Caught by Surprise

by Deborah Smith

  “Shut up, yahoo,” Brig told him grimly. “I’m not English, I’m Australian, and don’t forget it. Watch your trap or I’ll sic the lady on you again.”

  The teenager groaned. “Anything but that, man.”

  “Make one wrong move,” Millie added, “and the Englishman will use another aborigine trick on you.”

  She looked at Brig while her chest swelled with affection and respect and something much more intense that, were she not a serious, practical, rough-and-tough deputy sheriff type, she would have called love.

  Three

  The car thief was wanted by the police in the neighboring county, and within an hour of his arrival at the Paradise Springs jail, officers from that county came and got him. By the time Brig cleaned up and changed into a dry set of jail whites, Millie had left for the day.

  Feeling disgruntled because she didn’t bother to say goodnight—after all, he had stopped that ape from drowning her—Brig sat on his bunk and stared out the window, remembering how she’d smiled at him.

  There had been many women in his life, not nearly as many as everyone thought, but nonetheless a lot, and the fact that he couldn’t settle down bothered him. Something had never clicked, something had always kept telling him to move on. Until now. Now an intuitive sense told him that he’d never find anyone else like Melisande Surprise.

  He felt both peaceful and restless, and groaned in dismay. This had to be love—he was as confused as a stunned mullet.

  The sound of someone coming down the hall made him look around. Charlie McGown was big, a human tractor with red hair and a paunch. His size and the accompanying strength it gave him were the only things that made him dangerous. He was as violent as a daisy.

  “Hi ya, Gowy, how’s it goin’?”

  Charlie grinned at him. “Raybo says from now on you can come and go as you please. Inside the jail, that is.” His huge hands fumbling with the small magnetic card, Charlie unlocked the door to Brig’s cell. “You earned some privileges after what you did for Millie today.”

  “Thanks, mate.”

  Brig went to a corner and got his guitar, then sat back down on the bunk.

  “Aren’t you comin’ out. Brig?”

  “Nah. I got a song to write. If I don’t get it out into the air, it’ll stick in my craw all night.”

  “Sounds like a bad case of indigestion to me.”

  Brig chuckled ruefully. Melisande Surprise was a lot worse than indigestion—she was disturbing all the way down to his bone marrow. After Charlie left, he leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and tried to sort out his emotions. Would writing a song make his heated feelings of disappointment and arousal fade away? Hell, no, he decided, but it was the best alternative he had.

  An hour later he had gotten the melody and most of the lyrics roughed out. Music had always come easily to him, even as a youngster. He’d honed his skills in rough outback pubs where his guitar was a handy weapon as well as a musical instrument. Because of those years he could concentrate on his music no matter where he was or what was going on around him.

  Millie heard his rich baritone voice as soon as she opened the door between the reception area and the cell block. She halted, charmed. His albums couldn’t capture the raw magic.

  “Wiiiild woman,” he sang heartily. “Tearin’ at my heart, tearin’ me apart, then you put me back together with a sweet look or two, watch your step, baby, cause I’m just as wild as you.”

  The challenge in his tone made her shiver. He was wild, and she was drawn to him like a tiger looking for a mate. But who was the inspiration for his lyrics? Not herself, certainly. Men didn’t write love songs about her kind of wildness. They wrote about the bedroom kind, not the kind that made a woman dive after car thieves in muddy ponds.

  Millie went to the cell door and looked in at him. He strummed his guitar and rested his head against the wall behind him, his eyes closed. What woman provoked such reverie? she wondered. The one back in Nashville? “Nice music,” she announced bluntly.

  “Melisande!” His exuberant shout nearly made her jump. She stepped back uncertainly as he leaped up and trotted to the door. He slid it open and stared at her happily, his blue eyes gleaming. “I’ve never seen you without your clothes on before!” She looked at him in consternation. “Without your uniform,” he corrected.

  Millie resisted the urge to shift from one foot to the other as he studied her white shirtwaist dress and white sandals. She’d chosen the outfit because it didn’t look provocative. She certainly didn’t want him to think that she was deliberately dressing up for him. But he was looking at her as if she were wearing a gown that was paper-thin and low-cut. Millie fanned her face with one hand. Damn the man—he made her overheat everytime she got around him.

  “I brought your dinner,” she told him. “It’s special, in honor of your help today.”

  Brig glanced eagerly at the medium-sized ice chest she held by her side. “I thought you’d gone home for the night.”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” she said. “Surprises sort of suit me, don’t you think?” She nodded toward the door to the reception area. “Want to go outside? We’ve got a picnic table under one of the trees.”

  I’d go anywhere with you, Melisande. He didn’t say it, figuring that subtlety was called for at the moment. “Sure.”

  They walked through the lobby, where Charlie sat behind the counter with his feet propped on a desk. Outside, the shadows of a summer evening were teasing the oak trees, and the neat lawn around the jail smelled of a fresh mowing. Crickets sang in the hardwood grove on the other side of the quiet little road that fronted the jail.

  “This is a lot better than eatin’ in the rec room,” Brig commented.

  Millie put the cooler on a redwood table under one of the giant oaks that bordered the parking lot. Brig sat down and watched in fascination as she set out a pan of lasagna, a large bowl of salad, garlic bread, and finally, several oversized cans of Australian beer.

  “This is sweet, Melisande. You’re a bobby-dazzler.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Very good,” he said seriously. They shared a long, intense gaze until she looked away and shoved a can of beer toward him.

  “It’s just a celebration dinner,” she told him almost defensively.

  “Celebratin’ what?”

  “My being undrowned. Your being stubborn and heroic.”

  He chuckled. “Sit down and eat, my little briar, and let’s talk about naughty things.”

  Millie sighed grandly. “What else would I expect to talk about with you?”

  But they discussed many things, most of them not particularly naughty, some of them downright homey. She told him that she had a large collection of record albums, Including some country-western, but that her musical expertise was limited to a lengthy high school association with a clarinet.

  He grinned at that. “Why a clarinet?”

  “Because Dad was in the navy, and we moved almost every year. Bands can always use one more clarinet player. Made it easier for me, as a new kid, to get involved.”

  “You must have been pretty lonely sometimes, movin’ from place to place.”

  She nodded. “It either makes a child extremely shy or extremely self-sufficient. I managed the latter.”

  “I bet you were one tough clarinet player.”

  She grinned. “You got it.”

  Brig fascinated her with information about the inner workings of the record business, and she realized quickly that he was as much an expert businessman as he was a free spirit. Then he told her stories about the town where he grew up, a place where sheep stampedes were the main source of entertainment.

  “And what was the name of this exciting place?” she asked.

  He smiled slowly. “Washaway Loo.” When she looked puzzled, he explained, “A spring flood carried off half the outdoor plumbin’ facilities one year.”

  She laughed until she began to hiccup. He handed her his can of beer and it was so
big that she had to put both hands around it to lift it to her mouth.

  “You got pretty little paws for such a violent lady,” he told her. “Lethal little paws.”

  It was an odd comment, but he made it so sincerely and with such admiration that she nearly started hiccupping again. When she regained her composure and set the beer can down, she found his warm, magnetic gaze on her face.

  Millie took a deep breath. Now was the time to say what had been on her mind for hours. “You like to tease me, and that’s all right.” she told him solemnly. “It’s fun—I admit it—but don’t say things like you said in the car today.”

  “What?”

  She arched one blond brow at him. “ ‘I’m falling in love with you, Melisande.’ That’s going too far.”

  “Maybe it’s the truth.”

  Millie stared at him for a moment. “Maybe it’s a line,” she said quietly.

  “Sounds like one, that’s for sure,” he agreed, nodding his head. Then he focused a searing look on her and added, “But it’s not.”

  She clasped her hands in her lap and tried not to appear as stunned as she felt. “We met four days ago. I butted you in the stomach and put a handcuff on you. I don’t think that’s a sign of compatibility.”

  “I’m just gonna have to convince you that you’re my kind of Sheila.”

  She began to get angry. “Any Sheila will do under the circumstances. You’re a captive audience.”

  “Think poorly of yourself, do you?”

  “No,” she retorted. “But I’ve read all about you. You go through women like water through a sieve.”

  “I have my picture taken with a lot of women. I didn’t know that meant I was toyin’ with ’em all.” He paused, looking perturbed. “If I’m havin’ that much fun, I oughta take vitamins.”

  Millie shook her head wearily. She propped both elbows on the table and planted her chin in her hands. “Brig,” she murmured. “Short for Brigand. The dictionary defines brigand as bandit.”

  “And a wallopin’ good name it is, too, Melisande.”

  “Stop calling me Melisande! People will laugh at me!”

  He suddenly moved around to her side of the table, sat down beside her on the bench, and pulled her hands away from her face. He held both hands tightly, his fingers buried in the warm hollows of her palms. Millie met his eyes and found no more levity in them. He looked almost angry.

  “You’ve got an image problem,” Brig told her tautly. “You don’t see anything delicate or elegant about yourself, but that’s because you’re blind. I see it—the fineness.”

  She could barely speak. “You … you’re crazy.”

  “And you like it.”

  Millie couldn’t deny that, and he didn’t give her a chance. He bent his head and kissed her hard, breaking through her barriers in the quickest and most intimate way he knew.

  Anger warred with confusion inside Millie’s mind, and both were overwhelmed by the incredible sensation of his mouth on hers. She pulled back. He pushed forward, capturing her lips again and making a gruff sound of reproach as he did.

  Millie responded with a huffing sound of rejection, but by then her lips had parted without her cooperation to allow the hungry surge of his tongue. Why hadn’t anyone warned her that Australian men kissed better than anyone else on earth? And that Brig McKay was the best of the best? He smelled soapy clean and enticingly masculine. His fingers stroked her palms in a way that promised similar attention to the rest of her body.

  Brig twisted his mouth gently, and a thrill shot through him as he confirmed that she wanted him to kiss her as badly as he wanted her to kiss him. Suddenly, almost as if to prove that she could match him, she jerked her hands away from his and grasped his face.

  Her mouth devastated him with a take-charge series of capricious movements. She licked his lower lip, kissed the comers of his mouth, then lifted her lips to the tip of his nose and kissed it. A second later she was taking his mouth again, and he thought he’d die from wanting her. This passion went beyond simple satisfaction into a whole new realm of need. If he tried hard enough, he could draw this feisty, beautiful little woman into his soul and absorb all her courage and strength.

  Millie pulled back from him quickly and they stared at each other, both breathing hard. “You’re a prisoner here and I’m a deputy!” she exclaimed guiltily. She put one hand to her forehead and groaned. “This is terrible. I just violated my duty.”

  “Violate it some more,” he urged, and leaned toward her.

  She put both hands on his chest and held him back. “Don’t kiss me again.”

  “But that won’t keep you from kissing me first, will it?”

  “I can control myself.”

  “We’ll see about that, Melisande.”

  Challenge radiated between them in the silence that followed. They stared into each other’s eyes, reading the recklessness there, and Brig knew that she was on the verge of kissing him again.

  Slowly, one of her arms rose, and her hand balled into a fist. She didn’t look angry, she looked desperate.

  “You gonna whack me?” he asked in a husky voice.

  She blinked rapidly, dropped her fist into her lap, and shook her head. Smiling tautly, he got up and went back to his side of the table. Brig gestured toward her unfinished plate of lasagna. “Better eat, or you’ll have to heat it up.”

  Millie glanced down at the food and thought numbly that nothing around her and Brig needed heating up.

  “Aaaall I need is a little chance with you,” Brig sang under his breath. He paused to fork another load of fouled straw into the wheelbarrow outside the horse stall. “A little time to show that I’m true … truuue. Nah. Blue. Nah. A little time to show that I kneeew. Augggh! Strewth!” The woman had fuddled his mind until he couldn’t rhyme.

  He’d hardly seen his Melisande in the past four days, since the city had hired him out as a stable hand at Paradise Farms, a multi-million dollar Thoroughbred operation. She made certain that Suds or Charlie transported him to and from the farm, and she made certain that she wasn’t around when he returned to the jail each evening. Brig made a one-word comment on the situation, then looked at what he was removing from the stall and smiled sardonically. “Perfect,” he muttered.

  Every day he tried to work out his frustration through hard physical labor, but still he lay awake at night, thinking about her, his body tight and his mind full of plans. He had his tactics outlined now. Over the next few weeks Melisande Surprise was going to get more temptation than she’d ever imagined possible. By the time he became a free man again and she had no more reason to hide behind her deputy’s badge, she’d be ready to follow him anywhere.

  “Aaall I need is a chance with you,” he tried again, jabbing his pitchfork into a pile as he sang. “You took my heart and made it new. Run with me into the night, capure the stars and … I’ll give you the light.” Brig cursed darkly and shook his head. “Sounds like I’m offerin’ to fire up her cigarette!”

  It was hopeless. Melisande would simply have to fall in love with him, or he’d never again come up with a proper rhyme.

  As Millie brought her old Buick to a stop in the stable yard at Paradise Farms, John Washington, the stable manager, was already on his way to her door. “Howdy, neighbor,” he said cheerfully. “Saw you comin’ up the driveway like a juiced bobcat.” He took a long look at her sweaty face and disheveled hair. “Anything wrong?”

  “A tree fell through my roof.” The Buick was one of the last of the dinosaur convertibles. She had the top down, so instead of getting out, she simply climbed over the side. Millie leaned against the door, crossed her arms over her chest, and sighed wearily. “At least it happened on my day off.”

  John flashed ivory-white teeth in a face the color of dark chocolate. “Aren’t you lucky?”

  “I was just wondering if you could spare someone to help me move the tree and fix the roof. I’ll pay.”

  He ran a hand over his stubbly, graying hair a
nd looked sympathetic. “No can do, Millie. I’m short-handed—that’s why I hired your fancy prisoner.”

  “How’s my Aussie singer doing?”

  “Shovels like a pro, doesn’t expect special treatment, tells good dirty jokes. Hey, why don’t you take him over to your place to work on the roof? If Raybo doesn’t mind, that is.”

  “No. Oh, no,” she said quickly, raising both hands in a gesture of defense. “I’d rather have a permanent skylight than—”

  A whistle pierced the air. They both turned toward the wide hallway of the farm’s main bam. Millie watched dolefully as Brig ambled toward her, a pitchfork balanced on one shoulder, a plastic cup in one hand. His white pants were so sweaty that they clung to his thighs in an intriguing way. The white T-shirt he wore was molded to his damp chest, outlining solid muscles and wide shoulders. His wavy hair was ruffled.

  I know my control’s shaky, Millie thought raggedly, because this is the first time I’ve hyperventilated at the sight of a man who’s been cleaning stalls all day. She concentrated on breathing and squinted at him warily.

  “I’m takin’ my water break, John,” Brig told the stable manager cheerfully. “If that’s okay with you, mate.”

  “Sure.”

  “G’day, Deputy. Come by to check me out?” His eyes roamed approvingly over her pink T-shirt, cutoff jeans, and jogging shoes, and he whistled under his breath. “I like your new uniform.”

  “I’m off work today. I live near this farm.”

  “And a tree fell on her roof,” John interjected.

  Brig arched one brow and gave her a mischievous look. “Practicin’ karate on it, were you?”

  “It’s a very old oak and it has a root disease. I’d been planning to have it cut down, but I obviously waited too long.”

  “And she needs a handyman to help her move it,” John added. “You’re almost done here for the day. It’s okay with me if you want to go with Millie.”

  “No!” she said. “I’ll call a tree service.”

  “Melisande, I’ll cost you a lot less than a tree service,” Brig said innocently. “Don’t you want to let a humble prisoner pay off some of his debt to society?”