Lawman from Her Past

by Delores Fossen

  * * *

  CAMERON WASN’T SURE what was going on in Lauren’s head, but he sure as heck knew what was going on in the rest of her. That’d been heat he’d seen in her eyes. Plenty of it. And the heat had been in her kiss, too.

  So why was she leaving?

  The simple answer to that was she wasn’t, and he would make certain of that. He got up as fast as he could and hurried to her. She’d already made it into the hall by the time he caught up with her, but she was just standing there—as if trying to figure out what to do.

  “Is this about having second thoughts?” he asked.

  A soft breath left her mouth. “No. Second thoughts happened hours ago. I’m on third and fourth thoughts now.”

  Yeah, he’d been there, done that. And all those doubts hadn’t solved a thing. He still wanted Lauren, and she felt the same way about him. Cameron proved that in a really stupid way. He hooked his arm around her waist, hauled her to him and kissed her.

  Obviously, if Lauren needed some thinking time, this was not the way to go about it. So he didn’t kiss her for long. Just enough to rid her of more of her breath. And he stepped back. Cameron figured she was either about to chew him out or—

  She went with the or.

  She took hold of the front of his shirt, gathering it up in her hand as she pulled him closer. Lauren kissed him, and this time it wasn’t a kiss to prove anything. It was scalding hot and meant to send them straight to bed.

  Cameron responded, all right. He put his arms around her, dragging her right against him. Not that it took much effort. Lauren was already headed in that direction. Her breasts landed on his chest while the kiss raged on.

  Cameron did his own version of raging. He slid his hand beneath her top, touching the bare skin on her stomach. It was hard to think, but he forced himself to remember the gunshot wound on her shoulder. He didn’t want to hurt her.

  If the injury was bothering her, Lauren showed no signs of it. She also showed no signs of the timid teenager who’d become his lover over ten years ago. No. This was a woman’s kiss. A woman’s touch. And this woman apparently knew exactly what she wanted.

  She wanted him.

  Lauren turned him, putting his back to the wall, holding him in place while she made the kiss even deeper. Cameron did more touching, too, sliding his hands into the cups of her bra. She must have liked that because she made a sound of pleasure. It wasn’t loud, but it gave him another reminder.

  They were in the hall of her brother’s house. Gabriel or the others could come walking up at any second.

  Cameron silently cursed and started maneuvering her back into the bedroom so he could shut the door. Of course, there was a problem here, too. The babies. Yeah, they were asleep, but if much more moaning and grappling went on, Lauren and he could wake them.

  When he stopped kissing her, Lauren looked to see what’d caught his attention. She glanced at the boys. Then, back at Cameron. All the while she was nibbling on her bottom lip. Maybe she was realizing the logistics of having sex wasn’t going to be easy.

  But it wasn’t impossible.

  Cameron looped his arm around her and got her moving. He grabbed the baby monitor along the way but put it on the counter as soon as they were in the adjoining bathroom. Lauren was the one who shut the door, and she immediately launched into another kiss.

  The overhead light was off, and Cameron kept it that way, though there was a night-light by the sink. It was just enough for him to see the heat and the determined look in her eyes.

  He was still having doubts about whether this should happen or not, but the longer the kiss went on, the more the doubts faded. Soon, he quit thinking and went with it. He pulled Lauren back to him, and this time he had more than kissing on his mind. Well, more than just kissing her mouth anyway.

  She made another of those pleasure sounds when Cameron pushed up her top and kissed her breasts through the lace cups of her bra. It was good, but it got a whole lot better when he opened the front clip. That way, he could kiss her without the thin layer of fabric between them. She must have liked that, as well, because she fisted her hand in his hair and held on.

  As he went lower.

  Cameron got in some kisses to her stomach. Got her unzipped, as well, but Lauren seemed to want to kick up the pace. She achieved that by sliding her hand down into the waist of his jeans.

  Yeah, she was kicking this up, all right.

  He got rock-hard. And desperate to have her. Not exactly a good combination when he needed to make sure he didn’t hurt her while he also listened to the baby monitor.

  “Please tell me you have a condom,” she said.

  “Wallet, back pocket,” he managed to answer.

  She went after it, doing some clever touching along the way. It felt more like foreplay than looking for something they needed for safe sex. Of course, there were a lot of other “unsafe” things about this, but Cameron chose not to think about that right now. That probably had plenty to do with Lauren unzipping him.

  Since there wasn’t exactly anywhere else to go, Cameron lowered her to the floor. His back landed on the hard tile, but he barely noticed.

  That was because Lauren landed on him.

  Straddling him, she took out the condom and tossed his wallet aside.

  Cameron did a little tossing, too. Even though he liked seeing Lauren on top of him, he had to move her to get her out of those jeans. Not easy to do. The bathroom wasn’t that big, and Lauren wasn’t making things easier because she was fighting to get his jeans off, too.

  Everything suddenly felt way too urgent, and it was taking an eternity to rid them of their clothes. Cameron finally managed it, and Lauren moved back on top again. It was the best position so that her shoulder didn’t get hurt, though he certainly didn’t see any trace of pain on her face.

  But he did see the pleasure.

  Cameron was certain there was plenty of that on his face, too, because he was feeling a whole lot of it in his body. The feeling went up significantly when she got the condom on him and took him inside her.

  Lauren went still, as if savoring this for a moment, and in the milky light, she made eye contact with him. It was as if the past ten years just vanished. They were young lovers again before the tragedy that had torn them apart. The ache came. The reminder of just how much he’d lost that night.

  And then it was gone.

  Because Lauren started to move. That rid him of the ache but created a different kind of one. His need to pleasure her. The need for release.

  He caught on to her hips, guiding the movement that was taking him in and out of her. Not that she needed any guidance. Lauren was doing just fine on her own. Better than fine, actually. She was taking them both to the only place that either of them wanted to go.

  She put her hands on his chest, anchoring herself while she leaned down and kissed him. Her mouth was still on his when she pushed against him one last time and shattered. That was all Cameron needed, and with the taste of her roaring through him, he gave in to the release and went with her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sound woke Lauren, and she jackknifed in the bed. It was a loud boom. And for several heart-stopping moments, she thought they were under attack, that one of those hired thugs had made it onto the ranch and fired a shot at them.

  “A storm moved in,” Cameron said. He was close to the bed. Very close. Right by the nightstand just a couple of inches from her. “It’s thunder.”

  She heard the words, but it took a while for them to register. It was indeed storming. Lauren could hear the rain hitting against the windows and the tin roof. There was even a crack of lightning. But she wasn’t sure how she’d managed to sleep through that or Cameron getting out of the bed.

  Actually, she wasn’t sure how she’d managed to sleep at all.

  She had, though. She had apparen
tly fallen asleep after Cameron carried her to the bed, and now it was morning. Late morning. Well, late for her anyway. It was seven thirty.

  “I took the boys downstairs when they woke up about a half hour ago,” Cameron said as he made an adjustment to his shoulder holster. “Dara and Merilee changed them and are feeding them breakfast.”

  Good grief. She’d slept through the babies getting up, as well. Obviously, sex with Cameron was an amazing stress reliever for her to be able to do that. She hadn’t slept through the night since she’d become a mother.

  “You should have gotten me up sooner,” she grumbled.

  He shrugged. “I had some things I had to work out. Things to do with the investigation,” he added. “Besides, I wanted you to get some rest.”

  She wanted him to have some rest, too, but she was betting he hadn’t gotten much. They’d gotten in bed together, but before she’d fallen into a deep sleep, she’d remembered him getting up to go to the window to look out. Keeping watch to make sure those thugs didn’t come back for another round.

  She threw back the covers, only to remember that she was stark naked. Cameron noticed, too, and he gave her one of those lazy smiles that reminded her of why she’d landed on the bathroom floor with him in the first place.

  “We need to talk, so you should probably get dressed.”

  “Talk?” she questioned.

  “About the safe house. About some other things.” He was obviously keeping it vague, and she might have pressed for more, but he leaned down, brushing a kiss on her mouth. Coming from any other man, it would have qualified as a peck, but even a brief kiss was potent when it came from Cameron.

  “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” he added and headed for the door. But then he stopped and looked back at her. “By the way, Gabriel knows we were together last night. He came to the room at around five to check on you.”

  Lauren groaned. She didn’t mind Gabriel knowing, but it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with him. Gabriel wouldn’t feel the same way, though. She’d get another big-brother lecture from him about guarding her heart.

  And it was a lecture she needed to hear.

  She should do some heart-guarding, but considering she’d had sex with Cameron—amazing sex at that—that ship had already sailed.

  The moment Cameron was out of the room and had shut the door, Lauren hurried from the bed and to the shower. She didn’t even wait for the water to reach the right temperature. She just rushed through it and tried not to think of what could go wrong with the move to the safe house. They’d already been through so much, and she didn’t want anything else bad to happen.

  Lauren changed her bandage, got dressed and was ready to rush out of the room when she spotted something on the floor to the side of the vanity. Cameron’s wallet. She’d tossed it there after she’d taken out the condom, and Cameron must not have seen it. She picked it up, the wallet falling open. And that was when she saw it.

  The edge of the photo.

  It was tucked in one of the slots normally used for credit cards. Without thinking, she lifted it out and got a shock. It was a picture of Cameron and her. They were smiling, and he had his arm slung over her shoulders.

  She instantly remembered when it’d been taken. They’d been outside the barn at her house, and Ivy had just walked in on them making out. They’d been fully clothed, thank goodness, but Ivy had insisted on snapping the shot with her phone. Her sister had sent them both the picture, but Cameron must have had his printed out.

  Strange that he would have kept it all these years. It seemed like something a man would do when he was in love, and Cameron had never come close to saying the L-word to her. Of course, maybe he’d put the photo there way back then and had forgotten about it.

  Lauren headed downstairs, hoping to find Cameron alone so that she could give him the wallet without anyone noticing. No such luck. He was in the kitchen and so was everyone else who was staying in the house.

  Like all the other rooms, the curtains and blinds were drawn here. Merilee and Dara were at the table eating breakfast. Jameson was holding Patrick, and Cameron had Isaac. Jodi was at the back window, peering out the side of the blinds. And Cameron and Gabriel were going over a map that was on the laptop computer screen.

  They all stopped what they were doing and looked at her.

  Gabriel’s eyebrow lifted, and since it seemed as if everyone in the room knew what had happened in the guest room bath, she went to Cameron, kissed his cheek and handed him his wallet. What he didn’t do was smile or kiss her back. For a moment she thought that was because Gabriel was standing there, but everyone else was looking somber, as well.

  “What happened?” Lauren immediately asked.

  Cameron put his wallet in his pocket and touched the map. That was when Lauren realized it wasn’t an ordinary map. It was the ranch. It showed not only some of the trails but also the nearby roads.

  “About two hours ago, one of the hands spotted a suspicious vehicle here. A black SUV.” Cameron tapped the road that was only about a quarter of a mile from Gabriel’s house. “The hands were down by the cattle gate and used binoculars to read the license plate.” He paused. “It was bogus. There’s no vehicle registered with those plate numbers.”

  Well, there went any trace of that dreamy morning-after feel from sex. Lauren glanced at the others and realized they’d already learned this bad news. And it was bad. That vehicle had been way too close to the house. Obviously, this is what Cameron had meant by needing to talk to her, but Lauren had figured it was going to be a discussion about arrangements for the safe house.

  “Two hours,” she repeated. “Why didn’t you come up and wake me?”

  “I woke Cameron instead,” Gabriel said, looking straight at her.

  Good grief. She wasn’t normally such a sound sleeper, but that did explain why they’d had the time to come up with this plan. They’d probably been talking about it for the past two hours, and that meant Cameron hadn’t just rolled out of bed when she’d awakened. He’d probably come up just so he could have her get dressed.

  There was a loud boom of thunder, and Patrick started to fuss. Lauren took him, cuddling him close to her and hoping he didn’t pick up on the fear that was starting to crawl through her.

  “The SUV was gone by the time I made it to the road,” Jameson said, obviously taking up where Cameron had left off. “I looked around but didn’t see it.”

  What he didn’t say was that didn’t mean it was gone. The SUV could be on one of the trails or a side road.

  “I have a reserve deputy posted here.” Gabriel tapped the road that led from town to the ranch. “About an hour ago he saw a black SUV. It had different license plates from the one that was near here. But the plates were fake, too. The deputy went in pursuit, but the vehicle got onto the main highway before he could reach it.”

  If there were hired thugs in the second SUV, they could have doubled back. Or while the deputy was out chasing them, more hired guns could have gotten in place to launch an attack. That spelled out the bottom line for Lauren.

  “It’s too risky to take the babies out on the road,” she said. “We can’t take them to a safe house.”

  Gabriel, Jodi and Jameson all made sounds of agreement. Cameron groaned. “That doesn’t mean they’ll be safe here, either. You saw how easily Evelyn got through the trails. So could these guys.”

  That panic and fear weren’t just crawling now. Both emotions were at a full sprint. Their situation sounded hopeless, but it couldn’t be. They couldn’t just stand by waiting for another attack.

  “We need to do something.” Lauren knew she sounded desperate because she was.

  Cameron nodded, then paused. He looked as if he wanted to curse. “I don’t like even asking you to do this, but I can’t think of another way. Our first priority has to be to keep the babies safe.”

 
“I agree,” Lauren said without hesitation. “What do we need to do?”

  Cameron looked her straight in the eyes. “We’re going to have to force the gunmen to come after us. We’ll have to make ourselves bait.”

  * * *

  “FOR THE RECORD, I don’t like this plan,” Gabriel spat out.

  Neither did Cameron, but he couldn’t stomach the thought of the babies being caught up in another attack. Apparently, neither could Lauren.

  “So, how do we do this?” she asked. Again, no hesitation. “How soon can we make it happen?”

  She probably had doubts, just as Cameron and Gabriel did, but Cameron knew something that was much worse than doubts and fear, and that was having the babies they loved in danger.

  “The cruiser is already parked out front,” Cameron explained. “You and I will pretend to get into it with the babies. What we’ll be carrying are blankets that will hopefully look as if we have the boys. Since it’s pouring rain, it shouldn’t seem suspicious that we’d have them covered up like that.”

  “Where will the babies be?” Lauren asked him. Patrick was still fussing a little so she rocked him gently, brushing a kiss on the top of his head.

  “Patrick and Isaac will stay here at the house with Gabriel, Jodi, the nannies and Mark, the reserve deputy. Jameson and Jace will come with you and me.”

  Cameron took a deep breath before he continued. Here was the part that was going to make Lauren very uneasy. “The gunmen probably have the place under surveillance, so we need to make them believe the babies are truly gone from the ranch. That means sending the hands back to the bunkhouse and to the barns. We need them out of sight.”

  She shook her head. “But what if gunmen come here after we leave?”

  That was a question that had bothered Cameron right after he’d learned about the SUV being in the area. “The ranch hands will be close enough to respond.” Not immediately, though. And that in itself was a risk.