Chaps and Chance

by Evans, Jessie

  Layla shook her head. “No. It’s okay. I don’t need a lawyer.”

  “Are you sure?” he pressed. “Innocent people hire lawyers all the time, you know. Being innocent isn’t always enough to prove it or to protect you from saying something you shouldn’t to the police. A smart lawyer is a good thing to have, especially when it comes to something as serious as this.”

  “I haven’t been charged with anything.” Layla moved past him toward where the truck was parked, her brisk stride making it clear she was ready to be finished with this discussion. “Ned seemed satisfied with my answers and I gave them a sample of my hair to test for toxins. When the lab work comes back showing I was exposed to the same poison that Wayne was exposed to, it should prove that I wasn’t the one who did this.”

  Cole’s brow furrowed. He debated whether or not to push the issue, but this wasn’t something he could let drop to keep the waters smooth. This was Layla’s freedom—and the future he hoped they would have together—on the line.

  “I’m not sure that will prove anything,” he said, holding her gaze when she turned to shoot him a confused look.

  “Why not?” She shrugged stiffly. “I obviously wouldn’t poison myself.”

  He stepped closer, joining her in the shade of the ash tree pushing up through a hole in the sidewalk. “Or maybe you would,” he said softly, hurrying on when her jaw dropped. “Because you’re no dummy. If you were planning to poison someone, you would be smart about it and take steps to make yourself look innocent.”

  She shook her head, lips still parted in shock. After a long moment, she whispered in a thick voice, “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “It’s not what I believe.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the steps leading up to the police station were still empty before turning back to Layla. “But it’s an argument that could be made by the other side. And you’ll be in a better place to defend yourself from things like that with a lawyer looking out for your best interests, preparing for all the questions and accusations and heading them off at the pass.”

  Layla swallowed, her pale throat working, but she didn’t respond.

  “Please. Let’s find someone to talk to.” He took her cool hand in his, grateful when she didn’t pull away. “That way you’ll be prepared if you’re called in for questioning again. It sounds like you handled things fine today, but you shouldn’t set foot in that station again without a lawyer.”

  Layla’s fingers curled around his and her gaze dropped to their joined hands. “Do you really think I’m innocent? Tell me the truth.”

  Cole studied the top of her head, where her silver-streaked hair concealed the scar he’d discovered in the shower last night while he was washing her hair. The scar Wayne had given her when he rammed her head into a wall.

  Suddenly, he realized what had been bothering him more than the nagging feeling that she might have done what she’d been accused of.

  “Honestly…” He hesitated but decided he had to tell the truth. After everything she’d been through, she deserved honesty from the people close to her. “I don’t care. Maybe that’s wrong, but I don’t.”

  Layla’s chin snapped up and her eyes widened.

  “I just don’t want you to go to jail,” he continued, lowering his voice even though there was still no one on the sidewalk on this side of town. The rest of Lonesome Point was busy sleeping in, haunting the coffee shops down the street, or warming a chair in a Sunday school class. “You don’t deserve that, no matter what. I mean, hell, what were you supposed to do? Stay there and let him kill you first?”

  Her fingers tightened around his until she gripped him with a strength he hadn’t realized she possessed. “I didn’t tell you anything.” She leaned in, pinning him with a panicked look. “I haven’t confirmed anything. You know nothing, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Do you understand? I won’t put you in danger. At least not any more than I have already. This is my load to carry.”

  Cole slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her close. “But we’re going to get through this together. I’m with you, and that’s the end of it.”

  She held his gaze, wonder and fear mixing in her expression before she tipped her forehead down to rest on his chest with a sigh. “You’re crazy, Lawson,” she said softly. “You should run away from me. Right now. As far and as fast as you can.”

  “I’m not a runner,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “I prefer to jump into the middle of things and start swinging at the bad guys.”

  “This is going to get ugly,” she warned. “I knew that when Wayne broke in, but with his entire family behind him, hell bent on sending me to jail… It’s going to get worse. A lot worse.”

  “What about the break-in?” Cole asked, her words reminding him of the reason they’d come downtown in the first place. “What did Ned have to say? Did he file a report?”

  She tilted her head back, meeting his gaze with a guarded look. “I told him that some things had been moved around and that I thought maybe someone had been in the house, but I couldn’t be sure.” She paused, her forehead wrinkling. “But if you’re questioned, you should tell the truth. I don’t want you to lie for me.”

  Cole shook his head. “I’m not going to tell anyone anything, but why didn’t you tell Ned what happened? Knowing Wayne was trespassing and jerking you around by your hair makes the Wheelers look pretty fucking bad.”

  “It also strengthens my motive,” she said, hands balling into fists against his chest. “The crazier Wayne looks, the more believable it is that I felt I had to take desperate steps to get away from him. You said it yourself. What else could I do but wait for him to kill me first?”

  It wasn’t an admission, but it was close enough.

  Close enough to send a chill prickling across his skin and make him increasingly uncomfortable to be having this conversation a block from the police station.

  “Let’s go back to my place and make sandwiches.” He rubbed what he hoped was a comforting hand up and down Layla’s back. “Then we’ll ride out into the middle of nowhere and finish talking this out someplace more private.”

  “It doesn’t matter where we talk,” she said, her determination to shield him from the choices she’d made glittering in her pale blue eyes. “There’s only so much I’m going to tell you. If you can’t accept that, then we should end this right now.”

  “All right.” He sighed. “I get it.”

  “Do you?” She smoothed her palms up his chest to cup his face in her hands. “I need you to promise you won’t push me, okay?”

  “I promise,” he said, but he could tell she didn’t entirely believe him.

  “Because there’s a chance I’ll give in, the way I did with staying ‘just friends’ and going to the police.” Her eyes pleaded with him to help her keep her secrets. “But if I tell you anything that could implicate you as an accessory, I’ll hate myself and we’ll be ruined before we even get started. And I really don’t want that, especially now that I know…”

  “Know what?” He ran his hands along her bare arms from the sleeves of her tee shirt to her wrists, gently encircling them with his fingers.

  The bones felt so small and delicate in his hands. Knowing how easy it would be to hurt her made him want to take extra care with every kiss, every touch. He couldn’t fathom how any man could justify using his superior strength against his wife. He couldn’t imagine lashing out at a woman he loved…or even a woman he despised.

  He’d had a few girlfriends who had tried his heart and tested his patience—one had even slapped him across the face hard enough to make his ears ring during a fight—but a raised voice was the extent of his response. He’d shouted for Pamela to grow up and walked away. He hadn’t balled up his fist or pushed her down a flight of stairs. He hadn’t terrorized her or left scars on her body.

  The fact that Wayne had done all of that and more set him far outside Cole’s circle of compassion. As far as he was concer
ned, the world would be better off without Wayne Wheeler, and Layla had more than earned the right to hold the bastard’s fate in her hands.

  “That you would forgive me,” Layla finally said in a thick voice. “If there was anything to forgive.”

  “But there isn’t.” He held her gaze. “Not a damned thing.”

  She sagged against him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tight, letting him hold them both upright. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime, sweetness,” he said, heart aching as she laid her cheek against his chest.

  “Is there a way for all of this to end up okay, Cole?” she asked in a small voice. “Because right now I’m having a hard time seeing one.”

  He hugged her closer. “Of course there is. We just have to be smart and careful and want it bad enough.”

  “I want it.” Her breath rushed out, warming his skin through his tee shirt. “It’s a little scary how much I want it.”

  Cole knew the feeling. He’d never imagined having his wish for a second chance with Layla come true would be like this, but he wasn’t going to give up because their path forward was dangerous. Last night and this morning had proven that he and Layla were even better together than he’d thought they’d be.

  Something that special was worth bending the rules for. Worth breaking the rules for—and a few of Wayne Wheeler’s bones—if he didn’t learn to stay far away from the woman in his arms.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Layla

  Layla had spent so many years tiptoeing around the ruins of her failed hopes, waiting for another mortar to explode, that she didn’t quite know how to handle a dream coming true. Even three days after her visit to the police station, the fact that Cole knew what she’d done and hadn’t been scared away, still felt unreal.

  No one else knew. Not Grayson, not Reece, not even her best friend Gemma in San Antonio, a woman she’d been friends with since she was a child.

  Even if it had been safe to tell them, Layla would never have dared. No matter how much her family and friends loved her, she wasn’t sure they would understand. Sometimes she didn’t understand. There were nights when she lay awake plagued by guilt, her conscience insisting she could have found another way out if she’d really tried.

  Other times she was plagued by regret that she’d gone so far…but not far enough.

  There were ways to do it that would have left Wayne dead and the police with no reason to suspect her. But she had never intended to kill her husband. She’d only wanted to break him down, make him weak, and ensure he wouldn’t have the strength to keep her from leaving the way he had the first time.

  And her plan had worked. For a little while.

  Still, she’d known she needed to think beyond “a little while.” She had realized that once Wayne stopped getting a daily dose of arsenic in his coffee and sifted atop the white cheddar popcorn he ate late at night he would start to recover. The arsenic in the well water alone wouldn’t be sufficient to keep making him so ill. But she’d hoped by the time his strength returned he would have come to terms with the end of their marriage. She’d hoped that time apart would dull his obsession with her and knowing she had her big brother looking out for her would scare Wayne into keeping his distance.

  Grayson was one of the kindest people she’d ever known, but he was also ex-military, a crack shot, and not the sort of man who would let anyone hurt his sister. If Layla had called him Sunday night, he would have come straight home from his trip and stood guard on their front porch with his shotgun. But she didn’t want to expand the circle of people who would feel pressured to lie to the police on her behalf.

  Until she decided what to do next, she needed to keep her cards close to her chest and she really didn’t want to interrupt Grayson and Reece’s trip. They’d spent weeks organizing the list of ranch properties they wanted to visit with their real estate agent, and until their own property sold, there wasn’t a lot of extra money floating around to buy more plane tickets to Montana if this trip were cut short.

  Besides, Layla knew she would be as safe with Cole as she would be with her brother.

  She just wished that Grayson had come back to Lonesome Point before last autumn. If she’d had someone she could trust to help her get away from Wayne, she would have left him so much sooner. Years sooner. And maybe she and Cole wouldn’t have missed out on a decade of each other’s lives.

  Though she had to admit that they were doing a good job of making up for lost time.

  Despite the stress of the situation with Wayne and waiting to hear back from the police about the test results, she and Cole had relished every minute of their nearly constant togetherness. They’d cooked meals together, gone for long rides on the trails behind his mother’s house, taken a co-ed bubble bath in his massive tub, and stayed up late, taking turns reading aloud to each other, while they snuggled on the couch.

  They’d started with The Grapes of Wrath, one of their mutual favorites, but last night, Layla had surprised him with an impromptu reading of a dog-eared section of his favorite romance novel. At first, he’d laughed, then he’d started kissing his way up her arm as she read, and by the time the hero and the heroine tumbled into the straw in the stables, she and Cole were tumbling to the rug and getting naked in the middle of the living room.

  She hadn’t laughed—or come—so much in her entire life. No matter how dark the trouble cloud hanging over her head, she couldn’t wait to get back to Cole at the end of every day. He made her happy. Simply, miraculously happy. So happy that she spent every second she wasn’t worried about Wayne with a dopey grin on her face and cartoon hearts spinning around her head.

  She knew she should go slow and make sure what she and Cole had was built on solid ground before she leaped into another relationship, but she couldn’t imagine him hurting her. It simply wasn’t in his genetic makeup to use violence to control another person. It was too soon to know if they were going to make it for the long haul, but it wasn’t too soon to know that Cole was someone she could trust.

  Whether he broke her heart one day or they ended up making it all the way to happily ever after, it didn’t matter. Even a few perfect days—and nights—with him had proven that the joy he gave her in the present would make up for any pain the future might hold.

  “What are you thinking?” Georgie’s green eyes twinkled as she tossed a handful of napkin-swaddled silverware onto the pile she and Layla were making, finishing up their last closing duty before the dinner shift ended and the late night girls took over.

  “No wait, don’t tell me,” she hurried on, clutching her fists dramatically to her ample chest. “It’s about lover boy and how much you looooove him and how you can’t wait to get home and lick his schlong all night long.”

  “Oh, stop it.” Layla grabbed a sugar packet from the container near her elbow and chucked it at Georgie’s forehead. “We’ve only been dating a few days.”

  “But you still looooove him,” her friend teased, fluttering her lashes. “I can tell. You’ve got all the symptoms of Love-is Extremis—the dreamy smile, the giggling to yourself at weird moments.”

  “The drinking cranberry juice because you’ve been banging too much and are worried about getting a UTI,” Yasmin piped up from the booth behind Layla.

  Layla turned, giving Yasmin’s glossy black ponytail a tug. “Keep your voice down! My seventh-grade science teacher is eating at the corner table.”

  “So?” Yasmin turned, grinning wickedly as she leaned over the back of the booth. “I bet she knows all about the honeymooner’s disease. She looks like she saw some action when she was young. She’s got some sexy legs under those support hose.”

  Layla rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.”

  “I’m not impossible,” Yasmin said. “I’m observant. In the past few days, your cranberry juice intake has increased by three hundred percent.”

  “I like cranberry juice.” Layla’s cheeks heated, but she refused to verbally acknowledge that Y
asmin had caught her in the act of UTI prevention. “It’s high in antioxidants.”

  “Which are important for maintaining the energy to bang all night long. Or so I hear.” Yasmin heaved a pitiful sigh. “I haven’t banged all night long in For. Ev. Er. I have to break up with Doug. I have wild, carnal needs and half the time he just wants to spoon.” She tightened her ponytail with a determined jerk. “I have to call it off. Tonight. Before it’s too late and I forget all the dirty tricks I learned from that hot marine at Mardi Gras last year.”

  “That’s what you said two months ago,” Layla said, rolling up her last fork and knife. “But still…here we are.”

  “I know.” Yasmin sagged over the back of her booth, her arms hanging limply down toward the seat. “I’m so weak. I get ready to do it and then I think about having to sleep alone, without a big snuggly bear to cuddle, and I get all soft and squishy inside and go make him cupcakes instead of telling him to hit the road.”

  Layla laughed. “That’s sweet. And I think Doug sounds like a good…”

  Her words trailed away and her smile shriveled as the diner door swung open and Wayne pushed inside. He was wearing jeans that looked like they were on their third day of ranch work without a wash, a sweat-stained, clay-smeared tee shirt, and a ball cap pulled low over his eyes. But she could see the tension in his jaw and the hands balled into white-knuckled fists at his sides.

  One look at those fists was all it took to make Layla’s stomach lurch and her skin break out in a cold sweat.

  “What’s wrong?” Georgie asked, brow furrowing. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

  If only it were a ghost. If only Wayne were dead and she never had to worry about seeing him ever again.

  “Lay? You okay?” Georgie turned to see what Layla was looking at just as Wayne spotted her and started across the room toward the booth in the corner.

  Instinctively, Layla shrank lower in her seat. Her rational brain insisted Wayne wouldn’t touch her in public—his abuse had always occurred behind closed doors—but reason was no match for the terror this man inspired. By the time he stopped beside the booth, her heart was slamming in her chest and she was trembling all over, no matter how hard she squeezed her legs together or clenched her crossed arms to her chest.