Twenty Times Tempted: A Sexy Contemporary Romance Collection

by Petrova, Em

  “I’ve been awful to you, and I’m sorry.”

  “Wait, what?” Vanessa’s mouth hung open, and she couldn’t process his words.

  “After seeing your house, and your new life, and meeting Linc, I realized how I’d been treating you. You didn’t deserve it, and I’m sorry.”

  This was so out of the blue, Vanessa couldn’t help but wonder what had changed. She was suspicious this might be another ploy.

  “Have you spoken to Ian?” If this was some weird plot of theirs, she was going to scream.

  “No, I haven’t. Not since he left your house that day. He must feel the same way.” He sighed through the phone, long and loud, an aggrieved put-upon sound she was familiar with. Vanessa wasn’t going to burst her dad’s bubble and tell him Ian was still sending her the occasional text trying to get her back. “I won’t pretend I’m happy you’re so far away from me, but I need to get on with my life, and you need to live yours.” It was another guilt tactic, she was sure, but it was at least an acknowledgement of her independence.

  “Wow, Dad. I’m sort of speechless right now.” Vanessa looked out her window into the back yard and noticed people. A lot of people. Attention diverted from the phone call, she watched as Sheriff Tate organized a group of about twenty men and women, all wearing jeans or khaki pants, knit shirts with various police department logos on them, and ball caps.

  “Well, I love you honey. There’s nobody alive I love more right now, and I want to see you happy.” Her dad was getting choked up on the phone, but she needed to see what was happening with the people lining up at the tree line behind her house. Besides, his words insinuated he didn’t love his son, Victor, anymore, and she couldn’t really stomach that thought. Victor had tried so hard to get his life back together after the DUI, and Dad had turned his back on him.

  But apparently, that was a conversation for later. “Um, Dad? I’m really sorry.” She walked outside and stood on her back porch, waving at Sheriff Hughes. “I’ve got to go check something really quick. Call you later?”

  “Sure, sweetheart. I love you.”

  The sheriff saw her and started walking her way. When he was within hearing distance, she asked him, “What’s going on?”

  Pulling his hat off, and rubbing a hand through his hair before tucking it back on his head, he said, “We never found that missing girl, so we’re doing a more thorough search of the area where she was last seen. I’ve got some help from neighboring forces. Is it okay if we search your property?” At her emphatic nod, Tate dug around in his back pocket and pulled out some folded papers. “If you can sign this, giving me permission…” He looked around, a look of defeat in his eyes which looked foreign on the usually cocky face. “She was last reported hitchhiking on this highway. We’re expanding the search because me and my deputies can’t search this much by ourselves.”

  Vanessa’s heart went out to the girl, and to Tate. She really didn’t want anything bad to happen here, in her new-found oasis, even though it was haunted, and the creepy doll had shown up again. A missing girl, who god only knew what had happened to, was more than she could stomach.

  Part of her hoped the girl was found, alive and well, but a morbid part of her wanted her found anywhere but her property. She didn’t want the evil that would do something to a girl to touch her like that. But then again, if the girl had just wandered off and gotten lost in the woods, Vanessa wanted her to be safe.

  “Linc been spending much time over here?” The sheriff’s eyes squinted with suspicion. Vanessa got irritated with the man. She still didn’t understand the hatred for Linc. She didn’t think stealing his PlayStation warranted all the hostility.

  “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure kidnapping girls and dumping them in the woods isn’t on his agenda.” Vanessa was surprised at her own prickliness, but she was feeling protective of her boyfriend.

  To his credit, Sheriff Hughes’s face blanched at her words and he had the decency to look chagrined. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He pulled off his cowboy hat and ran his hands through his hair again.

  “Good luck, Sheriff,” she offered after handing back the release forms. “I hope you find her.”

  He tipped his hat at her in a panty-melting move that seemed second-nature to him. “Thanks.” He then stalked off to begin his search, walkie-talkie squawking.

  The woods were something Vanessa hadn’t explored much. The trees were thick and the undergrowth was insane. Gnarly vines, thorny bushes, and poison ivy by the boatload kept her from venturing very far. She had added it to the mental to-do list for Linc to work on but hadn’t told him yet.

  In fact, speaking of Linc, he was at his house, doing laundry. Vanessa was supposed to be getting her own dirty clothes together to take over there. She forced herself into a happier frame of mind. Getting out of the house would do her some good.

  ***

  That night, she found herself at The Pint, the sheriff having finished his fruitless search. Vanessa still wasn’t in the mood to hang out at the house since Linc was doing inventory at the hardware store for his dad. He was supposed to come by the pub on his way home and pick her up. She really liked this whole boyfriend thing. He was an amazing boyfriend, and she’d almost stopped comparing him to Ian, because really, there was no comparison.

  “So they didn’t find anything?” Wren had come out to hang with her after work, and she sat next to Vanessa at the bar, both of them hunched over beers. Wren owned a bookstore in town, but Vanessa hadn’t had the opportunity to ask how that worked. It didn’t seem like the size of town that could sustain something like that, but what did she know? Tiffany was working at The Pint tonight but was keeping herself scarce cleaning tables and taking caddies full of glasses to the back and basically staying out of the way of Nick, who seemed to be watching her every move.

  “An old still, which is kind of cool, but no girl.”

  Wren turned her body to face Vanessa. “I really hope that means she’s okay somewhere. Like, she met up to have a booty call and the sex was too good to call home, or something equally amazing.”

  Vanessa laughed and took a sip of her beer, when a super-gravelly voice came over her shoulder. “They’re not gonna find her alive. I can guarantee that.”

  The warden sat in the corner, three seats down from Vanessa, but close enough to hear every word they said. He looked over the rim of his glass, his black fedora low on his head. The frame of his face this way only served to emphasize his hooked nose and pock-marked skin, giving him a dangerous air.

  The women didn’t say anything, only stared at him. When he smiled at them, he offered up crooked, yellowed teeth. “Young girls like you all go missing all the time, and they’re never seen again. No telling what happens to them.” He tossed the rest of his drink into the back of his throat, tossed a bill on the bar, and left without another word.

  “That dude is so fucking creepy,” Wren shuddered, echoing Vanessa’s own thoughts. She hated that he lived so close to her in a house on the prison compound.

  “I wonder if the sheriff is searching his house,” Vanessa muttered into her beer as she took another sip.

  Wren giggled. “I can’t believe he’s got a kid. I mean, what sort of dad is he? And who had sex with him to make the kid?” She shook her head at her own brew. “Ewww…”

  The pub looked like it was an old saloon, and Vanessa could easily imagine a gunfight happening there, tables and chairs spilling in the chaos. So when the door banged open and a silhouette stood in the waning sunlight, she was captivated, a part of her lost in images of gunslingers and ladies of the night.

  But then Wren whispered under her breath, “How I would love to get my hands all over that man.”

  Noticing it was Gus, Vanessa turned to look at her friend. “Really?”

  “Sure, clean him up, give him a shave… Or not.” Wren’s eyes sparkled and she grinned like a loon. Vanessa had to laugh. Gus moved like someone trying desperately to stay under everyone’s radar. But his scent
beat him everywhere he went.

  He slunk over to the seat the warden had left and dug around in his vest pocket for a crumpled bill. Nick walked over to him, bent over the bar, and whispered something to him. Gus whispered back. Nick slapped a key on the bar top and walked away. Vanessa watched, fascinated, as Gus stood and walked across the bar to the stairs lining the edge with a rope across them.

  “What’s he doing?” she whispered to Wren. Vanessa had noticed Gus and Nick being all secretive before.

  “Nick lives up there. He lets Gus use his shower sometimes.” Wren was staring at the man as he skulked up the stairs and unlocked a door on the end. “In five minutes, Gus will be up there, naked and soapy,” Wren breathed.

  Vanessa giggled at Wren’s face as she got lost in some sort of fantasy-land about the homeless guy upstairs in the shower. She had to admit, the idea had merit. From what she could see, the guy had pretty eyes, but his eyebrows were so bushy and his beard so shaggy, they were about all you could see of his face. His body could be nice, but she had no idea. It was hard to tell if he had a gut or not because he wore all sorts of layers, even in the warm fall weather they’d had. Which meant sweat. And the aforementioned body odor.

  Tiffany came around to where they were at the bar, offering up more drinks, breaking Wren out of her hazy musings. Then she disappeared again.

  “What’s the story there? Do you know? I mean, I’m glad she’s not working for Marge anymore, but she doesn’t seem super happy with the change,” Wren whispered while watching Tiffany curiously as she knocked on the office door to speak with Nick.

  “They have a little bit of history, but I’m not telling. You’ll have to ask Tiff sometime. I’m not sure she wants it to be common knowledge.” Vanessa was upfront about not spilling secrets. She wasn’t like that and didn’t care who knew it. She wanted her new friends to know she was trustworthy.

  “Well, speaking of common knowledge…” Wren spun in her seat to face away from the bar, “… I think Shane is cheating on Kristie. I’m trying to decide whether or not to say something to her.”

  “What do you mean? Why do you think that?”

  Wren shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s why I don’t know whether or not to say anything. It’s just a feeling I have. The way he looks when he’s around her. Just… stuff.”

  “Well, don’t say anything unless you know for sure. You don’t want to go borrowing trouble.” Another one of her mother’s favorite sayings. Her mother was one to look at the positive side of life, and Vanessa missed that about her. A pang of longing hit her, but not as hard as it had when she first moved here. That sort of made her sad, in a weird way. She was getting over her mother’s death, and she felt guilty for it.

  A pair of hands at her waist and warm lips at her neck had her spinning in Linc’s arms. “All finished at your dad’s?” she asked him.

  “Yup. Y’all having fun?” Linc winked at Wren, who sighed loudly, making Vanessa giggle.

  “Yeah. Let me finish my beer and we can go home,” she told him, eager to get some more of what his lips promised her neck.

  “Y’all have a good night. I’m just going to sit here and drool over the hot guy in the shower upstairs.”

  “You gonna actually talk to him when he comes down?” Vanessa was curious why Wren didn’t just go for it. It wasn’t like women were banging down Gus’s door.

  She shrugged in answer. “I’ll try, but he never talks back to me.”

  Linc grabbed her hand, tugging her out of her seat. “See you later, Wren.”

  “Bye bye, Lincalicious.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Linc lived a love song the next two weeks. Every chance he could, he kissed Vanessa because her lips tasted like summertime. He was constantly touching her because her curves took him to another plane of existence. He watched her all the time, even while she slept, because it reminded him she was his.

  She was helping him wire the upstairs, which meant it was all taking longer than necessary due to the fact he had to kiss her every time she handed him a tool or asked a question.

  It was perfect. Everything. He’d brought her to his place, and she’d been impressed with all the work he’d done on the single-wide trailer and his landscaping out front. And the sex was amazing. They had sex everywhere at his house—in the recliner, the bed, and his crappy kitchen table.

  But for the most part, he’d been staying at her house, fixing it up, reading the diary, and getting to know Vanessa. He still didn’t have a clue what she did on her laptop all day, and it sort of bugged him, but he didn’t press her for details. He knew she was a writer and would love to read some of her stuff. He told himself as long as she wasn’t flirting with dudes online, it didn’t matter. But part of him was still a little hurt she hadn’t told him yet.

  And that damn doll. He wasn’t going to lie. The doll creeped him out. He knew it had to be someone he knew. The odds of her ex camping out in the woods behind her house to move a fucking doll around and scare her were slim, so it had to be someone from town. He still had his eye on the warden, but that creepy fucker was making himself pretty scarce.

  But that doll sure had shown up a lot.

  Other than that, things were great. So perfect, in fact, that Linc walked on eggshells waiting for some epic fail to happen. Something would go wrong. Because he had fallen for Vanessa in a big way. It wasn’t a ‘sort of’ type thing. Nope. Linc was in way over his head. He was ready to impregnate her and keep her in his kitchen barefoot all day when she wasn’t at her laptop churning out whatever it was she wrote. He was ready to be her everything.

  And the universe just didn’t give guys like him stuff like that.

  He’d been cleaning out the shed on a pretty cool day, emptying it of everything and making piles for trash and to save, when he heard her shriek from the porch as an old Volkswagen Bug came bumping up the driveway.

  But when a man emerged and she launched herself into his arms and planted a huge, sloppy wet kiss on his mouth, he couldn’t think straight. All he could think was she was still keeping a secret from him, and the secret had just shown up on her doorstep. Some guy she knew. Had to be. Every rotten thing he’d ever done came rushing back to him, including Amanda’s scream as it cut off when he’d hit the tree. All the people he’d hurt. All the reasons why this just figured. It was karma coming back to bite him in the ass.

  Her laughter, as well as the dude’s low chuckles, drifted to him and he shut his thoughts off, reacting out of self-preservation.

  He barely saw well enough to get to his car and drive home.

  Shocked, yes. Disappointed, yes. Angry, hell yes. Surprised? No. It was everything he deserved.

  It figured. She was gorgeous. Of course she had an old flame who would hunt her down and rekindle something with her. Or someone online she’d met. Might as well cut his ties with her now before he let her lead him on with the ‘he’s just a friend’ line and move on.

  Or back.

  As if she knew, Cindy called him before he was even in his house, on her way over. Perfect. He could use Cindy’s raunch to get the sweet aftertaste of Vanessa off him. Her summertime kisses needed to be drowned out by the cloying floral perfume.

  Only what he deserved. He would know better than to try to get a woman above his station. All that worrying he’d done before making his declarations about boyfriends and girlfriends with Vanessa weren’t to protect her. It was all clear now. It was to protect himself. His sister was right all along. He’d been scared.

  Scared of losing himself, breaking his own heart, falling in love. Because he had.

  Hard.

  Cindy arrived a matter of moments later and was naked seconds after that. When Vanessa’s knock came at the door, Linc passed her his shirt, with the curt words, “Get rid of her,” on his tongue.

  Not that he could actually fuck Cindy, but if Vanessa was fucking someone else, she could at least think he was, too. Let her think she didn’t matter that much to him. Let
her think she wasn’t his fucking life.

  When Cindy came back from her cringe-worthy dismissal of Vanessa, Linc reached up and grabbed the nearly full bottle of whiskey he kept on top of the fridge.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, Linc,” Cindy’s talons were scratching his chest, raking down his pectoral muscles.

  He knew having her hurt Vanessa was a low blow. And it was worse that he was using Cindy like this. She wasn’t his favorite person, but she was a person and didn’t deserve him treating her as a tool for his pain.

  But as he swigged the whiskey down his throat, feeling the burn explode in his gut, he didn’t particularly care. He wanted to hurt people right now because he hurt. And he didn’t want to hurt alone.

  “What?” He grimaced at the fire in his mouth.

  “I’m pregnant, Linc. It’s yours.” Her eyes held an amusement, like she was proud of herself, but Linc couldn’t bring himself to care, to question. He could only feel pain.

  Another swig, and another, while he watched this woman in front of him as she dropped to her knees to suck him off unbidden.

  “Get up.” The baby wasn’t his. He’d never gone without a condom with anyone besides Vanessa and that was just the first time. He’d always used a condom, with anyone. Besides, it was just as likely to be Gus’s baby as it was his, or Nick’s, or any number of truckers passing through, knowing Cindy.

  But he also knew why she told him it was his. She needed help taking care of it. He’d always thought he’d get roped into marrying Cindy, whether he liked it or not.

  He thought of Vanessa and what could have been as a seed of doubt planted itself in his mind. Then he reminded himself of all the shit he’d done, and that today was just a reminder of the fact he didn’t deserve happiness. And then he took another swig, demanding the numbness, the sickness, anything to distract him from his own misery.

  And tightened the noose.

  “When’s it due?”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  What the fuck just happened? Vanessa watched the door slam in her face, felt the vibration in her bones, but that wasn’t the worst. The worst was seeing Cindy in Linc’s shirt. The shirt he’d been wearing an hour ago. Why was Cindy at Linc’s house, wearing his shirt? She just wanted to introduce him to her brother, Victor. And see why he had left like his britches were on fire.