Hard to Resist

by Hunter, Samantha

  “Jarod, you can’t do that. You have your job, remember? The one you are supposed to report to in—” she slid a look to the clock “—about an hour?”

  “They can fire me.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I’m completely serious. In everything I ever faced in the course of my work, I don’t think I was ever as afraid as I was when you didn’t pick up that phone.”

  She frowned. “You’re focusing on the wrong thing.”

  “What?”

  Sitting on the sofa and pulling her lovely legs up under her, she yawned and patted the seat next to her. He went and sat close, his fingers finding her nape and stroking the silky hair there, still needing to touch her and reassure himself she was okay.

  “You’re focusing on the problem, on the fact that you weren’t here to protect me, but what you aren’t focusing on is that I was able to protect myself,” she said with a sort of fierce look in her eye that surprised Jarod, but shouldn’t have.

  “I know. I know that. Rationally,” he said. “But in here—” he took her hand and put it up against his heart “—I wanted to be the one to make sure you’re safe. That you don’t ever have to do that, ever again. I don’t know how I can do that with us far apart. Or how my job figures in, or what I—”

  She shook her head. “You can’t. You have to be who you are, and let me be who I am, and we just have to have faith it will be okay. Seeing what Jackie went through with Kenny, and realizing I could have helped sooner, I could have maybe avoided the entire thing—”

  “Wait—how? You aren’t to blame here.”

  “No, not to blame, exactly. I know it’s Kenny’s fault. But I was so wrapped up in my own issues, wanting to hide and pretend nothing had ever happened to me, that I couldn’t see what was happening to someone standing right in front of me. Maybe if I had…opened up, you know, gone to the counseling, allowed myself to heal sooner, Jackie would have told me what was happening to her.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes. How is she doing?”

  “She’s okay.”

  Lacey looked down, taking a breath, her words coming out quickly, as if she had to muster the courage to say them.

  “I’m going to go talk to someone later—an abuse counselor—to work through my own stuff, but also hoping it will encourage Jackie to do the same.”

  Jarod felt his own throat tighten and swallowed hard. “You are the bravest woman I have ever known in my life, I swear,” he said huskily, bringing her fingers to his lips.

  “You helped me get there. You made me believe again,” she said, and he knew no matter what the hardships, they couldn’t abandon what they had. They’d just find a way to make it work.

  Pulling her up against him, he kissed her more lazily this time, his tongue touching hers in a slow, mating motion. His body reacted sharply with relief and desire as she pressed into him wearing nothing but the shirt.

  “Let me call Tom and give him the rundown. I’ll go back as soon as I can get a flight out tomorrow but for now maybe we should go to bed for a few hours…get some rest or something,” he said, tasting the warm, soft skin of her neck.

  “Or something,” she agreed, as his large hand massaged her breast.

  THE FURTHEST THING from Lacey’s mind was sleep. It had taken hours for the adrenaline to wear off. As he touched her intimately, everything inside of her body seemed to melt. In spite of the stress and lack of sleep, she wanted him.

  She’d been surprised, though overjoyed, to get his message that he was coming back. The news had kept her awake for hours as she waited to see him again, and to feel his hands on her. However, it didn’t look as though either one of them was going to leave the couch until they’d had their fill. She smiled as he unbuttoned the shirt.

  It was, of course, the moment her cell phone rang.

  “Mmm…might be about Jackie. I asked them to call me,” she said, breaking away.

  “Answer it. Then meet me in the bedroom.”

  The words were wickedly delicious coming from him, and she watched him walk away rather than looking at the caller ID on her phone.

  Her warm mood and fuzzy feelings crystallized into something cold and sharp when she heard a familiar voice.

  “Lacey, don’t hang up.”

  Hang up? She was so stunned she couldn’t move. She tried to breathe normally, her heart hammering as she ran down the hall and grabbed Jarod by the arm, silently mouthing to him who was on the phone.

  Like magic, his expression went from molten sexuality to granite. He made a hand motion for her to keep her caller talking and she nodded.

  “I’m not hanging up, Scott. How did you find me? Are you in the city?”

  Jarod gave her the thumbs-up as he grabbed his own phone.

  “That’s why I’m calling, I, uh…Gena heard that you were having a bad time with someone, and they were looking for me, and it’s not me. I’m calling to say I’m, uh, sorry. But I haven’t been following you. I’ve changed, Lacey, or at least, I’m trying to.”

  “I know it wasn’t you, Scott, but that doesn’t explain why you’re calling me. The restraining order is still—”

  “Listen, I’m in love with Gena. I took off because I needed to get to her, not to come after you. We had a fight, and I was locked up in that house. She wouldn’t answer my calls, so I had to risk going to find her.”

  Lacey’s blood ran cold. “Is Gena okay? Did you hurt her?”

  “Hurt her? No! I would never hurt her. She’s here with me. She’s the one who told me to call you. I…wanted to say I’m sorry for what happened, for what I did to you. Part of it was the drugs, the booze, but my counselors said I can’t use that as an excuse, and they’re right.”

  Lacey listened, and felt more or less as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole.

  “Scott, I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you’d be better off to turn yourself in. At the very least, you’ve broken house arrest.”

  “I know. I had to do it. When I told her I’d taken off, she met me here and told me to turn myself in. I guess I’ll have to do extra time, but maybe if I give myself up, they’ll let me finish at home in L.A.”

  She grabbed a pen and wrote “Reno” on the pad. Jarod started to dial but she motioned for him to stop.

  “If you’re lying, you should know I’m not alone, and they’re looking for you—you won’t get away with this.”

  “I’m not playing games, not anymore. I—I had a lot of problems, and I didn’t know how to handle them. I’m learning now. I’m trying.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, and I hope it is, for Gena’s sake, then I’ll wish you well,” she said, feeling something spring loose inside of her. “You can’t ever call me again, Scott. You hurt me badly, and I want you out of my life, completely, forever.”

  “Thanks, Lacey. You’ll never hear from me again, I promise.”

  He hung up, and that was that.

  Jarod was on the phone and though she paced for twenty minutes while he checked, eventually he hung up, shaking his head incredulously.

  “It’s true. He’s turned himself in to the Reno police. He says he’s in love with Gena. She’s there with him, confirming his story. He escaped, called her, and she left to find him, to try to get him to turn himself in.”

  “He…apologized.” The idea hit her as so strange that she couldn’t quite get her mind around it yet.

  “It gets weirder. They want to get married, so that they could legally see each other while he’s finishing his sentence. You okay?”

  She nodded. “I just feel…strange. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that. I can’t really forgive him, but at the same time, I kind of hope he makes it. For her sake, anyway.”

  “That’s a kind of forgiveness…it’s healthy, but confusing, I know. I’ve seen victims forgive their attackers, or those who killed loved ones. I’ve never been able to imagine doing the same, but they tend to say it sets them free in a way.”

  La
cey nodded. “Yes…there is that feeling, I think. Like it’s finally, really over.”

  Jarod extended his hand. “It is over, but we’re just beginning,” he murmured.

  She smiled against his lips, laughing as he picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, not letting anything get in their way.

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  LACEY SLIPPED HER FOOT out of her sandal and slid the pads of her bare toes along the length of his calf, her subtle flirting hidden under the table. When Jarod coughed abruptly as her foot flirted higher up his thigh, sneaking inside the loose material of his shorts, she laughed and enjoyed the mix of playful censure and desire in his eyes.

  “You’re bad, you know that?” he said. “I could have scalded myself on that slice of pizza, or dumped my beer down the front of my clothes, and then what would we have done?”

  “I guess we’d have to go somewhere and get those clothes off, or I’d have to kiss it and make it better,” she said, not the least bit repentant. In fact, her making him dump that beer was sounding like a good idea. It was a perfectly sunny, seventy-degree December day in Texas, but suddenly she was feeling a bit overheated.

  “Hey, you two, this is a public area. Stop before I have to make up some new version of the fire code,” Ryan Murphy joked, holding out a chair for Jackie as they arrived.

  “This is great. Wearing summer clothes in winter. I may have to move here,” Jackie commented, stretching bare arms above her head. Ryan caught one and kissed it, making her blush.

  “And leave the best city in the world?” Ryan said in his heavy Brooklyn accent.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Jackie flirted. Her friend seemed happier and more herself than Lacey had seen her be in a while. Ryan was a good man, and exactly what Jackie deserved.

  Lacey smiled at them, happy to be here, basking in the sun, the company, and the free time she was enjoying at the end of a very busy several months. Jackie lifted the beer that the waitress delivered to their riverside table, as people walked by the restaurant’s patio.

  “To the end of a successful project, and to our fearless leader for making it all come together in the end,” she said, focusing on Lacey, making it her turn to blush.

  “Hey, I could never have done it without you, Jackie, not to mention twelve sexy, barely clothed men,” she joked, though she was only interested in one of the dozen, and he knew it. Things were good.

  “To barely clothed men, then,” Jackie repeated gustily, but only hers and Lacey’s bottles met. Ryan and Jarod both put their beers down, comically refusing to join that particular toast.

  “This was a fabulous idea, though, Jarod. A minivacation for all of us,” Lacey added.

  “I never spent much time in San Antonio…but we’ll be changing that,” he said, his foot finding its way over to nudge at Lacey’s. “My transfer went through,” he announced, and a hail of cheers went up.

  Lacey was happiest of all. Three months of traveling back and forth from New York to El Paso were at an end. She could move to San Antonio, and she was sure she could find work in Texas, especially with the recommendations and exposure Bliss had offered her.

  “Hey. Wait. I thought the only position open in San Antonio was the captain’s?”

  “That’s right,” he said calmly, leaning back in his chair. He looked at her from underneath that hat, those gorgeous brown eyes telegraphing her all kinds of wicked messages.

  “But you didn’t want to be captain. You wanted to be out in the field.”

  “Um, honey,” Ryan spoke up, “why don’t we go take a look at the river for a moment, until the food gets here? When we go home, all there will be is snow and slush,” he said tactfully, taking Jackie’s hand as they left the table.

  “Jarod, I don’t want you taking a job you’ll be miserable in just to be near me.”

  As much as she wanted to be with him, he’d never asked her to give up her career, and she couldn’t ask the same of him.

  “Happy means being near you, in case you haven’t noticed. Spending days on the road, tracking fugitives and drug-runners through the desert, has lost some of its charm, to say the least. I’ll be busy in the new job, it’ll be different, but I’ll be coming home every night to you.”

  Convinced, she leaned in to kiss him. “I guess I can’t argue with that,” she said huskily. “No long-term assignments for me, either, at least, not in the near future.”

  “Speaking of long-term, there was something else I wanted to ask you about,” he said, wrapping her hand in his.

  “What’s that?”

  Reaching into his pocket with his other hand, he pulled out a small blue box. Tiffany’s. Oh, my.

  Oh, my, oh, my, oh, my, was all she could think, as he released her hand to open the box to reveal a glittering platinum-set diamond.

  “I know it’s only been a few months, and there’s no rush, you can take your time, but—”

  “Yes! Are you kidding me? Absolutely yes!” She jumped up, nearly overturning the table as she threw herself into his arms. She branded him with a long, scorching kiss that only broke when they drew applause. He looked deep into her eyes.

  “I’ll always be there for you. Always.”

  “I know. I’ll be there for you, too,” she promised, tears welling as he slipped the gorgeous ring on her left ring finger. “You really are a hero, Jarod.”

  “As long as you see me that way, that’s all I care about, sweetheart.”

  Jackie and Ryan returned to the table, hooting, and congratulating them.

  “Leave the table for a minute and see what happens,” Ryan teased, slapping Jarod on the back and taking the seat he’d left earlier.

  “Hmm, who knows who will be next?” Jarod quipped, watching Ryan’s face, but he simply smiled, revealing nothing. The women were bent over the ring, sighing and talking animatedly, and Ryan shook his head.

  “They might be at it for a while.”

  Jarod grinned, enjoying every second of it.

  “Yeah, but that’s okay. We have time.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3544-5

  HARD TO RESIST

  Copyright © 2009 by Samantha Hunter.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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