The Sheriff's Surrender (24 page)

“I am. What's up?”

“I just got a call from the office. That area off Chicken Farm Road is flooded again, and this time the bridge washed out. We've got some people stranded out there. You want to let me out or tell me the code or…?”

“It's ten-twenty-three.”

“Ten-twenty-three,” Brady repeated. “The code for arrived at the scene. Anyone ever suggest you need a vacation, Sheriff?”

“Aw, heck, why would I want a vacation from police work?”

“The best reason's lying there beside you.” Brady took a step away, then turned back. “You have a gun handy?”

“On the nightstand.”

“How do you score with your off hand?”

“I may not be able to use a fork with it, but I can hit a target with my .45 at twenty-five yards.”

“Then I'll be outta here.”

“Thanks, Brady, for everything. And be careful.” Reese listened to the sounds of him leaving, then made sure his pistol was still on the night table. He was glad to be alone with Neely, but he had to admit, there was a part of him that had been more than happy to share the protection detail with Brady. He'd known she was safer, and that had made him feel safer.

“Is he gone?” Neely's voice was husky, as if she'd just awakened, and throaty, as if he needed arousing again.

“Hmm.”

She wriggled out of his embrace. “Let me doublecheck the alarm, then close the blinds so we don't fall asleep and wake up in the morning exposed to the world.”

“Darlin', it
is
morning, or just about. It's after six. It's just the storm clouds that make it seem earlier.” He watched her hurry down the hall to the garage door, then come back, her body pale in the dim light. She closed the blinds, leaving the room a few shades darker, then snuggled under the covers with him again. “The alarm was set, wasn't it? Brady doesn't get sloppy.”

“He's got a lot of secrets.”

“Yeah.” And Reese had learned one last night. Not that it had really been a secret. He had supposed all along that a woman was somehow involved in Brady's past. Maybe a fellow sufferer couldn't help but recognize the symptoms.

“Do you really have a road in the county called Chicken Farm Road?”

“Yeah. It's outside Buffalo Plains.”

“And let me guess—it got its name from all the chicken farms located along it.”

“Actually, I don't recall there ever being any chicken farms out there. I imagine some of the folks raise their own chickens, but mostly it's just regular farms.”

“Those poor people. I hope they don't lose anything.”

“You're softhearted.”

“You just think I'm all sorts of things, don't you?” she teased, then suddenly turned serious. “Last night you told Brady I was a damn good lawyer—too good to give it up. Did you mean that?”

“Of course. You've always known—”

“No. The closest you ever came to saying I was good was when you said I was too good to be wasting my talents defending the scum you were arresting. But you would have thought a chimpanzee was too good to defend them.”

He thought about it, but knew she was right. Raising her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to the palm. “I apologize for that. I've always admired your intelligence, your understanding of the law, your talents and your skills. I just thought your choice of clients sucked. But every deputy in Keegan County knew that if I ever got into any sort of trouble, you were the only one I'd want to represent me.”

“Thank you. That means a lot.” She rolled onto her stomach, leaning on her elbows to study him.

He used the time to recommit a few things to memory, like the straight line of her nose, the delicate shape of her features, how kissable her mouth was, how long and pale her throat was, the location of each of her scars. The entry wound was below the right shoulder, lower than his own, low enough to get into dangerous territory. The surgical scar was straight, neatly cut and neatly sutured, as was the third scar, not visible now.

He ran his fingertip over the entry wound, round with irregular edges, thickened. “It doesn't count for much, but…walking away from you that day was the hardest thing I'd ever done. There was a part of me that knew it was wrong, that wanted to hold you and protect you and never leave you, but I…couldn't. I had Judy's blood all over me—she'd just died in my arms—and I couldn't…”

Catching his hand, she kissed the palm, then the callused skin at the base of his finger, then dragged his fingertip into her mouth for a sensual bite. Too soon her play stopped and she clasped his hand in both of hers. “I went into surgery as soon as I got to the hospital that afternoon. They removed the bullet, and I had a pneumothorax, so they put a chest tube in—that's the smaller scar under my breast. That night I was pretty heavily drugged, and I dreamed you were there. It was odd. Even while I was dreaming, I knew it was a dream. I knew it was over between us.” There at the end her voice quavered, and she lowered her head so he couldn't see her eyes. “I'd never thought that day would come. I'd thought we would be together forever. We fitted each other so per
fectly…except for my job, and your…dislike for it. Not having you in my life was inconceivable. It took weeks to get past the certainty that it was all just a terrible misunderstanding.”

“Weeks? Try months. Something would happen at work, and I'd think, Neely will get a kick out of that, then remember that you were gone. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I could smell you on the sheets and on my skin, as if you'd just gotten up a minute earlier. The first few times it happened, I actually got up and checked the apartment, because I was so sure…”

In an obvious attempt to lighten the conversation, she leaned over him and sniffed. “Do you smell like me now? Because if you don't, I haven't done my job properly.”

“Maybe you'd better do it again just for good measure.”

In a surprisingly obedient mood, she kissed him, teased him, pleased him. Her talented, slender fingers touched him everywhere, bringing heat, and her talented, kissable mouth followed, promising so much more. He was hard, his skin glistening with sweat, his muscles quivering with sensation, and yet she continued to play, to stroke, to kiss, to arouse. When he'd endured about all he could, he pulled her away from her intimate kisses and lifted her over him.

“Not yet,” she chastened, but he maneuvered her into place and filled her with one long thrust that made them both groan.

“Not yet?” he echoed when he could speak. “Another five seconds of what you were doing, and it was gonna be over for me, darlin'.”

“This time, maybe. But there's always next time.” Smiling self-assuredly, she sat straight, raised her arms high above her head and arched her back in a full body stretch. The action lifted her small, perfect breasts, made her narrow waist seem narrower and delivered a potent surge of pleasure where her body sheltered his deep inside.

“Next time?” He stroked her breast, then watched her nipple pucker and swell. “You have great faith in your ability to arouse me.”

“Do that again,” she commanded breathlessly, then haltingly replied. “I have great faith in…in your ability to…be…aroused. Oh, yes, exactly like that,” she whispered as he kneaded her nipple between his fingers.

“I have great faith in us both.” He'd barely ground out the last word when she began moving in long, slow, sensuous strokes that threatened every bit of self-control he'd ever possessed. Every part of him ached to roll her over and make love to her fast, hard and fierce, to thrust into her deeper than she'd ever taken him, to fill her more incredibly, to ruthlessly claim her for his own and never let her go, but that would have to wait. This stormy morning
she
was doing the thrusting, the taking, the claiming, and he was glad to be claimed.

He came in an explosion of brutal need and raw satisfaction, emptying into her, and felt her body clenching and trembling with her own approaching finish. Her gasps turned to breathless cries, then dissolved into helpless whimpers, as he held her, stroked her, whispered quiet words. As her tremors faded and the tension that tightened her body eased, as she sank limply against him, clinging to him the way she had nine years ago, he again remembered their very first time.

I've been looking my whole life for the place where I belong,
he'd told her. Neely was that place. He'd found her, lost her and found her again, and this time, he swore, he wasn't letting her go. He was her place, and she was his.

And nothing—please, God—would change that ever again.

 

The first thing Neely noticed after her shower was that the kitchen phone was back in its place, plugged in and apparently functional. She went to Reese, making sandwiches at the kitchen counter, and slid her arms around him from behind. “Gee, give a man a couple of great climaxes, and he'll give you anything in return,” she gently teased.

“Like a couple of great climaxes of your own.”

“Or a telephone.”

“That you can use only for emergencies.” He turned to face her, to let her know how serious he was. “I'll do my best
to keep you from getting bored—” his charming grin flashed, then disappeared “—but you have to swear to me you won't call anyone just to let them know you're all right.”

She solemnly raised her right hand. “I swear.” Automatically she reached for the knife he held, then caught herself and pulled back. “Need any help?”

He eyed her wryly for a moment, then handed the knife over. “Our hands aren't so different, you know—five pairs of fingers, each in the same place on its hand, perfectly matched. The fingers on the left hand work the same way they do on the right, and the grip works the same. But it's amazing the things you can do with one hand that you can't manage with the other, like slicing a tomato or using a razor.”

“Oh, but think of the amazing things you can do just as well,” she said slyly, seductively, bringing a smoky look to his eyes. Frankly, she hadn't missed his right hand at all, not one of the several times they'd made love.

When they were seated at the table a few minutes later, she ate part of her sandwich before laying it aside to somberly face Reese. “How long can this go on with Forbes? If Jace can't get enough evidence to charge him, do I go back to Kansas City and wait for him to try again? Do I sell my house and close up my practice and never go back there again?”

“You can't go back to Kansas City. You can't make it easy for him, Neely.”

“So I let him scare me away from home for good? I go into hiding for the rest of his life or mine, whichever ends first?”

“No. You can't do that, either.” After a moment he asked, “What do you want to do?” The question was unemotional, the tone noncommittal, as if the answer didn't matter to him one way or the other. She knew it did. She just didn't know how much.

She wanted to stay right there in Heartbreak with him. She wanted to live out the life they'd talked about ten years ago—marriage, kids, the works. She wanted to get to know Shay better, and Brady and Callie, and she wanted to meet everyone
else Reese considered a friend. She wanted babies and barbecues and riding lessons—both with horses and without, she thought with a faint smile—and small-town life and friends and a father-in-law and a mother-in-law, or two or three.

She wanted the happily-ever-after.

“I don't want to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I don't want to worry every time I go out that some innocent person might die for no reason except that he was standing too close to me. I don't want Eddie Forbes to believe he can get away with what he's done.” She'd surrendered to the bad guys once before, when she'd run away from Thomasville without a whimper, and she wasn't doing it again. “I want to be free to live my life, to love someone, to have babies, without putting them in danger.”

He pushed his own plate aside with an unsteady hand. Inside the sling, his right hand was curled into a fist, and his face was unusually pale, his expression unusually hard. “There's a way you can do that, but it's dangerous. It involves using you as bait to draw Forbes out. Would you be willing to risk it?”

Cold inside, Neely stared at him. Suddenly the idea of spending the next forty years in hiding didn't seem so bad. Sure, it would cramp her lifestyle a bit, but at least she would
have
a life. But to deliberately face the man who'd sworn to kill her…

She'd faced worse and survived. She'd lived through losing Reese.

She nodded several times before she managed to get any words out. “All right.”

He held out his hand, and she moved without hesitation to sit on his lap. He wrapped his arm around her and held her close, resting his cheek against her hair. His voice was grim, his embrace secure, when he reluctantly responded.

“Then I'll talk to Jace.”

 

It took about three minutes of listening to Jace's ranting for Neely to figure out that he didn't like their idea—and she
wasn't the one on the phone. She was a fair distance away, but didn't miss a thing. He used every swearword she'd ever heard and came up with a few combinations she wasn't familiar with before finally stopping for a breath.

“Jace, it's been nearly three weeks since he first moved on her. She can't go on like this indefinitely.”

“Why not? She's safe.”

Neely hid a smile at his belligerent tone. “Believe it or not, Detective Barnett, she's got a life, and it doesn't allow for hiding behind locked doors twenty-four hours a day,” she said, raising her voice so he could hear.

“You weren't behind locked doors Wednesday, were you? And look what happened. Jeez, Reese, you discussed this with her? Can't you two find something better to do with your time than coming up with stupid plans to get one or both of you killed?”