Still Mine

Still Mine

Mary Wine

eBooks are
not
transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

Macon
GA
31201

Still Mine

Copyright © 2008 by Mary Wine

ISBN: 1-59998-957-3

Edited by Anne Scott

Cover by Dawn Seewer

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: May 2008

www.samhainpublishing.com

Still Mine

Mary Wine

Chapter One

“United States Marshals office! Hands up!”

The senior deputy issued his warning a split second after the door of the ramshackle house was smashed into kindling. The officers gave their prey precious little time to react. Three of the occupants of the home were secured in handcuffs before they even finished cursing the deputies. Whether or not they were in fact the objective of the raid would be sorted out after the scene was secured. Until then, everyone without a badge would wear handcuffs.

Keeping her gun steady and her breathing calm, Jolene Benate listened carefully, trying to find a clue as to what direction to go. Filtering out the swearing from the living room, she concentrated on moving towards the back of the house.

Panicked footsteps pounded along the wooden flooring. The sound echoed through the hallways. Mixed with the screaming and cursing of the secured suspects, it was unclear just what direction their last hostile suspect was heading in.

Senior Deputy Locke issued a sharp motion with his hand and turned the opposite direction. Jolene held her gun eye level as she made her way down the hallway. Her feet crisscrossed silently as she kept her knees bent to lower her center of gravity. Her gaze moved from side to side in quick and efficient movements. Not a single detail was overlooked. The two doors along the hallway were each kicked open by the deputies who backed her up.

Jo reached the end of the hallway and hesitated a second. An all clear had yet to be called. That indicated their suspect was still free. Failing to find that person could have deadly results if the warrant squad lowered their defenses. Being part of the team meant making sure she didn’t drop her guard before the scene was secure. It also required that she keep her mind sharp, searching for the trail. The sort of people a warrant squad went looking for didn’t like being found. She kept the barrel of her handgun steady as she listened.

Her gaze flickered across the walls and ceiling, looking for any possible avenue of escape. Her gaze touched on an attic access hatch in the ceiling. Pointing her weapon at the portal, she indicated with a jerk of her head for one of her back-up deputies to force the square door aside. Their action received immediate results. More pounding footfalls shook dust free from around the edges of the open trap door. The light thumps traveled away from her position. The crash of shattering glass put an end to the sound.

Jo shouldered her way into the bedroom directly in front of her. Through the open window she caught the movement of her suspect as he dropped from the attic. In the current warm weather, the window in front of her was covered only by a screen. Jo didn’t hesitate but propelled her body through it. The screen offered little resistance and Jo rolled over and onto her feet in one smooth motion. She came up with her gun pointing towards her suspect.

“Freeze!”

Randal Prendergast sneered at her. “No bitch is taking me to the can.”

Jo held her ground and kept her weapon leveled on the man. He was a large mountain of flesh, more fat than muscle, but ignorant enough to think he could outmaneuver a bullet. “Put your hands on your head.”

His body tensed as he prepared to lunge at her. Jo set her teeth but didn’t hesitate to discharge her weapon. She angled the sights off center, hitting him in the shoulder as he charged towards her with his hands stretching in front of him. The impact flung him back onto the ground. He gasped and cursed as the wound on his shoulder began to produce bright red blood. It soaked his shirt in a growing circle as he rolled over. A snarl passed his lips when he lifted his head and stared into Deputy Tait’s sidearm. Randal looked back at her before cussing in defeat. He let his body collapse onto the ground.

“Clear!”

Jo’s shout was echoed by the other members of the team. She kept her gun aimed at her victim and waited for Tait to secure the man. It took mere seconds for the rest of their team to surround Randal.

Jo turned away from the man and slid her weapon back into its holster. She took barely two steps before she came to a stop in front of Senior Deputy Locke, her boss. The leather of his face was set into hard lines as he ran a practiced eye over her. His expression never changing, Locke shifted his attention to Randal Prendergast. He looked back at Jolene and gave her a nod of approval before brushing past her to get a closer look at the wound she’d inflicted on their suspect.

Jolene’s lips twisted up into the briefest of smiles. With praise like that, a girl had to feel good about herself.

Several hours later Jolene was still feeling very good about herself. She had managed to not get herself killed and her boss hadn’t fired her either. All in all, that was a winning combination.

“Believe it or not, Jo, some people actually drink the contents.”

Deputy Richard Tait closed the distance between them. He studied her from hooded eyes as he pressed his luck by invading the area she’d selected to sit in. A tiny prickle of awareness rippled over her skin. She toyed with the reaction, trying to encourage it to grow into something that might come close to interest in the hard-bodied deputy. But her fickle body wasn’t interested. Nothing followed that first hint of awareness. All that remained was a slight tension drawing her neck muscles tight.

“Never let it be said that I’m predictable.”

A flare of determination crossed Tait’s expression. But the heat lurking in his eyes made her cringe. A face from her past took precedence over the one she was staring at. The memory stronger than any response she could find for Tait.

“Tait, are you hitting on Benate again?”

Ross Locke’s question gained a chuckle from most everyone within earshot. A few eyebrows rose along with the slightly adult nature of the jest, but no one really took it seriously. Richard Tait frowned as the interruption gave her an excuse to shift her attention away from him. Jo simply raised her glass in a silent salute to her boss. But she didn’t miss the frustration that tightened Tait’s face. The team looked at them, destroying any last bit of privacy.

“You caught me there.” Tait flashed her a wide grin that was anything but friendly. It was pure menacing intent. “Since the rest of you losers can’t seem to notice what a gem you’ve got sitting under your noses, I thought I’d sweep her off her feet while you weren’t looking. Get lost, will ya?”

It was a compliment that should have melted something inside her. Tait watched her intently, making it clear that he wasn’t playing around. But her heart froze. Her obsession for the man she couldn’t have cut off any hope for the one looking at her now.

It wasn’t a choice she made. It rose up from inside her, reminding her how it felt when her body exploded with sensation from a single glance. Tait just didn’t touch her on that level. It might be ridiculous to cling to the past, but she wasn’t willing to settle either. She was spoiled now, unwilling to take anything less than she’d had.

Ross Locke chuckled in his deep, rocky tone. “Good luck, Tait. You’ll need it.”

The rest of the deputies snickered before returning their attention to the baseball game.

Coming to Red Wade’s was a tradition for the group. Whenever they had served a particularly nasty warrant, they would all meet here. The Irish pub wasn’t the hippest place in town, but it was comfortable enough to let a warrant squad feel at ease. Her boss liked the bartender “Guppy” and that spoke volumes about the shaved-headed man serving up the heavy cocktails. Ross Locke hadn’t elaborated on just why he liked the man or why he called him Guppy, but working with Locke had taught her that asking wasn’t the way to find out.

Not that she was planning on calling the bartender Guppy.

It was expected that she attend, but Jolene came for other reasons as well. The group of deputies scattered about the dimly lit bar were family. The occasional jest about her gender was both expected and common, their way of acknowledging the value of a woman on their team. Besides, she doubted that men knew any other way to joke. Sex had to be included or it wasn’t funny. That was a side effect of being male.

There was no doubt in her mind tonight that this team, along with its leader, valued her. If they didn’t respect her as a fellow deputy, she’d find herself off Locke’s team in record time. Ross Locke didn’t suffer fools silently or long. The senior deputy held the statewide record for discharges from his team. He also had the longest waiting list for positions among his warrant squad.

She considered it a personal mark of achievement that she’d managed to stay on the team for over two years. Getting the assignment had been easy. It was fashionable to have a female deputy on every team. To date, Jo was the only woman who’d managed to keep her position with Deputy Locke for more than three weeks. The department had a list eighty men long waiting for a call to join up with Locke, but female deputies didn’t flock to the glamour of tracking down violent criminals quite as readily. Couple that with Locke’s personal habit of tossing out blunt comments, and getting assigned to his warrant squad had merely been a matter of time, once she processed the paperwork flagging her as a willing sacrificial goat. As far as the department was concerned, she was qualified.

But that wasn’t enough. She needed something more than the badge she’d earned. She was hungry for a stamp of approval that went beyond what she’d graduated from the academy with.

Considering Locke, she studied the sharp gaze he used every time he looked around. You felt it when you were close to him. New faces came and left. Remaining long enough to remember them felt good. Almost too good, because the feeling was becoming addictive. Her ego enjoyed knowing she had managed to outlast others.

Roper was the new man tonight.

Jo raised her eyes and looked at Deputy Roper. His slightly freckled face had a smile plastered across it. Young enough to still believe himself invincible, he was caught between youth and manhood. His first real fugitive capture kept his face bright as he sat with the rest of the team like it was an esteemed honor.

Richard Tait was another matter altogether. He was dangerous. Tonight, he was the biggest threat to her staying on the team. He wanted closer, into that area a girl only let a lover occupy. It was the single thing she was afraid of. While she might admit that to herself, no way was she going to let anyone discover her Achilles heel. His gaze cut back to hers, catching her watching him.

“Come on, Jo. Can’t you see I’m desperately waiting for you to notice I’m alive?” The look in his eyes wasn’t anywhere near as pleading as his words. His voice was hard, too, and full of anticipation. Suspicion lurked on his face as he tried to uncover why she was unresponsive to his advances.

The laughter increased as her teammates looked on with glee.

“You sure are cute, Tait, but the competition’s a bit thick for my personal taste. You have so many girlfriends as it is. You don’t need me joining the line.” She watched his lips twist as the word “cute” sailed across the table. His eyebrows lowered in distaste before he shrugged it off.

“You can cut to the front of my line. Special privileges extended by management.”

The flash of heat that crossed his eyes made her shift in her seat. Each little teasing remark was getting more intense lately.

“Tait, didn’t anyone tell you that Jo is still in mourning?” Deputy Roper issued his comment from a barstool.

“In India, the widows just climb up onto the funereal pyre instead of mourning forever.” Richard uttered that with a hint of frustration in his deep voice. It flickered through his whisky brown eyes as he watched for her reaction to his comment. Not a hint of shame showed on his face. Instead there was a clear challenge that the man was aiming straight at her. Almost like he had decided to smash through her barricade in some valiant effort to help her start living again.

Jo tipped her glass back, breaking their eye contact, while she tried to muster some kind of calm expression to plaster across her face. She was a complete idiot, but there was no reason to display that little tidbit to the rest of her warrant squad. As for Richard, she wasn’t ready to deal with his frustration over her lack of interest.

She needed to deal with herself first. It was one thing to know that you needed to get over something and another thing to actually do it. Restarting her personal life wasn’t as easy as processing an application to get onto Locke’s warrant squad. Love didn’t die along with her husband, the emotion still burned in her heart and she hadn’t figured out how to extinguish the flames.

Paul Benate had been dead for close to six years. While every other part of her life went on, her heart was still shackled to his memory. Paul wouldn’t even recognize her now. Her husband’s death had devastated her, no question about that. To find herself a widow at twenty years of age had almost been more than her young mind could absorb. They’d married just two weeks after meeting because his eyes had burned a path straight into her soul. He’d fascinated her completely, invading even her dreams. It hadn’t mattered where they were, she couldn’t get enough of his voice, or watch him intently enough. Passion had blossomed into full-blown need. A hasty wedding seemed like romance at its summit when you tossed in the fact that it removed the last of her guilt over yielding her innocence to him.

Amazing how huge the first sexual encounter was when you were young. Youth really was wasted on the young, because at twenty-six, she was far more comfortable with her body. Sexual arousal wasn’t cause for any great amount of guilt anymore. But it had been when she met Paul. The sheer abundance of signals racing through her body had knocked her inexperienced mind for a loop. In retrospect, she recognized that her faith hadn’t made her demand a wedding ring before jumping into bed. It was an attempt to forge a lasting bond between them. That thing that could help her build a happy-ever-after story, where she was the princess who never had to feel alone again.