Today there were four yearlings in there as well.
“You can’t be serious,” Ned said as he stood next to her looking into the paddock. “Do you even know anything about training a yearling under saddle?”
“No,” Mia said. “How hard can it be?”
Ned made a snorting noise that Mia thought sounded remarkably like his palomino. In the three weeks since Ben Bryant had died at the farm with a crossbow arrow embedded in his back, two more labor rings had been uncovered and their workers rescued.
“When’s Jack due back?”
“Tonight.”
“I can’t believe he had to leave…right when things were, you know, heating up.”
Mia gave Ned a sideways look.
“Very coy,” she said. “We haven’t done it, if that’s what you mean. And you know why.”
The very night that everything came down at Shakerag, Jack had received a frantic call from his mother that he was needed in Valdosta. His brother had died suddenly. Mia still couldn’t believe they were being put off yet again. Jack drove her to Jess’s house, kissed her deeply and told her he’d be back as fast as he could.
Three weeks ago.
“And did you tell me that Maria agreed to testify after all?” Ned said, squinting into the sun as it dropped from the winter sky.
“She did. Thanks to her Jamie will serve hard time for solicitation and sex trafficking. Maxwell says Dinsmore will stand trial with Joe Don for the murder of José, Mark Johnson, and his own man, Julio.”
“I like it when the bad guys are made to suck it,” Ned said, making a face.
“We still haven’t found Lorna, yet,” Mia said, her brow furrowed in a frown as she gazed out over the yearlings. “Nor José’s sister, either.”
“Yeah, but there are plenty of other things to celebrate.”
“That’s what Jack says. Accentuate the positive. I’m trying.”
“I like that one,” Ned said, pointing out a thoroughbred cross with a blaze across his nose. “Reminds me of Shiloh.”
It still hurt to think about Shiloh. Even now, as happy as she was, she felt the immediate threat of tears when anyone mentioned his name.
“I’ll never have another one as good,” she said.
“Probably not. Are you sure you don’t want one already made? You didn’t train Shiloh, did you?”
“I think we kind of trained each other.”
“Are we still talking about horses?”
Mia grinned and turned to him. “Stop that. Jack and I are one very complicated work in progress. Even falling into bed—if we ever finally get around to that—will likely not solve a tenth of the stuff that drives us crazy about each other.”
Ned looked over her shoulder at the parking lot where someone was trying to load a horse in a trailer just as Mia’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her jeans pocket and looked at the screen.
“Oh! It’s him.”
Ned put a hand on her phone. “Whoa, girl,” he said. “Give it a couple of rings, for crap’s sake.”
“Really?” Mia looked at Ned and then back at the phone. “Are you sure?”
“I happen to know a little bit about what men like, sugar, and trust me, you need to let him work for it a little.”
She frowned and watched her screen. Ned leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Wait until I’m nearly to my car then you can pick up. If he hangs up before then, promise me you won’t call him back.”
“I hate playing games.”
“Yeah, we all do. Promise me.”
“He hung up.” She looked at him with dismay and he laughed and jumped down from the fence.
“He’ll call back,” he said over his shoulder. “And remember, don’t buy anything until you talk to me first.”
“Yes, yes,” Mia said, as the her phone started ringing again.
Two… three… four rings.
“Hey there,” she said into the phone. “Are you back yet?”
“No, I’m still in Valdosta.”
Mia’s heart sank. “How’s your mother doing?” She and Jack talked every night since he’d been gone but it was possible the woman had taken a turn for the worse.
“She’s good for now. There are a few other things going on.”
When he didn’t elaborate Mia felt a kernel of anxiety in her stomach. She cleared her throat. “You heard that Maria is going to testify?” she asked.
“You told me a couple days ago.”
“Oh, right.”
There was a beat between them and an awkwardness wiggled its way in.
“What did I catch you doing?” he asked.
“Looking at horses.”
“To buy?”
“Maybe. Though I’m broke so I’m not sure why I’m even looking. Mom says I need to find a job and I guess that’s really a no-brainer. I’m sorry I’m babbling.”
He laughed and she basked in the warmth of the sound but it just made her miss him all the more. Their phone conversations since he’d been gone needed the whole picture to go with the audio. Without the image of how his eyes crinkled up when he laughed, or his full lips stretched into a grin, it just wasn’t the same.
“Well, I might be able to help on that score.”
“Gonna buy me a pony, mister?” she said teasingly.
“I want to make this thing official,” he said.
“Gosh, Jack, we haven’t even had a real first date yet.”
“I’m talking about our living arrangement. I’ve been at your place three weeks. Six if you count the three weeks I’ve been in Valdosta.”
“I’m listening.”
“I want to pay rent. You need the money and I need a place to stay.”
“You want us to live together? Like roommates?”
“Think of it as Sherlock and Watson.”
“So, no sex?”
He burst out laughing. “Our new living arrangement absolutely would not negate the possibility of sex,” he said, his voice warm and sexy in her ear.
“I’ll be sure and put that in the renters contract,” she said with a laugh. “When can you move your stuff in?” She jumped down from the fence and began walking back to her car.
“I have no stuff.”
“That works, too. And you’ll cook for me, of course.”
“My specialty is breakfast in bed.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Her phone vibrated and she saw she was getting another call. “Hold on, Jack,” she said. “Liz is calling me.”
“The woman’s relentless,” Jack remarked.
“I’m putting you on hold. Don’t go anywhere.” She punched in Liz’s number.
“Hey, Liz,” Mia said.
“I know you told me you already found your Maria,” Liz said without preamble, “but on the off chance you were speaking metaphorically…I have a girl here I think you’re going to want to meet.”
Mia stopped walking. She kept her voice calm. “How so?” she said.
“She was one of the ones rescued on the second ring bust. Did you hear about that one? It just went down. But the point is this girl, whose name is Maria, says she had a brother, named José who she now knows was murdered and whom she’s identified from a photo.”
Mia’s eyes widened.
“She wants very much to talk to you and Jack, Mia. Stands to reason. You two are the last ones who saw her brother alive. Can I give her your number?”
“Yes! Yes, absolutely, yes,” Mia said, recovering herself. “Okay then, good,” Liz said, “because I already did. And I’m going to see you Monday afternoon, right?”
“Yes, yes, Monday afternoon.” Mia hung up and reconnected with Jack. “Omigosh, Jack. We found Maria.”
“But I though the Maria we know isn’t—”
“It’s a new Maria! José’s Maria. She was rescued in the last sting. She wants to meet us.”
“I’ll be damned. We found Maria.”
“We did. We really did.” Mia looked out over the pasture of th
e peacefully grazing herd and a broad grin spread across her face.
“That’s amazing, Mia. Really ties a bow on the whole case. That’s great.”
Mia dragged her attention away from the pasture. She knew Jack well enough and long enough to know when he was faking it.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s happening with you?”
“What? Nothing. Are you kidding? I’m thrilled about finding Maria. You know that.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Jack. Something’s going on. Why aren’t you coming back yet?”
Jack sighed heavily. “It’s nothing,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you this in person.”
“Tell me what in person?” Mia stiffened and felt her fingertips tingle in apprehension.
“I have a little situation down here, is all. And it’s just taking me longer than I thought to wrap it up.”
“Jack, if you don’t start telling me facts and dates, right this minute, I’m hopping in my car and—”
“Okay, okay. God, that’s the last thing I need right now. As much as I’d love to see you,” he said hurriedly. He let out a long sigh. “Well, I guess there’s no easy way but to just come out with it.”
“I’m waiting,” Mia said, holding her breath in anticipation.
“Did I ever mention to you that I had a kid?”
Shameless
Copyright 2014
San Marco Press • Atlanta, GA
BREATHLESS
BOOK 3 of the Mia Kazmaroff Suspense Series
They hadn’t spoken in fifteen years but when their child is kidnapped, Sandy Gilstrap and Detective Jack Burton’s worlds collide with a resounding crash.
After a nasty divorce, an illegitimate child and twenty years working at a small south Georgia town nail salon, life was finally going Sandy Gilstrap’s way… until an indiscretion from her past crawled into her charmed new life—and threatened to destroy everything that mattered.
The day Detective Jack Burton discovers he’s a father is the same day his daughter is snatched on her way home from school.
Is it money the kidnapper wants or revenge? Can Jack find the girl before the kidnapper decides which it is? And can he do it before Mia loses patience with all Jack’s secrets and uses her “gift” to take matters into her own hands?
Breathless
Book 3
Susan Kiernan-Lewis
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter ONE
Jack studied the can of creamed corn in his hand. He glanced up the narrow aisle of canned goods in his mother’s neighborhood Piggly Wiggly, shrugged and dropped the can into his wire basket. It reminded him of the fact the French didn’t tend to use corn in their dishes, relegating vegetables to the class of “what livestock eat.”
But when he’d offered to cook one last dinner before he returned to Atlanta, his mother was insistent that creamed corn figure into it.
Just one more day…
It was a sure bet she wasn’t going to love the crevettes sauce boursin he was planning to make. Although if he called it “Jack’s Cheesy Crawfish,” she just might.
One more day and he’d be back home, back in the condo he shared with Mia Kazmaroff in Atlantic Station…and picking up where he left off in the very delicious new chapter the two of them were starting. He stood in the middle of the grocery store aisle as a long-playing repeat video spun in his head of Mia, her dark hair tossed back over her shoulders, her eyes mischievous and inviting, as she peeled her jeans down over her round, perfect—
The punch seemed to come from somewhere between the succotash and the French green beans and hit him square in the stomach. The pain shot up his chest and momentarily disabled his limbs. He dropped his basket and reached out for the shelving to steady himself when the second punch nailed him in the kidneys.
“Bastard! Think you can just come down here and do what you want…”
Jack’s ribs screaming in pain, he swiveled on the ball of one foot to face his attacker. Standing at least as big as his own six-four—when he wasn’t doubled over—the man held an aluminum baseball bat in his hands, his eyes glittering with malice.
“Who…?” Jack gasped, attempting to adopt a defensive stance. He heard a woman scream behind him.
“Do you know me now?” the man shouted, bringing the bat over his head with both hands.
Jack rammed his head into the guy’s midriff, bringing him down into the shelving. Cans rolled and bounced around them. The public address system blared: “The police have been called! I repeat, the police have been called.”
His assailant dropped the bat and the two men grappled and rolled across the floor, punches landing impotently across Jack’s back. His stomach still aching, Jack flipped the man facedown onto the floor. Jack’s knee went into the guy’s back and he grabbed his right hand and twisted it behind him.
“Let me up, you bastard,” the man said, breathing hard. “I swear I’ll kill you.”
“What’s your name, jackass?” Jack said, twisting the man’s wrist and prompting a squeal of pain from him.
“You know my name.”
“Fine. Tell it to the cops. I’ll find out when they book you.”
“I’m Sandy’s husband, you asswipe!”
Jack froze momentarily, then relaxed his grip on the man. “I’m going to let you up,” he said. “But if you come at me again, I’m going to break your arm. Understand?”
The man grunted and Jack stepped off him and backed away. The man got up, his face sullen and red as he leaned over to pick up the bat. Jack kicked it away.
He wasn’t going to ask what the man’s problem was or why he attacked him. If the guy was Sandy’s husband, Jack already had a pretty good idea why he wanted to kill him.
*****
The instructor was stocky, with a squat build and a no-nonsense buzz cut. He stood at the front of the class in the community center classroom, his hands held out as if in welcome. But Mia wasn’t fooled. From her spot on the front row, she could see several rampant nose hairs fighting for freedom from the instructor’s Irish pug nose. Mia tried not to look.
She’d originally found a nice comfy spot in the back row, but the instructor had moved her forward. Guess I’m the class idiot, she thought, trying to mimic his hand motions along with the rest of the class—twenty other people interested in mastering basic police self-defense moves.
“Chin na is the most powerful of all the Chinese martial arts moves used to control your opponents,” the instructor said in a nasal drawl. “There’s a reason why most police forces train their officers in this method as opposed to any other. Is it self-defense?”
There was a beat of silence and then a low-grade murmur of “Noooo,” that came from the rest of the class.
“That’s right. It’s not. If you want self-defense,” he said, walking over to where Mia stood and staring at her, “go take a women’s empowerment class.”
That got a ripple of laughter. Mia held his stare.
“Chin na is not for fending off attack,” he said loudly to the class, but speaking only to Mia. “It is for controlling your enemy.”
Is he talking about me? Mia forced herself not to blink.
“All right, sweetheart,” he said, holding out a hand to her. “Will you be our fir
st volunteer?”
Oh, this isn’t going to go well. She held out her hand. The minute he grabbed it, she confirmed what she already knew. He was a bully. He was angry. Mia got a quick sense of another woman. A hard woman, a taunting one—alcohol or maybe drugs involved somehow.
Shit….was it his mother?
Fighting her fear of public speaking and trying to ignore the anger her gift was receiving from him in record amounts, she let him position her in front of the room.
The instructor spun her around until she faced away from him. Mia looked over the heads of the people in the class, refusing to meet their stares. She felt the instructor place his hands on her arms from behind and she realized he’d been talking.
It didn’t matter. This was going to go down exactly as he wanted it to regardless of what Mia did. That much she knew.
“Your assailant comes at you from behind,” he said loudly into her ear. “You weren’t paying attention. You were not aware of your tactical environment. You were thinking something girly and stupid like what reality show you were going to watch or what shoes you wanted to buy and then suddenly, he was there.”
Mia felt his arms give a spasmodic jerk as he pulled her back against this chest. She fought the rising panic as his arms squeezed tighter around her. There’s no way anyone could get out of this! She began to wriggle and twist in his grip.
“Oh, he likes that!” the instructor said. “Oh, yes, sweetheart, the more you squirm, the better.”
Mia lifted her foot to ram it onto his instep but he shifted his hips to move her out of range.
“Most rapists like a little spirit in their victims,” the instructor said, “so you won’t upset them in the least by attempting to fight back.” The class laughed but when Mia brought her eyes down to look at them they wouldn’t meet hers.
The women in the class weren’t laughing.
“I give up,” Mia said.
The instructor released her. “That’s fine. But you just got raped.”
Complete Mia Kazmaroff Page 40