The Cowboy's Deadly Mission

by Addison Fox

  “She succeeded.”

  “I think you and Dove, and me for that matter, have a lot more in common than you think.”

  “Tate Charles Reynolds, are you actually suggesting a threesome?”

  He’d never been more strung out and aroused in his life, which made the rollicking laughter that kept bubbling up in his chest a decided contrast.

  Damn, had he ever felt so good?

  “I am not suggesting that, though you did put a rather exciting image in my head. What I’m suggesting is that I think the delectable Ms. Anthony talks a far more interesting game than she walks.”

  “You are actually lying here complimenting another woman while your hand is on my breast?”

  “Yes, I am.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the same spot. “I am who I am and I’m not going to change. But noticing another woman doesn’t mean I think she’s you.”

  “Keep up the sweet-talking and you might get yourself out of this yet.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to get out of anything.” To prove his point, he shifted his position, rolling so that he pressed into the warm, waiting entrance of her body. “Sweet talk or arguments or all the times that come in between, you have to know that you’re the only girl for me, Annabelle Granger.”

  She shifted in kind, allowing him better access, and teased him just so as she lifted her body against his. “No Belly?”

  “I only call you that to get you fired up.”

  “And now?”

  “Your cheeks are already flushed and warm for me.”

  Since every other part was flushed and warm as well, Tate didn’t wait any longer. Especially when she shifted once more, taking him fully into her body.

  As the moment overcame them both, hot and sweet and erotic and oh-so-familiar, Tate knew he’d never wanted her more. And as he began to move, he tried with everything he was to show her what she meant to him.

  Chapter 16

  “You cleaned up, too?” Belle asked as she looked around her sparkling kitchen.

  Tate whirled around from the counter, morning sun streaming through the window to highlight his bare chest and feet, nothing but well-worn denim in between. “Cleaned what?”

  “The kitchen after dinner last night. I was a horrible hostess who fought with you and ran out on you and yet you still stayed to clean up.”

  He poured her a cup of coffee and handed over the warm mug. She estimated she’d make it through no more than half the cup before the urge to leap on him and have sex on the kitchen floor did her in. If their discussion—and her apology—wasn’t so important, she might have done so already.

  “You weren’t a horrible hostess.” Tate took the seat next to her and set down his own steaming mug.

  “You were here last night, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was here.” He laid a hand on hers, linking their fingers on top of the table. “And if we’re going for total honesty, I was a bad dinner guest who fought with you right back. I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” Her gaze dipped toward the table before winging back up to him. “I’m truly sorry. I know we don’t agree on a lot of things, but you came for dinner and instead I picked a fight with you.”

  Tate cocked his head, the motion also lifting one large, capable shoulder. “That’s how you see it?”

  “It’s exactly what I did. We had hit a nice settled point in the conversation over burgers, which you were kind enough to bring over, and then I went and tossed ten years of anger back in your face.”

  She’d been reading his expressions for years, which made the inscrutable one that settled over his face that much more of a surprise. His gaze was serious, but not angry. His mouth was firm, but the lines showed no hints of frustration. And his eyes were wide open, even as she couldn’t read a single thing in their depths.

  It was unsettling and unnerving, but it was his comment that topped off the sense of unreality. “Maybe you and I need to start fresh.”

  “How do two people who’ve known each other their whole lives start fresh?”

  He stood and moved closer, pulling her to her feet. Then he moved in, nestling her flush against him, his arms wrapping around her waist. She had no choice but to splay her hands across that broad, warm chest. “I think that’s part of our problem, Belly.”

  “Back to that?”

  “Old habits die hard.”

  She supposed they did and, if she were honest, she sort of loved the nickname. Unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing that, she focused instead on his bigger point. “Our problem?”

  “Yep. Our problem.”

  She didn’t miss the emphasis, or the way his arms tightened around her, both possessive and protective in equal measure.

  “We’ve both been spending too much time in the past.”

  She was afraid of the question, but she’d never been any good at hiding things from him. And she certainly couldn’t hide something this important. “Isn’t that where we started? And isn’t that why we keep ending up back in the same spot?”

  “I suppose.”

  “That’s awfully noncommittal.”

  “Maybe it’s just a place. A starting point, if you will.”

  Whatever Tate was—and she knew he worked hard to project that practiced aloofness—Belle was well aware his waters ran far deeper than they appeared.

  Before she could press him to explain, he continued. “I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. And I realized that I’ve spent so much time thinking about what happened a decade ago that I haven’t taken a bit of time to look at what’s happening now.”

  “What’s happening now?”

  “Two adults who might just have a second chance. Especially if they can grow up enough to push aside past hurts and maybe a bit of their pride.”

  “Do you think you can do that?”

  A wry quirk tugged the corner of his lips. “Just me?”

  “No.” She shook her head. It wasn’t just him. To be fair, it had never been just him. “Both of us. I’d like to try, but I’d like to know that you’re willing to try, too.”

  “I’m willing to try. More than that, I want to. I want to live a different life than I’ve been living. And I’d like to do it with you.”

  “You’re serious?” She hadn’t doubted his sincerity, but there was something about hearing the actual words that stole her breath.

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t care about my job.”

  She would have seen it anyway in the movement of his muscles, but his body tensed against her. “I care. A lot. And I’m not going to suddenly get over the danger or the worry. But I sort of realized that I was going to worry about you whether or not we were a couple.”

  “You did?”

  Throughout their exchange a subtle gleam of teasing hovered in his eyes, so it was fascinating to watch as it vanished. “Always.”

  “But you’ve told me again and again that it’s a wasted pursuit. That there’s always another bad guy to catch.”

  “I still believe that.”

  If he still believed it, then what were they doing? For all his talk of forgetting the past, wasn’t that the same place they’d been before? Was now any different? Or would they simply be putting a temporary bandage on things?

  Because it sure as hell seemed like it.

  “I can’t go through that again.”

  “Through what?”

  “Losing you. Feeling like I have to choose.” She slid from his arms, her steps backward insistent at the same time he instinctively tightened his hold. “I won’t survive if I have to do that again.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m okay with it.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yes. I’ve realized what it means to live without you and I don’t want to do it anymore.”

&n
bsp; She didn’t want to fight. Didn’t want to go back to that dark place where they both hovered in their respective corners, unwilling to hear the other out. But as one comment tumbled into the next, she struggled to see how he had really changed.

  “So you want to be together but you still think my life’s work is a waste? That I’d be better off doing something else?”

  The lightness that had carried them through the night and on into morning faded, the air between them growing thick with a decade of resentment and anger. Oh, how she didn’t want to go back to that place.

  Yet how could she ignore it?

  “I’m not entitled to my opinion?” Tate’s tone was calm but it was impossible to miss the sparks of anger turning his gaze into a hard emerald. “I’m not holding you back and I’m through asking you to change. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Doesn’t mean I should suddenly feel good about seeing you stand over a dead body or a bloody crime scene.”

  “That rarely happens. Despite recent events, murder is an uncommon occurrence in the Pass.”

  “So you can stand there and tell me that the night you stood over Jamie Grantham’s dead body, a wrecked-out shell decimated by drugs, you didn’t stand over the specter of violent death? Or the car crashes you go to in the middle of the night, pulling lifeless bodies from the wreckage? Or the drug raids you go on with the Feds?”

  “That’s not all the time. Why are you making such a big deal about it?”

  “Because it’s you!” The anger that had built and brewed spewed forth with all the force of a geyser. “It’s you, Belle! Every time you walk into one of those situations, it’s eking out a piece of your soul. Every time you face one of those dark, desperate situations, you give up a part of your humanity for someone else’s.”

  She’d believed herself immune to it. If she’d questioned herself even the day before, she’d have quickly assured anyone who asked that she’d long since gotten past this argument with Tate. Had gotten over the raw, ripping pain of standing on opposite sides of deep-running, emotional waters.

  But she hadn’t.

  The deepest, darkest part of her lightened somehow when she went into those situations he disdained so much. In those moments, when she helped someone else at their darkest hour, she made some cosmic correction for her mother’s life.

  And he didn’t understand a bit of it.

  The man she loved—the one she’d love until the day she died—didn’t understand the deepest part of her.

  “No, Tate. You don’t get it. I’m not giving up my humanity. When I go into those situations, I get it back.”

  * * *

  Russ Grantham paced the small shed in his backyard and focused on his next move. Sweet, wholesome Belle Granger had become his enemy. He had no idea how it had happened—and the reality had blindsided him as swiftly as a bullet to the brain—but it was true.

  She suspected him. Suspected him for the murders of the trash that did their dirty work in the Pass and the areas beyond. Those suspicions had been subtle and more sly than he’d have expected, but they were there all the same.

  He’d watched her for years. Watched how she’d come up in the department, working hard and growing in her skills. He’d had such pride in her, watching Reese’s little friend grow into a fine policewoman.

  He knew of her background, of course. Midnight Pass was small and even aside from the fact that his daughter was close with Belle, he was in a position to know everything about everyone. He knew her father had never been in the picture and that her mother had borne her own share of demons. He’d worried over that when she’d first joined the force, but had soon come to realize that up-and-coming Belle Granger was a natural for police work. A determined young woman, she’d taken that core ability and honed it through years of hard work and a willingness to put in the hours.

  He’d had that drive once. That ambition. And that belief in the system that wrongs would be righted and the evil ones would be brought to justice.

  How wrong he’d been.

  How misguided.

  And oh, how his eyes had been opened when he’d realized that he could right the wrongs on his own.

  He reached for the medal at his neck, only to find nothing but his own flesh. That was bad luck, more than he could say. Abrogato had grabbed at it in a heated moment of struggle and torn it off. Russ had hunted for it once he’d ended the man’s life, but the dark and the thickness of the grass had prevented him from finding it. In the end, he’d believed it would sink into the earth and, if ever found, would simply be ignored. A belief only reinforced by the heavy spring rains that had coated the Pass for a week.

  Yet Belle had gone looking for clues and had found it.

  It was a stroke of bad luck, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

  Nothing he couldn’t overcome.

  He could overcome anything. Hadn’t he already proven that? Hadn’t he put on a smile and gone back to his life and spent each and every miserable day since losing his son demonstrating that truth?

  Only now he had to demonstrate a new truth. He believed in his cause and his calling. And while he hated to take an innocent life—one he genuinely cared for—he wouldn’t stop his work.

  His fingers ran to his neck once more, only this time, he tapped it against his chest, lost in thought. Losing the pendant was as much a stroke of bad luck as an emotional disappointment. He’d worn the gold image of Mary around his neck his whole life. He’d taken strength and comfort from her, believing that her mother’s heart knew and understood his pain.

  Yet now that pendant was a link in a deadly chain.

  One that would have to end with Belle Granger’s death.

  * * *

  His sister’s woo-woo music floated out of the living room, something dreamy and full of strings, as Tate entered the kitchen. The door slammed behind him, a dark counterpoint to the music and the distinct odor of cloying flowers that she liked to put on from some weird-looking diffuser when she did her yoga.

  The world was upside down and no amount of soothing music or smelly crap was going to make it better.

  He prowled to the counter, dragged a mug out of the cabinet and then poured himself a cup of coffee. For all her spiritual ways and clean living, Arden was as much of a coffee fiend as the rest of them and the pot was full and hot.

  Which would do as a fine stand-in until he could hit the whiskey bottle. He’d be surprised if he made it until three with the mood he was in.

  Maybe two.

  Damn it, what the hell had happened? He and Belle had come to an understanding last night. He’d nearly spilled out the fact that he loved her—had always loved her—over morning coffee and she’d blindsided him with all the talk of her job.

  Why did that always get in the way?

  And why was it so damned important to her that he was okay with it all?

  He was okay, wasn’t he? He wanted to be with her and he was fine if police work was her life’s calling. And it really didn’t matter if he was fine or not—he was well aware he had no say in the matter. He’d lived with that knowledge for ten years and wasn’t interested in continuing to fight the battle.

  She was a cop. A damn fine one. Couldn’t he believe in her and love her and still hate that she did work that put her in the crosshairs of criminals?

  He was halfway through his coffee when the air changed and his sister filled the doorway frame. “Scowl much?”

  “Nosy much?” he shot back.

  “You’re the one stomping around in here like a grizzly bear. You interrupted my meditation.”

  “Meditate later.”

  “I was meditating now.”

  “Too bad.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “You mean other than the fact that the house smells like a cheap whore’s perfume and you’re trying to put me to sleep wit
h the music?”

  Arden stomped across the kitchen, moving up so they were nose to nose. Or nose to chest as it were. Although his sister barely reached his shoulder, he had no doubt she could and would hold her own. “What crawled up your ass and died, Tate Reynolds?”

  “Why does it have to be my problem? I walk in here to get a cup of coffee and this place has turned into a freaking yoga studio. There’s no space. No air!”

  In his anger, his arm swung wider than he intended, his fingers flying open as his mug flew loose, shattering on the floor. The coffee spilled out in an arc and Arden jumped back, out of its way. He wasn’t so lucky, as half a mug of hot liquid poured over his jeans.

  She went from virago to den mother in an instant. “Damn it, Tate. Hurry up and get those off.”

  The normal modesty he and his brothers maintained around Arden vanished at the evidence he was liable to get burns if he didn’t shuck his jeans. In moments, he had them off, balled and tossed onto the floor. His sister had already taken off for the laundry room and was back in moments, a broom and dustpan in hand along with a pair of sweatpants folded from the laundry. “They’re Ace’s, so they’ll be long but they’ll do.”

  He took the offering, dragging on the cotton sweatpants before taking the broom and pan from her. “I’ll get it. You don’t need to clean up after my stupidity or my temper.”

  As gestures went, it was small, but as those were usually the most meaningful, the set of Arden’s shoulders visibly relaxed. While he cleaned up, she took his jeans and headed back to the laundry room. In moments, the shards had all been swept up along with the spilled coffee and the washing machine thundered from where it sat just off the kitchen.

  Arden had two fresh mugs out of the cabinet, already full of coffee, when he dumped the last of the broken ceramic pieces into the garbage. “Now. Do you want to tell me what has you so upset?”

  “No.”

  “Let me rephrase then. What has you so upset?”

  “Just leave it—” He’d nearly brushed her off—was absolutely prepared to head out with his sucky attitude to spend time with Tot—when he stopped. And the moment he stood still, all the anger and hurt and resentment spilled out in a torrent.