Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2)

by Willow, Jevenna

  He maneuvered her into his arms and held on tight.

  “I’m sorry. I should not have said that.” He then ran his hand over her forehead, into her hair, cupping the back of her head with his palm.

  “No. You should not have,” she sobbed out. “You should just keep your big, fat mouth shut for a change.” She slammed her fist against his bared chest hoping to get her point across.

  “It’s just . . .” Jake’s sigh so heavy, he leaned his forehead to hers. “It’s just with you being here, most everything I had thought never to say again seems to be slipping right out of my mouth unchecked.”

  Liddy moved her head and looked up, Jake wiping away a single, lingering tear off her face with his thumb.

  “And most of what I thought never to do again seems to be the only things happening.”

  He quickly leaned down to kiss her yet again and this time she let the man get away with it. Hot and heavy too tame to describe how either was feeling at the moment. Steamed? Saturated? Engulfed in a blazing white-hot fire? Surely those fit much better than just hot and heavy?

  Jake kissed her with ten long years of strong emotions buried deep inside the both of them. Liddy, with ten long years of incredible hurt bottled up in her gut. Ten year of passionless nights unfulfilled, and plenty of years waiting for these facts to change before it was too late.

  Coming up for air, he smiled down into her eyes. “See what I mean?”

  A grin slowly formed on her lips. “No. Not really. I think you steamed up my eyeballs. I can’t see a thing.”

  At the wisecrack he released her; although it seemed reluctantly. He ran his hand through his hair, then over his face. His sight trapped hers.

  “Boy! If Debra does not come back to this police station, and soon . . . I might find myself doing something really stupid.” At this thought he groaned aloud.

  Liddy slid her gaze without regret to her husband’s lower half, grinning shamelessly.

  Stupid? No. Stupid wasn’t exactly the word she would have used. Try idiotic, or foolish, even incomprehensible. But stupid?

  Besides, had Jake not found his own grip with reality, she might have wanted to do something really stupid herself. She could feel the tightness growing in her lower half, increasing tenfold. The ache that signaled to a woman who’d been without for so damn long as pure unadulterated danger.

  Jake making her feeling this way . . . was not good. He wasn’t supposed to be making her wanting him so badly her teeth ached. Liddy was supposed to want Mack Wells in this way; so strong, so violently sexual; so mind-blowing and completely out of this world.

  Thus far, in their rather tame relationship, Mack made the good parts of her anatomy simmer. There was no mind-blowing sex between them. In fact, there was no sex between them at all. Not yet anyway.

  But Jake surely should not have this particular information supplied to him.

  He glanced at his watch and groaned all the more. Sixty- seven hours and counting. They simply had to get through sixty-seven more hours with each other. And hopefully not rip each other’s clothes off just to have their way.

  Liddy watched Jake move his eyes about the police station, looking for something. What? Signs of hidden cameras?

  If there were any, half-sister Debra was smart enough to hide them.

  The pure temptation of getting caught in the act had always been his downfall. The man lived by the edge of the sword. A few well-placed cameras would not have stopped his taking her ten ways to Sunday ten years prior. But this was not ten years ago. This was now. Liddy was not the same person she’d been when he married her. In fact, she could see he still hurt from her seemingly easy abandonment of their marriage.

  Ten years was a long time not to take what was yours with no regrets.

  Jake groaned.

  “What? Did I hurt you?” Her voice had turned soft, alluring, almost unrecognizable.

  “No. But can you?” he suddenly prodded, winking at her face.

  With breakneck speed, she snapped out of the trance he’d put her in. “You are incorrigible, Jake Giotti. A complete, irresponsible, incorrigible ass.”

  “Maybe so, but I also have the added benefit of being an extremely horny man with my wife in the near vicinity. And maybe good old Larry was right.”

  Lucky Larry’s advice came back to the brain swiftly, with dreaded vengeance. “Right? About what?” Liddy wondered aloud, pretending ignorance.

  “About the fact no one would ever know . . . if we do,” he said, raising a thick brow.

  Liddy’s eyes widened. Her gasp was audible. “You can’t be serious?”

  Jake moved forward, placing his body just inches from her. His hard cock under his suit pants even closer. “I’m as serious as ever, sweetheart.”

  He then grabbed her right hand and hauled it down to the juncture between his legs. “Very serious,” he repeated; as she gasped at the size and thickness of him trapped under the expensively tailored pants.

  Liddy yanked her trembling hand out of his grasp. “Jake Giotti! I am not suddenly brain-dead while locked in this holding cell with you. You and I are not . . . we are not . . .” She managed to moan out the rest under the barest threads of her still intact sanity. “Damnit, Jake! We are not having sex with each other inside a police station.”

  “Why not?” He grinned, shameless of all fault. “Too chicken? Too uptight? God! We’ve had sex in far worse places, if you remember correctly.”

  Trying very hard not to remember those places, Liddy snapped, “Because, it is just . . .wrong!”

  “What? Wrong to have sex inside a police station?” he asked, raising another brow. “Or just wrong to have sex with your husband?”

  “Both!” she sputtered.

  “Oh, well, if that’s the case.” A harsh shrug made with his shoulders, he backed away from her. “Then I assume it is all right for you to have sex with a man you’re not married to?”

  Oh! That’s rich, coming from a womanizer . . .

  “I haven’t had sex . . .”

  Liddy caught the foolish words by their tail, clamping her mouth shut. Her husband, however, hadn’t missed the slip of the tongue. He pulled her eyes back to his by strong fingers clamping her chin.

  “What was that, sweetheart? Please don’t tell me you are keeping yourself virginal for your up and coming wedding night, and haven’t had sex with Mack What’s-his-name? You plan to marry this guy once you can actually rid yourself of me. The Liddy I knew would not be saving herself for anyone. The Liddy I know loves sex. She can’t live without it. So why would she even try?” He paused, drawing in a sharp breath. “Unless . . .”

  Her hand rose and she slapped him as hard as she could right across the face. This was the exact moment Debra walked through the door of the police station, and the exact moment Liddy’s heart sunk to her knees.

  Jake could do nothing to retaliate, simply taking the biting sting with a grain of salt. He moved to his side of the cell to drop down on the bench, now glaring at her.

  While Liddy stood by the cell’s door, trembling all over, head to toe, her remorse set in. It was only inevitable he’d think she’d been trying to trap Mack into marriage.

  “So? I see the two of you are now resorting to smacking each other around? Ain’t that precious?” Debra’s tone was caustic.

  She stormed over to her desk, grabbed a manila folder from it, and stormed right back out, locking the station’s door.

  “Debra!” Liddy yelled. “You can’t leave me in here with this man!”

  “She can’t hear you,” Jake flipped out.

  Liddy turned her head and hissed. “Shut up, Jake! Not another word out of you. Not another fucking word!”

  His eyes widened to what he must have considered as a rather pathetic and useless threat. “Oh, really? And just how the hell are you going to stop me, might I ask?”

  Angry red marks were marring his right cheek. His arm, the spot where he’d been trying to remove her name from a chain around
a snake late last night, was bleeding once again.

  “Damnit, Jake! Why are you being like this?”

  He leaned his head against the wall, closed his eyes, held the ice pack to his upper arm, and told her flat out, with no regrets, no hesitation, just the real meat and potatoes of a very real problem between them, “Forget about it, Mrs. Giotti. I don’t feel much like arguing with you. I’m hurting. And listening to the sound of your voice compounds any pain, quite unnecessarily.”

  “I hope it really hurts. I hope it hurts so damn bad that you can’t stand the pain. I hope that it . . .”

  She never quite finished these thoughts.

  Liddy was too afraid of them all of a sudden. His gaze had slammed into hers, and the ghosts of the past which seemed to haunt them at every turn came forth, and neither could hide from its destructive path to save their souls.

  Chapter Twelve

  How dare he throw in her face she’d not actually completed the act of sex with Mack—yet? And she was saving herself for her wedding night to the man? And, she hadn’t had sex . . . in freakin’ ten years!

  She, more than anyone, knew the punishment of leaving a husband as befitting the crime.

  How dared Jake Giotti judge her? Then thought to get away with it? Oh! And do not get her started on his kissing her!

  Argh!!

  Ugh!

  She’d felt as if melting into a puddle of warm mushy pudding. Not to mention, her lower half was so frustratingly burning her up from the inside out, set to match it could’ve surely exploded.

  Getting nothing in return, this frustration was building into uncontrollable.

  Jake was always good at getting the fire started. All he had to do during the four short months they were together was kiss her. And he just did, damn him, better than he’d ever done before. Her breasts were tight. Her core was tremendously unsatisfied. Her heartbeat was slightly—no, let’s be honest, shall we?—more than slightly unsteady. And the arrogant bastard knew this. He was fully aware of what she was going through.

  She could see it in his eyes. They’d turned colors. He was looking at her as if he knew her deepest, darkest secret. And he was gloating about it.

  Self-consciously, she tried to move her arms to cover what his gaze was suddenly so fascinated with; without it looking too obvious. A slightly altered chest was now under a tight fitting tank top. Okay, Okay! So maybe darling Mack had a little something to do with her barely noticeable increase in bra size. So what? They were going to be his anyway. If he wanted them bigger, who cared? He paid for them.

  Dearly.

  Only the best would ever do for Mack Wells, Attorney at Law, and only best plastic surgeon she’d been sent to.

  And so what if she hadn’t slept with the man? Mack said he was more than okay with the arrangements of having separate bedrooms until married. And, with her keeping herself intact, so to speak. But it wasn’t exactly the truth, now was it? Her being intact?

  Yes, it was incredibly odd the bedroom aspect of her life, but he’d convinced her he’d wanted them to be a little old-fashioned.

  The more she thought about it now, their ‘lack of’ was a little creepy. Truth was Mack didn’t know the truth about her past because she’d figured on telling him after the wedding, and only if she had too.

  Liddy was sure when push came to shove, no pun intended, she could have faked a loss of virginity. She could have faked a lot of things.

  Jesus! Was she really this naïve?

  “You got a boob job, didn’t you?” Jake blurted out.

  Her mind on Mack, caught up on how she’d ever put thought to getting away with faking inexperience, and not on Jake, she had to do a double-take to his question. Her eyes slid wide open.

  If at all honest, any faking would have betrayed her from the second of undressing to the actual act of intercourse.

  “I told you to shut up, didn’t I?”

  Liddy was pissed she could have been so stupid.

  “Did he pay for them, too?”

  Groaning, she snapped, her temper unchecked, the lousy bastard somehow reading her thoughts. “None of your damn business, Jake.”

  Still seated on the cell bench, he spat back, “It is very much my business, Mrs. Giotti, because technically those are still mine.” He pointed at her breasts with an accusing finger.

  For Pete’s sake, they weren’t grapefruit at the grocery store! He didn’t have to point.

  Liddy dropped her arms to her sides and slumped down on the bench. Let him look. Let him look long and hard. Let him look all he ever wanted to. It was not as if he was going to have any rights to her after she took him to the cleaners, just to get a divorce.

  But then she blurted out ‘oh so foolishly’, following in the wake of what she shall consider as her biggest blunder to date, “Just get it out of your system, Jake. Tell me all you have to tell me. Drag me over hot coals. Eat me alive if it makes you any feel better. I really don’t care anymore. But get it out of your system so we can somehow get on with our lives.”

  The air completely knocked out of her sails beyond this point, she was too tired and too hungry to argue with him anymore. And, she supposed, simply too weak-willed to dared a hand into an endeavor of any real magnitude with her soon-to-be ex.

  She hadn’t eaten breakfast. Yesterday’s meals consisted of one stolen strawberry out of Theodora’s garden and terribly tart lemonade to wash the stolen morsel down with, once the old hag had caught her in the act of theft.

  Her stomach betrayed the rest of her and growled. Jake heard it.

  “Okay. If you say so,” he warned.

  “Well?” she baited. The suspense was killing her. Surely there had to be more? There was always more whenever it came to Jake getting in the last word.

  “Well . . . what?” he asked, raising his eyes.

  “Aren’t you going to accuse me of doing some really horrible things? Tell me I am a truly despicable human being for leaving you in the lurch, as I did? Throw it in my face Mack Wells is not man enough and he buys himself boob jobs? Because he can, you know. He can buy anything he wants. He’s filthy stinking rich.”

  “Nope.” Mr. Giotti’s attitude changed quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because, you’re doing such a damn fine job of it yourself. I’d be wasting my time.”

  Liddy’s sigh came out heavy and painful. He was right. She was doing one bang up job of accusing herself of some pretty terrible things; leaving him in the lurch, and letting other men pay for implants that shouldn’t have been done. She’d been reduced to selling her body, perhaps her soul, to the highest bidder.

  Mack Wells had more money than any man she’d ever known. All of his wealth, power, and security had gone to her head. Mostly the security, for it was something she’d always wanted, and likely craved.

  Then Jake added more to her further dismay. “I figure you being stuck here with me as punishment enough. I said what I wanted to say. The rest is now up to you.”

  “Oh, how so gallant of a gentleman you are. God, Jake! What more do you want from me? An apology?”

  ‘Course it would probably be a cold day in hell before he would ever get one.

  Good grief! The man made her admit she’d had plastic surgery. No one else in this world knew this, except Mack. And well, her plastic surgeon. No one could even tell they were bigger. Not unless you really stared at them, and knew what the girls looked like before the slight alteration. And she did mean slight—a lousy cup increase in size.

  “For starters,” he ruled, staring directly into her eyes.

  “Fine, I’ll apologize. Are you happy now?”

  My, did it just get incredibly chilly out? Or, had she really said these words to the man?

  His smile was sudden and nasty, so yes, they must have slipped out.

  “Now actually mean it, Liddy.”

  “Damnit, Jake! You’re the one who should be apologizing to me!”

  “For what?” His low-timbered voi
ce became a steady calm before the storm.

  Liddy could feel the barometric pressure dropping.

  “How about we start with . . . for sleeping with another woman, for making my life completely miserable because of it, for purposely destroying my happiness, or for turning me into hating you these last ten years?”

  “Okay. I’ll apologize,” he conceded, staring at her chest again. “And while I give in to all of your plentiful demands, you can apologize to me for running off in the middle of the night, leaving me here all alone, and then, my having to take the blame for your disappearance when you knew my head had been turned around by false lies and very little else.”

  “You go first.”

  “No. Ladies first,” he sneered. “I insist.”

  Ten minutes later, they still hadn’t said a single word to each other.

  Twenty minutes later, Jake was checking his watch. Again.

  Liddy could only take his checking his watch every hour on the hour for only so long. “You have sixty-four hours to go, you wretched bastard!”

  She was fully aware of what he was doing. Jake was counting down every last millisecond until his release.

  His arm dropped quickly.

  Liddy gathered in a deep breath.

  Jake’s was much deeper.

  When she moved a little on the hard bench, he moved a lot; crossed his leg over his knee, then rolled his shoulders. He was literally preening like a pompous peacock right in front of her face.

  When she stood up to get the huge kink out of her neck and lower back . . . he cracked his neck and back right where he sat. Loudly.

  Her head turned swiftly. “Would you stop doing that?”

  “You first.”

  “Fine!” Onto to the bench she dropped.

  “Fine.” Jake’s foot fell to the floor, his grin unbidden.

  Liddy’s eyes then hit the bloody shirt still lying on the floor. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Why did you put my name on your arm?”

  “I already told you the reason.”

  “Yeah? Now tell me the truth, Jake.”

  He pulled his gaze from hers, drifting it back slowly. “Some things are better left unknown, don’t you think?”