by Paige Tyler
She was huddled beneath the blanket, shivering and watching him with a glazed expression. Fool woman, he thought. She was lucky she hadn’t ended up dead running out in the middle of a snowstorm like that. Shaking his head, Madoc opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.
Outside, the snow was coming down even harder and didn’t look like it was going to let up any time soon. Which meant that he and Shayna were probably going to be stuck in the cabin until it stopped. Great, he thought.
Of course, he wouldn’t be in this position right now if he had just left Shayna Matthews cuffed, Madoc told himself angrily as he stacked logs into his arms. He’d gone after her as soon as he realized she was missing, but when he hadn’t caught up with her right away, it quickly became apparent that she had more of a head start than he’d first thought. Furious with himself for letting a prisoner in his custody escape, he’d spent the next half hour trying to find her. But the snow had been falling hard and fast, and it was just by luck that he’d come across Shayna’s trail at all. Even then, it had taken awhile to find her. If she hadn’t stumbled across the cabin, they might both be in trouble by now.
His arms full, Madoc turned and went back inside the cabin with the logs. Though Shayna was still wrapped up in the blanket, she didn’t look like she was shivering anymore, he noticed. Setting the logs down beside the stove, he added a couple to the fire, and then turned his attention to the cabinets. While he wasn’t all that hungry after the big meal he’d had at the diner, he had no doubt that Shayna could do with something warm. He just hoped there was something in the cabin to eat.
Though the first two cabinets were empty, he was relieved to find that the third held a jar of instant coffee as well as half a dozen cans of soup and several cans of fruit. It wasn’t much, but it would do, he thought. The cans were covered in dust, but seemed to be in good condition. Grabbing one of the cans of soup, he opened it and poured the contents into a pot. He gave it a sniff test, decide it was still good, and then set it on the stove to heat.
While he waited for the soup to warm up, Madoc took Shayna’s wet shirt and jeans, and draped them over the backs of the chairs closest to the stove so that they would be able to dry. When that was done, he checked the soup and found that it was already bubbling. Taking two mugs from the shelf, he wiped them out with his shirt and poured a generous amount of soup into both of them.
Mugs in hand, he walked over to where Shayna was sitting on the bed and held one out to her. “Drink this,” he said.
As Shayna reached out to take the mug, the blanket slipped from one shoulder, and Madoc caught a glimpse of the tops of her breasts before she pulled it back up. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Madoc said nothing in reply, only watched while she drank the soup. When she had finished, he took the mug from her and set in down on the table alongside his own.
“Are you feeling warmer now?” he asked, turning back to her.
She nodded. “A little,” she said quietly, but he could see that she was getting back to her normal self. “You still look like you’re cold, though,” she added after a moment.
Madoc frowned at her observation. The cabin was taking a long time to heat up, he supposed. He hadn’t realized it, but now that Shayna had mentioned it, he had to admit that he was a little cold. But he wasn’t about to let her know that. He knew it was silly, but he just couldn’t let on that he was cold. Men didn’t do that, not where he came from. And definitely not in front of a woman, especially one that was a prisoner. “I’m fine,” he said.
She lifted a brow, clearly not believing him. “You were outside just as long as I was, which means you’re probably just as cold as I am,” she pointed out. “Why don’t you get into bed and we can share the blanket?”
Madoc lifted a brow at her words. Though the invitation to crawl into a warm bed with a half-naked woman was tempting, he had no doubt Shayna Matthews was trying to play him again. Just like she had when she’d convinced him to take off the cuffs. Well, not this time. “I said, I’m fine,” he told her gruffly.
She shrugged. “If you say so,” she said. “But you’re obviously freezing.”
Madoc made no reply, hoping she would let the matter drop, but to his annoyance, she continued.
“What is it with you men, anyway?” she said. “You think that if you admit you’re cold, we’ll think less of you or something. Well, you don’t have to worry about that with me. I couldn’t possibly think any less of you than I already do. So, stand over there and freeze if you’d rather.”
He ground his jaw, refusing to rise to the bait. “I will,” he said.
When Shayna made no comment, he thought she had finally given up on trying to cajole him, but then she spoke again.
“You’re starting to shiver,” she said. “Not only is it really blowing your whole tough-guy image, but it’s making me cold again.”
Madoc scowled at that. He knew she was trying to embarrass him into admitting that he really was cold. Then, once she got him into bed, she would try to use her feminine charms on him. But unfortunately, though he didn’t want to fall for her scheme, she was right about him being cold.
He thought about it for a moment. Aw, the hell with it, he thought. He wasn’t going to fall prey to her charms, so why did he care what she was up to? And since that was true, there was no reason to stand there freezing. Shaking his head, he motioned for her to move over.
“All right,” he said. “But only because you’re being such a pain about the whole thing.”
As he sat on the edge of the bed to take off his boots, Shayna scooted over to make room for him, but the bed was small, so it did little good. There was no way he was going to fit his large frame on there with her comfortably unless they cuddled up close together. As he moved closer to her sexy, curvy body, Madoc told himself once again that he wasn’t going to allow her feminine charms have any effect on him.
Shayna tried to give the Marshal as much room as she could on the bed while still trying to find a comfortable position. This had to be the smallest bed she’d ever seen, she thought to herself. Or maybe it just seemed smaller because the man in it with her was so big. Then again, maybe it was because it had been a long time since she’d been in bed with a man at all. It hadn’t exactly been at the top of her list of things to do since going on the run.
And she had to admit that the Marshal was gorgeous.
Stealing a glance at him from beneath her lashes, however, Shayna almost laughed at the effort he was making to keep his distance. It was obvious that he hadn’t wanted to get into bed with her. It had probably been a blow to his manly ego to admit that he was freezing, she thought. But she really had hated to see him standing there shivering. Of course, just because she hadn’t wanted him to freeze didn’t mean that she was completely comfortable with the idea of being in bed half naked with him, either. But sharing body heat made sense.
Moreover, it had gotten him to stop hovering over her like a guard dog. She might be his prisoner, but it didn’t mean she wanted to be reminded of it.
Shayna studied the Marshal in silence. He was lying on his back, his arm pillowed behind his head, his expression unreadable as he stared up at the ceiling. She was going to stuck in this cabin with him for at least a day or two, she thought, which made him a captive audience of sorts. Perhaps she could find a way to turn that to her advantage. But as much as wanted to jump right in with both feet and plead her case with him, she knew he wouldn’t be very receptive if she did. Which meant that she would have take it slowly.
“What’s your name?” she asked after a moment.
He gave her a sidelong glance, his golden-brown eyes narrowing suspiciously. “My name?”
She shrugged. “Call me old fashioned, but I like to know a guy’s name when I climb into bed with him,” she said dryly.
Though his mouth quirked slightly at her lame attempt at humor, he made no reply, and she was about to think he wasn’t going to answer her question at all when he fin
ally spoke.
“It’s Madoc,” he said. “Madoc Cutler.”
Madoc. It was an unusual name, but strong sounding, like a hero in a romance book might have, she thought.
Somehow, it fit a guy that hunted down fugitives for a living.
Deciding that talking about the weather would be non-productive, Shayna fell silent again. Despite the fact that she knew she had to take her time with him and get him to slowly let down his guard, she couldn’t think of a single thing to talk about that wasn’t related to her being a fugitive.
“So,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “How did you find me?”
His jaw tightened at her question. “It wasn’t that difficult once I picked up your trail in the snow,” he said.
Her brow furrowed when she realized he thought she meant how he’d found her at the cabin. “No, I meant how did you find me in Flint Rock?” she clarified.
“Oh,” he said. “I remembered seeing you on a wanted poster, and recognized you.”
Shayna’s frown deepened at his words. “So, you really were just passing through town and decided to stop for something to eat at the diner?” she asked incredulously. “I thought you had come there specifically to arrest me.”
The Marshal turned his head to look at her. “I’m actually supposed to be on vacation. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he said, and then when she scowled, added, “Or not, I guess, depending on your point of view. You know, you really should have dyed your hair or something. The glasses aren’t much of a disguise.”
“I’ll remember that the next time,” she said sarcastically, only to realize that there wasn’t going to be a next time.
Not unless she could manage to escape from Madoc Cutler.
She rested her head on her hand and gazed down at the handsome Marshal. “I didn’t steal that money, you know,” she said softly. “And I certainly didn’t murder anyone.”
“The police back in Denver think you did,” he said.
“Well, they’re wrong,” she insisted. “I’m innocent. I was framed.”
Shayna held her breath, waiting for him to tell her once again that he wasn’t interested and that he didn’t want to hear her going on and on about how innocent she was. But to her surprise, the Marshal simply said, “Then why did you run?”
“Because even my lawyer thought I was guilty. He told me that we would never win with the evidence they had against me, and that I was going to go to prison for a very long time,” she said. “He advised me to take the deal the district attorney offered, but I couldn’t. Not only would I have gone to jail for ten years for something I didn’t do, but part of the plea bargain was that I would have to return the money. I didn’t have it, so I couldn’t very well accept the plea bargain.”
Shayna waited for Madoc to say something, but when he didn’t, she knew she was going to have to make herself more sympathetic in his eyes. “Even my family told me that I should run,” she said. “They knew I hadn’t done what the police said, and that the way things were going, I could end up in jail for the rest of my life.”
Again, she waited for the Marshal to say something, but instead, he just stared up at the ceiling.
“Even with my family urging me to go, it wasn’t an easy decision to go on the run,” she continued. “I’ve always been really close with my family, both my parents and my younger sister. I was afraid of what becoming a fugitive would do to them. I didn’t want them hounded by the cops or the media. But what could I do? I didn’t want to go to jail for something I didn’t do. I know I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but my sister helped me get away. I’ve been on the run ever since.”
Beside her, Madoc seemed to be considering her words. “The warrant said you were wanted for suspected murder, which means that no body was found,” he said. “What’s that about?”
Shayna was a little surprised that the Marshal didn’t already know the story, especially since it had been all over the news. But she imagined that after awhile, all the crimes he read about just blurred together. She was just happy that he was actually finally willing to listen to her side of it.
“It’ll probably be easier if I start at the beginning,” she said. “I worked at a big manufacturing company back in Denver. For the past several years, I worked directly for the Chief Financial Officer, Evan Mercer. My job was to oversee the employee retirement funds,” she explained. “We have a lot of employees and the funds are worth a lot of money. A couple of weeks before everything happened, some computer programs I had running brought up some red flags indicating some irregularities in the funds. It was nothing drastic, but more money than usual was going out, and though I checked and double-checked, I couldn’t figure out where it was going.”
She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I started to get a really funny feeling and decided I’d better mention it to Evan,” she continued. “But that night, he called me at home and asked me to meet him at the office.
He said he needed to talk to me about something important, and that it couldn’t wait until morning. When I asked what he wanted to talk to me about, he said he didn’t want to discuss it over the phone.”
“So, what did he want to talk to you about?” the Marshal prompted.
“I don’t know,” Shayna replied. “When I got to the office, he wasn’t there. I thought that maybe he was just late, so I waited for awhile, but he never showed, so I finally left and went home. I figured I’d talk to him the next morning, but he didn’t come in to work.” She paused. “Later that day, the police came by with a warrant to seize all of our records. Apparently, they’d received an anonymous tip that half-a-million dollars had been stolen from the retirement fund. Before I even knew what was going on, they came back to arrest me for embezzlement.”
Shayna swallowed hard at the memory of how humiliating it had been to be handcuffed and led out of her office while her co-workers had watched. “I thought it was all just a big mistake, but then the police started showing me all the evidence they had against me,” she said. “They had numbers for Cayman bank accounts that I never opened, reservations for a plane flight out of the country that I never made, and emails to my boss that I never sent discussing the best way to go about moving the money I had supposedly stolen.”
She sighed. “I thought that Evan would show up and straighten everything out, but then the nightmare got even worse. My lawyer told me that with the amount of evidence the cops had against me, they would have no problem making the embezzlement charges stick. But the cops wanted me for more than that. They started trying to get me to confess to killing Evan. It was their theory that we had embezzled the money together, but that I had gotten greedy and decided to kill him so I could have it all for myself.”
“And they were sure he’d been murdered?” Madoc asked when she finished.
She shrugged. “They seemed convinced of it,” she said. “They found blood at his house, as well as my fingerprints were all over the place. I tried to tell them that I didn’t know anything about the blood, and that my fingerprints were there because I’d been to his house dozens of times. But they weren’t really interested in hearing my explanations.”
“Didn’t your lawyer ever suggest that maybe this Evan Mercer had actually stolen the money and set you up?”
Madoc said.
“He brought it up,” Shayna admitted. “But with all the physical evidence against me, the cops weren’t going to even look into the possibility that I’d been framed. It would just make their case weaker.”
Madoc was silent a moment. “So, what do you think?” he finally asked. “Could Evan Mercer have set you up?”
Shayna thought a moment. “I don’t know, but I hope not,” she said honestly. Of course, if her boss wasn’t behind it, then that probably meant he actually had been murdered, she thought grimly. “Evan and I have been friends since I started working at the company. He’d always been like a father-figure to me. I can’t imagine him framing me fo
r embezzlement and murder.”
Beside her, Madoc shrugged his broad shoulders. “If not him, then who?”
Shayna didn’t answer because she really didn’t have an answer to give him. In her heart, she really didn’t think that her boss was the one behind this, but she had no other suspect to offer. She wished she could think of something else to say, something that might sway the Marshal into believing her, but unfortunately, she had already told him the whole story.
Shayna chewed on her lower lip. At least the Marshal had been willing to listen to her this time, which had surprised her. Not that it meant much, she supposed. But it was the best she could hope for at this point. Maybe if she had a chance to keep working him, he might actually start to believe her.
She would have to take it slowly, though. If she pushed too hard, he might get suspicious and realize that she was trying to play him. That would only get her turned over to the cops that much faster. Or get her put over his knee again. She blushed at the thought.
She had been lucky that the Marshal had taken pity on her when he had found her at the cabin. As furious as he had been, her bottom might not have been able to take it. What was it with him and spanking, anyway? she thought. Didn’t he know he was in the twenty-first century? She didn’t even think people still did that.
The first time he’d spanked her she had been so shocked by it that she hadn’t really realized what was going on.
But that second time - when she had tried to hit him with the clock - she had definitely felt every smack. Even now, she could almost feel the sting of his hand coming down on her bottom. Oh God, was her bottom actually tingling? she wondered.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. Get those thought out of your head right now, she told herself. Focus on the important stuff, like figuring out what you’re going to say to the Marshal tomorrow. She needed to continue to try to get him on her side. But she would have to be subtle, she warned herself.