Dangerous Flirt (5 page)

She grabbed a gym towel from the passenger seat and looked back up.

A ten-point buck stood stock still in the middle of the two-lane road.

Anxiety rocketed through her body as she smashed the brake to the floor.

Nothing happened.

She pumped the pedal, each time slamming
it to the floor in a vain attempt to stop the car's forward motion. Corn fields whizzed by as the car hurtled forward.

Panicking, she tried not to hyperventilate behind the wheel. Her choices were limited. Go head-to-head with the buck, which would decimate her tiny car and probably her in it, or swerve into the crops, hopefully avoiding the deep irrigation gullies often bordering the fields.

Icy dread froze her hands to the steering wheel. The seatbelt tightened against her chest. She fought to slow her breathing. In a heartbeat, she was an eight-year-old girl again, trapped upside down in her parents’ station wagon, crying for a mother who could no longer hear her.

As her heart hammered, the Mini Cooper barreled toward the mesmerized deer.

She murmured a Hail Mary under her breath
and pulled the wheel to the right.

T
he airbag slammed into Beth's chest, sending her body backwards. Her head bounced against the headrest. Pain and panic exploded through her body.

Her throat clenched. The world darkened around the edges. She had to get out. Now.

Choking on the inflated airbag’s chemical smell, she felt around for her seat belt clasp. God, what if she couldn't find it? Blood rushed through her
ears. Sweat dripped down her forehead. She couldn't be trapped.

Not again.

Never again.

Her jittery fingers pushed against the clasp. It zipped across her body. Frantic, she slapped at the puffy airbag until it deflated enough to reach the door handle. She heaved the door open and stumbled out into the irrigation ditch.

Frigid water soaked through her jeans and spilled over the top of her
cowboy boots.

She inhaled breath after breath of the cold October air that burned her nostrils, greedy and desperate, like a woman emerging from the depths of the ocean. Her heartbeat calmed. The world came back into focus.

Glancing back at her car, her stomach slid down to her wet toes.

Son of a bitch.

The front end had tipped forward into the gully, the hood folding up like an accordion.
A foot of black water lapped at the mangled front end. The back tires rested on the bank nearest to the road.

Sucking on her bottom lip to keep it from quivering, she closed her eyes.
Just a car, Beth. It's a damn car. Besides it breaks down too often. You can handle this
.

When she opened her eyes again, the scene in front of her looked less like the end of the world and more like a manageable
car crisis. Another manageable car crisis.

She stomped through the slushy ditch water and leaned inside the wreckage to swipe her gym bag from the floor in front of the passenger seat, then slogged her way up to the highway. The deer was nowhere to be found. Lucky him.

Grimacing, she punched in the number for her mechanic. Thanks to her many trips to Mad Mike's Mechanical, she'd memorized it
months ago.

“Thanks for calling Mad Mike's. What can we do to make you happy?” Hailey's chipper voice carried over the phone's static connection.

“Hey, Hailey.”

“Oh no, Beth. What’s going on with that cute car of yours this time?”

“I lost at a game of chicken with a deer on Highway 28 and ended up in a ditch.”

“Oh my goodness! Are you okay? Do you need an ambulance?”

“Thanks, but I'm okay.”
Shading her eyes against the early afternoon sun, she scanned the road for a landmark. “I'm near mile marker twelve. Can you send out the tow truck?”

“Sure thing, sweetie. Mike'll be right there.”

After thirty minutes of alternating between swearing this time she'd get a new car and playing cellphone scrabble, the tow truck finally rumbled to a stop in front of her. Relief loosened the tightness
in her shoulders and she stood, brushing dirt from the seat of her jeans.

The crunch of another set of tires on the gravel caught her attention and she glanced up to see a familiar dark blue pickup stop behind the tow truck. Her heart sped up and she smoothed her hair before she could stop herself.

Concern tightened Hank's square jaw when he stepped down from his truck and Beth's insides melted
into warm goo. Damn that man.

Five days into a two-week vacation, he'd given up his Dry Creek County Sheriff uniform for jeans, a T-shirt and a scraggly beard that he somehow made appealing. Her fingers itched to feel the prickle of the three-day beard, to run through his thick brown hair that she knew from years of lustful observation curled if he let it grow to his collar. He was the stuff
of dreams. Naughty, sweaty, tasty dreams.

The object of her desire strolled across the cracked asphalt to her side. The smell of fresh coffee wafted up from the paper cup in his large hands and mixed with the woodsy scent of his cologne.

“Are you okay?” Worry weighed heavy in his deep voice and he brushed a stray hair away from her face, his eyes searching for injuries.

Every objection to touching
him evaporated and all her thoughts focused on how much she wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and soak up his strength.

“I do believe I can arrest you for looking at someone like that. You've got to be breaking some decency laws.”

Taking a deep breath, she recovered her bearings. Mostly. “You're out of your jurisdiction, sheriff.”

Hank fisted his free hand and fought to calm his jumpy nerves. Yep, he was out of his jurisdiction, out of his league, out of luck and out of his mind for wanting Beth. Badly.

His gaze combed over her, from her silky brown hair to the tips of her red cowboy boots. Her glasses were a little cockeyed, but she didn’t have a scratch on her and for the first time since he’d heard about the accident,
something inside him loosened.

A cough interrupted his inspection. Hank and Beth turned toward the short, squat man in a red Mad Mike's Mechanical T-shirt kicking dirt with the tip of his steel-toed boot. Damn, he'd forgotten all about Mike and the reason they were both there. “You got her all hooked up?”

“Yep. Jus' need ya to move over a bit so I can get her pulled up from the ditch.”

Before
he could say a word, Beth strode to the other side of the road, her head high, purposefully not looking his way.

He shuffled over a few feet and watched as Mike pushed a button, setting off a cacophony of clanking chains. The chains pulled tight with a loud clang and that ridiculously small car Beth drove slid backwards up the ditch. It took Mike a few minutes to pull the car up, secure it to
the trailer and begin the process of ensuring everything was safe for the drive back to his shop in Dry Creek.

Hank used the time to get a handle on the lust that had been riding roughshod over his body since he saw with his own eyes that Beth was okay. But he couldn't look away from Beth's curves framed by her V-neck black sweater and worn jeans. She stretched, extending one arm toward the clear
blue sky and pushing her small tits forward. His cock transformed into steel and he unconsciously took a step forward.

Shit. He wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anyone, including Amanda when they first started dating.

It took him years to see through her manipulative ways and extricate himself from her razor-sharp talons. Not a good loser, Amanda swore he'd never find anyone as good as
her, especially since he was just a washed-up ballplayer with a bum knee and a criminal justice degree. The thing was, she'd had him so twisted up during the final days of their marriage that he'd believed her. Some days he still did.

Maybe that's why Beth burned so hot yet acted so cold toward him, because she thought he wasn’t worth her time.

“All righty then. You're all set.” Mike slapped
the Mini Cooper's bumper.

“Great.” Beth lugged her gym bag up from the highway shoulder then crossed the road. “Can you drop me off at my house?”

Mike's gaze slid over to Hank as he wiped away the nonexistent sweat from his forehead with a greasy rag. “Um, well...”

“I'll give you a ride.” Hank started toward his truck, chewing the inside of his cheek, nervous about how she'd react to the story
he and Mike concocted. “Suzie threw up in Mike's cab and it smells like a sewer in there.”

Oblivious to the defamation, the rotund feline slept curled in a ball on the cab's dashboard.

Mike kept his gaze locked on the pothole to the left of his back tire. “Yep. Wouldn't want you to have to spend time in there. Uh, that's why I brought Hank along.”

Beth snorted, her suspicious gaze flickering
between the men.

He didn't blame her; if Mike played poker as bad as he lied, there was no way Hank would have lost fifty dollars to him last night. Lucky for him, he’d been paying off that loss when the call came in about Beth’s car.

“Front door service.” Holding out his hands, palms up, he flashed the affable, baby-kissing grin he'd perfected during last fall's election. “Promise my truck
does not smell like cat puke.”

Sighing, Beth pivoted and walked to his truck. As she slid into the passenger seat, he nodded a silent thank you to Mike. Now he had the twenty-minute drive into Dry Creek to convince her to go out to dinner and a movie. Nothing life threatening. Really, how hard could it be?

As soon as he shut the driver's side door and the smell of her vanilla and lilac perfume
teased his senses, his mind went blank.

“Why is Mike giving you a thumbs up?”

Glancing at the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the tow truck, he spotted Mike standing in the middle of the highway with a smartass grin on his face and his thumb stuck up as if he were hitching a ride. Mike always was subtle. “Who knows why he does half the things he does.”

Beth settled back into the seat
and proceeded to stare out the window, ignoring him completely. A million idiotic conversation starters rattled around his head, but he couldn't get his dry mouth to form the words. The silence ate away at Hank's nerves. Glancing out of the corner of his eye, he checked her out. The woman sat straight as a board, nervous energy pulsing from her brown skin, finding its outlet as she fiddled with the
green nylon strap of her gym bag.

He should say something. Anything. He was a grown man driving with a woman he'd known for most of his life. When had it gotten so hard to talk to her?

The sugar beet factory loomed on the horizon, with the big box stores only a little bit farther on. In another few minutes they'd be in Dry Creek proper. A couple of stoplights later and they'd be in front of
her adobe bungalow on Kaftan Street. His heartbeat sped up like a thirteen-year-old nerd’s walking up to the prettiest, most popular girl in school.

A block from her house, he couldn't take the silence anymore and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “So, I heard Sarah Jane made a mint when she sold her place. You thinking of selling your grandparents' place?”

Beth spun around in her
seat and nailed him with a deadly glare. “I'm never selling, and if you know who the asshole is who's trying to intimidate me into selling, you can tell him that it won’t work.”

Someone threatened her? Anger squeezed his chest. He slammed on the brakes in front of her house, making his truck tires squeal. “What the hell are you talking about? And why is this the first I'm hearing about it?”

She stopped fidgeting with the bag's strap. Her whole body went still as her big brown eyes regarded him. Uncertainty flashed across her face and her forehead crinkled. Her gaze flicked away for an instant. When she looked at him again with a stubborn tilt to her chin, his temple throbbed.

He wasn't going to like this, not one bit. Stubborn woman was going to make him certifiably nuts.

“Never
mind, I'm sure it's nothing.” She waved her long fingers in the air as if brushing off an invisible inconvenience. “Thanks for the ride home.”

He grabbed her left hand as her right reached for the door handle. Her warmth shocked his fingers and slithered up his arm. “Bullshit. I've known you since you were young enough to eat your own boogers. You wouldn't have said it if it was nothing.”

Yanking
ineffectively to free her hand, she shot him a dirty look. “Let me go, Hank. It's none of your damn business.”

Pulling her close so that their faces nearly touched, he fought to rein in the caveman urge to drag her somewhere safe and hide her away from anything bad in the world. “If it involves you, it
is
my business.”

Damn straight. As soon as he dropped her off, he'd do some snooping of his
own. He knew a few deputies in neighboring Council County who didn't appreciate Sheriff Wilcox's brand of flexible ethics. Time to call in some favors, find out what the hell was going on and fix it.

Her eyes went wide, showing off the gold flecks in her dark irises. She inhaled a shaky breath. “Look,” she whispered. “I know you're Claire's big brother and we've known each other forever, but
I can't let you involve yourself in this. It's not in your jurisdiction. It's not your house. You're like a brother to me and I don't want you to get sucked into my trouble.”