Southern Seduction (53 page)

That’s what I was trying to do. That’s what I had done so far tonight.

“Come spend the night with me instead,” he pleaded, his tone finally softening while putting his heart arguably all the way out on his sleeve.

I teetered on the cliff, helpless to decide, waiting on the wind to blow me one way or another.

Unfortunately, he took the silence of my indecision to mean that I already had an answer, and it wasn’t the one he wanted.

“I don’t believe this!” he snapped. “I can’t believe I actually thought I found
it
tonight,” he said, placing his hand on his chest directly over his heart on the word “it”.

“Mill, wait,” I pleaded as he turned on the heel of his boot and walked away from me, his head hanging low and shaking slightly back and forth.

He threw up a hand over his shoulder in response, but never broke stride.

Despair flooded my system so quickly, I feared I would drown.

Miller

My stomach felt like it was being filled with concrete, pumped in by a truck at a pace so fast I knew it was only moments away from claiming my throat too.

I absolutely hated the way I left things with Zoey.

I felt judgmental and oppressive, and the more that I thought about it, I realized that I too was forcing her to make a decision without giving her time to think it out. I was adding to her burden when I should have been lightening it.

I had already been moving at a steady jog, eager to run away from my feelings and get back to the solitude and solace of my house, but at the realization that I needed to take a different tactic in my war on Zoey, I kicked my pace into high gear.

My truck was at my house, and I knew that if shit went south, which realistically, it probably would, it would be a good thing to have later. I would have to stash it a ways out from the Mayor’s house, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were going to want it in the end.

My boots pounded the pavement in time with my heartbeat, both accelerated by thoughts of Zoey going into that house alone.

By the time I made it there, running the full half of a mile as fast as I could, I was lathered in sweat and feeling even more sick to my stomach.

My reaction has been childish and immature, and I knew when life’s regrets were all tallied in a row, this would be front and center on the list.

I was hoping to build a relationship with Zoey, not smother her values and decisions and replace them with mine.

Then she wouldn’t be Zoey anymore.

The moos were overwhelming as I climbed the fence and jumped into the pasture with my girls. They were still hungry, but they were going to have to wait even longer.

“Sorry, Penelope,” I shouted as I ran by her at full speed, headed for the house and my truck. Seemed I was going to be doing a lot of apologizing to the women in my life tonight.

When my truck came into view, I kicked myself into another gear, pushing myself to run harder and faster.

Maybe if I got there before she went in, we would still have time to talk it out some more. That is if there was any time left after I got done groveling and begging her to leave my balls intact. When she got done with me, I may very well be one of the “lots of guys” who suffer from one swollen testicle. If she was really mad, I might even suffer from two.

Luckily, Winslow’s crime rate was stupendously low---er, except for us, that is---and I kept my keys on the floorboard of my truck, right under the mat.

I yanked the door open with more force than necessary, snatched my keys from underneath the mat, hopped in, fired her up, and took off in a squeal of tire smoke.

My thumbs tapped the steering wheel nervously as I drove, barely a minute passing before I reached my destination a quarter of a mile down the winding road from Mayor Klein’s house.

I cut the engine in a hurry and didn’t even bother to pull the keys from the ignition this time. Kicking open the door with a shove of my boot, I jumped down and closed it with a lot less gumption than I wanted, hoping to make less noise now that I was within range of the scene of the crime.

Utilizing a semi-crouched run, I made my way to the big, brick house at the end of the road as quickly as possible, checking my surroundings as I went, and hoping to catch Zoey somewhere along the way before I got there.

No such luck.

Just as I was cutting through the yard on the side of the mansion I caught movement at the front and hustled my way to the side of the house for a better look.

The silhouette of her hair flying over her shoulder as she climbed in the front, first story window was the only thing I could see from my hiding place around the corner.

I tried to focus harder, to see more details of her pretty face, or maybe even catch a flicker of snark in her eye, but the darkness of night and shadows of the big, old house made it impossible. Another part of me, however, had honed in on wondering why in the hell she thought using the
front
window was a good idea for a covert mission. I was a skilled compartmentalizer when needed.

Maybe your first thought is that I’m a stalker.

I could see that, what with the way I was following a girl without her knowledge and skulking around in the dead of night.

Sorry to say, but you’d be wrong.

But, what I was actually doing was probably even more fucked up, so you can take some comfort in that. Or maybe, if you’re normal, that’s the kind of statement that
adds
to uneasiness.

No matter how you wanted to categorize it, it was happening.

Never in my life did I think I would care about someone enough to be following them as they pulled a B & E job, but here I fucking was.

Obviously, when the heart steps up, the brain steps back. Or takes a tropical vacation. Either way, it just gets the hell out of there.

My blood roared in my ears as I crept toward the open window where I had last seen her, my effort to be silent shaking violently through every muscle in my body.

I always found that when I tried to minimize my noisemaking, I felt my loudest. Or when I tried to move with grace, I stumbled all over the place.

Like a Law of Opposites.

My adrenaline wasn’t the result of my own fear, but instead inspired by my worry for her. Sure, I was pretty sure this activity was on the exact opposite side of the law from where I should be as a freshly deputized member of the Sheriff’s department, but I would probably get out of it in the end.

And surprisingly, I was finding that I didn’t really care if I did or not. But I didn’t want a stupid mistake to mess up Zoey’s future. She was smart and funny and deserved a hell of a lot better than tonight. Her intelligence was one of the reasons I was having such a hard time rationalizing this. She was too fucking smart to do something so stupid. She was too fucking
smart
to put so much weight in one, unbelievably
stupid
night.

But I could understand it. The weight of your future can feel unbelievably heavy when you get forced into it. I knew she felt like she was standing at a fork in the road, and instead of having time to rationalize, weigh the options, and think it through, she was just shoved down one side, tripping and careening the whole way.

That didn’t mean that the path she got shoved down was necessarily the wrong one. In fact, I was pretty sure she would find out it was right. But she didn’t get to choose. She was still finding her way. And when you’re already tripping and slipping, your body moving in a way that’s completely out of your control, you don’t always fall the right way. You don’t always protect your limbs or keep your arm from getting broken.

And this was just a larger, much less obvious example of the same problem. She was already fighting a mental battle with her fate, and stupid mistakes like this are sometimes casualties of the war.

I knew how expectations felt and had just recently gotten rid of the load myself. I had a father who needed me and a town that had a whole lot of dreams locked up in my life. My tale of woe always got to people, and the way I carried myself always garnered a lot of respect. I always appreciated that, but like anything good, with it comes bad.

When a whole town places you on a pedestal, that comes with responsibility, and sometimes, the choices you want to make up don’t line up with the ones they see you making.

I wasn’t like Zoey, though. I didn’t feel a need to rebel; I just wanted a little time outside of the fishbowl. A little time to mess up, live life, and take it as it came.

Who knew that our two worlds would come together so perfectly. Zoey’s rebellion might just be the shove that I needed to knock over my plinth.

I made my way to the still-open window, expensive curtains blowing gently in the breeze of the balmy summer night. Placing my hands gently on the sill, I leaned in close and strained my ears to hear her, hopeful that she would make it out of the house without getting caught and that we would have time to deal with the consequences without the urgency and danger of the homeowners bearing down on us.

Distracted by the sound of my own heavy breathing, I took a deep gulp of air and turned my ear to the wealthy decadence of the open living room one more time.

Still nothing.

I tried to be patient though. Going all commando, jumping in the window, and scaring the shit out of Zoey wasn’t going to help anything. In fact, it would probably do the exact opposite and end up being the reason we got caught.

A shadow caught my eye, and I narrowed my eyes on it, trying desperately to enhance my vision beyond that of a human.

She was creeping into the office a few doors down a visible hallway, pushing the door open slowly and moving with caution from what I could tell.

All I could see was her back, and no details at that, but I still watched with rapt focus. Floorboards squeaked and I tried to pinpoint an exact location, praying that it was at that very door, down that very hallway, under her little feet.

Blinding light flooded my vision, extinguishing my hopes and kickstarting me into action.

My weight shifted into my hands on the sill, and I launched myself inside, not even considering tucking tail and running the other way.

“What’s going on here?” Mayor Klein shouted violently, the whole house seeming to shake with the force of it as he came into view in a calf-length robe, his greying hair slightly rumpled from sleep.

My eyes skidded right passed him, to the door I knew stood between him and Zoey.

Of course, that was the absolute stupidest thing I could have done because now his attention was on the very same door.

Fuck.

What an absolutely terrible showing on my part.

Seriously, I was really going to have to work on that if I planned to have a career in law enforcement. Granted, I probably wouldn’t be involved in anything this personal, and I might stand a better chance at keeping myself focused just because of that.

But I was also going to have to be better about taking care of Zoey if I wanted to be in her life long term.

The Mayor looked back at me, moving his eyes away from the offending door, studied me briefly and, after several seconds of introspection, recognized me for the first time.

“Miller?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered unflinchingly, my eyes meeting his with an air of honesty, apology, and confidence. No matter the circumstances, I certainly wasn’t the kind of man who ran from his mistakes.

“I’m surprised, son,” he muttered solemnly before turning back toward the office and commanding, “You. In the office. I suggest you get out here right now,” with his usual bravado.

It was fairly intimidating (read: ball shriveling), and I had no doubt I would get a glimpse of some sweet, expressive, amber eyes in the very near future.

I braced myself, ready to do everything I could to help my girl, even though I wasn’t sure in that moment that I could help myself.

The creak of the office door cut through the silence, and the shadow of the hall gave way to a feminine figure cloaked in black. Her hair fell like a curtain around her downturned face, and I waited, eager for the moment when her eyes would meet mine and I could offer some sliver of reassurance.

Dark gave way to light, a sensation of lifting gripping my heart and taking it for a ride, and she finally emerged from the end of the hall.

My swift intake of air almost choked me with its force.

Fuck.
Me
.