Lawman's Redemption

“Relax,” he murmured in her ear. “Surely you’re used to people looking at you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re a beautiful woman, and people tend to look at beautiful women.”

Tilting her head back, Hallie met his gaze. “Okay, I get it. Your job tonight—besides acting as a groomsman—is keeping the newly divorced bridesmaid from ruining everyone’s fun with her mood, right?”

He gazed down at her a long time. His blue eyes revealed nothing, but she had the sense that her words offended or irritated him. When he spoke, though, his tone was no different than before. “Trust me, I would be the last person in the county anyone would choose to entertain, flatter or even talk to anyone else.”

“And why is that?”

While he considered an answer, the music ended and so did the dance. He didn’t release her right away, but held her and looked at her and made her feel incredibly warm and tingly, until finally Del Barnett’s voice quieted the crowd.

“Reese wanted to sneak out of here, but Neely says she’s got three single sisters and she’s not going without throwing her bouquet. So all you unmarried ladies gather around up here, and all you single men be prepared to run.”

It seemed to Hallie that everyone was moving someplace except her and Brady. He was still just looking at her, and darned if she couldn’t pull her gaze away from his.

Abruptly he let her go. “Go on.”

“I’m not single.”

“You’re not married.”

“No, I’m divorced. There’s a difference.”

“Not enough to count. Go on, or your sisters will create a scene.”

Already she was dimly aware of Kylie and Bailey calling her name in unison. She looked at Brady, and he looked away, breaking the spell that held her. Without a word, she walked away and joined the group of women on the grass.

With her back to them, Neely gave the flowers a great toss, and they tumbled, stem over bloom, through the air straight at Hallie. She didn’t raise her hands, didn’t move, didn’t do a thing. When Kylie reached across and grabbed them before they hit the ground, Hallie looked back to where she’d left Brady.

He was gone.

He was a cold-hearted bastard.

Brady stood in the shadow of a clump of trees where no light could reach and watched as Neely and Reese said goodbye to their families. Neely hugged her mother, then her sisters, starting with Bailey and ending with Hallie. She was the only blonde in a family of brunettes, but it was more than her hair color that set her apart. She was lonely. Wounded.

And he wanted to take advantage of that.

Farewells said, Neely and Reese got into the waiting limousine, and the driver slowly pulled away. They were spending the night in Tulsa, then catching an early flight to the Caribbean. There they would be taken by boat to an isolated island where one of Reese’s friends from his pro baseball days was letting them use his beachfront estate. They weren’t planning to come back for three weeks—unless she decided just to stay forever, Neely had threatened.

As the limo disappeared from sight, the wedding guests began heading back to their dancing, visiting and celebrating. Hallie talked to her sisters for a few minutes and got hugs from both of them. Kylie tried to give her the bridal bouquet—probably with a joke about Hallie’s multiple marriages. Her family didn’t appear to have a clue how three divorces had affected her.

After refusing the flowers, Hallie left her sisters and headed toward the church. She passed within ten feet of where he stood, so close he could smell her fragrance on the warm night air. She spoke politely to guests going the other way, then crossed the street to her car, a flashy little blue convertible.

He waited until she’d driven away to move out of the shadows. His truck was parked down the block and around the corner, but he didn’t hurry. There was only one main road from Heartbreak to Buffalo Plains, and he knew where she was staying.

Plus, he needed time to talk himself out of what he wanted.

He was almost at his truck when a voice called, “Hey, Brady.”

He knew before he turned it was Jace Barnett. He was a couple of years older than Brady, Reese’s cousin and a detective with the Kansas City Police Department, and after Reese and Neely, he was the closest thing to a friend Brady had. “Jace.”

“You heading off this early? You know a few dozen of these folks will be here until the early hours of the morning—including me.”

“I’m not much on parties.”

“Reese says you’ll be acting sheriff while he’s gone.”

“Yeah.” He’d never officially held the position—Reese wasn’t in the habit of taking vacations—but he’d been in charge every other weekend for the past two years. He could handle it for three weeks. It wasn’t as if Canyon County was likely to develop a rash of crimes the minute the sheriff left the state.

“Watch out,” Jace said good-naturedly as Brady reached his truck. “Don’t let the paperwork get to you.”

Something had already gotten to him, Brady thought as he climbed in, and it wasn’t work. He waved goodbye to Jace, then headed for Main Street.

It took five miles, and passing a half dozen cars, to catch up to the convertible with California tags. He got only close enough to be sure it was Hallie’s car, then dropped back a fair distance.

He wasn’t going to follow her to the motel, and there were a dozen reasons or more why. She was his boss’s sister-in-law, and anyone knew you didn’t mess with a man’s family. He’d be better off home alone. She’d been hurt before. He would just be using her, and she’d been used enough.

When they reached the Buffalo Plains town limits, she headed into downtown, where a right turn would take her to her motel on the east side of town. After a moment’s hesitation, he took the first right, onto Cedar Street, and drove the block and a half to his house.

Until two weeks ago, he’d spent his entire six years in Buffalo Plains in a six-hundred-square-foot apartment on the west end of town and had been satisfied there—satisfaction being relative, of course. Then one day while on patrol, he’d seen an old man hammering a For Sale sign in the yard that fronted a small neat house. He’d stopped to ask him about it and had driven away a half hour later with the keys in his pocket and a sales contract pending.

It wasn’t a great house. It was sixty years old, one story, painted white with dark green trim. There was a front porch wide enough for a swing and a back stoop barely big enough for a man to stand on. Inside was a living room, a dining room and kitchen, one bedroom and bathroom, and an additional room he planned someday to incorporate into the living room. The floors were wood, with cracked and peeling linoleum in the kitchen, and the walls needed painting, the bathroom updating, the roof reshingling. He’d paid cash for it, and could have done the same for a house ten times its price, but he hadn’t wanted a bigger, nicer place.

After all, he hadn’t been buying a house but a memory.

One of the few childhood memories he recalled with fondness.

He pulled into the gravel driveway and parked next to his sheriff’s department SUV, then shut off the engine. Nights were quiet in this part of town. The lots were several acres, the houses distant from each other, and behind them was pasture. Forty acres of it had come with the house, but the old man had leased it to a neighboring rancher, and Brady had continued the lease. Someday, though, he planned to put up a barn and buy a few horses from Easy Rafferty, one of Reese’s friends over in Heartbreak who raised damn fine paints.

He went inside the dark, empty house, turned on the TV and settled on the sofa with a beer. Welcome to his usual Saturday night.

Most of the time he didn’t care how alone he was. Hell, he’d been that way so long it had come to feel natural. Growing up, he and his kid brother, Logan, had pretty much been each other’s best—and only—friends. They’d known other kids at school, of course, but they’d kept to themselves. It had seemed safer that way.

Then Logan had disappeared without a trace nearly seventeen years ago. Brady had gone to bed one night and Logan was there in the next room, and he’d awakened the next morning and his brother was gone. He’d taken his clothes and left a note, one line that had just about killed Brady.

He didn’t let himself think about Logan very often, but tonight it somehow seemed appropriate. Where was he? Had he even survived the last seventeen years? Had he managed to make himself over into someone who could live a normal life, have friends, laugh, be happy? Had he ever married, had kids? Did he ever think about looking up his older brother?

Probably no more often than Brady thought about trying to find him. He had run a nationwide driver’s license check a few years ago and come up with a number of Logan Marshalls, but none whose birth date matched his brother’s. He’d even considered hiring a private investigator, but had discarded the idea. Logan had had his reasons for taking off the way he did. The least Brady could do was respect them.

He flipped through the channels, watched the clock and told himself that, barring any emergencies, he was home for the night. Bored with television, he went in and took a shower, then went into the bedroom to get a pair of boxers. He wasn’t getting dressed, he told himself, even as he took a clean pair of Levi’s from the closet, and he repeated it as he pulled a T-shirt from the dresser drawer. He absolutely wasn’t going anywhere, he insisted as he picked up his wallet, pager and keys from the dresser, then started toward the front door.

He wasn’t going to the motel.

Wasn’t parking beside her Mercedes in the back lot.

Wasn’t climbing the stairs.

Wasn’t standing in front of Room 22.

He stood there, trying desperately to talk himself out of knocking. But damn it, being accustomed to being alone didn’t mean it didn’t eat at him sometimes. Some days the need for somebody got under his skin and damn near drove him mad until he’d satisfied it. That was what had sent him to the bar Thursday night—what had made him come back to the motel with Hallie. Usually that one night would have been enough to fill the emptiness that sometimes consumed him and would enable him to go back to his life for a few more months.

But this time, God help him, he wanted more, and Hallie Madison was the perfect person to give it. They’d already filled each other’s needs once. He liked her, and she… He didn’t know whether she liked him, but at least she wasn’t intimidated by him.

And most important of all—she was leaving town the next morning. He would probably see her again, but not until she came back to visit Neely, and that could be months—even years. By then she might not even remember his name.

Raising his hand, he hesitated, then rapped sharply on the door.

Seconds ticked past with no sound from inside the room. He wouldn’t blame her if she refused to open the door—half wished she would do exactly that so he would have no choice but to go home. But after a minute, maybe two, there was a rustle inside, then the door swung open.

She’d obviously showered since the party. Her face was free of makeup and her hair, still damp, was slicked back from her face, and damned if she didn’t look as pretty as she had all dressed up. She was wearing something thin and satiny held up by tiny straps and ending somewhere around midthigh, and she was naked underneath it. She looked sexy and innocent and vulnerable, and he knew if he touched her again, he would be damned to hell with no way to redeem himself.

Even knowing that, he reached out.

And he touched her.

Chapter 2

Hallie knew why he’d come.

It was in the hunger that made his blue gaze intense, in the tension that crackled around him and the heat where his fingers loosely held hers. She could send him away with no more than a shake of her head…or she could pull him inside and close the door.

Sending him away would be the smart choice, of course.

But in all her thirty years no one had ever described her as the smart sister.

Barely breathing, she watched him watch her. He hadn’t taken so much as a step over the threshold, and she knew he wouldn’t unless she gave him an invitation. Did she have the courage to offer that invitation?

Did she have the strength to hold it inside?

She didn’t know how long they stood there—one minute or ten—but the sound of familiar voices in the parking lot below signaled that time had run out. Her sisters, mother and stepfather were back from the party, and while Doris Irene’s room was on the ground floor, Bailey and Kylie were sharing a room down the hall and around the corner.

Send him away or let him stay?

She wanted to do the first. She needed the last.

Tightening her fingers around his, she took a step backward, then another. While her family said their good-nights downstairs, she drew Brady into the room and closed, then locked the door.

As he’d done the first time—what she’d thought would be the last time—he turned off the lights, then pulled her close. She thought of her smart, talented, capable sisters kissing their mother good-night, then coming arm-in-arm up the stairs, far too good and moral to indulge in anything so tawdry as a one- or two-night stand.

Then Brady kissed her as if she mattered, and she stopped thinking.

He aroused her expertly, stroked her, caressed her. Though she wore nothing but a simple satin shift, he took his sweet time removing it, exploring, touching, tormenting every inch of her. When she was naked and weak, when the need for him throbbed throughout her body, he clamped his mouth to hers and kissed her onto the bed before pulling away.

Her entire body was vibrating, thrumming with need. In the inky darkness, she heard his boots hit the floor, followed by the soft whoosh of his shirt falling and the rasp of his zipper. She raised up on one arm, but it was too dark to see. She could hear, though—harsh breathing, strong hands crinkling plastic as he tore open the condom wrapper. She could smell the clean, fresh scent of him as he came nearer, the faint hint of beer, the fainter essence of pure, base lust. She felt the mattress give under his weight, then the warm, satiny skin when she slid her hands to his shoulders.

Just as he’d done the other time, he grasped both of her hands in his, pinned them at her sides, then lowered his head to kiss her. Forgetting that she wanted to protest, she greedily welcomed his tongue, then, with a swallowed gasp, welcomed him into her body—every hot, silky, hard-as-rock inch of him.

For a moment he was content merely to be inside her, and she was content to feel him there again. He didn’t move, but held himself rigid, letting her body adjust to his. She sighed deep in her throat at the pure simple pleasure of it. For this brief time, she felt connected. Wanted. Even needed.

And that was all she wanted—all she’d ever wanted. Tonight the feelings didn’t even have to be real as long as she could believe in them for the moment.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Hallie,” he said, his voice little more than a growl that vibrated all the way through her. Then he began moving, slowly taking long, deep strokes, pulling out, filling her again. At the same time he lowered his head to nuzzle her breast.

She tried to free her hands, but his grip was too strong. “Please,” she began, then caught her breath in a low groan as he sucked hard at her nipple. “I—I want…”

He increased his pace, thrusting into her faster, harder, deeper, and continued to kiss and torment her breasts. She was starting to see stars, quickly building toward a release that just might leave her shattered…then put her back together again. Every time his arousal rubbed against her, every time her body clenched his, every strong pull of his mouth on her nipple….

“Let me…Brady, I want…” To capture this feeling and make it last forever. To grab hold of him and never let go. To scream. Explode. Weep.

The pressure inside her kept building, increasing with every touch, every kiss, every breath. Her muscles were taut, her nerves quivering, her breathing ragged and shallow. He pushed her until she was sure she couldn’t survive, and then he pushed her even farther, until her climax rocketed through her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t control the trembling that claimed her entire body. All she could do was feel and, sweet hell, she was feeling everything. She was drowning in incredible sensations, all hot and sweat-slick and shuddering and satisfied. Oh, yes, incredibly satisfied.

It wasn’t until much, much later, after her second orgasm, when she lay quietly in Brady’s arms, that she remembered what it was, in particular, that she’d wanted—to touch him. To run her hands over his body, to make him hot and achy, to feel his strength, to cradle his hardness in her palms. To tease, play with and arouse him, the way he’d teased, played with and aroused her.

She turned so that she faced him, even though she couldn’t see. “Can I ask you something?”

His breathing was so slow and steady that she thought for a moment he’d fallen asleep. Then he exhaled loudly and asked, “What?”

“Is it everyone or just me that you don’t want touching you?” She felt the tension in his body ratchet up a notch or two before he answered.

“It would be physically impossible to touch more than we are right now.”

That was true. Her head rested on his arm, her breasts were pressed against his chest, her legs tangled with his. But that wasn’t what she meant, and she suspected he knew it. “I’m talking about with my hands. You held my wrists so I couldn’t touch you.”

“Did I?” He asked it as if he hadn’t noticed what he’d done, but she knew better than that. He was too observant, too self-aware, for that to wash.

She stared at him, a shadow among shadows. When he didn’t say anything more, she laid her hand on his ribs. Soft, warm, dark skin—she couldn’t see, but she could visualize—as smooth and silky as her own pampered skin. She slid her palm up a few inches, then down again, then he caught hold of her hand and lifted it to his mouth for a simple, sensual, toe-curling kiss.

Hallie had to catch her breath before she could speak. “See? You don’t like it when I touch you.”

With another heavy sigh, he released her and rolled onto his back, arms and legs open wide. “You want to touch me, go ahead.”

She considered it a moment, then in a pouty voice said, “No.”

“Come on, Hallie,” he coaxed, reaching for her hand and pulling it to his chest.

“No.”

“Okay. Then I’ll touch you.” He raised up and reached for her, then rolled back again, lifting her on top of him. She tried to wriggle away, which caused an immediate and intriguing reaction in him, so with a womanly smile, she did it again.

Since he was being so agreeable, she took him up on his offer and spent some time exploring his body. Having a man in her bed was one of the things she missed about being married—the different textures of his body, the contrasts to her own body, even the simple sound of his breathing. Even when there was no sex, there was still intimacy, and she missed that with all her heart.

By the time she’d satisfied her curiosity, she’d aroused him to the point that his breathing was rapid, his voice guttural. “No more play. Come here.”

She thought about refusing, at least for a while, but knew she didn’t have the willpower, because all that touching, kissing and caressing that had aroused him had had the same effect on her. She was hot and achy, and she needed him, please, just once more.

She knew the moment she took him inside her that neither of them were going to last long, and she was right. The duration was short, the intensity killing.

Long after it was over, she found the strength to lift herself away from him. She pressed a kiss to his jaw, then bonelessly sank down to lie beside him.

She wasn’t sure exactly when she fell asleep—right away, she thought—but it seemed like mere minutes until he was shaking her awake. “Hallie?”

“Hmm.” She blindly reached for him and realized he was dressed again. She forced her eyes open and saw that the lamp nearest the door was on and he was, indeed, dressed and ready to go. She felt a twinge of disappointment that he wasn’t going to stick around to wake up, maybe get some breakfast, maybe make love again. Next time—

She cut off that thought the instant it formed. There wasn’t likely to be a next time. She’d already gotten so much more than she’d expected when she approached him in the bar Thursday night. She should be grateful for it and not hoping for even more.

“I’ve got to get home.”

“Oh.” She raised up on one arm, then shoved her hair from her face. She imagined she looked pretty darn scary without makeup, her hair standing on end and after only a few hours sleep. “Okay.”

At least he was telling her. She’d awakened Friday morning to cold sheets and nothing to suggest that he’d even been there besides her incredible sense of satisfaction.

As she scooted to sit up with the sheet tucked under her arms, he sat down next to her. Looking seriously intense, he threaded his fingers through her hair, tilted her head back and simply looked at her. When moments passed and he didn’t say anything, she smiled awkwardly. “Thank you.”

His mouth twitched as if he might smile, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned forward and gently kissed her. “It was my pleasure.”

Releasing her, he stood up and crossed to the door in three strides. He glanced back at her and finally did smile, just a little.

And then he was gone.

Sunday was just like every other Sunday in Brady’s life for the past fourteen years—long and empty. He worked his usual every-other-weekend shift, did his usual chores and still had plenty of time to brood. Every time he’d left the sheriff’s department, it had taken all the determination he could muster to stop himself from driving through the motel parking lot to see if the California Mercedes was gone.

Too bad he hadn’t had that much strength last night.

He’d never been proud of the women-and-sex aspect of his life, but this time he felt particularly despicable. If he could learn how to live without occasional sex, female companionship or human contact, he would. Hell, if he could learn to open up to a woman, he would do that, too. But life had taught him a few lessons too well ever to forget them, the first of which was that the safest way to live was alone.

Even if alone was sometimes pretty damn miserable.

So damn miserable this time that he was grateful to see Monday and what promised to be a long, busy work week roll around.

He hadn’t had any experience in law enforcement when he’d walked into the department and applied for a deputy’s job over six years ago. He’d been hired in part because the salary was so low most people couldn’t afford to work there, but also because Reese had been willing to take a chance on him. He’d been surprised by how much he liked the job and by how good he was at it. He’d advanced quickly to undersheriff, and wouldn’t likely go any higher. The only job left to aspire to was sheriff, and Reese wasn’t going anywhere. But that was all right. Work was one aspect of his life that he wouldn’t change if he could.

After a morning spent on the paperwork Jace had warned him about, he picked up his Stetson from the filing cabinet and stopped by the dispatcher’s desk. “I’m going to lunch, Wilda.”

She waved her hand idly without looking up from her magazine. She was a good dispatcher and was less likely to miss work than any other department employee besides him, but she wasn’t the friendliest of people. Some of the deputies complained, but it suited him just fine.

He left the department, located on the first floor of the Canyon County Courthouse, and stood for a moment in the shade of an old oak. Buffalo Plains was a nice town—not big enough ever to get crowded, but large enough to provide everything a person needed. If there was something you absolutely couldn’t find, Tulsa was only an hour to the east, Oklahoma City about the same distance to the southwest. In six years, he’d made fewer than a half dozen trips to Tulsa and none to OKC.