Tycoon's Temptation

“Not as much as the car hurts.” As if he couldn’t stand to look at it any longer, he turned his attention to her pickup, where a good portion of candy-apple red from his car was decorating the side of her truck. It was the brightest color on what was otherwise pretty indeterminate.

“Is Palmer going to take you in to the hospital?”

“No.”

She was surprised. “Palmer’s a great EMT. The best. So’s Noah. But you should probably still see a doctor about your head.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Are you sure? I thought head injuries were tricky. What if you have a concussion or something?”

“Then I’ll deal with it.”

He didn’t sound as if he were used to being questioned, and she bit back more comments.

Shane had clearly finished looking at whatever he’d figured needing looking at and was heading toward them again. He held out his clipboard to the driver. “Fill that out. I’ll need to see your license, too.”

The man didn’t take the clipboard. “We can settle this matter without all that.” His voice brooked no disagreement, and Hadley mentally sat back a little, curious to see how her brother, I-am-sheriff-hear-meroar, reacted.

“Some reason you don’t want to file an accident report?” Shane’s voice had turned that silky way it did whenever he was really displeased. He knew where Hadley’s distaste for accident reports came from, she knew. But a stranger wouldn’t be accorded a similar understanding.

Nevertheless, the driver looked unfazed, despite the gauze and tape covering half of his forehead. “Just the time it all takes,” he said. “Neither one of us is hurt and we both agree to pay for our own damages.”

Hadley made an involuntary sound, looking pointedly at his forehead. The truth was, they hadn’t agreed to anything.

“My sister pulls out in front of you, and you’re willing to cover the damages on your own car.” Shane’s gaze shifted to the vehicle in question that was now secured atop the flatbed of the tow truck.

“That’s a ’68 Shelby.”

The driver’s expression didn’t change. “I was going too fast. We’re both culpable.”

Shane sighed a little. Settled his snow-dusted cowboy hat on his head a little more squarely. “I can measure the skid marks,” he said, all conversational-like. “To prove the point. But we both know what I’m gonna find.” His smile was cool. “You weren’t speeding. So that just leaves me a mite curious as to why you’re in a such a hurry to go no place.”

“I have business to attend to.” The driver still seemed unfazed, and Hadley had to admire him for it. Not many people could stand their ground against that particular smile of Shane Golightly’s. Even Stu, Shane’s twin, had been known to back down in the face of it.

If the man wanted to claim a share of responsibility in the accident, who was she to argue? After all, she didn’t particularly want that report filed, either.

Shane appeared to be considering the driver’s smooth explanation. “Well. The registration is in order.” He tapped a folded piece of paper that was still in his possession. “Let’s just look at your license for now. Then we’ll see.”

The driver’s expression didn’t change one whit. “I don’t have it on me.”

Oh, dear. Hadley looked down at her boots, scuffling them a little in the skiff of snow.

“Well, that’s kind of a problem now, isn’t it?” Shane’s voice was pleasant.

She closed her eyes. Shane never sounded that pleasant unless he was completely and totally peeved.

The driver didn’t look like a car thief. Not that she necessarily knew what car thieves looked like. But if she were going to write one into one of her stories, she wouldn’t have given him thick, chestnut-colored hair and vivid blue eyes with a rear end that was world class. She’d have given him piercings and tattoos and slick grease in his hair, and he definitely wouldn’t be the hero—

She jerked her thoughts back to front and center. “Shane,” she said in that dreaded, tentative voice of hers. “You don’t have to give him the third-degree, surely. Mister, um—” she glanced up at the driver and simply lost her train of thought when his gaze found hers and held.

“Wood,” he said.

Dear Lord, please don’t let him be a car thief. He’s just too pretty for that. “Pardon me?”

“Wood,” he said again. “Tolliver. Atwood, actually, but nobody calls me that.” The corner of his lips twisted. “Not if they want me to answer.”

There was a molasses quality in his deep voice, she realized. Faint, but definitely Southern. And it was about as fine to listen to as her dad’s singing every Sunday morning. When she was alive, her mother’s voice had possessed a similar drawl.

With a start she realized she was staring at him.

Again. It was even more of a start to find that he was staring at her right back. Her skin prickled again, and it was not at all unpleasant.

“Well, Atwood Tolliver,” Shane said, still in that dangerously pleasant way. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to bring you in. Just till we verify that you really are who you say you are.”

The driver’s eyes froze over a little, and the hot little prickles underneath the surface of her skin turned as cold as the air seeping through her too-thin jacket.

Of course the man was staring at her. Undoubtedly wishing he’d never had the misfortune to drive anywhere near Lucius, Montana, or her.

The best-looking guy she’d ever seen in her entire life—on television, the movies or in her imagination—and her brother was gearing up to arrest him.

Chapter Two

Bring him in?

It wasn’t often that Dane didn’t get what he wanted. But right now, he’d hit the trifecta in that regard. Judging by the sheriff’s implacable expression, Dane was not going to get out of the delightful experience of some Podunk little sheriff’s office. He was not going to be driving the one-of-a-kind Shelby he’d picked up at auction to his friend, Wood, when his task in Montana was done.

Not anytime soon, anyway. The wreck of Wood’s car was even now being hauled away.

And third, the woman—Hadley—might be the prettiest female he’d encountered in a long while, but she looked like she’d jump out of her skin if a rabbit so much as looked at her.

Dane Rutherford was no rabbit. He liked to look and touch.

He’d be doing neither.

“If you’re going to impound the car, there’s not much I can do to stop you,” he told the sheriff. Not much, yet. “But you probably realize that it’s in your sister’s best interest that we each take care of our own damages.” He pulled out his money clip and heard Hadley’s soft inhalation.

The sheriff’s expression didn’t change much, though his gaze focused on the folded bills in Dane’s hand. “Hadley,” he said without looking at her. “Does your truck still run?”

The woman cast a wary look at Dane, her gaze going in a little triangle between the money, the sheriff’s face and Dane. “I don’t know.”

“Try it. If it does, drive it into town,” the sheriff said flatly. “Meet us at the station.”

Her soft lips compressed. Even with her nose all pink from the cold, she had the kind of face a man could look at for a while. A long while. “Shane, come on. You’re not really—”

“Go.”

She looked up at Dane again, her expression seeming apologetic. Rightfully so, he reminded himself, given her terrible driving.

“Hadley.” The sheriff’s voice was warning.

She exhaled abruptly and turned on her heel, stomping across the highway to the decrepit truck, her slender hips swaying beneath the short pink excuse of a jacket she wore. She climbed up in the cab, ground the gears a few times as she disconnected the truck from the mangled mileage marker, and lumbered off down the road, leaving behind a puff of exhaust.

When Dane looked back at the sheriff, he knew the other man was perfectly aware of where Dane’s attention had been.

“Now, then. You want to finish the bribe it looks like you’re gearing up to offer, or do you want to tell me what’s really going on here?”

Hadley grumbled under her breath as she coaxed her ailing pickup truck all the way into town. She pulled into the lot beside Stu’s garage and gathered up all the items that were still strewn across the seat, replacing them in her purse. Then she went into the small office that her brother used when he was in town working at the garage. Some might have thought it odd that Stu Golightly was a rancher and ran the town’s only auto-body and repair shop. Personally, she considered it a great convenience. And the darned man better not have the nerve to bill her for the repairs, either, since it was his own fault she’d been so preoccupied.

The tow truck bearing the crumpled old convertible was parked near the closed bay door, and she carefully looked away from the wreckage and went inside.

It was nearly quitting time, but Riva was still sitting behind the counter painting her fingernails a putrid shade of blue and didn’t even look up until Hadley plopped her keys next to the woman’s splayed fingers.

Riva popped her gum, her penciled-in eyebrows lifting. She was seventy if she was a day, but that didn’t stop Riva from keeping “fashionable,” as she called it.

“Guess you had a little problem today,” she observed. “What’d you hit?”

Hadley told her. “I’m afraid Stu will be busy with that old car there first, though.”

Riva cackled at that and nodded her bright-pink head. “That he will. Your brother’s gonna wet his pants when he gets a chance to work on a piece of heaven like that. You probably oughta just go talk to your insurance agent about the claim now. Won’t be pretty, I expect.”

“Actually, we’re handling our own damages,” Hadley said, mentally crossing her fingers that this would still be the case. Unless her stubborn brother made Wood mad enough to rescind the offer.

Atwood Tolliver. That definitely could not be the name of a car thief, right? It sounded so old-fashioned. So upstanding. And the man himself had seemed so… so—

“You going to stand there and daydream all day?” Riva’s voice finally penetrated, and Hadley flushed a little, marshaling her thoughts. “Heard that you pulled right in front of him out near Stu’s place.”

“Nothing like the Lucius grapevine to get the word spread,” Hadley murmured.

“So why’s he willing to pay his own damages on a car like that?”

Hadley looked over her shoulder, through the somewhat grimy window to the tow truck outside.

“Like what? That car’s even older than my pickup.”

Riva snapped her gum and shook her head. “Honey, it is a mystery to me how you can have a brother who knows cars the way he does, and be as oblivious as you are.” She poked her nail polish brush back into the bottle, drew out a fresh batch of blue and slid it over her half-inch long nails. “That’s a ’68 Shelby GT500 convertible. It won’t be cheap to fix.”

Hadley looked again out the window. Down the street a ways, Shane’s SUV had pulled to a stop in front of the sheriff’s office. “It’s valuable then?” Her voice sounded too weak for her liking, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Besides, she’d known Riva since she was barely out of kindergarten.

“Think they only made 500 or so of them.”

Oh. Dear. Hadley’s stomach sank. No wonder her brother was leery of Wood. “Shane wanted me to meet him at his office. Guess I’d better go.”

Riva looked up at her after she just stood there, though. “Might help some if you open the door, child, and actually move your feet in the right direction.”

Hadley smiled weakly and went back out into the late afternoon. Her boots dragged a little as she passed the tow truck. She eyed the lines of the vehicle. Okay, so it was kind of a sexy old car….

If it hadn’t been crumpled down by a third of its size, maybe.

She exhaled and hurried her step, jogging across the street. One of the old-fashioned streetlamps flicked on as she passed it. Another hour or so, and it would be dark outside. She quickened her pace. She still had things to take care of at Tiff’s.

The bell over Shane’s door jingled when she went inside his office. Carla Chapman, Shane’s secretary-dispatcher-everything-else jerked her head toward Shane’s cubicle behind her. “He’s waiting for you,” she said.

Great. She loved her brother dearly, but the man had a distinct ability to make her feel as if she were being called down to the principal’s office.

It was warm inside and she unbuttoned her jacket, sliding it from her shoulders as she entered Shane’s cubicle.

Wood was not sitting in either of the two chairs situated in front of Shane’s massive metal desk. She dropped her jacket and purse on the desk and leaned toward him. “You locked him up, didn’t you.” Her voice was accusing.

He pointedly moved her belongings to one side, off his paperwork. “Sit down. You still need to sign the report.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “He’s in a cell,” he allowed after a moment.

“Shane!” She sat down, dismayed more than was wise. “For not having his driver’s license? That’s ridiculous. I’m sure he has one, he just didn’t have it with him.”

“Try bribery, then.”

“Bri—” Her voice choked. “He did not.”

Her brother shrugged. “Guess he had no room in his pocket for the license what with all that cash he was carrying,” Shane said dryly. “And you’ve always been a trusting little soul.”

“Makes me sound like I’m seven instead of twenty-seven.” She took the pen he extended and signed her name at the bottom of the accident report. “You haven’t locked up everyone who forgot their driver’s license at home.”

“Fortunately today she learned to take her purse or wallet with her when she left the house.” He looked sideways at her purse, assuring her that, yes, he was referring to her.

Darn his memory, anyway.

“You’re being unreasonable.”

He sat back and propped one boot heel over his knee. “Our Mr. Tolliver’s got quite the public defender in you.” The toe of his boot tapped the air twice. “Wonder why?”

“Look. If Stu… and you… weren’t so determined to hitch me to Wendell Pierce’s wagon, none of this would have happened. That poor man would have driven right through Lucius on his way to, to wherever, and that would be that. He was just an—

“Innocent bystander,” Shane put in, amused.

“Yes!”

He dropped his foot back to the floor and sat forward, arms on the desk. His amusement faded. “Doesn’t work that way, turnip. Until I know that car’s not stolen, he’s not going anywhere.”

She eyed him, but knew there was no moving Shane when his mind was set. “Dad says that stubbornness is not a blessing.”

“Dad says a lot of things,” Shane agreed mildly.

Frustrated, she snatched up her belongings and turned on her heel.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to see your poor prisoner!” She strode down the tiled hallway. The Lucius Sheriff Office housed a total of five cells and it was a rare day when even one was called into use. Shane was probably just bored and wanted to test the strength of the iron bars or something.

She turned the corner and stopped. Her breath sucked back up into her chest and a squiggle of something unfamiliar dipped in her stomach. Wood was sitting on the cot, his back against the wall, one foot planted on the thin mattress, the other leg—a long leg—extended.

“If you’ve come to break me out, save the effort,” he advised. “With your help I’d probably find myself in a federal penitentiary.”

She chewed the inside of her lip and took a step closer to the cell. From out in the front office, she could hear Carla talking on the phone, her voice bright and cheerful.

Just another day winding down in Lucius.

“I’m sorry.” She hugged her jacket and purse to her midriff. “This is all my fault.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” she added after a moment, “it’s not my fault that you didn’t have your license on you.” His lips twisted a little at that. He had very nice lips, even if her brother figured he was a car thief. “Are you?”

His eyebrows rose. “Am I what?”

Her cheeks warmed. That was the trouble for thinking half one’s thoughts out loud. Confusion inevitably ensued. “A car thief.”

A glint lit his eyes. His hand, draped over his raised knee, curled a little. Then he shifted and rose off the cot, his movements so smooth and relaxed he might just as well have been rising out of his own bed in his own home.

As if she’d ever seen what a strange man looked like rising out of his own bed? She ran the family’s boardinghouse. Any beds she was involved with were those needing a change of sheets between her rare guests.

She swallowed and stood her ground when he walked up to the bars of the cell and wrapped his hands lightly around them, looking at her through the space between. “Do I look like a car thief to you?”

She lifted her shoulder. “Can’t say I know what a car thief really looks like,” she admitted, speculation aside. “I don’t imagine they are all unattractive with shifty eyes.”

The corner of his lip twisted upward. “High praise,” he murmured.

He almost had a dimple in his cheek. Or more of a slash, she thought, which definitely went with a jaw that was razor sharp. And his nose was a little too long for his face, but the whole package was put together in a decidedly blessed way.

“You’re staring.”

She blinked. Moistened her lips. “Sorry.”

He reached one long arm between the bars and grazed his fingers against her coat. “So am I.”

He had a tiny scar at the corner of his eye. And another one, nearly invisible, bisecting his slashing eyebrow. “For what?” she asked faintly.

He hooked his finger in a fold of pink wool and tugged lightly.

She looked down. Right. The bloodstains on her jacket. More on the edge of her sweater sleeve. “Cleaning these stains will be a lot easier than fixing your car, I’m afraid.”

“So, at least you’ve decided that the Shelby is my car.”

How had he gotten those tiny little scars? Would he have a scar when the cut on his forehead healed? “Is there some reason to doubt it?”

He cocked his head a little, considering her. “You’re pretty trusting.”

For some reason she found herself smiling when the observation came from him. “Surprising, I know, but you are not the first to accuse me of that.”

“I’ll bet.” Lines crinkled at the corner of his eyes, and the tiny scar disappeared.

He wasn’t quite smiling but she still felt the impact, and for a moment the metal bars of the cell, the chirping of Carla’s voice from out front, everything else disappeared.

“It’s getting late. Don’t you have to get supper on or something?”

Hadley nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her brother’s voice.

The cell bars were back.

Wood’s hand slowly fell away from her jacket and she looked over her shoulder at Shane. His eyes were hard.

She very nearly argued with him that she had nothing more pressing to do than stand there staring at the man in the cell. Well, the brave little part of her that occasionally snuck past her larger sissy part nearly argued with him. But the truth was, she did have to get supper started. And after that, she needed to mix up bread dough for the rolls she’d bake first thing in the morning, and she had to get the tower room prepared for a guest coming the next day.

Staying wasn’t an option, even if she could have summoned the nerve to flout Shane.

Wood moved away from the cell bars and sat down on the cot, back propped against the wall again. He ran the tip of his index finger over the edge of the adhesive on his forehead.

She wondered what he was thinking and she wondered over the fact that had her brother not been standing there acting all Cro-Magnon, she would have actually asked Wood. And wasn’t that a surprise? Maybe if she pretended she were a fearless heroine, set on freeing the misunderstood hero, she’d manage to pull it off.

Or not.

“You better feed him,” she hissed as she passed Shane. “And give him some aspirin or something for his head. Better yet, call in a doctor. For all you know, he could have a concussion.”

“Mr. Tolliver’s gonna get everything he deserves,” Shane assured.

Ordinarily that would have been a comforting statement. In this situation, however? She grimaced and left, casting one last look at Shane’s prisoner.

He wasn’t looking at her, this time. He was staring down her brother across the distance of the cell, and even though he was behind bars, Hadley couldn’t help but wonder which of the two men would come out on top.

She pulled on her stained jacket and went back outside, waving to Carla, who was still jabbering on the phone. The sun had begun to set. Lights were glowing from the window fronts of the businesses along Main. The snow had stopped for the moment, and everything was covered with a thin veil of perfect white powder.

Including the wreck she could easily see from where she stood, still sitting atop the Finns’ tow truck.

Wrapping her jacket more tightly around her, she hurried in the opposite direction toward the boardinghouse. She could have gone by the church to get a ride from her dad. He’d have undoubtedly still been there. But since it was nearly as far a walk to Beau Golightly’s home-away-from home as it was to Tiff’s, there seemed little point.

Besides. She wasn’t quite ready to find out whether or not her dad had been in on her brothers’ ganging up on her over Wendell.

Her face felt stiff with cold and her hands were completely numb by the time she climbed the wide porch steps leading to the front door of the aging Victorian. But inside, the air was warm and welcom ing. From the parlor, she could hear someone tinkering on the piano. Probably Mrs. Ardelle. She regularly insisted that she was musical, but—so far—hadn’t proved it by the way she attacked the keys.

Still, Mrs. Ardelle was a darling soul, and if she wanted to pretend she could play, who was Hadley to stop her?

She hung up her jacket on the coat tree in the wide hall and walked through to the kitchen, located at the rear of the house. The ever-present coffee was hot so she poured herself a mug before getting down to preparing dinner. Her residents didn’t join her in the dining room for dinner every night. They were all welcome—for a fee, of course, which Hadley charged only because her sister tended to get on her case when she didn’t—but usually one or two showed up.

Fortunately, cooking for a handful of people was mindlessly familiar to Hadley, and by the time they sat down around the oval walnut table in the dining room, the resulting meal was perfectly edible and showed no sign that Hadley had fretted her way right through preparing it.

In the morning, after she’d baked up a batch of sticky cinnamon rolls and cranberry walnut muffins, she prepared a small picnic basket and walked back downtown to Shane’s office.

The door was unlocked. Carla wasn’t at her desk yet, but she could plainly hear her brother’s voice coming from his cubicle in the back, so she walked right through.

His eyes perked up at the sight of the cloth-covered basket in her mittened hands, and he waved her over to the chairs. A good sign. Shane had always had a soft spot for her rolls.

She set the basket on his desk and sat down, busying herself with tugging off her mittens and unwinding her red scarf from the collar of her serviceable blue parka while he finished his phone call.

“So, you are still speaking to me.” He reached for the basket.

She nimbly slid the basket out of his reach. “Have you come to your senses and let that poor man go?”

“If I haven’t, you think I’m going to change my mind through your bribery attempts?”

“I’m sure he didn’t really try to bribe you.”

He folded his arms across the top of his desk. “Are you, now?”