The car was jerked sideways as the tires lost precious traction. Fighting the steering wheel, Sheila finally managed to straighten the vehicle when another hard nudge from the back nearly had her crashing into the guardrail protecting motorists from the deep, still waters that ran alongside the road in that area.
She could feel the terror lashing at her. There were alligators in that water. They’d been driven into the area after the last tropical storms had swept through. As though they were tired of playing in the Everglades and decided to come to Texas and play there instead.
And Sheila was terrified of them.
“Casey!” she gasped as she finally sped past that danger, only to have the next heavy nudge throw the car onto the wide graveled shoulder of the road before she managed to fight the car back onto the blacktop.
The headlights stayed behind her. No matter how hard she tried, how fast she went.
“I can’t take much more!” she screamed as the next nudge nearly jerked the steering wheel out of her hand. “Casey, where are you?” she cried out desperately.
“I’m coming, baby. We’re passing Gator Bay. I’m almost there.”
“Oh God.” She pressed the gas harder.
The truck was trying to come around her.
She was afraid of what that meant, terrified of allowing the huge vehicle to come around her. It had been years since Casey had taught her the defensive driving techniques, and then, they hadn’t had someone actually trying to knock them off the road.
“Casey, I can’t keep him behind me,” she said, feeling the tears, the terror threatening to choke her. “Oh God, Casey, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand. Casey, I’m so sorry—”
“Sheila, don’t you dare let that bastard win.” Casey felt his guts clenching with pure, unimagined terror as he pushed the truck as hard as he dared, speeding around the curves at a speed he had never dared before as he raced to get to her.
Beside him, Turk grabbed hold of the handgrip above him and continued to report through the Bluetooth he wore to Cooper and the others behind them.
Casey and Turk had managed to tear out of the bar well ahead of the others when the call had come through.
He heard her scream again, then swore insanity was only seconds away as he heard the horrifying explosion of a weapon and Sheila’s agonized scream of his name as glass shattered around her.
“Fuck! Fuck! Sheila!” He was screaming her name as he pushed the truck harder, his foot landing heavily on the gas and sending the truck careening around the curves. He listened to Turk yelling out a report to Cooper as he jerked the Glock from the holster beneath the jacket he wore and checked the clip despite the wild ride Casey had him on.
“Sheila!” Casey screamed her name again as he heard an impact and the sound of what he knew was the driver’s side air bag inflating. “Sheila.
Answer
me, damn you. You will not leave me like this. I won’t let you.”
She wasn’t answering.
Casey felt such an insane rage overcoming him that he didn’t know if he could control it. God help whoever, whatever had struck out at her. If she was harmed, if anything had happened to her, the pain he would deal out to the culprit once he found him would be unimaginable. No mercy.
“I have her.” Mechanical, cold, the voice came over the line. “The past has come to collect, and the future no longer has a defense. I have taken her, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
Casey heard the weapon cock as he slid around the curve to see the vehicles in the small clearing off the road just ahead.
A black-garbed, shadowed form took off running as Casey raced for the location.
He let it run.
The truck sped away just as Casey swung into the clearing and came to a bone-jarring stop next to Sheila’s car.
He was aware of Turk sliding over and the truck racing off after Sheila’s attacker as he jumped out and ran to the car.
The driver’s side door was open and his woman, his life, was slumped over the air bag, blood smearing the inflated pillow as he searched desperately for a sign of movement.
“God no! Sheila. Baby.” He was terrified to touch her, fear unlike anything he had ever known in his life gripped him, took him by the throat and strangled the sanity from him as he reached in for her.
Terrified of what he might see, Casey gripped her shoulders and eased her back carefully.
She was breathing.
Tears, honest to God moisture that hadn’t touched his eyes in longer than he could remember, as her eyes slowly blinked open and he watched her take a shaky, confused breath.
“Casey.” The tears she held back slowly fell from her dazed, confused eyes as he lifted her from the car only to collapse to the ground beside it as he held her tight to his chest.
His head bent over hers as he shook, trembled, and felt the first rivulet of saltwater ease from one eye to her hair as he rocked her, held her, and let himself believe she was alive.
“No more games.” Ragged, torn, he whispered the words against her ear as he let his head lower further against her. “No more games, baby. I love you. I love you clear to my soul and beyond, Sheila. Oh God, baby.” His hands stroked over her, and he found himself terrified that feeling her alive and breathing against him was only a dream. “Sweet, sweet Sheila. How I love you.”
“What? Casey. What?” She forced him to pull back, to lift his head as she stared back at him blinking, her gaze confused, filled with disbelief. “Me?” She shook her head, clearly confused. “But why?”
He touched her face, desperate to feel her warmth, to feel her alive. “Why do I love you?” he laughed raggedly, cherishing her tears, her confusion, even her disbelief. Cherishing her and the fact that he could hold her, that she was in his arms where he intended to keep her. Safe, as he intended to ensure she stayed. “Because you make me warm in a place where I think I’ve been cold all my life, Sheila. Because the first day I saw you, I began to live. God help me, Sheila, because you’re my fucking life and I think I died listening to that bastard try to kill you.”
He framed her face with one hand, his thumb brushing over her tear-drenched lips as they parted in shock—and was that hope in her gaze?
“You love me?” Her hand gripped his wrist. “You love me?”
“With everything in my soul.”
Her lips trembled. The scratches on her face still seeped blood, tears still filled her eyes, and she was the most beautiful thing in the world to him.
“I’ve always loved you,” she whispered. “I thought I’d never see you again, Casey,” she suddenly sobbed. “I thought I’d never get to tell you I love you. That I didn’t understand until I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, that the only reason was because you loved me.” Her breathing hitched as his lips touched her. “I wanted to tell you, and then there was glass exploding around me.”
He laid his finger against her lips. The horror of hearing that gunshot would live in his nightmares the rest of his life.
“I have you,” he swore. “I have you, Sheila, and I’ll never let you go. That son of a bitch will never get the chance to touch you again.”
Because Casey was determined to kill him.
His lips touched hers. Tears, a hint of blood, and the overwhelming knowledge of love filled his senses as her lips parted for him, her hands moving to his neck, his hair, as her lips met his.
“I love you,” he swore again before he kissed her deeply, licked her, tasted her. He let the knowledge that she was alive seep inside him. Let the truth of it wrap around him.
Because Casey knew, he couldn’t have survived otherwise.
THIRTEEN
One week later
Ross Mason was led from his hotel room in Corpus Christi in handcuffs.
Once, years before, he might have been a handsome man, the man Sheila Rutledge had once believed she loved, though it was rather doubtful.
A weak chin, plain brown eyes, shaggy hair, and a plump midsection—it was hard to imagine he had ever drawn the gaze of a woman as lovely as Miss Rutledge.
Though, perhaps her once-deep shyness and the loss of her mother had caused her to look beyond the surface to that weakness beneath and unconsciously believe he would be the one who would not leave her, would not betray her.
That had nothing to do with looks. Betrayal came in all shapes, sizes, races, and creeds. Betrayal came when one least expected it, when one could be destroyed by it the most.
It was a lesson that only the strong survived.
Miss Rutledge had survived that lesson and lived to find a man who might or might not know honor. Who seemed to understand it, live by it.
There was no doubt now Nick Casey wasn’t Beauregard Fredrico.
Beau knew nothing of trust, honor, or true love. He knew nothing of holding a woman tight or of risking his own life to save hers, as Nick Casey had done.
No, Nick was not Beau.
The call had not been made before Ross Mason had been revealed as the attempted murderer of the young and lovely Miss Rutledge. There had been no reinforcements called out, no waiting army of loyal men willing to give their lives for the one their fathers had pledged to defend. And those sons would readily pick up arms now and travel across the seas if it meant the heir to the past would return and retake the legacy that had been meant to be his.
The past was truly dead and gone, though. There was no way to convince those men that there was no way to resurrect that past, that glory, or that wealth.
Not that the Fredricos had understood the business anyway.
Giovanni Fredrico, once known as Gio the Giant, hadn’t ruled the families as he should have. There had been no blood shed for infractions, just as the whores had not been punished when they fell in love and defected, and the drug dealers had not been murdered, painfully, when they stole the product that was the lifeblood of the organization that had once ruled with a steel fist.
Once, before Giovanni had taken the mantle of leadership.
Once, before his son Beauregard had turned his nose up at the legacy that he had been honor bound to claim.
The bastard.
A fist clenched, jaw tightened, and the familiar rage began to burn like a wildfire within a chest that had been ripped open, the very heart extracted so long ago.
No, Nick Casey was no Beauregard.
That suspicion had been there before Sheila had left the bar the night Ross Mason had followed her.
It was the reason only Ross had been following at first.
Realizing there was trouble following Miss Rutledge hadn’t been easy. Diverting suspicion had been even harder.
Casey had nearly caught sight of the shadowed figure moving through the darkness to take the pictures needed.
The one of Ross Mason pointing that gun at the girl’s head just seconds after firing into the car and causing the wreck would be a haunting memory.
But it was over now. The authorities had the pictures that proved Ross had been behind the assault on the woman Nick Casey now guarded so diligently.
Not that she seemed to mind. There was a smile on her face that hadn’t been there before, and a joy and youth to her that would stay with her for many years to come. Because the man she loved, the man who loved her, refused to let her out of his sight.
Just as Ethan Cooper loved his Sarah, Nick Casey loved his Sheila.
That left three: Jake Murphy, Iron Donovan, and Turk Rogan.
A weary sigh filled the inside of the truck that held the eyes of the past. A tired, disillusioned sigh. It wasn’t over yet. Not yet.
And there could be no peace until it was.
FOURTEEN
There was a heat surrounding him that Casey knew he would never escape. One he never wanted to escape.
As he lay with the woman he loved more than life itself and pulled his lips from the kiss that was pulling him headlong into a complete meltdown, he realized how he was looking forward to that final surrender to her.
Until then— He looked down at her kiss-swollen lips, the drowsy sensuality in her gaze and her flushed cheeks, and he reminded himself that getting there was just as heated, just as incredible.
Beneath him, Sheila arched closer, her lithe, naked body twisting beneath his as the blunt, heavily engorged head of his dick prodded at the swollen lips of her pussy.
Slick silk. Damn, that was what her bare, satiny pussy felt like. Like the softest, hottest syrup saturating a silk so pure and fine it could only be made in paradise.
“Casey, please,” she whispered as his lips descended to her breasts. “Oh yes, lick my nipples.” She arched closer yet, whimpering as his lips closed over them and he let her feel a hint of his teeth. “Suck them,” she moaned. “Suck my nipples. Make me come.”
Taking one of the hardened tips between his lips, Casey sucked it hungrily, the taste of her, the passion that flowed from her, making him desperate for more as her fingers fisted in his hair to hold him closer.
That slick, wet silk surrounding the head of his cock, his hips moving as he ate at the tender tip of her nipple. Slowly, with precise gentleness, he began working his cock inside her, feeling the snug muscle and tissue as it parted beneath each slow, easy thrust.
Oh, God. It was like being buried, like being wrapped in pure, wild heat. Her juices eased between her flesh and his, another caress that made him ready to growl with pleasure. To snarl with the demand to come.
He’d be damned if he would let himself go that easily. If he would allow Sheila to go that easily.
He didn’t want to leave the hot, milking grasp of her pussy until he had no other choice. Pushing inside the liquid heat, slowly, working his cock inside the tender portal, he had to clench his teeth to keep from riding her hard and heavy and spilling his seed inside her.
His balls were drawn tight beneath the iron-hard shaft, his muscles locked tight against the ecstasy threatening to claim him.