by Zoe Chant
Tara didn't hear any more. She dashed through the kitchen, catching a fleeting glimpse of the cook's startled look, and slammed the back door out of her way.
She hoped Sammie wouldn't get in too much trouble. The sheriff seemed like a decent guy. Maybe he'd listen to her ...
No. She couldn't afford to go down that road. If he arrested her, she'd be a sitting duck for Dick's goons as soon as the story hit the news. Right now she was lying low, but if her arrest made headlines—no. She couldn't risk it.
The problem was, there weren't many places to go. Wildcat Forks was nothing but a scattering of small businesses along two crossing highways. There was a gas station, a couple of bars, an antiques store, and a laundromat with showers that catered mostly to the backwoods crowd (Tara had been taking full advantage of the latter amenity while sleeping in the back room of Sammie's restaurant). The town wasn't even big enough to have a taxi; you could walk across the whole thing in ten minutes. A handful of houses and trailers eventually gave way to farms and woods.
The sheriff's long legs meant she couldn't outrun him. She'd have to find a way to lose him instead.
She ran around to the front of the diner, hoping a trucker was about to pull out, but the big gravel parking lot was nearly empty. The sheriff's patrol vehicle was there, a medium-sized SUV with "Pinerock County Sheriff" on the side in bold letters. Between customers she always tried to keep an eye out for cops, but she'd been too busy and had completely missed it pulling in.
I hope this isn't the last mistake you ever make, Tara.
Otherwise, the town was sleepy and quiet in the noon sunshine. Tara splashed through the edge of a puddle from last night's rain, heading for the crossroads because at least there, she'd double her chances of being able to find someone to pick her up.
On the edge of the Shell plaza, she heard a voice behind her bellow, "Stop!"
And it did make her stop, just for an instant. It was as if something in that deep voice cut right through her conscious mind and went straight to her animal hindbrain. She'd never had such a powerful, visceral response to anyone before.
Looking back, she saw the sheriff running across the parking lot of Marge's Diner. She'd expected him to draw his gun, but he hadn't. He didn't stop at his patrol car, either. It looked like he was trying to run her down on foot.
She raced around the back of the Shell station. There were some dumpsters here and a fence to keep animals out, and behind them, a patch of forest. Maybe she could lose him in the woods?
She dashed into the brush. Within moments she was deeply regretting her impractical skirt. The only reason she was wearing it was because she'd spilled ketchup yesterday on her one pair of jeans, and hadn't had a chance to wash them yet. The skirt was borrowed from Sammie, held up with a safety pin because even though Tara was a girl with some curves to her, she didn't hold a candle to Sammie.
Now she could feel the safety pin's tenuous hold starting to give away, loosening with every bramble and twig that snagged the skirt.
There was a tremendous crashing in the bushes behind her. God, it didn't seem to be slowing him down at all. He was making so much noise it sounded like there was a bear or something chasing her.
The skirt finally lost its safety pin, and it slipped down to wrap around her legs like a hobble. She cursed and struggled out of it, leaving her with nothing below the waist but her panties and shoes. Well, screw it. Maybe this would make it easier to get a trucker to stop for her. Or at least catch their attention.
But first she had to get back to the highway.
Then, in her panicked flight, she ran up against a fence. It was over her head. Tara stopped and stared in disbelief.
"You have got to be kidding me," she moaned.
Neither way looked any more promising than the other, and both ways were a potential nightmare of sticker bushes and poison ivy.
Maybe she could climb it.
Tara gripped the wire firmly. She'd climbed trees in the park when she was a kid. How different could this be? She wedged the toe of her shoe into a gap in the wire and hoisted herself up.
The wire wobbled under her weight, but the fence itself seemed sturdy enough to hold her. She reached up and took a new grip, then found a new foothold and climbed a little higher—
"Hey! Hold it!"
Great.
She looked over her shoulder as the sheriff burst out of the bushes behind her. She got some satisfaction from the fact that his neatly creased brown uniform was now rumpled and snagged, as well as wet across the front and shoulders where she'd pasted him with the coffeepot.
He saw her and skidded to a halt with his eyes wide. Oh, right. No skirt. He was getting a great view of her satin-clad ass with one bare leg raised as she tried to climb the fence.
"Yeah, keep your eyes in your head, buddy," she snapped.
His look of surprise changed to amusement. He crossed his arms and lounged against a tree. "You really think you can climb that?"
"Watch me!" She got all her weight on her right toe, lifted the left one and wedged it into the fence again. Wow. This looked a lot easier on TV.
Also, there were a lot of thorns underneath her to fall into if she slipped ...
The sheriff made a show of checking his watch. "Are you going to take all day? Because I have some paperwork to fill out back at the office."
"Jerk," she muttered, and took another cautious handhold higher. She was almost to the top of the fence now. If she could just get her hand over it—
"Okay, that's far enough." Bushes crackled beneath her as he stepped up to the fence. Not like she could stop him. She aimed a kick at him, but then her other toe slipped out of the fence, so the kick went wildly astray and she ended up dangling painfully from her hands. Ow.
The sheriff's big hands gripped her around the waist. She started to struggle, then realized that she didn't actually want to be dropped in the thornbushes. Instead she let go and allowed herself to be whisked off the fence and set on the ground.
The sheriff let go and took a step back, both hands raised placatingly. Defiantly, she resisted the urge to try to cover up. Instead she crossed her arms and faced him. If he was going to arrest her, at least she wouldn't go whimpering and crying.
"Listen, ma'am, I'm Sheriff Axl Tanner. I just want to talk to you."
"If this 'talk' involves handcuffs, buddy, I'm not going anywhere. I didn't do anything. I'm innocent."
"Nobody's getting arrested at the moment, but I also can't let you leave until we have a chat."
Tara thought about various self-defense options, but decided that roughing up a cop wasn't worth the remote possibility of getting away. Besides, the guy was huge. And he'd lifted her down from the fence as if she weighed nothing.
Let's face it, Tara, if you two get into a wrestling match, he's gonna win.
She was caught off guard by a sudden and startling mental flash of Sheriff Tanner's powerful, muscular bulk pressing her down—but definitely not to arrest her. Pulling down her little satin panties, gripping her hips with those strong hands, thrusting deep into her—
She shook her head to dispel the images that left her wet and a trifle overheated despite the cool day.
Where had that come from?!
"C'mon, let's go on back to somewhere we're not standing knee-deep in blackberry canes, huh? Speaking of which ..." The sheriff glanced down at her legs. "What happened to your skirt?"
"Someone chased me into the woods," she snapped, keeping her arms obstinately folded and trying not to blush.
Instead, he was the one who blushed, a flush of pink traveling down his neck. "Here. Let me give you something to cover up with."
And with that, he began unbuttoning his shirt.
Okay, now she was definitely blushing. He was wearing a T-shirt underneath, but it was also soaked with coffee and semi-transparent around the chest area. All it did was cling to his sculpted pecs and give her an even more striking view of his amazing chest and shoulders.
/> "I'm afraid it's a little wet, but someone knows whose fault that is," he said, handing her the shirt.
She thought about refusing on the grounds of pride, but then she thought about walking back into town flashing her ass around. Grimly she took it and tied the sleeves around her waist. It wasn't stylish and felt like it was one incautious step from falling off, but at least it put a layer of fabric between her panties and the world.
Not that they weren't great panties. They were pink satin, with black lace edging. And they were the only thing she had left of the expensive wardrobe that had once been at her disposal.
How you've come down in the world, Tara Malloy, she thought bitterly as the sheriff steered her back into the woods with a polite hand on her elbow, carefully evading the worst of the briars. She'd gone from boardrooms, custom-tailored suits, and trips to Paris, to getting hustled off to jail by a small-town cop while wearing his shirt as a pants substitute.
There would be more escape potential back in town, she hoped.
If only her heart didn't triphammer at the touch of his hand on her arm.
Chapter Three: Axl
The feisty redhead allowed Axl to escort her through the woods without putting up a struggle. After the incident with the coffee, he'd been braced for more resistance. She did insist on stopping to find the skirt she'd dropped, now little more than a bramble-snagged rag. She rolled it up and tucked it under her arm.
He didn't think she'd given in completely, though. She was only biding her time.
.... Unlike Axl's bear, which was a constant active annoyance in the back of his mind. It was delighted by his mate's presence, urging him to kiss those full, kissable lips, to run his hands up the luscious curve of her thigh, now hidden under his coffee-stained uniform shirt.
He'd had to fight down his bear while he was chasing her, as it tried to push forward and take over. True, he could have run her down a lot more easily on four legs than two, but he didn't think that having either a bear or a naked man charge out of the woods at her would do anything to make her more cooperative.
No, he thought. He wasn't doing anything with a woman who was wanted by the FBI, not kissing and not, definitely not, any of the other things a certain rebellious part of his mind (and other parts of him) kept wanting to do.
Especially not if he was going to have to go ahead and arrest her.
She smelled so good, though, a rich warm woman scent. Her red hair had been pinned up in the diner, but it had come down while she was running and now it spilled over the shoulders of her cream-colored blouse.
What he wouldn't give to run his hands through those thick red tresses, to bury his face in it and inhale her scent, cup her full and luscious breasts in his hands ...
No, no, no!
"If you're arresting me, I think you're supposed to read me my rights," Tara said sullenly as they left the woods and entered the edge of town.
"No one's getting arrested." At least not yet. "I'm serious about just talking."
"Uh-huh," she said skeptically, but she didn't try to run.
When they reached the patrol car, she balked. Her arm under his hand went tense. He could tell she was weighing her options.
"Look, we could do this in the diner, but I thought you'd want more privacy."
She gave him a long, level look. Up close, her eyes were blue, as vivid as the summer sky overhead. Long, thick lashes fringed them, dark enough to let him know that the red hair was probably dyed. She had a smattering of freckles, a light spray across her nose and a scattered few on each cheek, as if she'd been splattered by a painter's brush.
How he'd love to pull down the collar of her shirt, and see if the freckles went all the way down ...
"Listen," he said, wrenching his eyes back up to her face from where they'd started to drift. Her smell was driving his bear wild, but he kept himself in firm control. "There's a wanted poster back at the sheriff's office with your name on it. The thing is, I'd rather give you a chance to tell your side of the story before I go marching you into the office in handcuffs and getting lawyers involved and all that jazz."
"Will you listen, though?" she asked. "If I tell you what happened, will you give me a fair chance?"
"I will. I promise."
Another long, level look. He felt as if he could fall into the sky blue of her eyes and be lost there forever. Then she gave a tight nod.
Rather than putting her in the backseat like a criminal, Axl opened the front passenger door and moved his hat off the seat so she could get in. She stopped in the act of getting in, with one hand on the edge of the door.
"If this is all a trick to get me off to jail without raising a fuss, I promise you'll find out how much of a fuss I'm capable of."
"No tricks," Axl promised. "Right now it's just us, okay?"
"Okay," she said reluctantly, and took a seat.
Axl got in on the other side and started the engine. Tara said quickly, "Where are we going? Aren't we going to talk here?"
"I thought it might be better to get a little more private than this."
As if to demonstrate his point, another muddy truck pulled into the parking lot, and the bearded rancher who climbed out peered curiously at the patrol car, trying to see inside.
"Okay, fair enough," she admitted. "No jail, though."
"No jail."
He put the Chevy in gear and pulled out onto the left-hand fork of the highway. They drove for about a mile before coming to a bridge over a scenic, winding river. This was a branch of the Pinerock River that flowed out of Pine Canyon, where Axl's family farm was. Up there, the river was narrow and wild, a white-capped torrent pouring between jagged basalt boulders. Down here, though, it was slow and meandering, glimmering in the sun.
Just before the bridge there was a small parking lot with a handful of picnic tables, a fire pit, and a boat launch. Axl pulled over to the far edge of the lot, where trees sheltered them from the road and they wouldn't be quite so conspicuous.
When he killed the engine, the silence seemed to have a weight of its own, pressing on his eardrums.
Tara rubbed at a briar scratch on her knee. This drew his attention back to her legs—amazing legs, curvy and gorgeous, emerging from under the edge of his uniform shirt. Her dash through the brush had left them sadly scratched up.
It didn't seem right to let her sit there and suffer. Axl unbuckled his seat belt and leaned forward to reach for the small first-aid kit under his seat.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Tara demanded. Her hand hovered near the door handle.
"Those look painful." Axl showed her the first-aid kit with its red cross on the lid. "No reason to give you any grounds for a police brutality lawsuit, right?"
"Okay," she said, and held out her hand.
"I was thinking I'd put it on myself." There were things in the kit he didn't think he should let her get her hands on—scissors, for example.
The look she gave him from those brilliant blue eyes was a sharp one. "Seriously? What do you think I'm going to do, tie you up with a gauze bandage? Anyway, I'm used to taking care of myself."
"How about a deal. I take care of the scratches on your legs, and you tell me your story."
Tara hesitated for a long moment. "All right," she said at last. "You better stay below the knees, though."
"I'll be a perfect gentleman, I swear."
She toed out of her flat-heeled shoe and lifted her left leg, placing her bare foot up on the center console between the seats. All he'd have to do was tilt his head, and he'd be able to see straight down her pale thigh to the pink triangle of satin between her legs—
From the challenging look in her eyes, she knew it well.
Instead he firmly kept both his eyes and his attention on her scraped-up shin. He squeezed a little antibiotic ointment onto the ball of his thumb and smoothed it over the worst of the scratches. "Okay. Let's hear your story."
Tara hesitated a long moment, and then in a tone of determination, she said firmly, "I
know everybody probably says they're innocent, but I really am. I was framed, and I've been running for months now because of it."
Axl wanted to be more skeptical, but there was such clear sincerity in her face and voice that he had trouble maintaining professional detachment. Being a bear shifter gave him a lot of practice in reading subtle body language. Bears couldn't talk in their shifted form, so the only way they had to communicate was by changes in posture and movement. And his time in law enforcement had given him a lot of practice at honing his ability to tell if someone was lying.
Everything about Tara's body language said she was either telling the truth, or was such a practiced, pathological liar that she could fool even him.
She's not a liar, his bear grumped. She's our MATE!
Shut up and let me pay attention.
"If you didn't do it," he said reasonably, "then how did your face end up on a wanted poster?"
Tara's fingers knotted and unknotted on top of the shirt covering her lap. "Okay, for starters, how much do you know about me?"
"Not much," Axl admitted, smoothing the soothing ointment across a scrape on her ankle. His other hand rested on top of her foot, steadying it. Her skin was just as smooth and soft as he'd known it would be—Damn it, focus! "I know there was a bulletin about you from the FBI. You're wanted for embezzling, fraud, and assault."
"Did that bulletin happen to include who my parents are?"
Axl shook his head.
"Lucky me," she said with a wry twist of her mouth. "It's all over the news back home—or at least it was, although I guess the 24-hour news cycle has moved on to something else by now. My dad is Max Malloy, of the M&M Foundation. That's M&M for Max and Maureen, my parents. Heard of it?"
He shook his head again.
"Wow, you guys really are rural," she said dryly. "My dad got lucky in the stock market back in the eighties and early nineties, when things were booming. He got in on the ground floor with some computer investments—stock in Microsoft and that kind of thing. By the time I was born, my parents were multi-millionaires.
