The Big Heat

“I’ll take her to dinner to cover the overtime. Happy? And I’ll help her with that Web page.”

What was Martin up to? “Only if Marlene wants dinner.” Cade looked at Marlene. “You want dinner?”

“Sure.” Marlene’s smile was just a tad too honey-sweet. “There’s a new sushi place I’ve been wanting to try.”

Cade grinned at Marlene’s neat turn of the table and Martin’s look of disgust.

“I was thinking something with real food.”

Marlene leveled a guileless look at Martin and Cade made for the door. The two of them would figure it out. He had a feeling Martin would dine on sushi tonight. Marlene could be relentless.

Before he reached the door, the jingle bell wreath on the glass jangled as a woman stepped inside. Average height. Dark hair. He’d guess early to mid-thirties. There was something vaguely familiar about her. Cade never forgot a face, which came in very handy in his line of work, but he couldn’t quite place this woman.

The woman looked at Marlene. “Hello. I’m Nadine Axmoor. My sister is Sunny Templeton and I need to post bail for her. I’ve never done this. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”

That’s why he recognized her. There was a family resemblance in the chin and the line of her jaw.

Marlene’s mouthed gaped for about two seconds before she recovered her usual aplomb. “Sure. You know that we’re the company that campaigned with Cecil Meeks. Are you sure you want to go with us?”

“Marlene,” Martin bellowed from his office, “just do it.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The woman waved a dismissive hand. “You’re right across from the jail and I need to get this taken care of.” She shrugged. “I didn’t vote for her, either.”

What the hell? Cade’s hackles rose. She didn’t vote for her own sister? With family like her, who needed enemies like Meeks?

Marlene’s lips tightened into a thin disapproving line but she efficiently processed the paperwork. She slid the bond form across the desk to the Axmoor woman who stared at it as if was a snake. “What do I do with that?”

Marlene looked back at her as if Nadine Axmoor were something stuck on the bottom of Marlene’s shoe. “You take it across the street and the officer at the front desk will tell you what you need to do from there to get Sunny out.”

Nadine pushed the paper back across the desk with one manicured finger. “Oh, no. I have to meet my husband for dinner. It’s a business affair with some of his associates. I’m already running late. And have you seen the media waiting on her across the street?” Cade glanced out the front window into the burgeoning twilight. Sure enough, media vans lined the street in front of the jail. “I’ve gone to the trouble to come down and post bail. I’m done. Sunny got herself into this mess. She can figure it out. Maybe she’ll learn to think things through.”

Every protective instinct in him surged. He barely bit back a growl of disapproval.

What. A. Bitch.

“We’ll handle it from here,” Marlene said, standing, practically shoving the other woman out the front door. “If you hurry, maybe you can avoid the worst of rush-hour traffic.”

Cade didn’t catch the woman’s closing comment on the way out, but he had no trouble hearing Marlene once the sister was down the sidewalk. “What a hideous, odious woman.” She brushed her hands together. “Good riddance.”

“She was a piece of work,” Cade agreed.

“Poor Sunny.” Marlene inclined her head toward the melee of reporters across the street. “They’re going to eat her alive.” She very pointedly stared at Cade.

Sunny did need help. He nominated Marlene. “You’ve got your wish. You can go over there and bail her out.”

“No, I can’t. You just heard your father ask me to work late.”

He was doing what he could on the private-eye front with Danny Jones. That was enough. “Sunny Templeton is not my problem.”

“Who would you call to bail you out if you landed in jail?”

“First off, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to land in jail—” Marlene cut him off with a look. “Okay, okay. Linc. I’d call Linc. And if I couldn’t get him I’d call Gracie. If I couldn’t get those two, I’d call you. And after those three strikes I’d be dialing Martin.”

“And do you think any of us would leave you to make your way through those sharks waiting outside?”

“I’d lay money Martin might.” He didn’t count on Martin for shit.

“Watch it, boy,” Martin grumbled, but it lacked any real thunder. They both knew there was too much truth backing Cade’s words. Martin, his father, the man who should be his staunchest advocate, wasn’t altogether a sure thing.

“Sorry, Martin. I call ’em the way I see ’em.”

“He wouldn’t.” There was a quiet firmness, a surety about Marlene’s simple statement. “I think he’d lead the way for you, carve a path between them for you. No one that you called would leave you to face that alone.” Okay. Okay. “That woman that just walked out of here was the best Sunny Templeton had to call and that’s just plain sad.” Unfortunately, that was true. “You’re on your way out anyway. It’ll take ten, maybe fifteen extra minutes out of your day to handle the bail.” She examined the fingernails on her right hand. “Linc says you’ve got Jones looking for something on Meeks.”

Dammit to hell. Linc had a big mouth.

Every internal radar he possessed was going off. Sunny Templeton would be trouble. He knew it. He was working behind the scenes, doing what he could to fix the fact that he’d gone along with Cecil when all his instincts said he shouldn’t.

“You know she needs you,” Marlene said softly.

The instinct to protect her was even stronger than his instinct of self-preservation. That was his undoing. He couldn’t just walk out the door and leave her hanging. He’d go get her out. But it didn’t mean he had to like it.

He held out his hand for the paperwork. Marlene beamed at him but didn’t relinquish the form. Instead she pointed toward the back closet with the paperwork. “You might want to grab a jacket and take it with you for her. The temperature’s dropped about twenty degrees since midafternoon. There’s a cold front moving in.”

Between him, Linc and Martin, there were always a couple of extra jackets in the closet. Mostly because they just wound up leaving them at work, but sometimes they came in handy as a disguise.

“Fine, I’ll grab her a jacket. Go ahead and call a cab and have it waiting around the back. That’ll at least avoid most of the melee out front.”

A fine frown settled between Marlene’s arched brows. “A cab? But—” she glanced at the pink copy of duplicate paperwork on her desk “—I think this address is only a block or two out of your way. Weren’t you heading home? Seems like it shouldn’t be a big deal to just drop her off on your way.”

“Will you be happy then? Will I have thoroughly atoned for my sin? Will you finally concede Sunny Templeton’s not my problem?” And would he finally feel as if he could walk away with a clear conscience? That he’d done his best by her?

“Yes. Mostly. Maybe.”

He sighed and crossed the room to the back closet. He dug out a well-worn orange and white University of Tennessee jacket from Linc’s college days. He also snagged a ball cap off the top shelf.

“Feel free to nominate me for sainthood when I’m through.”

Marlene smiled sweetly and passed him the paperwork. Martin snorted from his office. Cade paused in the doorway on his way out. “Enjoy the sushi dinner,” he said, closing the door on Marlene’s laugh and Martin’s grumbling.

The wind held a sharp edge and carried the smell of old grease and hickory smoke from the barbecue shack on the corner. Cade avoided a wadded fast-food bag blowing down the sidewalk and rounded the corner of the building to the small, potholed parking lot beside AA Atco.

He just wanted to get this over with. Done.

He unlocked his car and tossed the jacket and cap onto the passenger seat. Marlene was right, he could take fifteen minutes out of his day to do the woman a good turn. He cranked his car and pulled past the media to an unlit corner of the parking lot close to the back entrance.

He was about to encounter Sunny Templeton in the flesh. No flyer. No newspaper article. No Internet blog. His heart pounded the way it hadn’t since he’d apprehended his first skip sixteen years ago.

He had to get a grip. He brought in hardened criminals, for chrissakes. Just how much trouble could it be to bail Sunny Templeton out and drop her off at home?

4

“SHE’S ALL YOURS,” officer Jack Winslett, per his name badge, said, speaking over Sunny’s shoulder.

Time to face Nadine. It wouldn’t be pleasant but it couldn’t be any worse than what she’d been through so far. She turned, expecting her sister. Instead she came face-to-face, well to be technically accurate, face-to-wall-of-hard-muscular-chest with the big, badass bounty hunter himself who’d been starring front and center in her secret fantasies. Cade Stone.

She must truly be off the deep end because she locked gazes with his piercing tawny eyes and something primitive, something hot and wild and deliciously disturbing shook her to her core, despite having just been bailed out of jail. More than likely, she was just flat-out disturbed. This hadn’t exactly been her finest day. She was tired. Hungry. Grubby. Still damp from her soaking. And to top it off, she’d been hit on by a big woman named Spanky with a skull tattoo on her forearm. And much as he might show up in her fantasies, she didn’t want to deal with him in real life. Especially not when she looked like she’d just crawled through hell and back. Feeling flushed and breathless and slightly weak-kneed was downright inconvenient right now.

“What are you doing here?” she said, also reminding herself he was the enemy. He’d campaigned for Cecil, against her. He had a lot of nerve showing up here.

A flicker of…remorse, amusement…something flickered in his eyes and then was gone. “I’m passing along your get-out-of-jail card.”

His voice was deep, sexy with an underlying hint of gravel. Oh. Sweet. Mother. She reached behind her and grabbed the edge of the desk. A part of her would’ve been relieved if he’d sounded like Tweety Bird. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be feeling this incredible surge of sexual energy if the guy sounded like he’d just sucked on a helium balloon. That would’ve killed the fantasy. But no, Cade Stone had to sound as good as he looked.

“You want to take this somewhere else, folks?” Officer Winslett scowled at them. “You’re blocking my desk and I’ve got other people to process.”

Cade grasped her by her elbow, his touch sending another heat wave through her, and led her out into the corridor.

Once outside the release room, she dug in her heels and shook his hand off of her arm. She wanted some answers and his touch was…well, it made coherent thoughts other than “I’d like to see you naked” difficult.

She tilted her head back to look at him. Way back. He had to be nearly a foot taller than her. Fine lines radiated from the corners of eyes that were a golden brown with flecks of black. No-nonsense lines bracketed his mouth. A dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His dark hair was close-cropped. Faint lines etched his forehead. His nose, Romanesque, skewed slightly to one side, as if it’d been broken once or twice and never quite made it back to the center. He was beautiful in a rugged, untamed kind of way.

His size alone would have made him intimidating, but a body-hugging black T-shirt tucked into black jeans, black leather jacket and black military-style boots only furthered the intimidation factor. No one would mistake him for a gentle giant. He seemed hard through and through, but she didn’t sense any cruelty, just determination and focus.

She stared him in the eyes, not wanting him to think he intimidated her.

“I don’t understand why you’re here. I called my sister.”

Nadine had been the lesser of two evils. Calling Sheila hadn’t been a remote possibility. She wasn’t screwing up the woman’s vacation. As for calling her other friends, it didn’t seem right to drag them into the financial matter of bailing her out. Nadine had plenty to say about Sunny landing herself in jail. Eventually, however, after she’d had her say, she’d agreed to bail her out. So where the heck was she?

Overhead, a fluorescent bulb that needed replacing flickered. She looked away from Cade to an officer escorting a disheveled middle-aged man in handcuffs down the hall.

“Your sister posted your bond but she couldn’t make it over here to finish up.” Was that a hint of disapproval behind that implacable stare? He’d campaigned for Cecil Meeks. He didn’t have room to disapprove of anyone. Then it suddenly occurred to her…color her slow what with being arrested and booked.

“Nadine came to you to bail me out?” She could handle her sister’s tirades, her disapproval. She could handle Nadine not bothering to show up and give her a ride home. But to have gone to this man’s company, the very people who’d been on that billboard with Meeks to post her bond, that stung like an open-handed slap to the face.

“Our office is right across the street.”

She lifted her chin and started down the hall. “Thanks,” she said, more of a dismissal than an actual appreciation. She walked toward the exit arrow at the end of the hall.

He caught up with her easily. “Look, put on this jacket and cap. We’ll duck out the back door and I’ll give you a lift home.”

She hadn’t even noticed the items he held in one hand. “No, thank you.”

“There are camera crews and news vans outside that are going to crawl all over you when you walk out of here.”

Sunny stopped. Cade stopped, too. What did it take to get rid of this man? “Look. I know my sister stuck you with coming over here and bailing me out. I’m bailed. You’re done. Go home. Shoo.”

Okay, so maybe the accompanying shooing motion was a bit much. Cade Stone didn’t look like a man who got shooed very often…uh, probably never. And from the way he narrowed his eyes and thinned his lips, he wasn’t happy with it happening now.

“There’s nothing I’d like to do more. I’m trying to go home. I just need to take you home on my way.”

“That’s not happening. How do I know you’re not a pervert who just wants to get me in his car?”

After a stunned moment he laughed. If he was a pervert, he was a most amused one. “Sorry to disappoint you, honey, but you’re not my type.” He rubbed his hand over his head. “Look. I’m just trying to help you out, here.”

“The same way you helped me out by campaigning with Cecil? No thanks.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Nice to know she wasn’t his type. He might have some bone-melting physical effect on her but he wasn’t her type, either. Case in point, she’d told him to go away and he was still here. She wasn’t feeling particularly tactful. “I don’t need your help, so quit bugging me.”

“I’m bugging you—” uh-huh, he didn’t like that word any better than he liked shoo “—because our secretary has taken you up as the cause of the day. Marlene damn near considers you Joan of Arc. Your sister showing up today and then leaving you high and dry was just icing on the cake. Marlene has taken it into her head that I need to give you a ride home to atone for our sin of being part of Meeks’s campaign. If I let you walk out of that door and allow the media to swamp you, if I don’t deliver you safely to your door, my life isn’t going to be worth living.”

She’d lived on her own for the past twelve years. Aside from having been taken into custody today and subsequently released, she was the only one that made the decision on whether she walked out of a door or not. “If you let me walk out the door…? You’re seriously confused on several issues.”

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