The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  When Jordan rammed his fist into Bender again, and again – because let’s face it, it felt damn good – his arm was grabbed from behind, his brother’s voice sounding in his ear. “Stop. Jordan, stop. I know it’s tempting, but you can’t kill him. The nice officers behind me might object. And, um, Ava?”

  Jordan looked up, met Ava’s eyes before she shifted them toward Jesse. “I’m Agent Wellington. Jesse. Nice to meet you. And I’d really like it if you’d hand me your weapon. Butt first. That’s the way. And I believe this shirt belongs to you.”

  Her hand started shaking after Jesse took the gun. And her eyes were wide when she looked at Jordan. “Elbow.” She lifted it up.

  And despite everything, Jordan laughed.

  EPILOGUE

  “LET me take that,” Jordan cajoled, and grabbed the empty casserole dish in his wife’s hands. “There are enough able bodied people here to help clear the table. You should be sitting down.”

  Ava frowned, and tugged on the dish. “I may look like a beached whale,” she said testily. “But I’m perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet.”

  Jordan grinned. Was she ever. He’d never met a person so adept at taking whatever curves life pitched, and batting them back like a champ.

  “I know that, honey.” He shifted, cagily snagging the dish – a remnant from the New Year’s dinner they’d just enjoyed with the rest of the growing Wellington family – and dropped his free hand to her rounded belly. “But there are two little people inside you almost ready to come out. No one’s going to confuse you with Shamu if you let the rest of us clean up.”

  “You’re lucky I can’t see my feet, or I’d plant one on your ass.”

  “I’m lucky, period.” He dropped a kiss on her lips.

  “Nice save,” she said against his mouth.

  “I thought so.” When she wound her arms around his neck, he slid deeper into the kiss than he’d intended.

  “Get a room,” Jordan’s younger brother Justin suggested as he walked by with an armload of plates.

  Still wrapped up in his wife, Jordan’s free hand connected to his brother’s biceps.

  “Ouch!” Justin nearly bobbled the plates. “Hey, I’m back on call in a few hours. Don’t mess with the arm that wields the scalpel.”

  Jordan smiled into Ava’s eyes as his brother walked away. “Go sit down,” he coaxed again, and she reluctantly acquiesced.

  As he watched her waddle – walk, he corrected, somewhat desperately. She’d scalp him if she knew he’d even thought the other word – toward his parent’s family room, he contemplated his incredible good fortune.

  Last month they’d watched her father deliver testimony that had resulted in Carlos Martinez being sentenced to several life sentences. His empire had crumpled around him like a house of cards, brought down at the hands of the brother he’d betrayed. Ava’s father’s testimony had earned him a plea bargain that would considerably shorten his time in prison, giving him hope that with good behavior he’d be paroled in time to get to know his grandchildren.

  Lorena Martinez’s body had been positively identified, and buried with due respect and ceremony in the cemetery near the church where she’d been abducted. Ava had handled the entire thing with remarkable composure, clutching her mother’s rosary in one hand, the other tucked into Jordan’s. She’d been surrounded by her friends and his family – her family now – for the kind of support that still brought a tear to his wife’s eye when she thought no one was looking.

  Robert Bender sat in jail awaiting trial.

  Jordan tried to feel sympathetic instead of vindicated whenever he came across Jeff Simpson – after all, the Internal Affairs investigation had shown that the man had neither tampered with evidence nor had any inkling what his nephew was up to – but really, he was only human, and Simpson had behaved like an ass.

  “Are you going to stand there all night, son, or are you going to take that dish into the kitchen?”

  Jordan snapped out of his reverie with a start, then smiled at his father, patiently waiting for Jordan to quit blocking the doorway. “Sorry. Just taking a moment to appreciate the scenery.”

  Tom followed his son’s gaze toward the family room, where Ava sat near the fireplace, hands draped protectively over her abdomen. The fifty degree weather hardly warranted the crackling fire in the hearth, but she looked so beatific sitting there, smiling at little Grace, that Jordan felt warm all over. He’d build her a dozen fires if she wanted them.

  “Are you ready?”

  Jordan understood that his father was talking about his impending fatherhood, as opposed to making his way to the kitchen. He took a deep – and admittedly shaky – breath. “As I’ll ever be.” He cast a questioning gaze toward his dad. “Were you scared when Mom was this close to her due date with Jack?”

  “Shitless,” Tom said succinctly.

  Jordan laughed. It was exactly what he needed to hear.

  His gaze drifted back toward Ava. While neither of them had expected their first joking discussion about fertility to have… well, already taken root, so to speak, they’d been ecstatic after the shock had finally worn off. They both wanted a family, the kind two people nurtured until it grew and blossomed, ripe with love.

  They had a bumper crop of love.

  And speaking of bumper crops, he mused, as his father clapped him on the shoulder and moved past him. He supposed it would be time soon to start thinking about that little garden he and Ava had talked about planting. On the little farm they seem to have bought. Fresh vegetables for lasagna, plenty of room for the animals to roam, and good, messy dirt for their children to dig in when they got a little older.

  And three bathtubs to house frogs.

  “Oh.” Ava looked up, startled, and pressed a hand to her back.

  The casserole dish slipped out of Jordan’s hands and shattered. “It’s time?”

  “I think so.”

  She met his eyes as other members of his family rushed in to see what had happened, happy chaos erupting when everyone realized the babies had decided it was time to join the fun. And instead of the nerves he’d been expecting, Jordan discovered that what he felt was excitement.

  “They’re a little early,” Ava said, almost apologetically as he quickly crossed the room.

  He took her hands and helped ease her from the chair. A new year, a new start. Two new lives.

  “That’s okay.” He leaned down and kissed his wife. “We’re ready.”

  Forbidden

  Book Two in the Southern Comfort Series

  PROLOGUE

  CAMP sucked.

  That was the singular thought floating in twelve-year-old Tate Hennessey’s head as she watched the empty Coke bottle spin on the cabin’s plank floor. The tinted glass blurred, executing revolution after revolution, finally slowing to a drunken and uneasy rest.

  Its open mouth pointed at her.

  For one perilous moment the only sounds in the musty dark were the mechanical whirr of the ceiling fan and the rasp of her uneven breathing. Up to this point she’d been lucky, as for the past fifteen minutes of this dumb game no one had any reason to pay her any attention.

  Looks like her luck had just run out.

  “You know what that means, don’t you Tate?”

  The nasty, sing-song voice belonged to Lacy Chapman, a viciously perky blonde who’d already developed breasts. Real breasts, the kind that required an actual bra as opposed to one of those training jobs Tate’s mother was always trying to push on her. Lacy’s boobs apparently bypassed training entirely, heading straight to the Major Leagues. Rumor had it she’d let one of the boys from the other side of camp touch them. Tate wasn’t sure if that was true, but she knew for a fact that Lacy was trouble. Her angelic looks belied a bully who liked nothing better than to make other people squirm.

  And Tate was currently on the skewer.

  Swallowing hard, she studiously avoided the five pairs of eyes which pinned her like an insect awaiting disse
ction. It was decision time, and she didn’t much care for her choices. “Truth,” she finally mumbled, not about to accept a dare. Since there were no boys around with whom to play spin-the-bottle the traditional way, they’d merged the two games to make it interesting.

  “Okay.” Lacy delighted in Tate’s discomfort. She’d made it her mission over the past five days to make sure Tate was alternately ridiculed or excluded. The only reason she’d been invited to play the game tonight was that Lacy knew it would prove a goldmine of embarrassment potential. “What I want to know is… do you have a thing for Lifeguard John?”

  Every bit of summer color drained from Tate’s face as all eyes present snapped toward her. She’d been prepared to answer almost anything, but her mammoth crush on Lifeguard John – the hunky eighteen year old counselor – was her deepest, darkest secret. How had Lacy managed to figure it out?

  Certain that she was stepping into a very carefully laid trap, Tate took the path of least resistance. She lied.

  “N… No.”

  Several muffled giggles followed someone’s curse of disbelief, causing Tate’s green eyes to widen. If she’d said that word, right out loud, her mother would have cleaned her clock.

  “Then how do you explain this?” Lacy held up the Polaroid of Lifeguard John that Tate had hidden in the bushes outside the counselors’ cabin to take. Until that horrifying moment, it had been stashed beneath the mattress on her bunk.

  “Give that back!” Tate lunged across the circle of snickering girls.

  “Ah, ah, ah.” Lacy’s push sent Tate sprawling backwards onto her butt. A splinter lodged itself in the heel of her palm, but the sting of humiliation was more painful. “Would someone care to remind Tate what happens when you break the game rules?”

  “She has to accept a dare,” several voices rang out.

  Lacy smiled as panic rearranged Tate’s features. “And I know the perfect one for our little liar. Since Tate is the one who cost us the swimming trophy today, I dare her to go over to the boys’ camp and get it back.”

  The ultimatum swung through the air like an executioner’s axe. The best way to reach the boy’s camp was by way of a walking trail through the forest.

  The dark, creepy forest.

  Not only was the dare cruel, it was also unfair. It really hadn’t been her fault that they’d lost the competition. Beforehand, a boy named Timothy had told her stories about the monster of Lake Allatoona, and then swam underwater during the heat of the race to lay hold to her ankle. Panicking, Tate had floundered, causing Lifeguard John to dive to her rescue. But a little thing like the truth didn’t matter to Lacy. Several girls snickered behind their fingers, and Tate knew she was sunk. It was either suck it up and walk through the dark, or spend the rest of her time here in misery.

  Confronting the narrowed eyes staring back at her, Tate swallowed her rising fear. “No problem.” But when she started toward her flashlight, Lacy’s hand snaked around her ankle.

  “No flashlight.” Her tone was sweet, but her nails bit into Tate’s skin. “If the boys see it, they might know that you’re coming.”

  Jerking her ankle away from Lacy’s grip, Tate stalked out the door.

  Fluorescent light winked between the vents of the cinderblock bathhouse, but the shadowy path through the trees looked like the gaping maw of Hell. Shuddering, Tate picked her way a little deeper into the darkness, the ground mist swirling around her ankles reminding her of every monster movie she’d ever seen. Crickets sang their dirge to evening, woodland debris crackled beneath her sneakered feet, and something rustled in the underbrush beside the almost imperceptible path.

  Tate jumped, a loud splash off to the right reminding her that the path followed the edge of the lake. Visions of the monster the scheming Timothy had tricked her with crowded her overactive imagination, but she valiantly told herself that there was nothing but fish in the lake.

  Moonlight shimmered, giving the murky, brownish water an eerie glow, as fingers of that horror-movie mist stretched from the surface. Despite the “nothing but fish” chant running a continuous circuit in her head, she had no trouble believing that the lake was home to all manner of nasty creatures. Like the piranhas she’d seen on that TV movie. Or the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  Or Jason.

  Oh. God. How could she have forgotten about Jason? She’d seen Friday the Thirteenth; she knew what happened to kids at summer camp. Any moment now, a hockey-masked, axe-wielding maniac was likely to break through the underbrush and do her in.

  Frozen with the sudden onset of mindless fear, Tate sucked in tiny breaths of panic, until a sharp crack behind her propelled her willy-nilly down the moonlit path. Brambles scratched her bare legs, thorny vines tore at hair and clothing. But the blood trickling toward her socks seemed like no big deal compared to running for her life. Chest heaving with sobs, Tate broke through the trees, stumbling onto the pine straw at the edge of the clearing. She was cut, scraped, winded and terrified, but at least she was out of the darned woods.

  Wait a minute.

  She was out of the darned woods. A triumphant smile played across her tear-streaked face, but she put a little more distance between herself and the looming specter of the trees, just for good measure.

  Creeping on silent feet toward the circle of the boys’ cabins, Tate paused only to wipe the cold sweat that trickled into her eyes. The various trophies earned that day were kept on a special picnic table in the middle of the circle, and scanning the area for any sign of the enemy, Tate crept stealthily toward her quarry.

  She grasped the coveted trophy – her own personal grail – until an unexpected noise coming from the direction of the boys’ bathroom reminded her that she needed to clear out, quick. Being caught red-handed in the middle of the enemy camp would put quite a damper on the glow of success.

  As she was creeping around the side of the building, the sound she’d heard began to distinguish itself into voices: one young, soft and worried, and a grown up voice, reassuring. She was almost sure that the younger voice belonged to the dreaded Timothy. She’d heard it in her ear enough that day to know. And though she couldn’t be positive, she thought the older one belonged to the camp director, Mr. Logan. It seemed strange that he was up at this hour, in the bathroom with one of the campers. Maybe Timothy was sick.

  Beside herself with curiosity, Tate couldn’t stop herself from sneaking closer. But the voices inside had been replaced with other noises. Noises that made her uncomfortable.

  Shivering, Tate felt the overwhelming urge to run away. But when she heard a quickly muffled cry, she peeked around the corner.

  The swimming trophy slipped out of her hands as her scream rent the stillness of the night.

  CHAPTER ONE

  July 15, Present

  JANIE Collier was hot, tired, and mad at the world.

  Running away from home wasn’t supposed to be so hard, but getting out of Charleston on foot in ninety degree heat proved to be more of an undertaking than she’d initially guessed. The asphalt was so hot that her sneakers sank into it, and about every fifth step one or the other of them threatened to come off. They were too damn big, anyway, because they were hand-me-downs from her sister.

  Her stupid older sister who’d had to go and get herself knocked up.

  Why the hell hadn’t she listened when Daddy had told her that the Lawrence boy was no good? Hell, anybody with eyes could see Danny was only slumming when he’d asked her out. Her older sister had a body like one of them centerfolds Daddy was always looking at, and that’s the only reason Danny Lawrence had shown the least bit of interest. Rich boys like him weren’t in the habit of making girlfriends out of poor white trash. Danny didn’t even come inside the trailer when he picked Joelle up. He just sat in his Mustang and beeped the horn, like he was too damn good to dirty his expensive sneakers by setting foot in their home.

  And wouldn’t you know it? Daddy’s prophecy had come true.

  Danny Lawrence had gotten in h
er sister’s pants one time too many, but now that she was pregnant he was nowhere to be found. His parents had sent him off to visit some relative for the summer. His daddy, a lawyer, had threatened to sue Janie and Joelle’s daddy if he ever laid a finger on his boy. Since Janie and Joelle’s daddy was a drunk, he hadn’t had the good sense to listen: he’d attacked Mr. Lawrence at his high-falutin’ home one night, demanding that Danny own up to his bastard.

  Consequently, Danny had left the state, her daddy was in jail, and the child welfare people had been swarming over her and Joelle like flies.

  Joelle, who was six months gone, was in a home for unwed mothers, and she – Janie – had just run away from her third foster home.

  Not like those idiots were going to miss her. The wife had been okay, but her lard-ass husband looked at her in a way that made her feel like she’d come down with chiggers.

  So she’d hightailed it out of there before Fat Hubby had decided to take those gropes-disguised-as-hugs to the next level. She was experienced enough to know exactly what the bastard wanted, and while she was no virgin, she preferred to choose her partners. Fat Hubby didn’t make the list.

  Janie shivered despite the heat.

  Sweat trickled off the back of her neck, running down into her cotton panties, where little bumps of heat rash popped up like chicken skin. Looking at the road sign she’d just passed, Janie saw that she’d traveled approximately ten miles out of the city. At this rate, she’d turn fifteen before she made it to Florida.

  Janie sighed, blowing out a breath that ruffled her sweat-damp bangs. She needed some shade, she needed some water, she needed somebody with wheels.

  Coming upon a massive live oak, Janie dragged herself to the side of the road and sagged against the trunk. There was a fruit stand maybe a mile or two down the highway, and if she could just make it there she could buy herself an apple and a nice, cold drink out of the cooler. She’d love to have one of their cherry sodas, but she figured she’d better stick to water so she didn’t get dehydrated. They’d studied that in health class last year, so she knew all about things like blood sugar and hydration. For the most part, school seemed like a huge waste of time, but she had to admit she liked learning about the body.