Caught by Surprise (12 page)

This was love, then, he thought, this being so happy for Melisande that he didn’t mind the unslaked need throbbing in his own body. He gathered her close to him, stroked her golden hair, and kissed her forehead.

“Your needs,” she finally managed. “Poor you.”

“Sssh. ‘Poor me’ is about as bloomin’ ecstatic as a man can get. Funny thing, eh? Not very macho, eh?”

“Eh,” she agreed. “I adore you.”

“See there?” His voice was hoarse, his throat tight. “See what bein’ sensitive can do for a man? Gets him adored.”

“I adore you even when you’re not sensitive.”

“You mean I’ve wasted my time studyin’ Phil Donahue?”

They both laughed softly. She winced a little, and he got up to retrieve the ice pack. After he put it on her eye, he helped her dress. She watched him with a devotion that made his chest ache with pleasure. Brig covered her with a blanket, then pulled a chair beside the bunk and sat down.

“Sleep for a little while, love,” he told her, his hand caressing her hair possessively.

“Can’t. I’m on duty.”

“Then I’ll call Raybo and tell him you’re hurt. He’ll send somebody to take over.”

“I don’t ask for favors.”

“Melisande, the situation wouldn’t be any different if you were a male deputy. Relax.”

“The reason I’m accepted around here is that I don’t have to ask for help.”

“Wrong, love. You’re good with people and capable of handlin’ anything that comes along. That doesn’t mean you have to be tougher than everybody else. Sssh, now. I’ll wake you up if anybody calls.”

She struggled silently for a moment, then gave him a wistful look. “Promise?”

“Word of honor.” He smiled. “That’s more serious than swearin’ on a kangaroo’s hop.”

Millie sighed at the gentle sound of his voice and the soothing pressure of his fingers. Her eyes closed, and as she drifted off she felt a deeper sense of peace than she’d ever known in her life.

Dread gnawed at Millie’s stomach as she opened her eyes. And then, as her good eye squinted in the sunlight pouring onto her face through the jail cell’s window, she knew. Brig had let her sleep past the end of her shift.

“Dammit, no!” Millie threw the blanket off and rolled out of his bunk, ignoring the dull throb that had taken over the left side of her face. She ran to the cell’s little dresser and stared at herself in the mirror. Her eye was a rainbow array of colors, heavily favoring the purples, while the rest of her face was colorless.

“I look like a vampire on a day pass,” she muttered. She raked her fingers through her hair but it still looked as though it had been combed in a tornado. Her uniform was wrinkled and her shirt hung out of her pants. She had been weak last night, weak and soft and vulnerable, and she looked it. The terrifying part was that she’d enjoyed herself.

Millie straightened her clothes as best she could, then squared her shoulders and went to the lobby. Brig lay on the couch there, reading the morning newspaper. His feet were bare, and he had propped them atop one of the couch’s armrests. Charlie sat behind the desk with his feet—not bare, thankfully—dropped on a trashcan. He was sipping coffee and lis-tening to a talk show on the radio.

As soon as Brig saw her, he got up hurriedly. “How’s the eye, love?”

“What time is it?” she demanded.

“Eight-fifteen,” Charlie answered.

Her jaw set, she gazed at Brig angrily. “You promised to wake me up.”

“If anyone called. Nobody did.”

“My shift ended two hours ago!”

Swinging about stiffly, she walked to the counter and faced Charlie. “I apologize,” she told him, her voice clipped. “It won’t happen again.”

Charlie gave her a slow-eyed blink that made him look like a bewildered bear. “What’s wrong, Millie?”

“I’ll put the details of the incident on my shift report, and you note on yours that I was asleep in a prisoner’s bunk when you got here.”

“Melly, stop it,” Brig said, his voice grating.

Charlie gaped at her. “I don’t want to report you,” he said plaintively. “I’m not upset.”

Her chin up, she told him, “It’s a matter of duty and pride.”

“And foolishness,” Brig interjected.

Millie did an about-face that was nearly military in execution. He glared down at her in exasperation. “I should have known you’d treat me this way after last night,” she declared. “But I’m not a frail little ciybaby. I don’t need special attention.”

“You need to have your fanny paddled.”

“Get an army, McKay. If you try it, you’ll need help.”

When he was upset, he reverted to a heavier accent. His eyes flashed. “I’ve never walloped a Sheila in me life, so don’t strain yerself makin’ threats. But bein’
that you’re such a violent little thing, a good paddlin’ is probably the best way to communicate with you!”

“Your true colors are showing,” she retorted. “You wanted to play Sir Galahad last night, and in a moment of extreme stupidity, I let you. My mistake. Now you think I’m a helpless little girl who has to be pampered. That may make
you
happy, but it won’t work for me.”

Millie looked at the hard planes of his face and wondered how she could have seen so much tenderness there last night. He was furious. “You
are
a little girl,” he told her. “Because a grown woman has sense enough and grace enough to accept a man’s love without thinkin’ that he’s manipulative and selfish.”

“Geez,” Charlie said in an awed tone. “Everybody said there was something goin’ on between you two, but I didn’t believe it.”

That was the final blow. Millie pressed her fingers to her temples. Despite all her efforts to maintain a professional appearance, people were gossiping about her and Brig. Whether the gossip was ugly or not didn’t matter—a woman who worked at a job traditionally held by men couldn’t allow herself any slack. She’d learned that in the navy. When she recalled how Brig’s intimate touch had made her forget her responsibilities, she felt like crying.

Millie twisted, walked over to the desk counter, and thumped a fist down. Charlie jumped. “No matter what anyone says, I’ve never compromised my duty as a deputy. Understand?”

“Nobody said that, Millie, and—”

“And I will never compromise my duty.” She jerked a thumb toward Brig. “He’s just another prisoner.”

Brig crossed his arms over his chest. “One you happen to love.”

She whirled around and stared at him. He read anger and shock in her expression, but also a kind of wistful distress that tugged on his heart. Her voice low, she bit into each word as if it were hard. “Are you determined to ruin my professional reputation?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “If that’s what it takes to teach you a lesson.” Brig wouldn’t have believed that he’d ever see fear in her beautiful green eyes, but he saw it now. He added, “Lucky for you that I don’t kiss and tell.”

Her face grim, she went behind the counter, opened a drawer in one of the file cabinets along the back wall, and retrieved her small straw purse. Looking worried, Charlie got up and hovered over her like a mother hen.

“You okay, Millie?”

“Fine. Have a good day.”

She came out of the desk area and stopped in front of Brig, gazing up at him with a cold, troubled expression. “I’m going to sit down with Raybo tomorrow and tell him what’s happened between you and me. Then I’m giving him my resignation.”

For just an instant, Brig looked stunned. Then his eyes narrowed and he said, “Good. It’ll make it easier for you to move to Nashville with me.”

Her good eye widened in disbelief. Brig was a hard-headed, overconfident, unstoppable freight train of a man. She could either give up, punch him squarely in the face, or laugh. Laughing seemed the best alternative.

Millie cupped a hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shaking, she turned and marched toward the door. It was only when she was outside in the bright July sunshine that she realized how anguished her laughter had sounded.

Raybo sat across from her, graying hair ruffled, paunch a little paunchier from the huge barbecue lunch he’d recently eaten, long legs crossed. He smiled his sweetest good-old-boy smile.

“I’ll accept your resignation when hell freezes over,” he drawled cheerfully.

Out of sight below the level of his desk, Millie’s hands wadded wrinkles into the skirt of her flowered dress. “I don’t intend to bring gossip down on you or your office. Can’t you see what’s going to happen if I keep working around Brig?”

“Millie, folks have always talked about you. This is nothin’ new. Different fuel, same fire.”

Her breath shortened and she slid to the edge of her chair. “What do you mean?”

Raybo blanched a little. “You don’t know?” She shook her head numbly. He sat up, fumbled for her letter of resignation, threw it in the trash, and cleared his throat. “You live so durned far out in the woods and keep to yourself so much that you don’t hear much of anything, I reckon.”

“That’s right. What do people say about me?”

Raybo flung his hands out in a gesture of dismissal. “Same things they’d say about any unmarried woman
doin’ the kind of work you do. That you don’t like men. Or the opposite—that you’re one of those women who gets a jolt out of dominatin’ men.”

Millie relaxed a little. “Oh, that. It comes with the territory.”

“Frankly, the rumors about you and Brig McKay are doin’ you more good than harm.”

“What?”

“Well, the folks who think you don’t like men have decided that you do, and the folks who think you like to dominate men figure they were wrong, ’cause Brig wouldn’t take after a woman who tried to do that. So all in all, he’s the best thing that ever happened to your reputation.”

Millie slumped back in her chair. “Good grief.”

“You gonna run off with him?”

She straightened again. “No!”

“Why not?”

She sighed. “It wouldn’t last. I’m a
sexy
little challenge to him right now, but what would I be to him in Nashville? A weapon’s expert with martial arts’ skills and a penchant for whacking people, that’s what.”

“A man can always use a woman like that,” Raybo said hopefully.

“Or he can try to change her, and when he can’t, he can tell her good-bye.” Millie struggled for a moment with the lump in her throat and tried to sound nonchalant. “I hate good-byes. Guess it comes from all those years of leaving people behind when my family moved.”

Raybo sighed and picked up a document on his desk. “You better start gettin’ ready for this one then. Judge up in Nashville says to let Brig go a week from today. Early release for good behavior.”

“I’m gonna be
what
in a week?” Brig asked incredulously.

“Free,” Raybo repeated.

Brig, who sat on the edge of his bunk, put his head
in his hands and cursed soundly. “I’ve gotta have more than a week.”

“I know it’s a horrible thing to do you, son,” Raybo said dryly. “That Nashville judge must be mean as hell.”

Brig stood up and paced, his hands on his hips. “Does Melisande know?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll talk to her as soon as she comes back from her day off.”

“She’s not coming back, son.”

Brig stopped pacing. “I thought you said she didn’t resign.”

“She didn’t. But she took vacation time for the rest of the week. Said she thought it’d be best to stay clear of you. Gal’s as spooked as a bird in a hailstorm.”

Brig cursed again, rammed a hand through his hair, and turned toward Raybo in supplication. He was desperate for time, and Millie was running like hell. “All right, this calls for imagination.”

Raybo smiled sweetly. “Son, on that count I reckon I can help you.”

Millie wasn’t in the mood for problems. She had enough of them already, considering the fact that Brig would be out of jail in a few days. With him a free man, able to roam where he wanted and confront her at will, she’d have no peace.

So when she came home from the grocery store one morning and found a hole where a young magnolia tree had stood in her front yard an hour earlier, her tension exploded and she swore revenge.

Millie ran into the cottage and came back with a loaded shotgun. With the shotgun tucked under the convertible’s front seat, she spun gravel out to the main road and raced to the tiny clapboard house a half-mile away.

The house sat less than two-dozen yards back from the road, a relic from the time when the road was
nothing but a sandy trail. Just as Millie had expected, Imogene Berkley, ninety-five years old but still keen enough to spit tobacco at a fly and hit it, sat rocking on the front porch.

“Miss Imogene, did you see anybody go by hauling a magnolia tree?” Millie yelled from the car.

A nod. A bony black finger pointed north. A stream of tobacco arched over the edge of the porch and hit a sluggish yellow tabby cat in the head. “ ’Bout ten minutes ago.”

“Bless your heart!”

“Your tree?”

“Yes!”

Miss Imogene rocked faster. Someone had stolen all her azaleas a month before. “Kill ’em.” More tobacco juice leapt through the air. The cat ducked this time.

Millie liked Miss Imogene’s attitude. She gave her a whimsical salute and drove away.

She felt as proud as a mother cat about to take a particularly tasty dinner home to her kittens. Everyone would be so proud. Especially Brig.

“Keep it still or I’ll shoot it off, scum,” Millie told the slack-jawed redhead wearing overalls. She poked her shotgun into the chest of the similarly slack-jawed blond. “You too, slime-for-brains.” The two men sat on the office floor at Perkle Greenhouse and Nursery where they’d tried to sell her tree. Their hands and feet were bound with baling wire and construction tape, courtesy of Henry Perkle. Henry lounged nearby, grinning.

“Miss Millie, you sure you aren’t half tiger and half greyhound?”

Millie looked down at her mud-stained blue jeans and torn T-shirt. She’d run the tree-stealing Roger boys around the nursery grounds a few times before she’d cornered them, appropriately, behind a manure pile. She chuckled. “I think I’m half warthog and half skunk.”

“Then you’re a credit to your species,” Henry noted.

The sound of a siren signaled the arrival of Charlie and the patrol car. After a stunned assessment of what she’d accomplished, Charlie grinned at her affectionately, put a ham-like hand on the back of the Roger brothers’ necks, and guided them to the car.