t stand a chance against us.”
“He’s not mine.” The longing to give in, to stay with Jamie and to have the baddest guys she could think of at her side, almost had her saying yes. She shook her head. “These are my troubles, Jamie, and I won’t dump them on you or anyone else.”
Never mind that she still hadn’t told him everything. Would he be so willing to be her champion if he knew the worst?
He shook his head as if she were an errant child in need of a scolding. “Sugar, don’t ask me to walk away. I don’t think I can. If you insist on going on to wherever it is you’re planning to go, I’m coming with you. We can hide together.”
“You don’t mean that.” Jamie go into hiding? He would wither and die.
“Yes, I do. Which will it be?”
Still dazed by the speed at which she’d been hustled back to Pensacola, Sugar stood in front of Jamie’s door waiting to learn why she was at his house instead of her condo. Although the drive back should’ve given her plenty of time to think, her mind had closed down on her. Jamie had stayed behind her the entire way, and when she’d put on her blinker to turn for home, he’d come up beside her, blown his horn, and motioned her to follow him.
Now what?
“You forgot something,” he said, walking up with her suitcase and laptop bag in one hand, and her cat carrier in the other.
So she was staying with him? Her knees almost buckled from relief at not having to spend the night at her place, alone and peeking out the window until daylight, watching for Rodney. He was near. She could feel his evil creeping up on her.
“I didn’t know. That I was staying here, I mean.” Did her voice sound as pathetic and needy to him as it did to her?
“You are. At least, until this is resolved.” He handed her the carrier, then dug his keys out of his pocket. “If nothing else, Junior travels well,” he said as he unlocked the door. “Maria’s cat yowls like a banshee at the mere picture of a car.”
He was trying to cheer her up, and she dutifully chuckled, appreciating that he cared enough to attempt the impossible. She was scared out of her freaking mind and eyed the road they’d just come in on with longing. The smart side of her brain screamed that she should be halfway through Texas by now.
The dumb side wanted to be with Jamie even though she didn’t see a future for them; there were just too many unknowns where she was concerned. As for him, he was like some kind of knight of old, out to right a wrong; then he’d be off on his next adventure.
It was stupid of her and unfair to him not to tell him everything. Before much longer he’d find out anyway, and he’d hate her for lying to him. After a good night’s sleep, she promised herself she would tell him. At the moment, though, she was dog-assed tired and not thinking straight. Once she was coherent again, she’d give him the whole truth and nothing but. So help her God, and all that.
“The guest bedroom’s this way.”
Sugar blinked, finding herself standing in the middle of his living room. The guest bedroom? What’d you expect, Sugar? That he brought you here to play house with him? As she followed him, she glanced around, taking note of his furnishings. The décor reminded her of the eighties, with the blue-and-white Laura Ashley prints, even a well-worn, blue fabric recliner. Except for the wide-screen TV, it certainly wasn’t what she would’ve expected Saint’s home to look like, or any single man’s for that matter. It was like . . . it was like he’d re-created a place from his past.
As he led her to the guest room, her gaze roamed over his back, his wide shoulders, then down to his trim waist, and lean hips. Such a contradiction in what he showed the world and what was inside him. For the first time, she thought she understood him. He was stuck in the past, in a time when he’d had it all—loving parents, a bright future, and the homecoming queen for a girlfriend. And she thought she was screwed up. It was good to know, though, that he was human after all, and not the perfect, blue-eyed angel she’d first thought.
Or, a past girlfriend had decorated his home to look girlie, and he just hadn’t gotten around to changing it.
“This is pretty,” she said when she took in the white dresser, white headboard, the patchwork quilt in blues, greens, and peach.
“Do
you think so? My mom kept a room like this for guests.”
His question was so serious, as if her answer really mattered to him. “I do.” And he hadn’t cared enough about some other woman to let her drape his home in Laura Ashley prints.
“I figured she knew better than me how a guest room should be decorated.” There was longing in his eyes as he glanced around the room.
Yep, he was messed up. Impulsively, she lifted onto her toes and brushed her mouth over his, drawing back before he could push her away. “It’s lovely, Jamie. Really.” She’d give anything to be the one to help him put his past to rest, but that had about as much chance of happening as her marrying her secret crush, Prince Harry.
His face lowered toward hers, and she thought he was going to kiss her, thought, yes, please. But he pulled back, stepping away. “You have your own bathroom. Why don’t you get settled, then we’ll decide what to do about dinner.” He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand, then left.
Sugar set the carrier on the bed and opened the door. When her cat strolled out and meeped, she picked him up, and hugged him to her chest. “He’s pretty messed up, Junior, but I don’t care. Let’s take a bath, then we’ll go see what he’s got to offer for dinner.”
There was no bathtub to luxuriate in, but the shower felt almost as good. Surprising her, Junior pawed at the glass door. Opening it a little, he jumped in and chased droplets of water from one end of the tiled floor to the other, not seeming to mind he was getting soaked.
“Silly boy. Don’t you know you’re a cat, and you’re supposed to hate water?” He never had, though. To him water was as fascinating as his toy mouse. “Maybe our new home, wherever that ends up being, will have a shower for you to play in.” She laughed when he reared up, his paws high in the air, then pounced on a soap bubble slithering toward the drain.
