by Heidi Rice
“But have you ever camped out around here?”
“Well, no I’ve never…”
“Because no one in their right mind would camp out here in March.”
Charlie tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and tried to get a firm grip of her temper. “I have a fifty-tog sleeping bag that can withstand a night on Everest,” she said in her reasonable voice. “I will be fine.”
“I don’t care if you’ve got a five-hundred tog sleeping bag that can withstand a month in the North Pole. I’m not leaving you out here tonight. So why don’t you gather up your stuff and we can get going.”
The Deputy Formerly Known as Sexy Lips, who she’d just rechristened Deputy Hard-Ass flicked his eyes down for a moment. Heat arched between them. Had he just checked out her breasts? The ticking muscle in his jaw went as hard as the granite mountain she’d spent the afternoon admiring.
“You can’t make me go,” she said, her temper slipping through her numbing fingers. But at that precise moment a gush of frigid wind whistled over the pasturelands and right through her sweater. Her teeth chattered as a shiver wracked her body.
He swore softly under his breath. And she knew, from the dangerous look in his eyes, that there was no way on earth he was going to let her stay here for the hour she needed to get her perfect shot. She wanted to swear, too. A lot. The thought of losing the shot because of Deputy Hard-Ass’s Neanderthal attitude to women made her want to scream.
“Yeah, I can,” he said, his voice as deep as it was firm. “You’ve got a choice. You can either get in that squad car without an argument. Or I can cuff you, and arrest you and put you in it. Either way you’ll be riding into town now. But one way you get to ride up front, the other you ride in the back and get to spend a night in the cells.”
“You can’t arrest me? What for?”
“For jaywalking,” he said.
“But I’m not jaywalking,” she said. Not that she was exactly sure what jaywalking was.
“Walking down a highway would qualify.”
“But I’m not on the highway. And since when is walking down a road an arrestable offence?” If they arrested people for that in Manhattan they’d have to lock up the whole city.
“It is, if I say it is,” he said, the tiny twitch on those wide sexy lips antagonizing her more.
Was he finding this amusing? Because she sure as hell wasn’t. She wanted to stay out here and take her shots. This was her professional career. But more than that, she could feel the shimmer of excitement in her blood, always triggered when she knew she was on the cusp of taking an amazing shot. And it could only be the prospect of that causing it this time, too… Because her weird reaction to him was becoming less and less explainable the more snotty he became. Getting pushed around was not high on her list of turn-ons. Even by guys who looked like he did.
“If you’re going to arrest me, go ahead.” Sod obsequious. “But I’m not leaving until you do.”
She turned her back on him, which was her second mistake. The tiny jingle of metal on metal was followed by the cold touch of steel and the soft click on her wrist. She spun round, shocked into silence, when he took her other wrist in firm callused hands and snapped the other handcuff shut.
“I’m arresting you for jaywalking on I-89, Miss Charlotte Foster.”
“You have got to be kidding me?” she managed, the surge of something that made no sense at all annoying her almost as much as the shock of getting handcuffed.
Instead of answering, he stared her down with those cool blue eyes, and began reciting a load of rights at her, which he reeled off in a deadly serious monotone. But she could see that slight twitch on his lips was still there.
Good grief, he is totally getting off on this.
She wanted to be outraged; unfortunately she couldn’t quite be, because she could feel the melting sensation in her abdomen as he lifted her pack and her tripod on to one shoulder as if they weighed nothing at all.
“Come on,” he said, grasping her arm above the elbow and leading her to the squad car. “The sooner we get you into town, the sooner I can charge you and throw you in a nice warm cell for the night.”
“You’re actually serious? You’re going to imprison me for being sixty feet from a road?” She was so completely astonished by the turn of events—the cold steel of the handcuffs clamped on her wrists and the warm feel of his fingers firm on her arm as he directed her to the car—that she was still struggling to get to her outrage.
She’d met hard-asses before. She had never met anyone as hard-assed as this guy.
He opened the back door of the car, dumped her pack and her camera inside, and then placed his other hand on her head to direct her into the seat. After buckling her into the car, he slammed the door and got into the driver’s seat in front, then spoke through the grill.
“You’ll thank me for it, Charlotte, when you’re warm and cozy in a cell tonight and not dying of hypothermia.” The twitch gave way and a lopsided smile tipped up those beautiful lips.
Heat suffused her cheeks, and concentrated at her core.
Damn the man for being even more sexy when he was patronizing her.
She sent him an angry glare, and then ignored him, finally locating her outrage.
“I very much doubt that,” she grumbled under her breath as the rich redolent glow of happy hour began to roll across the landscape.
The car pulled onto the road and she watched her perfect shot disappear out the back window.
It took twenty minutes to drive into the nearby town. Charlie fumed every second of the way in the back seat. Cursing Deputy Hard-Ass, America’s ludicrous highway code, and her big mouth but most of all her sex-starved libido, which—if the liquid warmth in her abdomen was anything to go by—had so lost the plot it had decided that getting manhandled by a guy who obviously enjoyed bossing women about was actually sort of hot.
Find out what happens next in Tempting the Deputy…
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About the Author
USA Today Bestselling and RITA-nominated author Heidi Rice is married with two sons (which gives her rather too much of an insight into the male psyche). She also works as a film journalist and was born in Notting Hill in West London (before it became as chi-chi as it is in the film starring Hugh Grant). She now lives in Islington in North London – a stone’s throw away from where they shot Four Weddings and a Funeral… (She has asked Hugh to stop stalking her, but will he listen?!)
She loves her job because it involves sitting down at her computer each day and getting swept up in a world of high emotions, sensual excitement, funny feisty women, sexy tortured men and glamorous locations where laundry doesn’t exist … Not bad, eh.
More from Heidi:
Visit her website Heidi-Rice.com
Check out her blog
Follow her on Twiter@HeidiRomRice
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