Outlaw Justice (Decorah Security Series, Book #13): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novella (2 page)

Steve waited for a response. When it didn’t come, he heard himself say, “Off and on, I’d see your old high school friend Candy, and she’d tell me you and Warren were happy.”

“Because that’s what I wanted people to think. I didn’t even come clean with
her
that anything was wrong. I mean, what would you do if you realized you’d made the worst mistake of your life? Would you tell everyone about it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s obviously not your fault.”

“Maybe you’d better fill me in on the real story.”

She looked defiant—then resigned. Perhaps as a signal that she wasn’t going to run away, she dropped her bag and sat down on the floor with her back against the wall. The wounded look on her face made him want to pull her close and rock her in his arms. Instead, he left a few feet of space between them when he joined her.

Her voice went flat as she said, “Warren was charming and exciting when I first met him—and he was very focused on me. He came from an old, established family. He had a lot of money, and he could take me to restaurants and concerts. I couldn’t help being thrilled that he’d chosen me over a lot of the other girls in my class.” She looked down at her hands. “You remember how my parents didn’t pay much attention to me?”

“Uh huh.”

“My dad must have worked sixty hours a week, and my mom spent a lot of time at the country club.”

He was tempted to say, “Yeah, and they didn’t know you were running around with the town bad boy,” but he kept the observation to himself as she continued.

“It meant a lot that Warren put me first.”

Steve couldn’t stop himself from thinking that Warren had been a direct contrast to the hometown boy who’d had to work at a dead-end job for enough cash to take Leah to a hamburger joint. And while he kept himself from bringing up their shared past, he was thankful that this was the place she’d chosen to hide out—and that he’d come here at the right time. Had fate sent her to him—or what?

No, it was his boss, Frank Decorah, who’d told him to take some time off and settle the problems with the property. Sometimes Frank did things like that out of the blue. It was like he had access to information nobody else possessed. But why was that so strange when he’d hired a staff of agents who all had psychic abilities?

Leah was still speaking. “But after I agreed to marry him, he acted like he had the right to make decisions for me. Maybe that should have been a warning sign, but I was still too caught up in the relationship to object.

“It was his idea for me to drop out of school so I could make a home for him. He still spent money on me—on us, I guess—but I gradually realized that he was taking over more and more of my life—and separating me from my friends. I mean, Candy was the only one left.” She looked down at the hands clasped in front of her. “And then he started getting angry—and lashing out at me when he was upset.

“I felt like I was walking around on ice that was melting under my feet, trying to make sure I didn’t do anything that would make him flare up.”

“Didn’t you have new friends?”

“Sort of.” She made a snorting sound. “I hung out with women in the Junior League. I went to lunch with them and did some charity projects like working at their thrift shop so I wouldn’t feel useless, but I wasn’t close to any of them—nobody I could confide in about my, . .” She stopped and swallowed. “About my marital problems.”

Steve nodded, then probed for more information while she was in the mood to open up. “When did he start hitting you?”

For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she grimaced and said, “A couple of years ago. But it was mild at first. Like a slap on the arm or something. Then it got worse. Anything that didn’t go right in his life, he acted like it was my fault.

Steve clenched and unclenched his hands.

“A few nights ago, I knew I had to get away.”

“After that scene I saw?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“But I couldn’t use my credit cards. And I had hardly any money.”

“Couldn’t you go to your parents?”

“Dad died of a heart attack five years ago. It turns out they blew through all of their money. Mom is in a nursing home—that Warren pays for.”

“I didn’t know any of that.”

“How would you?” she asked, then went back to her recent circumstances. “I had started saving money from the cash he gave me every week. It wasn’t much, because we mostly used credit. But I took that and ran.”

“You drove here?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to spend the little money I had on a motel, and I knew the house was empty.”

“How?”

“Candy fills me in on stuff about people in town. I knew you’d moved your mom to a senior community in Baltimore County—and that you’d been renting out the house. But the last tenants had made a mess and left without paying the rent.”

“That’s a lot of information for her to know.”

“She still comes back to town to see her parents—and high school friends. She married Dave Markham, then divorced him a couple of years ago. You remember him from school?”

“Yes. He was going to build high-end yachts for the people who have vacation homes down here.”

“He does.”

“Would Candy tell Warren if she knew where you were hiding out?”

Leah looked shocked. “No.”

“She might think she was helping to patch up your marriage.”

Leah closed her eyes and opened them again. “I guess that could be right, but I was careful not to be seen here. I hid the car in the garage,” she confirmed what he had suspected. “And I didn’t use any lights after dark.”

“How did you get in?”

She lifted one shoulder. “The key was under the same rock where it always was.”

“I’d forgotten about it.”

“And you didn’t know I was in here, right?”

“Not until I got inside,” he conceded. “Then the house didn’t smell empty.”

Once she’d started talking, she had given him a lot of information in a short amount of time. Now she looked drained.

The slump of her shoulders made him ache to comfort her, and when he stretched out his arm, she came into his arms.

He stroked her back, then reached to run his fingers through her hair, feeling her tremble in his embrace. He’d found her here by accident, and she’d tried to come across like she didn’t need his help, but he knew that was all an act.

She lifted her head, searching his face, and what he saw in her eyes made him go very still. Probably she’d been frightened for a long time, and now she had finally found a champion.

It had been forever since he’d held her in his arms, and he’d resigned himself to the emptiness of living without her. But here she was, putting her trust in him. More than trust. She was silently acknowledging that she hadn’t forgotten how good they’d been together.

Without giving himself time to consider the consequences, he lowered his head. The touch of his lips against hers was like a homecoming.

She murmured his name against his mouth, then opened for him, telling him that she wanted this as much as he did. Angling his head, he moved his lips against hers, absorbing the pleasure of the intimate contact. She made a small sound in her throat as she slipped her hands around his shoulder, holding him to her.

He had resigned himself to never holding her again—kissing her again. Now he felt dizzy with the intimate contact, drunk with the intoxication of enjoying what he had dreamed of for years. Her taste was familiar, transporting him back to the time they’d been together. And her body felt so right in his arms.

He wanted to keep kissing her forever—taking everything she was willing to offer and giving back in return. In his heated imagination, he pictured shifting his body, stretching out on the mattress and taking her with him. He’d undress her slowly. Do all the things that he knew she liked, and when she was aroused to a fever pitch of need, he’d join their bodies. He could feel it. Taste it. See it. But a small voice in the back of his mind told him that pushing the two of them over the edge was wrong—for a lot of reasons.

When he’d been a kid, he hadn’t known how to handle his gift of second sight. Even when he was on the job with the Baltimore PD, he’d been uncertain about using his special talent to solve crimes. It had taken Frank Decorah to show him effective ways to utilize his unique sense of touch that gave him a window into another person’s life.

Since joining Decorah Security, he’d realized that his psychic power carried an obligation to help people—not take advantage of them—the way he he’d be doing if he made love with Leah. And he wouldn’t let himself take advantage of Leah now—no matter how much he ached for her.

Fighting for self-control, he lifted his head. Leah’s eyes blinked open, and she stared at him with a mixture of confusion and hurt that made him feel like the air had turned to ash in his lungs.

“Steve?” she asked in a low voice.

He moved back, putting a few feet of space between his heated body and hers. “Sorry.”

“About what?”

“Things were heating up pretty fast.”

She had lowered her head. Now she raised it again. “Don’t you think I would have stopped you if that was what I wanted?”

“Sure, but you’re in fragile shape right now. You’re not in any condition to make sexual decisions. Plus, you’re a married woman.”

“A married woman,” she repeated, her voice as dry as parched earth. “Yeah, that might signify something if the marriage still meant anything.”

This time she was the one who moved farther away along the wall, and he ached to reach for her and pull her close again, but he kept his arms at his sides.

“We need to figure out how to help you—not ignore the problem.”

She raised one shoulder. “Like how?”

“I saw that scene where he pushed you against the chest and hurt you. But I couldn’t hear what he was saying. What was he angry about?”

She kept her gaze steady. “I answered the phone.”

“Huh?”

“I’d forgotten he’d told me not to answer if it rang.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t say. It was just something that he’d decided to require.”

Steve winced at the way she said it. “And your answering was enough to make him go batshit?”

She kept her gaze steady. “Yes.”

He repressed a curse. There was no use getting angry. Instead he glanced out the window. When he saw it was getting dark, he asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Complete change of subject?”

“Yeah.”

“There was some junk food here, not much. And I was afraid to have people see me at the grocery.”

“I’ll go out and pick something up. What do you want?”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Why don’t we go with carryout from the Crab Depot? I always liked their stuff.”

“Fine.”

He used his cell phone to put in an order, then looked at her. “Will you be okay here alone?”

“I was here alone before you arrived.”

“True.”

Outside in the spring night, he called Decorah and apprised Frank of the situation.

“I kind of thought you might run into trouble down there.”

“Why?”

“Just a feeling I had.”

“One of your hunches?”

“Right. Let me switch you to Teddy.”

That was Teddy Granada, one of the Decorah IT guys, who promised to do some research on Warren Pendelton. “If you come up with anything interesting, send it to my phone.”

“Will do.”

oOo

As Leah watched Steve walk to his car and drive away, she felt her chest tighten. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking that it might be better if she were gone when he came back. She hadn’t expected him to show up, and it wasn’t fair to drag him into her problems. But if there was anyone who could help her, it was probably him.

She thought about what he’d revealed—about his talent for touching people’s things and getting information about them. He’d hidden that well. What she’d seen all those years ago was a darkly appealing tough guy. He still had the same dark good looks, although he was older and a lot worldlier.

But when they’d been teenagers, there was also the rebellion factor. If there was anyone who her parents would have considered unsuitable for her—it was Steve Outlaw. Which made him deliciously forbidden fruit.

She remembered their heated encounters—especially the one when they’d said good-bye. She’d thought she’d get together with him when she came back from school for Thanksgiving. That was before she’d met Warren, and he’d started monopolizing her time.

She muttered an unladylike curse under her breath. She hadn’t seen it back then, but Warren had picked her
because
he thought he could control her. That was the kind of relationship he was looking for. And if she hadn’t been so eager to fall in with his plans, he would have dropped her for someone else. She would have been crushed by the rejection, but she would have escaped a lot of emotional and physical pain.