Irresistible Force (6 page)

Shay knew she should just agree with him, in the hope that he would leave. But then he’d have gotten everything his way. As usual. The heavy thumps of her heart weren’t just from fear. Anger spurred that pump, too. She’d just spent a miserable month fighting her own self-doubts and vulnerabilities. That was his fault. She just couldn’t let him get away with thinking he had bested her.

“Why were you seeing me if you had her?”

He looked a little annoyed. “Her daddy’s had me dancing a damn two-step courtship these last ten months. You were my no-strings revenge fuck.”

Shay didn’t even feel insulted by his crude remark. Instinct told her he’d come here to do more than gloat, and that’s where the danger lay.

She dropped the bag of oysters on the table and clutched her phone to her chest where he couldn’t miss noticing it. “You need to leave.”

His head jerked up, annoyance spoiling his good looks. “Now see. I’m asking you to understand my situation. But you won’t even try to understand. You’d rather jerk my chain.” He folded his arms casually across his chest. “Get this straight, Shay. I’m not leaving until I get what I came for.”

“You don’t get to make threats anymore.”

“Threats? I’m not threatening you.” His tone of voice ratcheted up to angry before he caught himself. He paused and unfolded his arms, his expression showing the strain of dialing back his temper.

He took another step toward her, his voice dropping in tone. “The truth is, Shay, I just can’t forget how you walked out on me. And called the cops on me. That wasn’t very nice. I need you to apologize.”

A spurt of anger made her brave. “Don’t hold your breath. We’re done.”

His face lost animation. All that was left was an icy glitter in his narrowing gaze as he approached her. “Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with? You don’t call the shots in this relationship.”

In that moment everything clicked into focus for Shay.
He’s going to hurt me. Really hurt me this time.

The thought shocked her so much she immediately shied away from it. Yet there was no avoiding his expression. She’d seen that look once before on a man’s face, and it had ruined her life.

Shay backed up, trying to avoid him as her finger pressed the emergency button. But he grabbed her wrist and wrenched the cell phone out of her hand then tossed it away before she could be certain the call had gone through.

Panicked by memories, she swung at him wildly, her fist connecting to his jaw with a force that snapped his head back.

“Shit!” He pushed her back so hard her body slammed into the cabin wall. Then he seized her shoulders and her head snapped back against the wall with a sickening thud.

“You stupid bitch!” He began shaking her with enough force to cause damage.

Panicked and unable to free herself, Shay gripped his biceps to steady herself and hung on. She had no family to protect her. No one ready to smack down the man hurting her. Eric knew that. No one would come to rescue her.

A whimper escaped her, drawing her deeper into remembered terror.

CHAPTER SIX

“Let’s haul ass!” James swung open the door and Bogart bounded into the passenger seat of his pickup.

What should have been a mere formality at the sheriff’s office had turned into an all-day marathon of waiting while the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department “checked” their facts in the matter. He suspected this was his chief’s way of expressing disapproval of the manner in which he had rescued Bogart. His unit leader was going to tear him a new one, too, when he got home. That didn’t matter. Bogart was back where he belonged.

As he tightened the seat harness especially designed for dogs, Bogart happily licked his face.

“Oh, now you want to make up.” James playfully pushed his muzzle away. “I don’t forget that easily, you turncoat. You chose the pretty girl over me.”

Bogart tilted his head to the side, black eyes regarding James with soulful interest. This meant, James knew, that Bogart was trying to figure out his partner’s state of mind.

For the year and a half they had been together James had been continually surprised by his dog’s intelligence. Bogart would often sense and size up a situation as quickly as he did, sometimes more quickly. Yet they were still figuring each other out. One veteran of the K-9 force had warned him that Bogart was his “learner dog.”

“It won’t be until you’re working with your second dog that you’ll feel as if you know what you’re doing most of the time.”

James stroked Bogart’s back, an action that was almost second nature when they were together. While he hadn’t liked to hear it, he was beginning to understand what the seasoned handler meant. For instance, he didn’t quite get why Bogart had sided with Shay Appleton, even after he appeared. Was it because he had sensed which of them was more in need of his support?

Or was his partner feeling abandoned and untrusting of the man who’d allowed his at-the-time girlfriend to give him away?

James winced as regret sucker-punched him. What the hell had he been thinking to let Jaylynn into their lives? He’d let her screw up everything.

No, he wasn’t going to think like that. He and Bogart just needed to get back to their routine and they’d both be fine.

James took his dog’s muzzle in his hand and wagged it. “Okay, you win this one. I might even have been tempted if Shay Appleton had looked at me the way she looks at you.” He scratched his partner behind the ears. “But that’s over now. ‘Prince’ has had his day. Bogart is a working stiff. We’re going home where we belong.”

The ringing of his cell phone caused him to pause before climbing into his truck.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hello, James. How are you, sweetheart?”

“Great. What’s up?”

His mother hesitated and James came instantly alert. His mother wasn’t the type to let small things bother her. Something was wrong. “I just wanted to remind you about Thanksgiving. It’s at my house this year.”

James frowned. “It’s always at your house, Mom. Thirty-something years.”

“That’s just it. Allyson has got it into her head that, as the eldest daughter, she should have it at her house this year. She said something about all the preparations being too much work for me.”

James had never thought about that. “Well, is it, Mom?”

“I’ll have you know I can hoist a twenty-pound turkey in each fist. I don’t go to the Y three times a week for nothing. I can certainly handle a meal for nine adults and two children. Of course, we’ll probably include a few last-minute people, too.”

James smiled. That sounded like Thanksgiving at the Cannon house. The numbers increased as the day drew closer. “So, great. I’ll have my feet under your table on Thanksgiving.”

There was a pause. “You won’t let Allyson change your mind? You know she’s not the best cook but she can be very persuasive about things she wants. She’s got almost three weeks to work on everyone.”

“Sic her sisters on her.”

“Yes. I could do that.” There was that hesitancy again.

“Is there something else on your mind, Mom?”

“I was just wondering how you’re doing, son. Alone.”

James frowned. “What’s with the sad tone, Mom? Given how you felt about Jaylynn, I thought you’d be jumping for joy that I’m single.” Before his mother could respond he glanced at Bogart. “Oh, great news, Mom! Bogart’s turned up. Just this morning.”

“Really? James, that’s just wonderful! A miracle. How did it happen?”

James gave her the quick, clean version of Shay having taken his partner in at a shelter in Raleigh and then him finding out about it. No point in laying out the whole shitty mess that involved Jaylynn’s part in Bogart’s disappearance.

“So, is he all right?”

James scrubbed Bogart hard behind the ears and he barked in response. “Hear that? He’s fine.”

“Okay. You be careful driving back to Charlotte. It’ll be dark out.”

James smiled. He was a cop. He carried a gun. His life involved the daily possibility of danger. Yet his mother worried about him driving a major highway after dark. “Sure thing, Mom. Love you.”

James hung up with a smile on his face. The family always ended every call with “I love you.” Only in his teens did he balk. A guy couldn’t say “love you” to his mother—forget his dad—if anyone else was around. But he’d always known he was loved, and surrounded by enough family to make a man sometimes wish he could hide out from them. But mostly it was just good to know that they would always have his back. Time to go home.

Yet once behind the wheel, James just sat without putting the key in the ignition. He couldn’t forget the look in Shay Appleton’s gaze as they walked away. She looked more than defeated, she looked abandoned.

The setting sun slanted down through the trees in the parking lot, highlighting the warm colors of the autumn leaves. The colors reminded him of her dappled gold and brown eyes. Those eyes held secrets he didn’t begin to understand but they moved him just the same. The look said she didn’t have options, or someone to back her up. And that resurrected an old and painful memory he thought he’d successfully buried.

It happened his first year on the job. A domestic-abuse call from a neighbor who’d heard a woman’s cries coming from the apartment next door.

He’d responded with his senior partner to find a young woman, plain and thin and wearing little more than a man’s shirt, and a bruise the size of a fist that had spread across her cheek to swell her eye shut. She wouldn’t let them in and wouldn’t answer any questions except to say that she had fallen over a toy and struck her face on the coffee table. There was a small child crying in the background. If there was a man behind that door, menacing her, they could only speculate.

His senior officer had tried everything to get her to open that door, cajoling her, offering to settle the crying child, to take her to the emergency room. She wouldn’t budge. But the gaze of fear and pain from her one good eye had branded James.

As they turned away, he’d been hot with frustration, calling his partner unfeeling.

His partner had waited until they were back in their squad car to speak. “You got emotionally involved. That’s not the job. If they don’t ask for our help, we can’t force them. If they say no, then you leave a card and walk away. They aren’t your problem anymore.”

His seasoned partner would repeat this speech several times in other vastly different circumstances his rookie year, but he never completely bought it. It didn’t help that, a few weeks later, they were called back to that same address to find a dead mother and child.

James massaged his brow in weariness. Shay Appleton didn’t want his help. She couldn’t have been clearer about that if she’d told him to eat dirt and die.

“You leave a card and walk away.”

His murmur drew a whimper of response from Bogart.

James shook his head as he gazed at his partner. “You don’t get a vote this time. You’ve become emotionally involved.”

He started the truck. He had become a good police officer. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to win a spot on the K-9 force after just three years on the force, the minimum. That required the hard-won ability to be unemotional in emotional situations. And to know when to step away from a situation when it didn’t call for his intervention. Shay Appleton wasn’t his problem by any stretch of the imagination. He was out of his jurisdiction. Hell, out of his emotional comfort zone. He had only one obligation at the moment, and that was to get back to Charlotte to square away the details of his actions so that he and Bogart could return to active duty.

Still, the sight of her standing on the porch as they drove away, clutching the railing as though without it she might collapse, made him feel like one cold bastard.

During the course of the day the deputy had offered his opinion of Shay being a “high-strung little gal.” Later the sheriff confided that Ms. Appleton had lived in the cabin for a time during her teens. Later, whenever she came up, which hadn’t been in more than three years, she always made calls about some nuisance or another. One year it was a supposed lurker. Another time a stray rock had been thrown through a window. When pressed for the reason for her fears, he ducked his head, saying only, “She’s city folk now. Crickets and such make ’em skittish.”

James sighed. Law enforcement officers, himself included, were often too jaded to see a stray rock thrown through a window as anything more than mischief. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that the sheriff, deputy, and Ms. Appleton weren’t being completely honest with him. Something lay just under the surface of the events of the day that none of them were willing to discuss.

Not that they should confide in him. After all,
he
had been the one to wage war on her doorstep. Besides, he had his own secret. He hadn’t told them about the stalker of the night before.

Because he didn’t want to be further involved.

James’s conscience jumped up to body-slam him. Ms. Appleton had handled his intrusion with more grace and courage than many a suspect he’d arrested. She didn’t seem the victim type. Nothing like that worn-out young mother, in too deep to crawl back to life before it was too late. Yet her wary gaze held the suspicion of someone who had been through something hard, and no longer trusted the world to be on her side. Did it have something to do with the man in the truck?

Something nudged the back of his mind. The fact that she’d seemed prepared for trouble. If not from him, then from something equally unpleasant. Yet that, too, was none of his business. She had Deputy Ward to watch over her.

Life was tough. He had his own problems.

He rolled down the windows for a breath of country air, put his truck in gear, and headed down the rural lane that led back past the lake to reach the highway. He didn’t need to pass Shay Appleton’s cabin to do that. He could have taken the shorter route.

Ten minutes later, when the cabin came into view through the trees, he could have swerved right and hit the tarmac and headed toward Interstate 85 and home. Instead, he stepped on the brake to roll past at a speed that barely registered on his odometer.