Fated (3 page)

She struggled harder, and he held
her hands steady to save the tender skin on her wrists. “I’m arresting you.”

“Excuse me?” He allowed her to
straighten and shuffle to face him. That mass of silky blonde hair was in
disarray, some drifting in tendrils around her angry face, and it took a very
real effort to not obviously notice the way her breasts heaved behind the
skimpy cover of her little top. Her nipples were taut little buds poking
impertinently against the fabric, and the evening wasn’t that cool.
Hmmm.

Keeping a careful eye on her,
concerned she might fall, he ticked off his reasons. “Speeding—breaking the
three strikes
rule
.
Failure to signal.
Resisting arrest.
Assaulting a
police officer.
Care to add to that?”

“What?” Fuming, she obviously tried
to form more words.
“Whose rule?
I pulled over. There was
no one else around. I didn’t … resisting? Who did I assault?”

“You can plead your case to the
local judge. That would be me.”

“What?” A pulse beat in the hollow
of her throat, and she swallowed audibly.

Finding it impossible to hide his
near juvenile glee at finally being close to her,
 
alone with her, and believing her anger hid a
far more palatable emotion, he resorted to dipping a shoulder into her midriff,
and straightened to carry her stiffening body back to his cruiser.

“You’d better put me down, Reese
Murdoch. You’re going to be in a ton of shit when my father gets wind of this.”
Her voice was somewhat muffled by her position, but the indignation came
through loud and clear, and she tried to kick her feet.

He indulged himself, smacking her
curved ass. “Language, Candace. And your father is the least of my worries.
Although he might be a source of concern for you.”

She abruptly subsided, and he
snarled at himself under his breath. How could he forget how old man Grant
viewed his only child? Hadn’t he seen it with his own eyes? Wasn’t that the
primary reason he’d left her in the first place?

Moving ahead, he took advantage of
her short-lived meekness, and jerked open the back door of his vehicle.
Lowering his sweet burden, he again turned her to face the car, and released
the cuffs. There was no way she could sit comfortably with her hands bound
behind her, and they’d already done the trick.

“Inside.”

“No.”

Hardly loath to put his hands on
her again, he stroked one hand up her back to cup her nape, bending her head
forward,
then
guided her inside with a gentle hip
check. Candace scrambled inside and away from his touch, throwing her body back
against the seat, folding her arms across her chest.

“I’ll have someone pick up your
car. Put it in the station lot.”

“Sure. Humiliate me some more.” She
wouldn’t look at him, and despite the now lowering light, he could see her
bottom lip tremble before she took it between her teeth. There was the
vulnerable Candace.

“It’ll be safe there.” He’d gone
from seeing victory in his grasp to feeling like a total shit.

“Park it behind my store.” A hint
of a plea added to his crappy feeling. He wanted her to beg, but not this way.

“We’ll see.”
 
Reese didn’t like to bend at all, especially
when dealing with the woman who’d led him a merry dance since his return. Maybe
she had good cause to be pissed with him, but she’d never given him the
opportunity to explain. Ignored his letters, and more recently, every overture
he made, while taking her needs down the road.

Shutting the door, he strode back
to the Bimmer to retrieve her purse, and noted the piece of luggage in the
back. He grabbed it, too, and also the piece of material women wore over their
shoulders to ward off a chill. As he approached his car, Candace ducked her
head, and he could literally feel her shields going up. Well, he’d made the
mistake once of walking away from her once. A quick learner, he wouldn’t make
another.

Chapter Two

Candy watched Reese saunter back to
the cruiser, his tall, broad frame silhouetted against the lowering sun. She
couldn’t make out his features, but the effect of the Stetson-like hat crowning
his head, and the swivel of his lean hips, brought to mind the quintessential
cowboy. Which he had been, a ranch hand after school and on weekends before he
went and signed up to put his ass in danger a world away.
From
her.
He’d filled out some, packed on more muscle, but she suspected he’d
feel much the same, under his clothes. She had an earlier body memory of his
strong form, one that filled her dreams at night more often than she’d admit.

She didn’t need to see his face.
Every nuance, every beloved jut and dip of bone and those chiseled lips were
emblazoned like some computer chip stored deep in her brain. He’d matured, was
now a full grown man, but he was still her Reece.

No, not hers, if
he ever had been.
She borrowed from her father’s credo of not
remembering or thinking about things that cut to the bone, and honed it, rarely
bringing up that memory once she accepted Reese had left her.
A brief note, two lines.
I’m
doing the right thing. Love you.
Torn from a cheap pad, a
mere scrap of paper.

Not even a signature.
Could have been from anyone, except she’d recognized the heavy,
slashing penmanship.
He’d fucked her over—literally—and taken off the
day after he graduated. She’d had to learn the details from his loser friends,
and that summer and the remaining year of high school then devolved into an
endless party circuit. Sinclair had been her rock during that time, as Candy
used anything at her disposal to cure her broken heart.
Pah
, bruised pride more like it.
Bruised the way her pride would be
when she called her daddy from the single holding cell Barrister boasted,
although her father would probably mete out some additional punishment.

It didn’t matter if what Reese had
done was legal or not. She’d heard he took his job seriously, and he’d followed
through with his promise to incarcerate her if he caught her “driving with
careless disregard for her safety and that of others”.

Okay, she’d own that. She was a big
girl and accepted responsibility.
You
didn’t really think he’d do it though.

Whatever.
The other charges were ludicrous, tacked on to drive his point home, because
she wasn’t going to dwell on that insane chemistry that sparked when he’d
manhandled
her—and wasn’t that something
the way she’d reacted to a cave man tactic? Even the mention of her father
hadn’t totally cooled her jets. She’d probably backed into his flashlight,
although
Maglites
didn’t
pulse
. Covertly touching her wrists, she squinted against the way
her pulse had spiked when those cuffs had tightened around them, being at his
not-so-tender mercy.

Nuts. She was certifiable and
needed to remember what he’d done and how it had messed her up. Candy Grant
wasn’t anybody’s fool, and no way was she going to let Reese Murdoch shame her
again.

He swung into the front seat, and
she kept her head down, dreading the humiliation awaiting her at the small
station. She could handle Cory and Jason, two grades behind her in high school,
but if Laverne was still working … well, the grapevine would blister tonight.
The woman had nothing more to live for than gossip. Considering how hard Candy
had worked on cleaning up her image, taking her interests further afield and
acting the respectable businessperson, this was going to be a considerable
blow.

Reese used his cell rather than the
radio to contact Cory, the action somewhat curious, but she was too miserable
to care. When she heard him tell the other man to park her baby behind the
store, she was marginally relieved, and sank back into the seat cushion. There
was a myriad of conflicting aromas in the confines of the car, and she breathed
shallowly.

“Nothing to say,
sweetheart?”
His deep voice washed over her despite her determination
not to accept any overture. She decided to take the fifth, and then realized he
hadn’t read her those rights she heard all the cops say on television.

“I want a lawyer.”

“You don’t need legal counsel,
Candace.”

Was that amusement in his tone?

“You didn’t read me my rights.”

Laughter filled the vehicle,
Reese’s unmistakable guffaws taking her back in time, something she struggled
against.
So not going there.
Not remembering how
they’d laughed at the same things and believed in many of the same causes. He’d
been far more mature than she had been, with different life experiences, but
never treated her with anything other than respect and apparent interest.
And showed you that interest
in inimitable style.
No one
else has measured up.

“I guess being the Sheriff gives me
some latitude.”

What did that mean? Her stomach
rolled and fluttered. She hadn’t been this close to Reese since before he’d
walked on her, if she didn’t count the time he’d stopped by her boutique on the
pretext of introducing himself as the new law enforcement. She’d heard he was
back and desperately wanted to see him, yet avoided him, then badly wished to
get the inevitable contact over with so she could set the parameters and
pretend he was just the Sheriff.

He’d given off a hostile vibe,
overlaid with lust—making no secret of his need. She was experienced enough to
know he wanted her, probably thinking to pick up where he’d left off, and the
battle she’d fought with herself had been incredibly tough. But in the end, her
brain had won, and she’d treated him like the man he’d turned out to be.
 

A burgeoning smile tugged at her
lips when she remembered how she’d written a check and presented it to him with
a flourish in front of two customers who conveniently entered the shop.
Her donation to the Neighborhood Watch fund or some such thing,
unsolicited, and far more effective because of it.
It had put him at a
decided disadvantage, as evidenced by the way those cat green eyes had iced
over before sparking with annoyance. Public servant out soliciting donations
put in his place, and the gap between them underlined and dredged deep.
Funny how it hadn’t felt so fine afterward.

Her smile faded and died. She had
acted like a petty, rich girl.

The vehicle slowed and turned off
onto a side road, just short of town. In the gathering dusk, she could make out
the paucity of houses along this stretch, and remembered Reese used to live on
this side of town.

Wrong side of the tracks, Candy.
People like us don’t dally with them.
Her
daddy’s snobbish comment popped into her head and suffused her with shame.
Although she hadn’t been like that back then. And her father’s accusation that
she “dallied” with Reese and his friends to annoy him had been unfounded,
although she hadn’t minded the spin off. But why was the Sheriff driving here?

She wasn’t going to ask. Probably
he needed to pick something up on the way to the station or something. The less
they spoke the easier it would be to keep her distance, although it wasn’t
working out real well. Witness her present predicament.

They pulled up in front of his old
house, and she barely recognized it as the worn clapboard structure she
recalled. The picket fence was obviously in good repair and shone white in the
reflection of the headlights. Those same lights swept over new siding and
replaced windows, and she thought there had been some landscaping done.

Her scrutiny was interrupted when
Reese exited the cruiser, her suitcase and other belongings under one arm. He
hesitated by her door before striding off, passing through the gate and up the
walkway to the house. His head dipped for a moment, and then a dark opening loomed
in the façade of the house. He’d opened the front door and was putting her
things inside. A strange, flickering sensation settled in her belly and flooded
downward. He had brought her to his
home
.
Lord, she didn’t understand, and yet she did.

Frozen in place in the backseat of
the aromatic cruiser car, Candy swallowed with a suddenly dry mouth, watching
him backtrack toward her, mesmerized like some small prey in the shadow of a
predator. She was no stranger to dominant men, having explored her sexuality at
certain clubs and parties she hadn’t even told Sinclair about, and discovered
how much she liked those large and in charge. It was a relief to turn herself
over sexually to someone in a safe, controlled situation. Not hardcore BDSM or
anything, but something to finally rein in all those self destructive
tendencies she’d acquired, when the man approaching had ripped her heart out of
her chest and trampled on it. But most of all had shit on the hope he’d
created.

The car door creaked open beneath
his hand, and the cooler night air wafted in to mitigate the smells in the car.
Heart pounding, she worked hard at looking calm and controlled, giving him what
she sincerely hoped was an aloof, inquiring look.

“C’mon, darlin’.
Out you get.”

“Why are we here?” Did her voice
quiver?
Damn.

“Out of the car,
Candace.”
He was the only one to call her by her full name, except when
her father was extremely annoyed with her, and being addressed that way by
either man created a tinge of anxiety, if of two very different types.

When she hesitated, Reese grasped
her bicep with a lightning quick gesture, and hauled her out. It could have
been a painful experience, except he took her weight with his other arm around
her waist, hauling her up against him. The buttons of his uniform shirt pressed
into her skin like tiny brands, and she could feel his steady breathing—and
what was definitely not his Maglite poking against her belly.