She glanced down to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to put her pants on that morning. Nope. She was still wearing her white capris—her favorite pair, tight enough to showcase her gym-toned derriere but still classy. She adjusted the collar of her silk T-shirt, wishing she’d chosen something that showed a little less cleavage.
His eyes dipped to the cleavage in question, and the smile widened. Lacey cleared her throat, feeling her lips tremble along with her knees, and glanced down again to make sure her nipples didn’t show through the shirt.
Because her nipples were definitely happy to see this guy.
Who was definitely not Chase Caldwell.
Because this was no farmer. This was a cowboy, tan and muscular, with sinewy arms exposed by the carelessly rolled-up sleeves of a snap-button shirt and slim-hipped Wranglers suggestively worn white at the thighs and fly. Lacey had never felt the effects of airborne testosterone before, but this guy made her wobble like a Weeble.
His gaze traveled from her cleavage over to one happy nipple, then the other, lingering a moment before it drifted downward on a long, leisurely journey that took in her hips, her thighs, and the tips of her French-manicured toes. His gaze would have been insulting if it hadn’t been so appreciative—and so very much appreciated on her end too. Overheated and exhausted from the long road trip, she couldn’t help doing a self-congratulatory mental fist pump at the guy’s obvious interest.
She let him finish the once-over and met his eyes just in time to see his appreciative assessment harden into shock, then pass through something that looked almost like fear before it froze into a cold, hard glare.
“Lacey Bradford,” he said. “Holy…” He pressed his lips together, as if suppressing a curse.
Lacey squeaked. She couldn’t help it—it was that much of a jolt to hear Chase’s husky Southern drawl coming from this paragon of masculinity. She knew boys matured later than girls, but he hadn’t just improved with age; he’d transformed. It was like watching Clark Kent step out of a phone booth in a cape and tights.
“Chase,” she said. “Um, hi.”
“What the hell are you doing in Wyoming?” he asked.
It was a question that should have been accompanied by a smile, or at least a curious tilt of the head. Instead, Chase scowled when he said it.
Scowls always made Lacey babble. She could feel the urge coming on and was helpless to stop it.
“I need—I need help. Things went—well, wrong in Conway. Very wrong.”
“Join the crowd,” Chase said dryly.
“I got a divorce,” Lacey continued. The words were spilling out, and she had the sudden sensation of tumbling down a steep hill, limbs flailing, completely out of control. “Trent was…” She sucked in a deep breath. Trent had told her not to tell anyone anything, but it was all going to come out eventually anyway. Besides, Trent wasn’t the boss of her. Not anymore. “He was a liar and a cheat. I couldn’t stay married to him once I knew what he’d done, and now everybody hates me and nobody can find him and they’re after me.”
“They?”
“My ex-husband’s business associates.”
“What, you’ve got a bunch of vicious real estate agents on your tail?” Chase’s lip quirked up on one side in the first indication Lacey had seen that he might have a sense of humor.
“No. I’ve got Wade Simpson on my tail.”
That got his attention.
“Wade Simpson? The guy who…”
“The guy who cornered me at that party and practically raped me. The guy you rescued me from.”
“I always figured Wade would be in jail by now.” He turned his attention to a sheaf of papers on the counter, picking them up and straightening the edges.
“He’s a cop,” she said.
Chase looked surprised, and she couldn’t blame him. Wade Simpson had been Conway High’s resident juvenile delinquent. His beleaguered parents had been as surprised as anyone when he’d channeled his penchant for violence and bullying into a stint at the police academy and a job patrolling the normally placid streets of Conway.
And she’d been surprised when she discovered Trent was doing business with the guy. She wasn’t sure how a small-town cop had amassed enough money to invest in real estate, but Wade had evidently become a player.
“Or at least he’s a cop now, but he won’t be once Trent testifies,” she said. “He was one of Trent’s investors, and I guess he was kind of an enforcer, threatening people. He’s good at that kind of thing.” She looked down at the floor, tracing the edge of a linoleum tile with the toe of her shoe. “You saved me from him once.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“It was.”
“I was a different person then.”
She scanned him from his broad shoulders down to the big square belt buckle that guarded his fly. “Yeah. You sure were.”
Had she just licked her lips? She couldn’t believe she’d licked her lips. She was normally more dignified than that. More subtle.
But the blatant come-on didn’t seem to have any effect. He was still eyeing her with undisguised disdain. “So you’ve been living on dirty money all this time?”
She set her fists on her hips and glared at him. In response, he gave her another once-over, and this time it was downright insulting. When had that sweet boy who’d followed her around like a lost puppy all through school become this bitter, caustic man?
“I’ve been trying to find a job. Nobody would hire me. Besides, I didn’t know Trent was a crook.”
“You should have.”
He was right. Lacey sucked in a deep breath and blew it out, wishing her guilt would go with it. She wasn’t responsible for what her husband had done. She hadn’t had any idea how he managed to buy so much land cheap from the government. But it was hard to admit that she hadn’t known she was living on ill-gotten gains for the past eight years. She might not be evil like Trent, but she’d been stupid. Stupid and naive.
“It was complicated. Trent was bribing people. Getting them to condemn land, so he could buy it cheap. There’s a law in Tennessee—it’s called eminent domain—where the state can take people’s land if they want to build a highway or something.”
“I know.”
She resisted the urge to scowl back at Chase. He wasn’t just mean and sarcastic; he was a know-it-all too. “But then the highway project would get canceled, and Trent would buy the land cheap from the state, and…”
Chase’s brown golden retriever eyes looked more like a Rottweiler’s now. A mean Rottweiler. She half-expected a growl to rise from his throat.
This was not going well.
“He was a crook,” she admitted.
“I know,” Chase said again. “So that makes you Mrs. Crook, right?”
“Not anymore.” She splayed her hands. “Look, I made a mistake. I never loved him. He wasn’t—wasn’t what I thought he was.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Well, you should have.”
“How could I? You kept the whole thing a secret.”
He was right. Her relationship with Trent had been hushed up practically until the day they married. She’d been seventeen when she’d started working weekends in his office, and the twelve-year age difference between them had been more than a challenge; it had been a legal obstacle. Trent could have gone to jail for their relationship. The day they could go public as a couple was only a week before her wedding.
Her eighteenth birthday.
“Look, I married way too young, and I married the wrong guy. He told me he’d do anything for me, told me I could go to school, get my real estate license, study marketing—everything I wanted. And then he turned out to be a liar. A liar and a crook.” She looked down at her hands twisting in front of her and remembered how the realization had crept up on her, darkening her future like vines covering a bright window. “But lots of girls make bad decisions. It’s not like I did drugs or anything.”
She angled her gaze
up to his face, biting her lip. Chase had probably never made a bad decision in his life. He’d pursued his chosen future so single-mindedly that he probably didn’t have a clue what it was like to be young and foolish.
“No, but you drank.”
“Just that one night.”
He would have to bring that up. It had been a week before her wedding, and she’d realized at some point during a graduation celebration that this might be her last carefree high school party. She’d had a few too many drinks—way too many, really—and ended up alone in an empty bedroom with a drunk and determined Wade Simpson. Chase, straight-arrow Chase, had hauled Simpson off her and taken her home. It was a good thing too. She’d been so loopy on sloe gin fizzes she couldn’t even remember the drive or how she’d gotten in the house.
She’d relied on him then, and surely she could rely on him now. She just had to make him understand the danger she was in.
“Once Trent testifies, a lot of important people will go to jail,” she said.
“Good.”
“So they’re desperate. And dangerous. Wade came to my house. He—he threatened me.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s not what he said. It’s how he said it.”
Chapter 3
On her last night in Conway, she’d been wandering around the house locking doors and windows and daydreaming about a future without Trent. She’d find a job eventually, she’d told herself. Maybe she’d move to some other town, someplace where nobody knew about her past. And the first thing she’d do, after she found a little apartment somewhere, was buy some comfortable furniture. The house she’d shared with her husband looked like a photo from a decorating magazine, but it had never felt like home. The sofa cushions were hard as military cots, and the wing chairs flanking the fireplace were as straitlaced and erect as the colonial Puritans who’d designed them.
It was too bad her ex hadn’t had that kind of backbone.
With his neatly trimmed hair tipped gray at the temples, Trent Bradford had looked the part of an upright elder statesman when they’d first met. Of course, she’d been seventeen and pretty much everybody was “elder.” But after her father died, she’d been all alone in the world. And there was her boss, so willing to step in and help. So handsome. So distinguished. So very, very rich.
Sadly, she’d mistaken money for class and a slick salesman for a savior.
She’d perched on one of the chairs, drained her Sleepytime Tea, and set the cup carefully on its matching saucer. The wafer-thin, flowered teacups were one of the few formal features of her leftover life that she still enjoyed. Drinking her bedtime tea felt special when she used them. Ceremonial. Maybe she’d take one along—a souvenir to link the past to her new, independent life.
Maybe she’d make nighttime tea-drinking a ritual—a time to reflect on the day gone by and plan her next adventure. Her old bedtime routines had always centered on her husband. Now she could create new ones of her own. She reached up and flicked off the lamp.
Click.
The formal furniture, the gilt-framed paintings, the oriental carpets—all the trappings of Trent’s nouveau wealth—faded into darkness with the flick of the switch.
Tap.
What was that? An echo? She sat up straight and listened.
Tap. Tap.
It must be a branch hitting a window.
Tap.
No, wait. It couldn’t be a branch. There were no trees near the house. Actually, there were no trees in their entire suburban development—just a few spindly but hopeful seedlings sprouting from the neat gravel.
So it wasn’t a branch. It was somebody at the door.
At midnight? That couldn’t be good news. Maybe something had happened to Trent.
Tap.
Maybe it was Trent himself. She’d been trying to get in touch with him for a week, and he wasn’t answering his phone. She knew he was probably avoiding people now that he was out on bail. The folks he’d cheated might be out for revenge since his schemes had come to light.
Maybe one of them was at the door. Trent had put on a pretty convincing show when they were married, making like she was the light of his life. Somebody might think hurting her would hurt him. She’d seen the sideways glances and heard the whispers. Even though she’d divorced him the minute she found out what he’d done, people still blamed her. Hated her. Shunned her.
But no one had ever tried to hurt her. She tamped down the rising panic in her chest.
Tap.
The slow, stealthy tapping was somehow more threatening than a knock. She stood, brushing imaginary crumbs from her thighs, and walked to the front door, her heels clicking sharply on the hardwood floor.
She opened the door to find Wade Simpson on the doorstep, dressed in his policeman’s uniform.
Oh, God, something had happened to Trent. Maybe he’d hurt himself, even killed himself. He’d been so upset when the lawyer told him three families were going to prosecute. He hadn’t been ashamed or contrite; he’d been afraid of losing his social standing.
He’d been worried about losing his wife too, but she was pretty sure that was just part of the status and power thing. Trent had never loved her; he’d just wanted her for decoration, like the wing chairs and china teacups. He’d seen the way his clients looked at his eager young receptionist, and he was the kind of man who had to have what other people wanted. She was just another gilt-edged treasure for his collection.
Wade stretched his lips in a grin that was as convincing as a cheap Halloween clown mask. “Hello, Lacey.”
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. There were supposed to be two cops, and they were supposed to take off their hats and look grave and sorrowful. Wade just looked pissed.
“Where is he?” He took her arm as if he wanted to steer her inside. He was a bodybuilder, and she’d always suspected he popped steroids like potato chips. His muscles were pumped up to the point where his head looked absurdly small on his massive body. Veins stood out in his arms, and now there was one pulsing at his temple.
She flinched at his touch and jerked away, but the movement gave him an opening and he stepped further into the foyer, kicking the door closed behind him with a click that echoed like a gunshot. Despite the wide curving staircase and cathedral ceiling, the foyer suddenly felt small and hot.
“Whatsa matter, Lacey?” He stepped closer. “What are you scared of?” He wasn’t much taller than her, but he still seemed to loom over her. His arms were bowed at his side, and Lacey wondered if the cords of muscle were strung so tight that he couldn’t straighten them.
“Nothing. I just—when you see a cop at your door…”
“I’m just here to talk to Trent. He moved out of his apartment. I figured he’d come back here.”
That explained why Trent wasn’t answering his phone. Her mind raced, trying to figure out where he might have gone. He’d been arraigned for fraud and corruption just days ago and released on his own recognizance.
Holy crap. He’d run off. He was probably in Mexico by now.
“He’s not here.”
Wade’s eyes narrowed, his massive forehead creasing. “He must have called you. You must know where he is.”
“Honestly,” Lacey said. “I have no idea.”
Wade began to pace the tiled floor. She could almost smell the barely suppressed rage coursing through him.
“He’d better not have made a deal.”
With sudden certainty, Lacey knew that was exactly what Trent had done: turned state’s evidence, like some mobster in a bad movie. He’d do anything to save himself, just as he’d done anything to keep the money coming in.
“If he talks, he’s going to ruin a lot of lives. It’s my job to serve and protect this town. I need to find him before he ruins everything.”
Lacey would have laughed if she could have caught a breath, but her heart was fluttering in her chest like a trapped sparrow. Wade didn’t care about the town. He cared about himself. If he
was worried about Trent talking, he must have been involved in the scheme himself.
“He can’t hide from the law,” he mumbled, as if he was talking to himself. “I’m the law. Me. I’m the law in this town.”
“That’s right.” She pasted on a perky cheerleader smile to encourage him. It worked on big, dumb football players, so it ought to work on Wade. She didn’t think he was dumb, but the steroids had probably fried a few synapses and slowed down his thinking. “You’ll be able to find him.”
“I’m not wasting time looking for him. I’m setting a trap.” He stopped his pacing and stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his feet spaced wide apart. “You know, Belle’s been worried about you. You oughta come over to see her.”
The sudden change of topic threw her off balance. Belle? His wife? Why were they talking about her all of a sudden?
“Now?”
“Sure. Your divorce and all, you probably need somebody to talk to.”
Belle was the one who needed to talk to someone about divorce. Wade’s wife was a hesitant, birdlike woman with a tentative manner, and Lacey suspected she spent most of her time fending off her husband’s fists. Besides, Lacey knew Belle wasn’t home right now. Her sister was sick, and she’d gone to Memphis to take care of her.
Wade reached over and grabbed Lacey’s upper arm before she could dodge away. “Come on. She’ll be real glad to see you.”
“No.” The refusal came out louder than Lacey intended, but her tone actually made Wade take a step back. “It’s midnight, Wade. Why would I visit now?”
“Because I told you to.”
“Maybe tomorrow…”
“Look, I been hunting for your no-good ex all day, all night. You need to tell me where he is now. Otherwise you’re coming with me.” He grabbed her arm and tugged her toward him. She tried not to breathe in the man’s scent. It was a sickening mix of animal and chemical, as if one of the dead frogs they’d dissected in biology class had come to life and started hanging out in the boy’s locker room.
Tall, Dark and Cowboy Page 2