That was the sad testament of what his life had become since Roxanne Faust left him that note and ran.
Speaking of which, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled it out.
This was his nightly routine.
He’d park his ride at this shithole dive, pull out the note, and then read it.
‘Jagger,
I’m sorry. I don’t do relationships well, and I certainly don’t do goodbyes. They suck. I wanted to tell you that the last few days, this has haunted me. When you and I fell into bed, I knew I couldn’t stay. I wanted to be with you way too much, and in the end, it would be a disaster.
I fell for you.
It’s lame, stupid, and so damn cliché, but you deserve to know the truth. If I wasn’t a broken mess, I would have been here. I hope you forgive me, and you move on.
Thank you for the best moments of my life.
Love,
Roxy.’
Honestly, he had it memorized.
Jagger could recite the words verbatim, and it sucked. At night, after he left the seedy hotel smelling like some other woman, it was Roxy he was always thinking about. It was her face he dreamed about when his head hit the pillow.
It would always be her.
He read the note again to add salt to his already festering wound.
It was that last part of the paragraph that tripped him up.
‘I hope you forgive me and you move on.’
How the fuck was he supposed to do that?
He dreamt about her, he thought about her all day long when he was supposed to be working, and when he was having sex with some slutty blonde, it was the doctor he was fantasizing about.
Forget?
Hell no.
Forgive?
Never in a million years.
Jagger tucked the letter back into his leather jacket pocket, carefully trying to preserve it. That was his last piece of her, albeit shitty, and he couldn’t lose it too.
His life had been so full of loss.
His mother.
His father.
His sister moved on.
Roxy walked away.
He had nothing left. Jagger was officially alone in the world. The people he called family…he was ready to set them free too. They didn’t deserve to be surrounded by his pathetic existence.
They deserved better.
‘You have us, and we love you,’ whispered through his mind as soon as he thought it.
Immediately, he knew who it was.
Oracle was playing her games, and he wanted no part of it. Each night, when he did this, it shamed him.
He never got off.
Ever.
It was like Roxy took that too. His heart and masculinity was stolen by the sultry brunette who obviously hated his guts to do this to him.
He was a shell of a human being because of her.
He was nothing.
Yeah, the note was a joke too. She wanted him to forget and move on?
How?
That was a crock of bullshit. It was never a possibility, and because she was able to…he hated her for it.
God!
He really hated her.
Jagger glanced down at the time, and he knew he needed to go. There was a woman to pick up, a pussy to pound, and one more sliver of his soul to kiss goodbye.
Here was his life in a nutshell.
Getting out of his truck, he ignored Avalon in his head. How she was talking to him, he didn’t ask. All he knew was her gifts were growing, and he wanted no part of it.
“Leave, Oracle. I don’t want you in my head.”
‘Jagger, come home. Don’t do this. I love you.’
He didn’t care.
His truck door slammed, and so did the access between their minds, closing her out.
She was one of the few good things left in his life, and there was no way in hell he was going to let her view what was coming.
He was ashamed of his behavior, and she was like his sister. What he was about to do to whatever woman he found…
Yeah, she couldn’t see that.
He was disgusted and knew she’d hate him in the end too.
All the women in his life eventually left, and he couldn’t lose her too.
Not yet.
Jagger wasn’t ready to let her go.
Now came the time in his day where he made himself bleed for his actions. It was time to degrade everything in his life to forget the one woman he found that had shunned his heart and soul.
It was time to destroy himself all over again. Each day, it was the same punishment.
And he deserved it.
He wanted…to find someone to make him forget.
As he tugged open the bar door, the odor of stale booze and cheap perfume assaulted his nose. The place was full tonight.
His slut cup runneth over.
Well, it was good to be home.
In the gutter where he belonged.
Chapter One
Happy, Texas
She loved a puzzle—the harder the better.
Maybe that was why she became a coroner. The idea of solving things had always been part of her life. As a child, she was nosey, trouble, and always getting into things that were a bad idea. Curiosity killed the cat, but she just couldn’t help herself. Some things couldn’t be left unsolved.
Life had been hard for her as she grew up, and Roxanne Faust needed an outlet to focus all her pain. So, with the free library card her one teacher gifted her, she started reading everything she could get her hands on.
That led to her favorite genre—mysteries.
She loved them like a fat kid liked cake. She couldn’t get enough, and that was fine with her. Even now, in her thirties, she loved books more than anything in life.
That wasn’t saying much, considering her life consisted of being alone, cutting into dead bodies, and reading.
Still…
There was nothing like sitting down, falling into a book, and never looking back. That was the life. The only thing she loved more than reading a mystery was being in the middle of one.
That was exactly where she was right now.
As stand-in coroner to the town of Happy, she had one hell of a mystery on her hands.
She had two women, recently deceased, on the metal tables in front of her, and Roxy had no freaking clue what had happened to them.
Their toxicology reports were clean.
Their organs were pristine.
There was no sign of assault.
They were perfect in every way but still dead. This was a real head scratcher.
When she took the job, offering to cover until the town could lure in a permanent ME, she thought it would be fun. She had never been to this part of the country before, and it seemed like an adventure.
Who didn’t love that?
She did.
This was all about spreading her wings, getting out, and finding the route to happiness in her life.
Who was she kidding?
She only took the damn job to get away from HIM. The further away from that ridiculously sexy Marine, the better off she would be, and she knew it. It scared her stupid that Jagger Armstrong had gotten through her defenses.
She was crazy about him.
She was also pregnant with his child.
Yeah, she didn’t see that one coming. In fact, no one knew. As of that moment, she wasn’t sure if she was keeping the baby, ending the pregnancy, or taking the adoption route.
What did she know about being a mother?
NOTHING.
Her own sucked.
So, Roxy was pretty sure she wasn’t equipped to pull it off on her own. If she told Silas, he’d shit three tons of bricks all over Happy as soon as he arrived to drag her ass home.
Yeah, bad idea.
How long could you hide a pregnancy?
Shouldn’t she, as a doctor, know that?
Her brain was fogged with pregnancy hormones.
When she left Ravenswoo
d, she did it to escape him, but fate had another plan. Maybe plan wasn’t the right word. Fate wanted to be a bitch, and it was throwing her for a loop.
Pregnancy was hard.
With each morning getting sick, she was constantly reminded of what they’d made together.
AND…
How she’d run, leaving him in the dust. She felt horrible about that. She really did. When things got tough, she wasn’t like Bishop, or other tough women. She buckled and bailed.
It was her MO.
Basically, Roxy was a chicken. She was terrified of what might happen if she let Jagger into her life. The last people she had loved and trusted had abused her.
Her own father molested her, and her mother, after she found out, didn’t even try to save her. She sacrificed her child because she ‘loved’ her husband.
Roxy couldn’t let that happen again.
Roxy also couldn’t let her be like her mother. She couldn’t allow herself to become so sick and twisted with infatuation that she’d let a child be repeatedly raped.
So love had to stay out of her life.
Roxy couldn’t fall for anyone.
Granted, that wasn’t true. She’d let Bishop Killion in, and her amazing grandfather Silas Reed—and they’d never hurt her. In fact, when she got all weird, they grounded her.
To that day, Silas sent her texts and calls, begging her to come home. Only she couldn’t.
Roxy wouldn’t go back until she figured out what to do with the child growing in her body. Did she end it?
Did she have it and give it away?
Did she fall in love and become a shitty mother like her own, destroying her child’s life?
Jesus.
Why couldn’t it be easy?
She had Jagger’s cell number, and in fact, she’d actually typed out a message for him. She just never hit send. In it, she told him what had happened. Apparently, fate was a bitch.
When they’d fornicated—and she was on birth control—he’d still managed to knock her up. She didn’t want anything from him, but she thought he should know.
Again…
She didn’t hit send.
Bock freaking bock.
She was a total chicken.
Why couldn’t she just push that one button? How hard could it be?
Well, she didn’t, and it didn’t matter. By the time she returned to Ravenswood, she’d have made up her mind. Odds weren’t in her favor. She had a shitty childhood, and she wasn’t cut out to be a mother.
Ironically, the baby…it made her happy.
She was an idiot.
That was the only rational reason for that. All day, she was picturing herself buying baby things, settling down in a cute little cottage, and having her own little family. If there was no man, there would be no one to hurt her or her child.
Right?
That was her twisted way of thinking. She had to be freaking insane. There was no other excuse for it. There was no time for any of this. Now Roxy had to focus on anything but what was happening inside her body. The second she was forced to focus on it, the sooner she would have to tell Jagger, Bishop, or her grandfather.
The second the cat was out of the bag, she could already hear him.
‘Roxy, honey, you have to stop playing fast and loose with your life. You have value.’
She knew her grandfather, and he’d insist on taking care of her like he always did. It made her want to cry. She’d made a mess of her life, and here it was.
It was all falling apart around her.
Roxy wanted to weep.
So, she did the only thing she could. She focused on the mysteries on her morgue tables.
She had two dead women and no idea how they died.
To make it worse, she’d looked back at some of the medical records the old coroner had kept, and there were five other women who had died of the same thing.
Nothing.
How did healthy people just drop dead in their sleep?
She’d checked the reports. Kathleen Hale and Brianna Moyer had nothing wrong with them. They were both young, athletic, and in the prime of their lives. There were no drugs, no sign of forced entry at their homes, and it was one hell of a mystery.
Instead of calling them unknown deaths, she had to keep digging. When she found the five folders from the previous year, her interest was piqued.
That was too many to be a coincidence.
Honestly, she wished Doctor Morgan was still alive. The old coot took any knowledge with him when he bit the big one. If he had taken better notes, she wouldn’t have to play ‘detective’.
Unfortunately, Happy was a small town with the bare minimum. She was shocked she had any equipment at all. Yeah, it was that damn pathetic. What had she been thinking?
Oh yeah.
Escape the sexy ex-Marine Fed.
This was her karma.
Now she was forced to stare at two people who shouldn’t be on her tables. Accidents—she understood.
Hell!
She even got murders too.
This?
Yeah, no clue.
Heading toward the two women, she stared down at them. The most disturbing thing to her, other than the fact nothing was wrong with them, was that they were both frozen in the same positon. Their eyes were open, clouded with death, and their mouths formed the same horrific ‘O’.
It was as if they had been…scared to death.
She laughed at how silly she was being.
That wasn’t possible.
Here was proof she was losing it. Roxy had baby on the brain and it was already making her an idiot. Gently, she placed her hand over her belly.
“We have to figure this out,” she stated. “You and me, kid. We have one hell of a mystery to solve.”
Just then, she jumped when there was a sound behind her.
“Doc?”
“Jesus! Wear a bell, Sheriff!” she said, spinning around to find the young man standing there.
Sheriff Joe Gilespie laughed. “I’m sorry, Doc. I didn’t think you’d be lost in thought.” He moved closer to the beautiful brunette with the sexy brown eyes. “What do you have for me?” he asked.
She took a step back, and it wasn’t intentional. Roxy didn’t like people too close.
Well, she liked one man all over her, and oddly, she trusted Jagger to be in her personal space.
Damn!
Why couldn’t she stop thinking about him?
Oh yeah.
She was carrying his child.
Shit!
“I don’t have a lot, Sheriff,” she said, putting space between herself and the handsome man before her. The sheriff was young, attractive, and someone she would have chased down two months ago—‘B.J’.
Before Jagger.
Now she couldn’t even fathom bed hopping with some sexy lawman. It sucked too. Roxy loved sex, and she loved the way the passion would suck her under, allowing her to forget the shit life she’d been handed.
She couldn’t ride another man while carrying Jagger’s baby. She just couldn’t.
Great.
Now she grew a code of morality.
She should have known better than to saddle herself up with that sexy Marine. The second she saw the green eyes and the red buzz cut, she should have known that he was a one-way trip to Troubleville.
“I don’t understand,” Joe said. “Are you telling me that you have two victims without any sign of what killed them?”
“Yes. I know how insane that sounds, but it’s true, Sheriff. I can’t give you anything.”
“And you’re sure? Maybe you’ve just made an error,” he offered. It was possible that bringing her on as the temporary coroner was a huge mistake.
Apparently, she didn’t have anything on good old Doc Morgan.
She headed toward her desk and handed him the folders. “Remember these?”
He took them from her and studied the names on the tabs. The second he saw them, he recalled each and every one of
the cases.
“I was a deputy last year. I recall them, but I didn’t work them. In fact, the sheriff was hush hush about anything to do with them.”
“Where is he?”
He shrugged. “Dead.”
Great.
Both people, who might have something on these cases, were dead, and that meant this mystery wasn’t going to be easily solved. Roxy really wished she could call her bestie and get some help. Bishop was really lucky when it came to putting things like this together. She might solve this with a snap of her fingers.
God!
Thinking about her hurt.
She genuinely missed her.
Last she had heard, from her grandfather, Bishop married Lucian Monroe, lost her job, and then was playing wife to the beast.
That wasn’t her thing.
She couldn’t understand it.
“Doc?”
“Huh? Sorry. I was thinking about calling someone for some help,” she offered. “I have a friend who is really good at solving shit like this.”
“Want to talk about it over dinner?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it.
“We could have a few drinks, get to know each other, and maybe discuss what you think is going on here. If you don’t mind mixing business with pleasure, we can discuss what’s going on between us.”
When he winked at her, she shook her head.
Damn, Jagger!
He killed her libido with love. She could kick his ass.
Finally, she trusted herself to answer. Thankfully, common sense prevailed. “No thank you.”
“Are you ever going to go out with me?”
Roxy needed to get rid of this guy, and fast. He was relentless, and she wasn’t in the mood to play these games anymore. Look at where it got her.
“Probably not, Sheriff.”
“I like a girl who plays hard to get.”
“I’m not playing. I’m not going out with you, and you’re just going to have to accept that.”
“Give me one reason.”
Oh, she could give him the mother of all reasons, and she was sure it would wipe the smug look off his face.
“I’m almost two months pregnant.”
Oracle Saving (The Phoenix Files Book 3) Page 3
