The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  “Here. Use some of my makeup,” Caitlin said, hurriedly grabbing the bag and sitting it on the counter. “And toothpaste. He’ll never know the difference. Especially if he’s that tired.”

  Connie accepted Caitlin’s hand to help her to her feet, and then started making repairs. “Thank you,” she said as she reapplied mascara. “For not saying anything.”

  “Like I would just blurt out Oh hey, congratulations on your impending fatherhood.”

  “I know you wouldn’t. It’s just… aw hell, I’m going to get teary again. Stupid hormones.” She slammed down the tube of mascara and met Caitlin’s reflected gaze in the mirror. “I love you. And I’d do anything for you. You know that, right?”

  “Right,” Caitlin agreed. “Now stop it or you’re going to make me teary.”

  Caitlin towel dried her hair while Connie finished her ministrations, and then hugged her friend as she prepared to leave. “Are you sure you’re up for dinner?”

  “Absolutely. After I throw up, I’m starving. I think this kid is confused.” She reached for the doorknob. “You want us to bring you something?”

  Caitlin shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

  Connie frowned. “I’ll let it slide this time. But tomorrow morning you’re eating a good breakfast. Don’t answer the door for anyone.”

  “Do I look stupid?”

  “No. See you soon.”

  Connie hustled out, and Caitlin brushed her damp hair before walking into the bedroom. She glanced at the duffle bag containing her clothes, but was suddenly too drained to bother changing.

  Wrapping her towel more snugly around herself, she lay down on the bed.

  A baby. Somehow, she’d always pictured herself as having kids before Connie, and Connie as their slightly wild, favorite aunt. Yet another thing that hadn’t turned out quite as she’d expected.

  Caitlin held out her hands, studying her spread fingers. Those hands had caressed a married man, albeit unknowingly. They’d taken another man’s life, though in self-defense. Very different activities from baking cookies and tying ribbons in little girls’ hair and holding the hand of her husband as they walked down a beach at sunset. She’d vaguely imagined Ryan in that role for a brief time, but that image slipped into darkness like that fantasy sunset when his wife approached them in the restaurant.

  Now, Caitlin wasn’t entirely sure what she pictured for herself.

  A man like Jack didn’t scream marriage to her, despite all of his undoubtedly desirable attributes. He seemed more of a love ‘em and leave ‘em type, which, when the dust from the current rubble that was her life cleared, might not be a bad thing. Maybe a brief, hot affair would be healthy. At least she would know what she was getting into. Unlike her relationship with Ryan.

  Caitlin pictured a toddler walking around Jack’s immaculate kitchen, smearing Spaghetti-O’s on the white cabinets, and found herself laughing. He, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t find the idea amusing.

  Although he did seem excited about his brother’s baby. Caitlin wondered if that child had arrived yet, and if it was a boy or a girl. Maybe she could send a little gift to the hospital. After all, Jesse had volunteered his time to – ironically enough – babysit her today…

  The knock on the door from the hallway startled her so badly that she shot up off the bed. She must have dozed off. Heart pounding, she stared at the door as if it were a foreign species.

  The knock came again. “Caitlin?”

  Caitlin shook her head. Despite being muffled, she could tell it was a masculine voice. She approached the door and cautiously peeked through the peephole.

  Jack.

  “Ah.” Good lord. She was wearing only a towel. “Hang on a second.”

  Her bag, haphazardly packed by Connie just a couple of days ago and repacked even more haphazardly this afternoon, sat on the end of the bed. Caitlin pulled it open, grabbing the first thing she put her hand on. An off-white tank dress – one that she’d bought online as part of her retail therapy following her breakup with Ryan.

  Good enough.

  Caitlin tossed the towel aside, pulled the dress over her head, and finger combed her still-damp hair as she walked toward the door. She hadn’t seen Jack since she’d left his office, hadn’t spoken with him alone since he’d told her he wanted her. Seeing him previously hadn’t exactly been easy, as every time she had she’d been under tremendous stress, physically and emotionally. But the boundaries of their relationship were firmly in place: he was her attorney. She’d managed to draw a degree of comfort and security from that. And while she still thought he had her legal wellbeing as a priority – after all, Ainsley Tidwell was still part of his firm and therefore reflected on his reputation – the playing field had changed. She wasn’t sure entirely what he wanted now.

  Well, sex. She was pretty sure he wanted sex. But she was also fairly certain that he hadn’t come here expecting it this evening.

  Drawing a deep breath – which reminded her to do a quick check to make sure she didn’t need an emergency hit of mouthwash – Caitlin unlatched the door.

  Jack stood in the hallway, jacket gone, his shirtsleeves rolled up and the top couple of buttons undone. His dark hair bore signs that he’d run his fingers through it recently, and he smelled vaguely of cigar smoke.

  His gaze dropped down to her bare feet, lingered briefly on her injured ankle, and then traveled slowly back up to meet hers. She didn’t like to write, let alone think, in clichés, but if she’d been wearing panties they probably would have melted.

  Dangerous. That was the first word that came to mind. She’d caught a whiff of his sexual magnetism on several different occasions, but he’d obviously been keeping it in check for ethical reasons.

  Caitlin realized she hadn’t been prepared to see it unleashed.

  However, before she could either clutch her proverbial pearls or rip her clothes off right in the doorway – she leaned more strongly toward the latter – Jack smiled. An easy, friendly smile that made him seem far more… comfortable.

  “Hi. Looks like I caught you at a bad time. Or a good time, depending.”

  “A good…” Suddenly suspicious, Caitlin glanced down. “Oh my God.”

  She was wearing a wet T-shirt. Or what amounted to one, at least. She’d overestimated the hotel towel’s drying capacity, or maybe underestimated the amount of water still in her hair, but either way the result was that her off-white tank dress had become rather see-through.

  Caitlin yanked her hands up to cover her chest. “I just got out of the shower. I didn’t have a chance to put on a bra.”

  “I would apologize for my timing, but I’d be lying, and that’s something I try not to do. However, if you want to change, I can wait right here in the hallway.”

  Caitlin gave him points for being forthright, as well as for being considerate enough to understand why she might be uncomfortable. Which she was. Her privacy and bodily autonomy had been invaded tremendously this past week, first by the intruder in her home and then by medical and law enforcement personnel.

  But this was different. As forward as Jack had just been, he hadn’t made a single physical move toward her. And he’d alerted her to the situation – flirtatiously, it was true – rather than taking advantage.

  It was considerate. Jack was considerate, which was a quality she would not have attributed to him upon first impression.

  So her discomfort eased.

  “No, don’t be silly. Come on in. Why don’t you wait in the living room area, and I’ll be right there.”

  “I would have come to that door,” Jack said as he walked into her room “but I bumped into your brother and Connie in the lobby, and Connie said you’d just gotten out of the shower.”

  That explained why she was still wet – she must not have been dozing more than a couple minutes.

  “It’s okay.”

  He waited a beat. “You look really cute all freshly scrubbed. Minus the scrapes and bruises. I’ll be out here.”<
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  Jack disappeared through the connecting door into the communal area, pulling it shut behind him. Caitlin stared after him.

  Cute. It made her feel like she was fifteen. It also made her feel… safer. If Jack had said hot or sexy or any other similar terms, she probably would have tensed up again. Not because she was a prude by any stretch of the imagination – she wrote about sex pretty regularly, for heaven’s sake – but just because the situation she’d recently experienced made her feel sullied. She knew better, knew that she’d in no way been at fault. But even though Hal Cox hadn’t raped her, he’d still violated her. He’d drugged her drink, followed her home, come inside unwelcomed and taken advantage of her incoherent state. Caitlin didn’t know how she’d managed to fight him off, but she was grateful. So damn grateful. She hated that she’d had to take another person’s life, but she would do it again in the same circumstance. Whether he’d planned to rape her or kill her or both, he was the one who’d initiated the violence. None of what happened made her a bad person.

  Feeling steadier emotionally, Caitlin collected the damp towel from the floor and then selected some of the new underwear she’d picked up and a comfortable pair of shorts and a T-shirt – none of them white. She hung up the dress alongside the towel so they could both dry.

  Then she exited the bedroom.

  Jack stood in front of the window, his hands in his pockets, looking down at the lights of the historic riverfront reflected in the water. He’d asked her, when he’d suggested this hotel, if she felt uncomfortable returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak, as the bar where she’d encountered Hal Cox was just a few doors down. But she bore no ill will toward that place, because she didn’t remember seeing him.

  Unfortunately, the negative associations she harbored revolved around her own home.

  Jack turned his head, and even though Caitlin opened her mouth, no words came out. He looked dangerous again, but not in a predatory way. Instead, he looked thoughtful. Perhaps just the tiniest bit melancholy, or maybe that was simply the low lighting in the room and his watery reflection in the glass giving that impression. He didn’t smile, but he did ease the tension by being the first one to speak.

  “Better?”

  Caitlin glanced down at her dry clothes. “Yes. Thanks.” And because she’d been thinking of it right before she dozed off, asked about his brother. “Any word from Jesse?”

  The smile which had been absent earlier curled his lips. “Yeah, I just came from the hospital actually.” The smile bumped up to a baffled grin. “It’s a girl.”

  “Really?” Caitlin found herself grinning back. “And you were so certain you’d have a nephew.”

  “Yeah, well, precedent. But I should have known Jesse would do things differently. He usually does.”

  “Everyone doing okay?”

  “Jillian – that’s my sister-in-law – is exhausted but otherwise doing great. My parents are practically incandescent, and my brother is torn between seam-bursting pride and a kind of simmering terror. Which I totally get. And the baby has all the requisite fingers and toes. Her name is Grace. Grace Julia Wellington. The Julia is for my sister-in-law’s mother, although she spelled hers with a Y. She was a Russian ballerina.”

  “Oh.” The was resonated with Caitlin. It was difficult to be motherless on ordinary days. She imagined it was particularly poignant upon the birth of your first child. “Well, that’s lovely.”

  “She’s lovely. Grace, I mean. Her hair’s red, although they tell me it will likely fade to the same reddish-blonde color as her mother as she grows.” He chuckled. “A red-headed girl, and I have four brunette brothers. Who’d have thought.”

  “Certainly not you. You had your football all ready.”

  Jack nodded. “And I gave it to her. Well, to her dad, as she’s only a few hours old and can’t really grip things yet. I also went down to the gift store and bought her a doll. She can decide later on which she’d rather play with.”

  Caitlin lifted her brows. “That’s very enlightened of you.”

  “You think I’m a Neanderthal?”

  “Not at all. You’re just very…”

  “Very what?” Jack prompted.

  “Very male.”

  His smile turned to something more sensual. “I’m glad you noticed.” After several beats of weighted silence, Jack said “I would really like to move closer, but I realized belatedly that I probably smell like cigar smoke. Jesse – who occasionally is a Neanderthal, although mostly when it comes to any sort of cultural refinement – passed them out. I wasn’t sure if it would affect your asthma.”

  “Oh. My asthma is almost entirely exercise induced, or during periods of tremendous stress. But thank you. That was very thoughtful.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that surprises you?”

  “Because it does,” she admitted. She lifted her shoulders. “My first impression of you was of a man who was aggressive, high-handed and probably a bit cold. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  “My irresistible charm must have failed me. But you weren’t wrong. I can be all of those things, when the situation calls for them. Which in my line of work is pretty often. And I’ve never suffered from a lack of confidence, or the notion that I couldn’t or shouldn’t have what I want. So I can be pretty aggressive on a personal basis, too.”

  Something fluttered through Caitlin, but she couldn’t define whether it was nerves or excitement. “That sounds like a warning.”

  Jack ran his hand over the back of his neck. “This is new territory for me, Caitlin. I’ve never been attracted to a client, or at least not beyond my capabilities to keep a professional distance. Not to mention that your circumstances make me want to handle you with kid gloves. But I still want to handle you. Literally.”

  Okay, so the fluttering thing had one wing of each. “Would you like a drink? Because I’m pretty sure I need one.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Sure. Does the minibar run to whiskey?”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Her stomach seemed to bounce along with each step she took toward the kitchenette in the corner of the suite. Caitlin felt rather ridiculous. It wasn’t as if she were a sixteen year old virgin. But she’d been out of the dating scene for almost a year now, and Jack was nothing like the men she’d been involved with in the past. She’d always chosen beta males – artists and academics and men who were more likely to wear a sweater vest than an expensive suit. Not that clothes mattered all that much to her, but it was more what they represented. And she imagined that Jack would look every bit as powerful and authoritative out of the suit as…

  Okay. Now she couldn’t stop picturing him naked. Maybe not the best train of thought for the moment.

  “Ah, let’s see… is Old Crow okay?”

  There was a beat of silence. “Seriously?”

  Caitlin laughed and looked over her shoulder. “No. I just wanted to see how much of a whiskey snob you were. Your brother said something about you hiding the good whiskey at your office.”

  “Because he’s a mooch.” Jack considered her. “You know whiskey?”

  “One of my characters was of Scotch-Irish descent and owned a distillery. I did lots of research, including more taste-testing than was probably wise. I still prefer my whiskey coupled with coffee and a dash of whipped cream, but I do know enough to recognize the good, the bad and the ugly. The minibar serves Four Roses. If that’s not okay, I could put something more presentable on and we could go down to the bar.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Neat or on the rocks?”

  He cocked a brow. “And water down my whiskey?”

  “Well, it’s hot,” she remarked as she took one of the tumblers and poured the mini-bottle, which no doubt cost as much as a full size bottle at the liquor store. But she wasn’t counting costs at the moment.

  Their fingers brushed as Jack accepted the glass. “It most certainly is.”

  “Ah… okay. Hang on.” Caitlin opene
d a second mini-bottle – it didn’t really matter what it was – and broke the seal. Then she drank straight from the bottle. Jack’s other eyebrow joined the first when she pulled out a second one, but Caitlin didn’t care. She had to take the edge off.

  Shuddering after she emptied both, Caitlin then tossed the bottles in the trash. And turned back around to face Jack.

  “I’m not good at flirting,” she told him “even in the best of times. Which this definitely isn’t. I’m very good at writing sexy banter and witty repartee. If you want me to text you clever things from the other room, that I can probably do. My brain seems to articulate primarily through my fingers. I don’t date men like you, because I end up clamming up either due to the fact that a.) I’m intimidated or b.) I think you’re an asshole. Usually a combination of both. That’s not to say that I think you’re an asshole. You actually seem pretty decent. But I see the suit and the height and the face and the… everything… and my internal survival shields go into, like, defcon ten defense mode.”

  He tucked his tongue in his cheek. “I can take off the suit.”

  “No!” Caitlin held out a hand, as if he were actually about to start disrobing. “No. I just got that image out of my head. And Jesus, what the hell was in those bottles?”

  She glared toward the trash.

  A single finger came to rest under her chin, and Jack tilted her head up. “Caitlin. I don’t want to make you feel awkward.”

  “That’s pretty much an everyday occurrence.”

  His lips twitched into a lopsided grin. “You’re adorable. And not in the least bit awkward. And you’ve shown remarkable resilience. A lot of people would be hiding under a proverbial blanket after what you’ve been through.”

  “I considered hiding under a blanket. A literal one.”

  “And I wouldn’t blame you a bit.” He studied her face. “If you’d feel more comfortable downstairs in the bar or the restaurant – by the way, have you eaten?” He glanced around, as if looking for leftovers.