by Rachel Lee
He compressed his lips for a few seconds, then spoke again. “What I want is a relationship. Hell, I want more than that, but you must need time. But if we build something bigger, it’s okay if you don’t want to move to California.”
Now she could barely breathe. “Why not?”
“My home is there, but I’m almost never there anyway. I could come visit you between programs, between seasons. You don’t need to live with me in an empty house for long stretches. Without the job you clearly love, or the friends you’re making here.”
Now there didn’t seem to be any air left in the universe. Her heart and mind had caught on one thing. Live with him? “Steve?”
“I’m a bumbling fool. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve fallen in love with you, and if you eventually see your way to feeling the same about me, then we can make it work.”
It was such a huge prospect that she had trouble absorbing it. A life she’d given up hoping for was now offering her the possibility of it becoming true?
But he’d stayed with her an entire night after her meltdown. He’d never criticized her for it. Instead he’d offered understanding and comfort. Now he wanted to offer her more.
Truth and reality both began to dawn on her, and as they did her heart soared. Honesty caused her to blurt a fact she’d been hiding from herself. “I think I love you, too.”
The biggest smile spread across his face. “You’ve just made me the happiest man alive.”
Then, leaning over, he scooped her up into his arms. “Now for the other part of what I want. If you don’t mind.”
The heat inside her became electric. “Why would I mind? I want you, too.”
Then he carried her off to her bed, the first steps on a road to a new future.
She knew she could handle this. She knew she was going to love every minute.
A new day was creeping into the world, and into her heart.
* * *
Don’t miss other romances in Rachel Lee’s thrilling Conard County: The Next Generation series:
Conard County Justice
Stalked in Conard County
Murdered in Conard County
Conard County Watch
Available now from Harlequin Books
Keep reading for an excerpt from His Brand of Justice by Delores Fossen.
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His Brand of Justice
by Delores Fossen
Chapter One
The moment Marshal Jack Slater brought his truck to a stop in front of the small country house, he drew his gun, threw open the door and raced up the porch steps. He’d already glanced around the road and the sprawling yard to see if there was any immediate danger. If there was, he hadn’t spotted anything.
That didn’t mean, though, that there wasn’t a threat.
And that was why Jack had gotten here as fast as he could, once he’d received the call from the live-in nurse, Lucille Booker. From the instant he’d heard Lucille say “Marshal Slater, there might be a problem” in a breathy voice, Jack had known there was no might to it. There was trouble. Lucille had been at this job for three months, and never once had he heard that kind of concern in her voice. No, not just concern.
Fear.
Jack didn’t knock. Instead, he flipped up the top of what appeared to be an ordinary doorbell to reveal a panel for the security system beneath it. He punched in the code, which would alert the two women inside that it was him. Only when he heard the clicks that let him know the alarms and locks had been temporarily disarmed did he open the door.
Lucille was there in the foyer, and she had a gun in the white-knuckle grip of her right hand. A gun that Jack had issued to her after making sure that she knew how to use it.
There was no blood on her, thank God. No signs of any injury, and the room showed no indications of a struggle. Everything in the house was neat and tidy, as it usually was.
Lucille was what no one would call petite—another reason Jack had wanted her for this job. Her beefy build, no-fuss choppy brown hair and sharply angled face all gave her the appearance of a woman who knew how to take care of herself. And it was true. In addition to being a nurse with twenty years of experience, Lucille had been an instructor of self-defense classes for women.
“What happened?” Jack asked as he reset the security system. “Where’s Caroline?”
An answer to that second question wasn’t necessary, though, because he soon saw the blonde in the kitchen. Caroline Moser. Jack cursed, because she was standing there with a butcher knife.
Unlike Lucille, there was nothing beefy about Caroline. She was lean and tall, and the loose pale blue cotton dress she was wearing didn’t disguise her willowy body. She had an angel’s face, he’d always thought. Like some painting on a museum wall. Once, before things had gone to hell in a handbasket, there’d been a lot of toughness and street smarts beneath those soft, delicate features.
No toughness now, though.
She was way too pale, and she looked way too fragile.
“When Caroline and I were clearing up after lunch, I saw a man,” Lucille explained. “A stranger. He was by the pond.”
Not good. No one should have been within a quarter of a mile of this place, since it wasn’t anywhere on the beaten path. Of course, Jack could say that about lots of properties in the county, which was mainly made up of ranches, farms and small towns. Like Longview Ridge, the place where Jack had been born and raised and where he still lived. This safe house was only about fifteen miles from there—and from him. But it was still far enough away that someone shouldn’t have just strolled by here.
“You saw this man, too?” he asked Caroline.
“Just a glimpse.” There was plenty of worry and fear in her voice, but there was something else in her jewel-green eyes.
Suspicion.
Jack knew that particular reaction was for him.
She didn’t trust him, not completely, anyway, and he’d seen that look plenty of times over the past three months since he’d become her handler in WITSEC. Before that, when she had known who he was, there’d been other emotions...ones that he wished he couldn’t remember, either.
Jack wasn’t sure why the doubt was there now. Or all the other times he’d visited her here in this safe house over the past weeks. Her doctors had said it was because of the trauma from her injuries and her amnesia. It was hard for her to trust anyone, they’d said, when there were way too many blanks in her mind.
Still, it cut him to the bone.
Of course, there were plenty other things that he should be thinking about right now, things that didn’t involve whether she trusted him or not, and Jack went to the kitchen window. That vantage point would give him a good view of not only the pond but also the small barn and pasture.
Other than the two horses that Jack had personally delivered to the place, nothing and no one was out there. However, since Lucille wasn’t easily spooked, she must have seen someone.
“You didn’t recognize the man?” Jack pressed, glancing back at Lucille.
The nurse shook her head. She put away her gun in the slide holster at the back of her scrubs. “But he had dark hair and was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. He darted behind the big oak tree when he spotted me.”
Darting definitely wasn’t a good sign, but Jack was holding out hope that this was just someone who’d strayed onto the property, only to realize that he was trespassing. Too bad the twisting feeling in his gut let him know that wasn’t the case.
“I called you right away, just as you told me to do,” Lucille added. “And I mad
e sure Caroline stayed away from the windows.” Again, that was as Jack had instructed.
Jack made a sound of approval, and while continuing to volley his attention out the window, he reached out to take the knife from Caroline. Her hand went stiff when his fingers brushed over hers. Actually, every part of her seemed to stiffen as her gaze collided with his. Her intense stare held a few long moments before she finally let go of the knife.
“Sorry, Marshal Slater,” she muttered. “I’m a little spooked.”
Marshal Slater. It wasn’t a surprise that she called him that. In fact, it was the only thing Caroline had called him since she’d turned up in Longview Ridge three months ago with that head injury and the amnesia. She said his name with the same edgy suspicion that was in her eyes.
Before the memory loss, she had called him Jack. And there’d sure as hell been no suspicion then. Only the heat from the scalding hot fire that he no longer saw or felt in any part of her.
I love you, Jack.
Those were the last words Caroline had said to him before she was taken hostage, before this nightmare had begun. Words she’d said when they thought it would be an ordinary, short goodbye. When Jack had thought there’d be plenty of other times for him to say I love you right back—and that was why he hadn’t said it to her then. Now he might never get the chance.
He was a stranger to her now. He was Marshal Slater.
Jack tried not to let that eat away at him, especially since Lucille had insisted on calling him by his title and surname, too. But in Lucille’s case, it just sounded as if she’d wanted to remind herself that he was there to protect Caroline and her. Which he was.
“You think it was a false alarm?” Lucille asked, joining him at the window.
Jack lifted his shoulder. “The sensors weren’t tripped.”
If they had been, Jack would have gotten the alert on his phone. Of course, the guy would have had to get closer to the house for that to happen, since the sensors were arranged around the perimeter of the yard and on the dirt road that led to the house.
There were also some cameras, and Jack fired off a text to his partner, Marshal Teagan Randolph. He asked her to cull out the video feed from all the cameras for the past hour and send it to him ASAP.
“I’ll wait around for a while and keep watch,” he assured Lucille and Caroline when he was done with the text.
A while was going to mean staying for the night. Or longer. He didn’t intend to take any risks with Caroline, because somewhere in those lost memories in her head was a piece of information he needed as much as the next breath he took.
She knew who’d murdered his father.
The images came. They always did whenever he thought of his dad, Sheriff Buck Slater. Buck had been the law in Longview Ridge, but that had ended one night in a hail of bullets and blood when someone had gunned him down. Caroline was the only person alive who could tell him what’d happened.
Other than the killer, of course.
And Jack suspected he wouldn’t be getting any answers from him or her on that. Especially since he had a mile-long suspect list that he hadn’t managed to whittle down much since his father’s murder a little over a year ago.
He was betting Caroline was eager to uncover those memories, too. Well, maybe she was. She had to want to know what’d happened not just to his father but also to her. She would want to know how she got that head injury. But the doctors had said the amnesia could be a way of protecting herself from a nightmare that was too traumatic for her to face. Still, Jack had to hold on to hope that one day she would push the trauma aside and help him catch a killer.
“I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee,” Lucille volunteered, and she got busy doing that after she gave Caroline the once-over.
It was the kind of quick exam a nurse would take of her patient, probably to make sure Caroline wasn’t on the verge of a panic attack. Jack hadn’t witnessed one of the attacks, but he’d heard from Lucille and then Caroline’s doctors that she’d had several in the three months that she’d been in WITSEC. It was the reason the US Marshals—and Jack himself—had wanted a nurse to be with her. Normally, when someone was placed in WITSEC, that didn’t happen. The person merely started a new life with a new identity and no past.
But nothing about this situation was normal.
Jack had also had to convince his agency that this wouldn’t be a conflict of interest for him, that he could do his job as Caroline’s handler despite their prior personal relationship. And that it would be all right for him to place her in the local area where he could keep a close eye on her. Maybe some of his fellow marshals did know of his personal interest in the case. But none had doubted that he would do whatever it took to make sure Caroline was not only safe but that she also made a full recovery. Emphasis on the full.
When Lucille had moved from the kitchen window, Caroline had came closer to him. But not too close. She always gave him a wide berth, making sure they didn’t accidentally bump into each other. Maybe that’s why his merely touching her hand earlier had caused every muscle in her body to turn to iron.
“You think that man by the pond came here to kill me?” she asked.
If he hadn’t thought that was possible, she wouldn’t need to be in WITSEC. But the truth was, he just didn’t know. Maybe there was no killer after Caroline, but he wasn’t willing to take that chance. Because if there was someone after her, it would likely be the same person who’d murdered his father. The person could want to silence her permanently so she could never reveal his or her identity.
“We don’t know who we’re dealing with,” he settled for saying. He usually gave her a variation of that whenever the subject of her safety came up. Which was often. No need to alarm her and spur one of those panic attacks by spelling out worst-case scenarios. “Was there anything about this man you recognized?”
“No. Like I said, I only got a glimpse.” Caroline didn’t hesitate, but she did huff. “Has my location been compromised? Will I have to move to another safe house?”
Possibly, but Jack decided to put a softer spin on that. “Let’s just wait and see. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He looked at her as the last of those words were leaving his mouth, and for just a split second he saw something more than distrust on her face.
Anger, maybe?
But it was gone as quickly as it had come.
“I don’t know who killed your father,” she insisted. The riled expression might be gone, but there was a tinge of agitation in her voice.
Jack glanced at Lucille to see if she had an explanation for this change in Caroline’s attitude, and the nurse’s mouth tightened a little. “Caroline found some articles on the internet.”
Well, hell. That definitely explained it. There were plenty of sites that had gobs of sordid details about his father’s shooting. About Deputy Dusty Walters, who’d also died that night, too. And Caroline’s name came up often on those sites. Not in a good way, either. The press had had a field day with her because she’d disappeared. There’d been plenty of speculation that had gone along with questions about where she was and what’d happened to her.
Not many people knew the answer to that.
WITSEC had taken care of shielding her identity so that now she lived and worked in this house. In fact, work was the reason she had a laptop in the first place. The Justice Department had created a job for her where she was reviewing witness testimony in cases where no charges had been filed. It was one step above busy work, but obviously it hadn’t kept her busy enough.
“Yes, the filters are still on the computer,” Lucille assured him.
“I figured out how to get around them,” Caroline quickly confessed. “And no, it wasn’t something I remembered how to do. I just kept plugging away until I found a web page that the filter didn’t catch.”
Jack added another “hell.” He’d need to
tell the doctors about this so they could deal with it during her weekly therapy session. A session that would, ironically, be done online, since Jack had wanted to limit Caroline’s visits into San Antonio along with also limiting the number of people who knew the location of the safe house. And he’d managed to do that by limiting that info to his partner, Lucille and his three brothers, who were all lawmen. Jack had wanted them to know in case they needed to make a quick response.
However, even with all the precautions they’d taken, Jack knew that the safe house information could be breached. Their computer filters were more elaborate than the ones on the laptop here, but someone determined to find Caroline could still get around them. A killer definitely fell into the “someone determined” category.
Caroline groaned softly and pushed her shoulder-length blond hair from her face. “I used to have a life. I’ve read about it,” she added in a grumble. “I came from almost nothing. My prostitute mother was killed by a drug dealer when I was eight, and I ended up in foster care.” She looked ready to tack on more to that recap of her childhood, but then she stopped, paused. “I got through all of that to get a job working for one of the top criminal profiling experts.”
Jack nodded. Yep, all of that was true. She’d had a life, all right, and even though she was alive, she might never get that life back. Would certainly never undo the fallout to her reputation because of the work she’d done with that top expert.
What Caroline hadn’t just mentioned in the rundown of her life was her police record. A sealed juvie rap sheet that she wouldn’t have been able to access without the prime hacking skills that she’d had before she lost her memory.
This woman with the angel face and almost fragile-looking body had been arrested when she was fifteen for hacking into multiple state records to find the dealer who’d killed her mother. Caroline had then stolen a car, tracked down the man and managed to bash him in the gut with a baseball bat before calling the cops to come and get him. The cops had gone easy on her because of the extenuating circumstances, but she’d still spent some time in juvie lockup.