by Morgan Fox
A sudden rush of amazing strength filled his body. The door of the car practically flew off its hinges as he wrestled his way to get her out of the car. He pulled a knife from his boot and cut her free of the seat belt, then with Hunter’s help they extracted her from the car, trying to keep her as flat as possible. If she had internal injuries, he didn’t want to do any more harm, but he couldn’t leave her in the car, not without sealing her death sentence.
The blonde woman was now lying flat on the ground. Clay knelt beside her, checked for a pulse, listened for her airway, and then immediately began CPR once he confirmed she wasn’t breathing. He arched her chin and blew in her mouth, then began chest compressions.
Hunter removed his shirt, tore the sleeve off, and wrapped her leg in a tourniquet. Her left leg had a clear gash where he assumed the car door had ripped into her flesh. Her jeans were soaked through with blood.
Clay’s chest grew tight as it felt like forever before the ambulance finally arrived but was really only a short few minutes. Regardless, he didn’t think the woman was going to make it. She’d lost a lot of blood and was still showing no signs of life.
Flashing lights lit the night sky, and the paramedics took over the moment they reached Clay, practically knocking him out of the way. Muttering words Clay couldn’t understand, they placed her limp body on a gurney and loaded her into the back of the ambulance. Everything was moving at such a fast pace, he could hardly believe it was all unfolding in front of him. He and Hunter stood helplessly watching as the ambulance sped away. Neither had any indication if the woman they had tried to save was even going to survive.
Clay reached inside the wrecked car and pulled out the woman’s purse. He had to find her identity, had to be able to notify the next of kin. Opening the wallet, he sighed at the picture of the gorgeous woman in the driver’s license photo. Her young face was so full of life and energy. A complete contrast from the woman he’d just tried to save.
“Delilah Devero,” Clay muttered.
Hunter stepped up alongside him, his brows narrowed. “Who did you just say?”
“Delilah Devero. That’s the name of the woman.”
“Holy shit,” he murmured. “Do you know who Delilah Devero is?”
Clay arched a brow and stared. “No, why should I?”
Hunter chuckled. “She’s the only daughter to one of the wealthiest oil families in Texas. If this woman”—he pointed to Delilah’s driver’s license—“is part of that family, then she’s related to Pamela Travis, who married into the Devero family. Pamela Travis’s family owned a good part of Temptation, Texas. I heard that she sold the land before moving to California over twenty-five years ago.”
Clay’s heart twisted at the connection. Curiosity struck him, and he wanted to know what Delilah was doing back in Temptation? What would make a billionaire’s daughter travel alone in the middle of nowhere, Texas? “How would you know any of this?”
Hunter shrugged. “Well, I guess you could say that my brother Cooper is a walking Texas encyclopedia and gets off on good old Texas history.”
Clay glanced back over his shoulder, staring at the fading amber and white lights in the far horizon, and prayed that the woman fighting for her life would find a way to survive. Making calls to loved ones that their beloved family member had been killed was starting to make him hate his job. Even worse, he now had a name to go with the breathless angel, which made it much more difficult to see another woman meet her fate in Temptation.
Chapter Two
Delilah woke with the worst headache of her life. The pounding was so intense that it hurt to open her eyes. Her heart galloped in her chest, slamming fiercely against her ribs as she regained her wits. Glancing around the room, she realized she was in a hospital bed and an intravenous line had been taped to her left arm, while her left leg was covered in bandages and throbbed as severely as her head did. Blinking away the blurry vision, she felt as though she’d been hit by a bus.
Shit! What the hell happened? She covered her face with her hand and had the urge to cry or scream. Her luck sucked.
The unique scent of crisp sheets, medication, cleaning supplies, and other hospital fragrances she couldn’t quite identify filled her nose. In all her life, she’d spent very few days in a hospital environment. In fact, the last time she’d been admitted was at birth, when her mother passed. She went home, but her mother never did.
Her heart did a funny little skip whenever she thought about the woman who gave her life but she never got the chance to know. It was strange to love someone she’d never met. Deep down in her soul, she believed that Pamela Devero had loved her, and it only seemed natural to reciprocate those emotions. Her father had shared stories with her about her mother’s life, how they met, dated, and ultimately fell in love. It seemed his mission to make sure that his daughter knew her mother. Oddly, never once had her father taken her back to Texas to see where her mother was raised. So with all that was going on in her life, it only seemed fitting to make the adventure now. She had to escape her vile stepfamily, and going back in search of her mother’s roots just felt like the thing to do. The idea alone brought her much-needed peace.
Thinking back on the events that put her in the hospital, she remembered being distracted and tired, but she also remembered pressing the brakes with all her might and finding out that regardless of the amount of pressure and frequency she applied to the brake pad, the car never slowed. She’d been helpless to stop the car from slamming into the fencing. She cursed as she wished she’d just been driving a little slower and paying better attention.
How dumb could I be?
A twisted feeling churned in her belly as she again replayed in her mind the events of her failing brakes, wondering if she had been imagining the entire experience. As new as her car had been, she just couldn’t imagine that her brakes were faulty. Her instincts were telling her that perhaps Warren had tampered with them. He’d warned her from the beginning that he’d do something to her if she ever thought of leaving their little family circle, and it was no secret how much she disliked the Michaels. The damn man is making me paranoid.
Maybe Warren meant for her to be abandoned on the side of the road, where he could easily get to her. She didn’t want to believe that he had done something to her car, something that would leave her injured and in a hospital, but at the same time, the sick, twisted fucker could not to be trusted. I have every right to be paranoid.
A sudden knock came to her door, and her heart raced with alarm. Had Warren already found her? It was possible. If he had been following her and listening to the police radio, he could have easily honed right in on her whereabouts. Twisting her fingers around the blanket, she fearfully waited for the unknown person to enter.
The door edged open slowly, and the dark-brown eyes of a stranger peered through. With hesitation, the brawny, brown-haired law-enforcement officer stepped into her room. His neatly pressed, light-tan uniform clung to his muscular body. She sighed, more than relieved that it wasn’t Warren.
Then as she took in his entire appearance, her heart did a funny little flip, matching the same reaction in her belly. The soft stare of his eyes made her swallow hard. She quickly studied his strong, powerful posture and felt overpowering warmth fill her soul. There was something unique about the man standing in her room and the solitary quality made her wonder how a man could stop her dead in her track with just a glance.
Shaking the strange feelings from her mind, she glanced down at the white hospital sheet covering her legs, and silently prayed she didn’t look like hell.
“Ms. Devero?” his deep, soothing voice called out to her.
“Yes, I’m Delilah Devero.”
His eyes filled with relief when she told him her name, and a warm, inviting smile pulled at his lips. “My name is Sheriff Clay Garrett. I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”
She let out a throaty chuckle. “I don’t know if you could say I’m doing well considering I’ve just had a c
ar accident.”
He nodded. “You’re alive. I’d say that’s doing pretty well. When the paramedics took you from me you weren’t breathing at all. I wasn’t sure how I would find you today.” His smile widened. “I’m glad to see that it’s alive and awake.”
She smiled shyly. “So you’re the one who found me?”
“Hunter Boyd, the rancher whose fence you destroyed, found you. I was just the one who performed CPR on you until the paramedics showed up.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Well, I guess I owe Mr. Boyd an apology. I have every intention of paying to have the fence replaced, and I guess I also owe you a very big thank you.”
Arching a brow, he told her in an authoritative voice, “You can thank me by not driving so fast on dark country roads or driving too fast period.”
She felt like saluting him. “Right,” she said, glancing down at her hands, thinking back on her previous thoughts and concerns. “I might have been speeding just a little, but the crashing part had more to do with my brakes not working.”
He stepped closer, standing just to the side of her bed. His eyes scanned over her with heavy concentration. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk with you about. When I looked up the information on your car, I noticed you just bought it a few months ago. Did you notice any problems with the braking system then?”
I knew it. There was something wrong with my brakes. Why else would he be asking me this? “No, my car’s been perfect. When I started my road trip, I did notice that the brakes felt soft, but I was in too much of a hurry to worry about it.” She twisted her hands together, feeling the pull of her anger and apprehension flood through her.
Had her brakes been faulty, or had someone tampered with them? Was that why he was staring at her as if she were on trial?
Sheriff Garrett pulled out a notepad and pen. “Has anyone worked on your car recently?”
She shook her head. “No. Why are you asking me this? What’s going on?”
He closed his notepad and locked gazes with her. The deep brown within his eyes seemed to grow even darker as he studied her. “Besides your speeding,” he noted with a tense frown, “your brake line was sliced. Your brakes would have been useless by the time you truly needed them, which I’m assuming is why you crashed into the Boyds’ fence.”
She knew it. She hated that she even had to worry about such things, but she had known in the back of her mind that Warren had messed with her car. Fury soared from within the depths of her mind as well as so many other emotions. She could’ve been killed. Shaking with fury, she had to get away from them, or she was going to find herself dead and them inheriting more than her father’s money. They would get hers, too. She envisioned Sharon and Warren laughing hysterically at her funeral with a checklist in hand. Kill Delilah. Check. Collect inheritance. Check. Kill Marshall…
“Is something wrong, Ms. Devero?” Sheriff Garrett asked.
No, just my overactive imagination. Collecting her thoughts, she quickly plastered a fake smile on her face and prepared to lie. “I’m fine, Sheriff.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Clearing her throat, she attested, “No, I’m fine.”
“Then you won’t mind if I ask you another question?”
She shrugged her shoulders and did her best to seem unaffected by her racing and unsettling heart rate. “What’s that?”
“Are you running away from someone, Ms. Devero? Is there someone who wants to hurt you?”
Her eyes rounded. She was stunned and mortified that he would ask such a direct question. Was it that obvious? She froze, unable to speak. Dumbfounded, all she could do was stare at the attractive, broad-shouldered giant hovering beside her.
* * * *
Clay could feel deep into the marrow of his bones that she was keeping the truth from him. After years as a policeman, he knew the signs. She was wringing her hands together nervously each time he mentioned her brakes and then again when he asked her if someone wanted to hurt her. Her face paled as if all the blood had drained from her body. Something was going on, and he was too stubborn to let things go without getting to the bottom of it.
“Is there someone who might want to hurt you, Ms. Devero?” he repeated.
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
Clay scanned over her with a heightened level of scrutiny. He held her gaze for as long as she held his, but the moment she looked away, he said, “Are you protecting someone, Ms. Devero? From what I gather, you’re a terrible liar. So please be honest with me.”
She gasped, and her eyes widened. He knew he was pushing her a little, but he had to dig the truth out of her one way or the other. She didn’t seem to feel comfortable just blurting out the truth on her own, so he figured he’d offer some encouragement.
Clay pulled the guest chair over and plopped himself down into it so she didn’t have to look up at him. He was taller than most. At six foot four, he knew his size was a little intimidating, and he figured staring up at him was making her nervous.
Dropping down to meet her at eye level might help her feel a little more at ease, as well as make it known he wasn’t leaving anytime soon. “I’m sorry if that offends you, Ms. Devero, but I can read people pretty well, and you keep saying one thing, but your body language is telling me something else entirely. Please, if you think someone might have done this deliberately to your car—”
“Warren Michaels,” she muttered. The moment she said his name, the look of defeat flooded her expression. Her eyes glistened, but he couldn’t tell if that was from worry, sadness, or maybe a little of both.
“Who’s Warren Michaels?”
She blew out a long breath and ran her hands through her hair before settling back into the conversation. “Unfortunately, he’s my stepbrother and a diabolical pain in my ass.”
A soft smile tugged at his lips, but he kept it hidden from her as best he could. He was glad she seemed to possess a sense of humor. “Why do you think he’d want to hurt you?”
She laughed. “This is the oldest story in the book, Sheriff. He wants what all greedy sons of bitches want…money.” She sighed. “My father is a very wealthy businessman, and he got the bulk of his money in oil right here in Texas. I spent a good deal of my life learning my father’s business and worked with him for many years. Until recently, I was being groomed to be his right hand.”
Hunter was right about her family. “Why until recently?”
“I got tired of my father’s wife and her son, Sharon and Warren Michaels, pressuring and stalking me. Warren actually tried to date me. How strange is that, a stepbrother making the moves on his stepsister?” She paused as if remembering something painful but then continued again. “Warren has done some questionable things as far as I’m concerned.”
“Like what?”
She inclined her head to look at him. The soft sweep of her wavy blonde hair teased over her shoulder, and her soft blue eyes paled. “The first thing you should know, Sheriff, is that I still live with my father. Actually, we all do. My father’s home is quite large, over forty thousand square feet of living space, and that’s not counting the pool house, cabana lofts, and guest quarters. My father and I have always been close, and he begged me to stay, so I did.” She stared at him as if waiting for a reaction. He didn’t offer any. “On more than one occasion, Warren locked me in any given room in our house and forced himself on me. He never raped me, but he sure tried to. I don’t know how he does it, but he knows when I shower or when I’m in the bathhouse out by the swimming pool. He finds a way to…”
“What Delilah? What did he do?”
Glancing out the window of her room, the morning sun beaming brightly through the glass, she said, “Last week, I was changing in the bathhouse. I like to swim in the early mornings before everyone gets up. It helps me clear my head. I went inside to change, and Warren was there, but I didn’t see him at first. It wasn’t until I had undressed that he showed
himself. He was naked. He’d stolen my towels and hidden my clothing. When I tried to get away from him, he pinned me down onto the cot. He…I got away.”
Clay’s heart jumped into his throat. Hearing a woman describe a physical assault always had his hands balling into tight fists. He’d seen brutalized woman before, and he hated that Delilah was one of them. She might not bare the physical marks, but the emotional ones were still there. He wanted so badly to comfort her. “Did you report the attack?”
She swallowed hard and shook her head.
“Why?” He couldn’t help but sound surprised and a bit frustrated that she hadn’t. He had never met Warren and already wanted to beat the shit out of him for forcing himself onto a woman. Only a weak man would do such a vile thing.
“My father doesn’t need to hear about these things happening under his roof. I knew that Warren was just trying to scare me. He was trying to use force to get me to bend to his will.” She glanced back over at him, and her eyes were slightly red and puffy. With anger in her voice, she said, “I’m not some victim, and I don’t need a babysitter.”
“No, I would certainly not call you a victim, but I do think you should’ve reported the incident. Has it happened before?”
She licked her lips, and immediately he rose from his chair, walked to her side table, and poured her a glass of water. He could only imagine how uncomfortable it was for her to reveal so many private things about herself to a complete stranger.
“That was the bravest he’d ever gotten with me. The other times, he just tried to kiss me and scare me with intimidations.”
Brow arched, he asked, “Intimidations?”
“He said he’d hurt me, find ways to make me pay for not doing what a good girl should.” She chuckled softly. “Now that I’ve said it out loud, it just sounds silly coming from a twenty-five-year-old.”
Clay was deadly serious as he told her, “There’s nothing silly about a man assaulting a woman.” He felt his blood pressure rise. The heat around his collar grew more intense as he watched the waves of emotions pouring out of her. He hated that she’d been so helpless. He despised that he could do nothing more than open up an investigation and report the incidents involving Warren Michaels.
