Tempting the Deputy

by Heidi Rice

  She finally lowered the camera, to stuff it in her bag as they headed back to the house across the yard.

  “We should work out a time for your shoot,” she said. “Before your hair grows back.”

  “That won’t be for a while.” He’d checked, on the Internet. It took two to three weeks for waxed hair to grow back. “I’m busy with ranch business. Calving season starts soon.” And he wasn’t sure he was ready for the humiliation of having Charlotte photograph him. Yet.

  He shoved open the door to the ranch house, and held it for her. But she paused on the threshold. “I can fit the shoot round ranch business.” Then she blindsided him. “What are you doing now?”

  “I’ve gotta wash up, then I was planning to put some sandwiches together for lunch and…” He hesitated. What the hell else was there to do that would sound convincing? “Then check on the cattle in the calving pens.”

  “Tad told me you were just in the calving pens when I came looking for you.”

  Gee, thanks a bunch, Tad, you big blabbermouth.

  “They have to be checked on every three hours. Just in case one of the cows goes into her labor early.”

  Instead of taking his lame excuse at face value, she whipped her cell out of her back pocket. “That gives us two hours.”

  He was going to kill Tad.

  “Yeah but…”

  She stepped closer and placed a finger on his lips, halting the stream of excuses he had yet to think up.

  “It won’t be that bad, Logan. There’s nothing to be worried about. It’ll just be you and me. You get final say on the shots. I thought we could drive out onto the open range, find a spot away from the ranch, so there’s no chance of anyone eavesdropping.” Her lips quirked in a grin that was far too sexy for its own good. “I have to admit, I’m dying for another chance to check out that magnificent chest. Don’t make me wait any longer. Because the glimpse I got last night was way too brief.”

  Arousal punched him in the chest and sunk lower.

  “What do you say?” she added, still going full steam ahead with the sexy charm offensive. “You go wash up, I’ll make the sandwiches, and then we’ll take off in the pickup. Find the perfect spot. We can have a picnic once it’s done. Then you can stop worrying about it because it will be over and done.”

  “I’m not worried about it.”

  “Prove it,” she shot back.

  He swore softly, feeling as if he’d been penned in better than the cows that Mystic and he had been herding that morning.

  “Fine, dammit. Let’s do it. If it’ll shut you up.”

  A triumphant smile lit her face as she did a zipping motion over her mouth. “Consider my lips officially zipped.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Logan, relax.” Charlie sighed as she lowered her camera. “I’m shooting you with a Leica not an AK-47.”

  “I reckon I’d prefer to get shot for real,” Logan said, digging his fists into the front pockets of his jeans.

  He looked glorious, even with all the pissed-off vibes pumping off him, his muscular shoulders bunched up by his rigid stance. The backdrop of sagebrush and mountain sorrel, and the old-style fence posts that stretched into the distance made the composition breathtaking. Although, not as breathtaking as the man.

  But Charlie didn’t want this shoot to be too excruciating for him. Getting him to relax though had proved impossible. From the way he was hunching, she knew what the cause was—the burn mark on his chest. The burn mark he was so self-conscious about.

  The burn mark that she’d realized as soon as she’d spotted it had been made with the Double T branding iron, because she’d seen the same mark on the cattle. Perhaps it was time to start addressing the real issue here, instead of trying and failing to calm him down with lame jokes.

  She lifted the camera back to her face, focused in on Logan’s bowed head. “How did you get the scar?”

  His expression was shadowed by the cowboy hat he’d plunked on his head as soon as he’d taken off his shirt, but she saw the subtle tension in his abs go rigid. “It was an accident.”

  “Someone accidentally branded you?” she fired back, still shooting. “How the heck did that happen?”

  His head shot up and she saw the flash of blind panic and shame before he had a chance to mask it.

  She lowered the camera, her stomach dropping to her toes. “Shit, Logan, it wasn’t an accident was it? Someone did that to you on purpose?”

  Something hideous had happened to him, something really hideous—and she’d as good as made a joke about it. “I’m so sorry.”

  He stared up at the snow-capped peaks of the mountain, his lips clamped shut. Even though she knew she was stepping over all kinds of boundaries, she didn’t think, she just reacted.

  Slinging the camera over her shoulder, she walked toward him. “Who was it, Logan?”

  His chin dropped to his chest, his shoulders slumping as all the air left his lungs. “He was drunk at the time; he didn’t know what he was doing.” He shrugged, the movement somehow so hopeless it made Charlie’s heart hurt. “He started drinking when Mom died and he just never stopped.”

  His father? His father did that to him? How could he?

  Everything inside Charlie gathered and without pausing to debate all the reasons why she shouldn’t care about this man’s pain, because they were just casual bonk buddies, she lifted her arms around Logan’s neck and pressed her lips to the scar. She felt the shudder of reaction chase through his body.

  She rested her cheek against his bare chest, sunk her fingers into the hair at his nape, and let the single tear spill over her lid before lifting her face to his.

  She could see the stunned disbelief in those pure blue eyes. Before he cradled her cheeks.

  “Hey, Charlotte, why are you crying?” he said, his voice hoarse, as if he really didn’t get it.

  “I’m crying for you. Your father shouldn’t have done that to you.”

  He frowned. “It was a long time ago. I’m over it now.”

  But how could he be, if he was still so ashamed of something that had never been his fault?

  She knew Logan was a proud man, that he wouldn’t welcome her pity, so she let her anger kick in. “I don’t care if you’re over it,” she said, even though she knew he wasn’t really. Because how could you ever get over that kind of abuse?

  For goodness’ sake, she still hadn’t been able to get over her own issues with her mum and dad. The way they’d never been that interested in her and Em growing up, because they had been selfish, self-absorbed people with unlimited funds who couldn’t be bothered to look after their own children, when there were so many other more exciting things they could be doing.

  But how much worse would it be to be the child of a man who didn’t just ignore or patronize you? A man who would hold his child down and burn his flesh because he’d taken the easy way out and lost himself in a bottle?

  “It’s no excuse that he was drunk when he did this to you, Logan.”

  “He didn’t know what he was doing. He’d forgotten about it the next day,” Logan said, defending a man who didn’t deserve to be defended.

  “Had he?” she said. “Or had he just decided that he wasn’t going to take responsibility for what he’d done?”

  “Shit, I guess. I don’t know. The drink made him mean. He didn’t used to be like that… Not before…” He paused, but the sadness in his voice, the emotion vibrating through him, had another tear slipping over her lid.

  Not before Logan’s mother died.

  She could feel his loneliness and she understood it, because on some level she’d always been lonely too. Even with Em there throughout her childhood, supporting her, telling her that it didn’t matter if Daddy and Mummy couldn’t come to their birthday again. They had each other, didn’t they.

  Em had never understood Charlie’s anger. Never been able to relate to how furious Charlie had begun to feel when her parents didn’t show for another birthday, or another sc
hool concert, or another Christmas morning—because they were too busy in Antibes hosting a beach house party for their equally feckless trust-fund friends, or waltzing down the red carpet in Cannes and going to all the after parties. Or skiing in Klosters with the minor royals they were cultivating.

  Em had slipped so easily into the role of good girl, trying so hard to make her parents notice her on merit, while Charlie had been the bad girl, getting into scrape after scrape—but neither of them had ever been able to cause so much as a ripple in their parents’ glittering social schedule, because Justin and Camilla Foster had never been capable of giving a shit about anyone but themselves.

  “You know what, Logan—I hate your bloody dad…” She doubted that was the only time the man had hurt his son. “I wish I could get that bloody branding iron and stamp it on him. The bastard.”

  *

  Logan had the weirdest urge to laugh, not just at Charlotte’s ferocious expression, but also the way it made him feel. And he had no idea why.

  Fact was, he didn’t even know why he’d blurted out the truth.

  He’d never told anyone about the brand on his chest and how he’d really got it, not even Lyle, especially not Lyle. He’d spent the early days after it had happened sticking with the story that the nasty scab was an accident, an accident he’d inflicted on himself, and then over the years found endless ways to cover it up or deflect attention from it.

  But there had been something about standing bare-chested in a damn field without even a scattering of chest hair to disguise the scar, the oil Charlotte had slapped on him burning off in the mid-morning spring sunshine, that had dried up all those old lies and excuses and prevarications and had the whole sad, sordid little story blurting out of him as if he’d just been injected with truth serum.

  His humiliation had been complete. But instead of the pity, or the derision he’d expected from her—because what woman wouldn’t think a guy was pretty lame if he’d once let his own father brand him like a prize heifer—instead she’d looked fierce and protective, her face full of a kind of strident compassion that for the first time in his life made him feel more than, instead of less than.

  And then that single tear had seeped out and glided down her cheek and he’d been poleaxed.

  Because he’d bet his last five bucks Charlotte Foster wasn’t the kind of woman who ever cried. And now she was crying for him. Or crying for the little kid he’d been back then. Scared and alone and with not one person to turn to whom he could trust now his mommy was no longer there to hold him and stroke his hair and whisper in his ear whenever he had a nightmare: “Don’t you fuss, my serious boy. Mommy’s here to keep you safe.”

  For so many years the nightmares had been real. And he’d dealt with them the only way he knew how. By taking the licks from his father and keeping the truth from Lyle—because Logan was the only one left to keep his kid brother safe now their mommy was gone. He’d never gotten mad with his old man; all he’d been was scared and anxious and hopeless. Would he be strong enough, good enough, smart enough to keep it all together? But having Charlotte stand up for him, a woman he barely knew, felt kind of awesome. Because it wasn’t as if she was standing up for him—Logan Tate aka Deputy Hard-Ass—the guy who had banged her into unconsciousness the night before. No, she was standing up for that scared little kid.

  Just thinking about that, and being able to make that separation—between who he was now and who he’d been then—had all the grief and guilt and shame that had been a part of his life for so long lifting off his shoulders. It was a weight he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying all these years. A weight that had worn him down and closed him off. A weight that had prevented him giving that scared little kid a break.

  Holding her face, he brushed one of those precious tears away with his thumb. “I reckon we should probably stop talking about this, or I’m going to end up freezing my nipples off before we’re done.”

  Charlotte stepped back and brushed the last tear away with her fist. “True dat,” she said, around a watery laugh—as if she’d only just realized how emotional she had become. On his behalf.

  “Okay, big guy, let’s finish up so we can have our picnic. I’m famished.”

  She circled him again with her camera, stroking her hand over his shoulder to shift him into the light. Tugging on his hat to bring the brim down over his face.

  The touch of her fingers had the familiar hunger burning through him. But he did as he was told, holding the poses that had made him so damn self-conscious a moment ago, but didn’t make him feel exposed anymore.

  While she snapped off the last of the shots, the concentration on her face as she focused and refocused the camera lens was almost as sexy as seeing her naked draped over his kitchen table. He tried to stay focused on the here and the now, and not the heat humming in his abdomen.

  He didn’t fight the connection anymore though.

  His childhood had been tough, after his mother had died. And the toughest part of all had been keeping it a secret.

  But Charlotte had figured out his big secret in a matter of minutes. A secret no one else had ever even bothered to look for, not even Lyle.

  And once she’d figured it out, she had stepped right up to the plate without a second thought to defend the boy he’d been—which told him something.

  Charlotte had a lot more depth than she wanted to let on.

  If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to connect so easily with the scared little fella that still lurked inside him and whom he’d tried to ignore for so long.

  As they settled in the truck and Charlotte unwrapped the wax paper on the sandwiches she’d made earlier, he couldn’t help studying that smart, sexy, tough-girl face and wondering if Charlotte had a scared little kid lurking inside her too.

  “There you go,” she said, handing him a ham and cheese sandwich almost as big as her head. “Try not to dislocate your jaw. These things could double as doorstops. I think I overdid the filling.”

  He chewed off a chunk, not easy when the size of the thing meant it barely fitted into his mouth, but the perfect combo of salty ham, creamy cheese, and tart mustard and rich mayo had him humming in his throat.

  Her eyes flashed to his, the smile knowing before her gaze darted away again.

  The zap of awareness sizzled across his nerve endings.

  So the photo shoot had turned Charlotte on too. Good to know.

  “You want a pickle?” she said, rummaging around in the bag she’d stuffed the sandwiches into.

  “Sure.”

  She handed him one and then plopped a serviette on his lap.

  She bent down to reach beneath the bench seat, then straightened, producing the flask he used on overnight trail rides.

  “Ta-dah,” she said, grinning as she unscrewed the cap. “I also have fresh coffee. Never let it be said that Charlie Foster doesn’t know how to pack the perfect picnic.” She whipped two metal mugs out of her bag of all things and perched them on the dash to pour them each a cup of coffee. The steaming aroma filled the cab, but did nothing to mask that sultry scent that had been driving him wild for a while now.

  “I hope you’re okay with black?” she said, picking up her own cup to blow on it. “I couldn’t find anything to put the cream in without it ending up all over our paving-slab sandwiches.”

  He laughed around another mouthful of ham and cheese, then gulped down some hot coffee before he choked.

  Why did he get the weirdest feeling she was nervous? She’d always been a talkative type of woman, but all her usual snark seemed to have disappeared as they stood out in the top pasture and she took her pictures. Without that edge, there was something about the motor-mouthed commentary on their picnic that he found really endearing. A side to her that was younger, more innocent, and as captivating as the rest of her—like he was getting a glimpse of Charlotte without her armor.

  He dumped his sandwich on his lap, and took a bite of pickle, contemplating his next move. Ma
ybe it wasn’t his business, but hell, she’d jumped right into his business this afternoon and the result had been…okay… So he didn’t see why he shouldn’t satisfy at least some of his curiosity about her.

  “What about your folks, Charlotte? Do you have any?”

  She glanced his way, then shrugged, the movement deliberately casual.

  So casual it broke his heart when she said: “Not anymore. They died in a plane crash when Em and I were eighteen.”

  “Damn, I’m sorry. That sucks.” She’d been orphaned too, at a young age. Maybe not as young as him and Lyle when they’d lost their mom, but still young enough to have it hurt pretty bad.

  But instead of accepting his condolences, her voice remained flat and indifferent. “Don’t be. We weren’t close.”

  “No?” he delved.

  She slanted him an exasperated look. “Okay, is this the moment when I tell you about my shitty childhood to let you off the hook?”

  “What?” he said, because she’d lost him there.

  “You had a really shitty childhood, Logan. Mine wasn’t half as shitty. So you don’t have to feel bad for me in return.”

  “Then you won’t feel weird about telling me why you weren’t close with your folks?” he said, not letting her hide behind her usual snark.

  He knew a distraction technique when he saw one.

  “Oh for…” She plopped her own sandwich down. Had the subject of her parents ruined her appetite? “Fine, do you want the full sob story, or just the abridged version?”

  “The full story.”

  She gave a theatrical sigh. “Okay, once upon a time there were two poor little rich girls.” She sent him her best mocking smile, the one he now knew she used to avoid serious conversations. “Their parents were wealthy London socialites. Their father had a family connection to one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting, which he milked mercilessly. And their mother was the only daughter of a hedge-fund manager and his trophy wife. Camilla and Justin were both trust-fund babies who spent all their time chasing the next great party or soiree or event. They traveled widely—always in First Class. Made it their mission to throw the most talked-about event of the season every year. Loved each other with one of those grand passions only reserved for the spoilt and immature. And did not have the first clue what to do with unplanned twin daughters once their children had grown out of the cute-baby-photo-op phase and started to talk back.”