by Jenny Penn
Never one to keep up with gossip, Cooper had nevertheless heard the tale about Lindsay taking a Taser to her husband’s balls on their wedding night. It was supposedly the incident that had landed her a nice long stay at some upscale retreat. Everybody knew that was just a stuck-up way of referring to an asylum.
There could be no doubt that Lindsay had spent some time in an institution, but having met the girl, Cooper couldn’t believe she’d actually electrocuted her husband in such a gruesome manner. She was too sensitive. A fact he’d seen in her eyes when she’d made her crack about bear traps.
She didn’t have that kind of cruelty in her, which was just why he knew the way to win the argument over the land was to make her feel as guilty as possible. Cooper bet Lindsay wouldn’t be able to manage hold off for long as she thought about all those poor, dehydrating cows.
“There is no need for him to take such a risk,” Buddy insisted as he drew Cooper back into the conversation. “That woman isn’t going to last a whole day in that cabin. You saw her. She didn’t even want to go inside.”
“Hell, I didn’t want to go in.” Cooper grunted.
“At least you didn’t have to worry about falling through the floor,” Buddy retorted as he grabbed his gut and shook it. “I tried to suck all this in and just prayed I didn’t go crashing through those rotted planks.”
“That place should be condemned.” Cooper nodded, thinking back to Lindsay’s accusation about them leaving Elton to live like that. It irritated him that she might have point. After all, it wasn’t like Elton invited people over for tea. They didn’t know…but maybe they hadn’t wanted to.
“It doesn’t matter.” Cooper rejected both his thoughts and Buddy’s comments. “The cabin’s her problem and the water is ours. Give me a couple of days and I’ll get you all access.”
“You’ll have to forgive me.” Chet voiced the doubts Cooper suspected the rest of the men shared. “I’ll believe you when I get access to that water.”
“So be it.” Cooper could accept those terms. They were the same as he’d faced all his life—produce or fail.
“It better not be more than a couple of days,” Pete warned him. “We don’t have the kind of water or time you have.”
“None of us do,” Buddy agreed, not saying anything Cooper didn’t already know. “This can’t last very long.”
“It won’t.” Passing another glance back over the group, Cooper prayed his words didn’t end up lies even as he spoke with absolute confidence. “You’ll all get what you need if you let me handle this situation.”
“And Nick?” Chet pressed.
“Is my problem.” Cooper forced a grin, hoping to break the tension that seemed to grip them all. “Unless you’re going to tell me I’m too old to manage my baby brother.”
A round of muttered, halfhearted denials echoed around Cooper as the group began to break up. He didn’t bother to offer his friends any more reassurance. He understood their worry, but none of their concern compared to his own.
Whatever secrets Nick hid, they were becoming a problem. His brother wasn’t getting better. He was getting worse. Sleeping less, eating less, and his temper…it was too quick to ignite and flared too hot for his own good. Something had to be done. Cooper just didn’t know what. When it came to feelings he was kind of at a loss.
So he remained silent as he opened the truck door. With his nose pressed up to his window, Nick didn’t even bother to glance in Cooper’s direction as he slid into his seat behind the steering wheel. Irritated by his brother’s obvious interest, Cooper slammed the door hard enough to make the truck bounce. Nick’s head cracked against the window, earning Cooper a dark look along with a few curses.
“Jesus, man, what you trying to do? Give me a concussion?”
“More like knock some sense into you,” Cooper retorted, jamming his key into its lock. “What do you mean by starting a fight with Pete over a woman? You’ve been friends with him since before you wore big-boy pants. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Right is right and wrong is wrong,” Nick stated simply. “All the justifications in the world don’t change that.”
“Oh, I see. You’ve gotten all pious in your old age.” Cooper stepped on the clutch and threw the truck into gear. “Because I remember a freckle-faced kid getting lectured by the preacher on almost a weekly basis.”
“I did not have freckles,” Nick retorted absently as he turned to gaze back at the cabin. “And the only reason you remember that is because you were sitting there on the bench beside me getting the same damn lectures.”
Cooper couldn’t deny that. He’d been there, all right. Been there and had fun. “Remember the frogs?”
“I was eight.”
“And who got caught looking up Belinda Hickory’s mother’s dress? Kneeling under the choir benches just to sneak a peek.”
“I was twelve.”
“She was your aunt!”
“By marriage, not blood,” Nick retorted, clearly unashamed. Turning his attention from the cabin fading into the horizon, he reminded Cooper of his role in that disaster. “Besides someone had told me she didn’t wear panties. And what about you getting caught with Christy Uly and her cousin in choir’s loft.”
Just the mention of that day had a grin growing fast and quick across Cooper’s face. He couldn’t help it. Despite knowing he should feel ashamed and all sorts of embarrassed, the only emotion that memory ever evoked was smug kind of satisfaction.
“A choir loft is still better than the confessional,” Cooper stressed. “Or don’t you remember Maureen Warren?”
“Oh, yeah.” Nick chuckled. “I’d forgotten about that Thanksgiving.”
“Trust me, nobody else has,” Cooper assured him. “You’re the legend. I’m just the stud. And legends…don’t fight over a woman.”
Cooper left it there, the question unspoken but clearly asked. Just like all the other times he’d offered Nick a chance to talk about what he clearly needed to, his brother ignored him. Nick returned his focus to the window, staring back where the cabin had disappeared from sight.
“Lindsay is different.”
Unfortunately, so was Nick.
Chapter 4
“You’ve reached Lindsay. If you’re Carl or any one of Mr. Bryne’s employees, you can go to hell and rot there for a very long, long time. Everybody else can leave a message…Beep.”
“Lindsay, honey, this is your father and I have no intention of going to hell until I know you are safe. Please call.”
Carl Bryne set the receiver down in its cradle very carefully as he fought back the rage boiling under his calm and rational exterior. The need to mask his emotions had been bred into him just as the instinct to cover his ass had been. If anything unfortunate were to happen to his stepdaughter, the cops might access her voice mail.
Despite Lindsay’s sharp, bitter tone, all they would hear in his was sincere, fatherly concern. That’s what they’d believe because Carl had a natural born talent for gaining other people’s trust. He’d spent years using his skills to cultivate all the right contacts and carefully build a network of connections that allowed him to amass millions and ultimately assume the kind of authority and control he’d always craved.
His power extended beyond his bank account, beyond the local judges, past even the state lines and across the American borders. If that little bitch thought she could take that all away from him…
Before Carl could control the impulse, his hands snapped down on the phone, ripping it off the desk and sending it hurling into the wall. It shattered in a spray of plastic before crumbling to pieces on the floor. It wasn’t enough. He wanted that bitch to pay, to suffer, to beg for mercy and know none was coming.
“Sir?” Crugman appeared in the door to his office, tense and ready for action.
“It’s all right.” Carl waved Crugman into the room with that assurance.
“Lindsay?” Eyeing the fragments of phone scattered across the floor,
Crugman came to the obvious conclusion.
“Who else?” Carl sighed, wondering why it was the girl could never cooperate with his plans.
Things would have been so much easier if she would just be practical. He’d offer her anything and everything, all she had to do was mind a few basic rules, but no, Lindsay wanted her independence. Mostly she just wanted to get away from him. That feeling was mutual. Hell, even as a child he’d sent her to live in different house than him. Carl had to. She irritated him that much. Enough that sometimes he forgot the golden rule—never leave a mark.
“Anything I can do to assist you?” Crugman asked as he moved toward the dry bar in the corner.
His nonchalance didn’t fool Carl. Crugman owed Lindsay. The only reason he hadn’t collected his revenge yet was out of loyalty to Carl, and Carl knew not to push that too far. As a general rule he liked to keep Crugman away from his stepdaughter. Too much emotion involved in that relationship.
“I’m not sure.” Carl nodded when Crugman lifted the decanter in his direction, silently agreeing to a glass of brandy. “The investors are not pleased to say the least and Lindsay has decided to cut off all contact.”
“You’re worried.”
That was putting it mildly. There wasn’t much that Carl feared but homicidal cartel assassins were the stuff of nightmares. They didn’t just kill. They dealt in human suffering, finding it an exhilarating challenge to find new and inventive ways to torture a body before it died on them. Carl didn’t plan on becoming their next experiment.
Accepting the brandy from Crugman with a steady hand, he settled back into his seat to let the liquor fill him with a comforting warmth as he faced the one fact that still befuddled him. “I cannot believe she got Judge Willis to overturn my conservatorship.”
“Perhaps that’s because she gave him something he wanted,” Crugman suggested as he poured himself a whiskey. He returned the national brand to its hiding place behind all of Carl’s private labels.
“No. I don’t think it’s that.”
He wasn’t that lucky. The bitch had intentionally remained a virgin, screwing him out of any chance she might get pregnant, which meant Lindsay or her lawyer, Mr. Mathews, had something on the judge.
“Mathews argued a good case, didn’t he?”
“Does it matter? The man is clearly an inconvenience.” Settling into the chair across from Carl’s desk, Crugman stretched his legs out and offered Carl a suggestion that didn’t sound bad to his ears. “Probably a temporary one, though. Did you see how badly he was sweating under all that blubber? He’s a heart attack waiting to happen.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Carl had entertained a much more violent end for Mr. Mathews, but natural causes drew a lot less notice. “But now that you mention it, he is kind of a danger to himself.”
“So are high-strung people, like your girl.” Crugman hands slid downward until this glass rested just below his belt buckle. Carl wondered if the man realized that every time Lindsay came up in conversation he covered his balls. “Actually I think they’re at a higher risk for strokes than obese people are. She could end up incapacitated for life.”
“Well, that would just break my heart.” It really would. “I’d never get my grandkids.”
“Oh, you never know. There could be some randy orderly who just happens to take advantage of your poor little girl in her weakened state.”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Crugman’s suggestion would draw a lot of attention. That wasn’t something Carl cared to experience. “I rather enjoy indulging pregnant women, though I always worry, too. All sorts of complications in birth can lead to anything, including death.”
“Then here is to childbirth.” Crugman saluted him with his glass before downing the entire contents.
Chapter 5
Nick lay stretched out between the cool, crisp sheets, staring up into the shadowed darkness of bedroom ceiling. Shadows played across its smooth surface, taking on a menacing air as the memories Nick would prefer to forget crept out of the rocks he stored them under. The screams, the pain, the horror, it invaded his dreams and haunted his days. He knew only one way to attain a moment of peace.
Shoving the covers back with an agitated hand, he pulled on a pair of sweats along with an old T-shirt and a pair of well-worn sneakers and headed for the back door. After twelve years in the military, Nick knew he couldn’t outrun his problems but he could escape the memories. So he fled into the darkness, leaving the cries and screams echoing in his head behind.
Soon all he felt was the pound of his heart, the strain in his legs, and the rough heave of his breaths as he pounded mindlessly forward. Nick gave himself over to the moment, allowing himself to get lost in the momentum until a light grew to a sparkle in the distance. The dim yellow glow cut through the blackness of the night, like a warm, welcoming beacon.
Elton’s cabin.
With his muscles aching and his lungs burning from the long, hard run, Nick finally stumbled to a stop at the top of the ridge looking down on Lindsay Howell’s new home. He hadn’t planned on heading for her cabin but couldn’t deny the sense of rightness that invaded him as started down the slope toward her front door.
There was just something about Lindsay. She drew him to her with invisible ties that Nick didn’t fully understand. What he did know is that her big, honey-brown eyes had held secret fears that had called out to him. She knew her weakness, her vulnerability and tried to hide them deep within a defiant heart.
Lindsay might be small, soft, and built for loving, but she’d learned the value of standing her ground. It was that strength that captivated Nick. That’s just what he was—enthralled. Nick wanted Lindsay, but more than that he wanted to know about her, about her likes and dislikes, about the jokes she’d laugh at and the stories she’d tell. He wanted to know it all.
No doubt that sentiment would have sent Cooper into a seizure. His brother had made it more than clear that he didn’t want Nick chasing after the girl. Cooper’s explanations had all centered around their need to reach an agreement with the girl over the water and not wanting those negotiations compromised, but Nick knew the truth.
He wasn’t the only one who thought Lindsay was short, curvy, and sexy as hell. Cooper had noticed, too. That had been obvious the moment his older brother had started babbling about what she should call him. Nick had never seen Cooper less smooth than he’d been that morning. Between antagonizing the girl about the coffee and trying to intimidate her into giving him the access to her water, Cooper had been acting like a little kid pulling the pigtails of a girl he liked.
That image had Nick smirking as he jogged across Lindsay’s dirt-patched yard. He bounded up her porch steps without a worry in the world and sauntered right up to her door.
“…that’s right I should have…mad enough to kill…be like fate…”
At the sound of Lindsay’s voice Nick stilled, his hand in midair, ready to knock. Curious and a little uncertain, he leaned in closer to press his ear to the door as he caught strange bits and pieces of a one-sided conversation.
“Tuna is pretty good…wish I could bend like that….not that I’d stick my face in my own ass…kind of gross, do you know that, Mr. Cat?”
A grin broke across Nick’s face as he caught that last word. For a moment there he’d thought she might be as crazy as everybody said. Instead she was a sweet as he had suspected. Too sweet, in fact, to be wasting her affection on cat. Determined to claim her affection for himself, Nick knocked, a chipper beat, on Lindsay’s front door.
“Who is it?”
“Nick Cooper.”
The door slid open, revealing Lindsay looking too cute in a matching set of pink-and-white plaid pj’s. Neither revealing nor sexy, her tentlike top was embossed with the image of a puppy fast asleep, a kitten curled into his side, making her looked so adorable Nick couldn’t help but fantasize about corrupting her.
Heat flushed through him as all sorts of dark, dirty
fantasies flooded his head. Fantasies about laying her down, stripping her bare, and licking her all over. His mouth watered as the very idea left him hungry and hard. If she didn’t stop frowning up at him, he might just indulge in himself in a little taste.
First, though, he’d have to relieve her of the shotgun resting on her shoulder. Lindsay stood ready to do battle in pink toenail polish. That just made Nick fall all the harder for her.
“You going to shoot me?” He nodded toward the long, metal barrel, amused by the very idea.
“I don’t know.” Lindsay didn’t return his smile but studied him with open distrust and hostility. “It depends if you came by to gloat, because I’m not really in the mood for anymore of you or your brother’s games today.”
“Excuse me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Though, Nick could take a pretty good guess. Cooper must have decided to go ahead and pull her pigtails. Just like all the little girls before her, Lindsay was not amused.
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously,” Nick swore. “I was just out for a run and saw your light was on and thought I’d drop in to say hey…So, hey!”
“At one in the morning?” Lindsay sounded skeptical. “You just decided to go for a jog?”
“And saw your light was on and decided to stop in and see how you were doing,” Nick finished for her, keeping his smile firmly in place.
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m back. Like I said I would be, remember?”
“What I remember is that you sent me to be verbally humiliated by the not-so-pleasant Candy Anne,” Lindsay shot back with enough snap to her tone to make Nick flinch.
“I guess Candy Anne didn’t give you any grease, huh?”
“No. She did not, but she did give me a humiliating tongue-lashing where she managed to not only insult me but also the ‘dog-faced whore who gave birth to me.’”
Nick always knew that Candy Anne spoke her mind freely. The old blonde was known for it. Along with her temper it wasn’t uncommon for her to unload on a person, but Nick had never known her to be mean or cruel without cause. Then again, Cindy probably thought she had it.