Full Circle (10 page)

Meanwhile, work on her house had nearly halted because she was spending so much time helping Jack dismantle his place. She had a lifetime to finish her place, but she didn't think she had a lifetime with Jack. He hadn't said when he was leaving, but she suspected the time was coming. He'd been getting phones calls lately, and he always walked off to answer them. He hadn't made any lifelong promises to her, and Josie hadn't expected any. She would take what he had to offer as long as he was there to offer it. She had no illusions of permanence. Jack would tell her when their time was over.

Josie listened to her messages, taking down pertinent information she would need for follow-up calls. Jack had been gone for two months now. Several days after he left, she received a single phone message from him saying he would be back, but he was not specific about when.

Josie found out from the town gossip mills and the network news why he had left. Amos Rawlings, his grandfather, had collapsed on stage in Tulsa while pre-recording a religious sermon for broadcast throughout the south and mid-west on the following Sunday morning. Jack had not returned to Rawlings after the celebrity funeral services. He'd left another message for her, more hurried than the first, but again with no specifics about his return. Another week went by, and the international news covered the story of fifteen hostages taken from an American cruise ship by Somali pirates. Several weeks later, the U.S. Navy SEALs implemented a rescue. She was concerned and worried when they reported that two members of the SEAL team were seriously injured. Still, there was no word from him.

Meanwhile, daily life went on. Josie was gradually turning over the reins of the sheriff's department to Sheriff Charles Malone. She had eventually agreed to stay with the department a little longer to help with the transition.

Alex's first day in court was positive even though Marcy Carter still refused to sign off her parental rights. Mrs. Foster, his child-advocate attorney, filed a termination of parental rights with the court, based on the long history of Marcy's alcohol and drug abuse and criminal charges. Technically, Alex was petitioning for the termination of parental rights. Unfortunately, Marcy's refusal would tie them up in court for a while. A Family Court Judge would make the final decision based on psychological evaluations and reports from social services, but it could be a long and tedious process. If they granted the termination, Josie could file for adoption. Meanwhile, the court was agreeable to her retaining foster-parent custody.

Josie had gone back to peeling wallpaper off her walls, sanding floors and continually learning how to be a Mom to a boy who had recently turned twelve. Her days were full and busy, but her nights were long and empty. She told herself that missing Jack was silly. He had never spent the night with her, at least not in her bed. What they had was sex, fantastic sex, but nothing more. It had been only a physical relationship, and she'd known from the beginning that Jack was a Navy lifer. But when she fell asleep in the early morning hours, she dreamed of her time spent with him, those fleeting hours when she had felt secure and wanted.

After she'd given up on the idea that he would return, one day she picked up her phone to discover him on the other end. Blunt and brief, he merely said, "I'm on my way back to you," and the bastard hung up!

Josie was furious—no… she was so far past furious, she was seething. She vowed revenge, but it was hard to plot revenge when all she wanted was to see him, touch him and make love to him. After she did all that, she was going to kick his ass!

Josie and Charles Malone dripped their way down the sidewalk and back to the Sheriff's Office eliciting laughter and smiles from everyone on the sidewalks. They walked through the door of the office to the surprised faces of the Deputy on duty and the dispatcher, Georgina Snyder.

Georgina let out a loud, raucous bark of laughter. "What happened? You two look like you were attacked by a giant cupcake!"

"We were," laughed Josie. "Linda Riggs and Lily Cummings got into a fight at the Rite-Food bakery. They were still going at it when we tried to break it up. We got hit with their weapons of cake icings and puddings. We got the manager to agree not to file charges if they cleaned up the mess and paid for the ruined goods."

"What started the fight?" Georgina asked, pulling out a roll of paper towels from a desk drawer and handing them over.

"Linda Riggs' almost ex-husband, Wade, asked Lily out on a date. Lily said she was going to accept. Linda got a bit bent out of shape over it and accused Lily of breaking up her marriage," Josie explained.

Georgina shook her head in disgust. "I warned Linda not to kick Wade to the curb yet, but she wouldn't listen. She can't claim she didn't know this was coming because I told her Wade wasn't going to waste any time tom-catting around."

"Wait, didn't she already catch Wade with another woman?" Josie asked, wiping pink icing from her uniform.

"Yeah, but I told her that was her fault too," Georgina complained. "It was her idea to have Wade's plumbing fixed. I told her to get her plumbing fixed because doing that to a man is giving him a free pass to screw around. I know how them ol' boys like Wade think. I've got four stupid, redneck brothers. If they can't get a woman knocked up, they think it doesn't count, and they're not going to get caught. Wade always was about as smart as a dead stump."

Charles wadded up the dirty paper towels. "From what I heard, Linda caught Wade with the other woman down at the motel. Considering we only have one motel in town, parking your truck in the lot to meet up with some gal that you're not married to—well that's plain stupid. Especially when you've got the only truck painted green camouflage in town."

Josie laughed as the new Sheriff dispensed his share of the latest gossip. "Thanks, Georgina, but these aren't going to do the job. Charles, I'm heading home to clean up, and I suggest you do the same. I seriously doubt anything more exciting is going to happen today. I haven't been in a food fight since the fourth grade, and since I got detention for two weeks and had to clean up the cafeteria, I think Linda and Lily got off lighter than I did."

Josie was in the shower washing the last of the pink and green icing out of her hair when she heard the doorbell's Westminster chimes go off. She quickly wrapped her hair in a towel, grabbed a robe and ran down the stairs. She opened the door and slammed it shut hard.

The door opened, and Jack Rawlings came sauntering in with a grin on his face and a gleam in his eye.

"Get the hell out of my house!" Josie yelled.

"Now, Josie," Jack said, advancing on her.

"Don't you 'now, Josie,' me, you goddamn asshole," Josie shouted furiously. "Two months, Jack! Two goddamn months! All I got in two months were three friggin' messages!"

"I wasn't supposed to make two of those," Jack admitted. "You were undercover, Josie. You had clearances, and you know the rules."

"You couldn't have told me your Grandfather died, Jack? Was that Top Secret? You couldn't have told me your team was activated? Or, was it that you didn't want to tell me?" Josie yelled. "Get the hell out of my house! Go back to your damned SEAL team."

"I can't," Jack said. "I have been officially detached and decommissioned. I've come home this time for good. I'm a civilian."

Josie turned her back on Jack, and as he tried to put his arms around her, she elbowed him in the ribs, caught him behind the foot and gave him a shove to the floor. "Ask me if I care, you big-headed asshole!" She jerked away from him as he tried to get up, but he grabbed the back of her robe to hold her in place. She defiantly shrugged out of the robe and stormed up the stairs naked. "Get the hell out of my house or I'll shoot you as an intruder!"

Jack sat on the floor with a handful of white terrycloth robe and a wide grin on his face. He got to his feet and followed that gorgeous naked body up the stairs. The bathroom door was locked, but he figured she would have to come out eventually, so he settled down to wait.

Josie went back into the shower and stayed there until she was semi-calm. She was not going to let Jack Rawlings walk back into her life again. She would not! The son of a bitch—she would arrest him for trespassing! She'd need backup for that. Where was her phone? Crap, she'd left it in her uniform shirt pocket. She peered around the edge of the door and saw no sign of Jack, but the second she stepped out his arms were around her.

"Let me go!" Josie screamed.

"Not until you calm down," Jack said patiently.

"I'm not going to calm down, you ego-driven jackass!"

"Yes, you are," Jack said, tightening his grip. "You need to listen."

"I need to kick your ass!" Josie snarled, and she bit him on the arm, hard.

"Ouch! Damn-it! Okay, you want to play it that way, I can play rougher. I'm stronger, better trained and a hell of a lot meaner than you are, Josie Raintree," Jack said testily. He swept her off her feet, carried her to the edge of the bed, tossed her face down on the mattress and sat down beside her. He swung one of his strong legs over her back, effectively pinning her to the mattress. He yanked the towel away and laid down a hard spank to her ass.

Josie screamed in fury. Swearing, she tried to kick and claw her way free. Her training was good, but Jack had over a hundred pounds of pure muscle and weight on her. Her lower half was trapped, and it took him only a few seconds to secure her arms behind her back. He pinned her wrists in one strong hand as he applied a lesson of anger management to her butt with the other.

Josie was in shock that he was actually spanking her, and mad as a hornet at her stupidity in thinking he had given up after she came upstairs. She clamped her jaws shut. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing he was hurting her! He
was
hurting her! Each smack to her bare bottom was leaving a burning trail of throbbing pain, and where he might have held back when she was a youngster, he was not holding back now.

She fisted her hands and gritted her teeth, but the pain intensified with each hard smack. She didn't know when she started squirming, and she didn't know when the tears started or when the sobs broke through her fury. All she knew was that her butt was on fire, and she was beyond caring about being tough. At some point, she started pleading him to stop. "Stop, Jack, please stop!"

Jack, however, never started anything that he didn't intend to finish. He reddened her bottom considerably, but still concentrated several more hard stinging smacks to her beautifully shaped buttocks, each one eliciting another cry and a sob.

When he released her, he grabbed several of those large pillows she called 'decorative,' bunched them up behind his back, and pulled her up onto his chest letting her cry out her frustration. When her sobs settled down to an occasional sniff and hiccup, he drew her up and kissed her.

"Are you ready to let me talk to you now?"

"No!" Josie exclaimed trying to roll away, but he held her firmly to his side.

"Damn it, Hellion, you nearly took a chunk out of me. Look at those teeth marks!" Jack complained.

"Good, you deserved it!" Josie snapped, but she blinked and swallowed when she saw blood seeping through his skin.

"Quit fighting me, Josie," Jack said firmly. "Now, you either calm down and listen or I'm going to figure you haven't learned a lesson yet and start spanking the fire out of you again!

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you, couldn't warn you," Jack said bluntly. "This last mission was complicated and dangerous. I don't mind dealing with military missions, at the very least we can calculate and approximate what can or could go wrong. But when you're dealing with idiots who think an assault rifle is power and have no concept of human dignity or the value of life, it's a whole different kind of mission.