Illegal Motion: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Donna Kauffman

  “Box’d like to talk to each of you separately if you’re ready to give your statements. They’ve previewed enough of the tape to warrant taking Miller in for questioning.” Grinning broadly, Sky hauled Nick into a tight bear hug. “We did it, man. We nailed the bastard.”

  Nick responded with a fierce hug of his own, then stumbled slightly when Sky released him. He immediately doubled over and grabbed his knee.

  Willa responded immediately to his groan of pain. She knelt and probed around his knee, then gently pushed him into a sitting position on the floor.

  He looked up into her worry-filled eyes, a cocky smile creasing his face. “Thanks, Princess.” He pulled her head close and kissed her again, briefly but thoroughly. “You did it. You saved me. Now let me up so I can tell these guys what they need to know. I want to talk to you and we’re wasting time.”

  Willa fought hard, barely resisting the temptation to touch Nick, to run her hands all over his body, reassure herself that things would be all right. But the nagging suspicion that things weren’t what they seemed was too overwhelming to ignore. Thinking was impossible, so she fell back on her professional training and focused all her thoughts on Nick’s reinjured knee.

  Looking up, she said, “Sky, can you go in the kitchen and get some ice?” When Nick started to rise, she pushed him back down with one-hand without turning. “We need to put something on this before it swells to the size of a grapefruit.”

  “Don’t move, Nick. You can talk to the police later.”

  And then you can answer a few questions of mine, she added silently. Like how did you know about the phony drugs planted in my house and why in the hell were you conveniently here when Miller showed up? As if floodgates had opened, one inconsistency after another rushed into her mind. She jumped when a policeman tapped her shoulder.

  “They’re ready for you now, Miss Trask.” His tone was polite but firm. She needed some time and space and quashed the desire to have it out with Nick here and now. Besides, she was too strung out to mount any kind of interrogation and she was too damned scared that she already knew what his answers would be.

  Sky had already gathered ice and towels, and with events happening so quickly she didn’t stop to wonder how he’d known where to find everything. “Make sure he stays here until his knee is well iced, Sky. Get your detective friend to sit on him if necessary.” Sky nodded and with supreme effort she avoided Nick’s heated gaze and followed the officer into the dining room.

  TEN

  It was almost daylight before Willa finally tumbled, completely exhausted, into bed. Her questioning had lasted a long time, during which Sky had convinced Nick he needed to go to the hospital to have his knee examined. They were leaving just as she stepped back into the front room. Nick had refused to let her accompany him, insisting that she rest. She’d barely managed to remove her clothes and pull down the sheets before falling into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

  Now it was late afternoon and she still felt exhausted. After a long shower she dragged herself downstairs and fixed a cup of coffee. She had the presence of mind to call the club’s CEO and explain that she needed a temporary leave of absence. She must have sounded as bad as she felt, because he gave in without too much hassle. She went back to her bedroom.

  Despite the warm spring sun shining through the window, Willa tucked her down comforter around her and slowly sipped her coffee while relentlessly forcing her mind over and over each excruciating detail of the preceding several days.

  No matter how she looked at last night’s events, Nick still had to have set it up, using her as bait without telling her. Had their whole relationship been a charade? The full range of that possibility had become increasingly, unavoidably, and most painfully clear as she’d tried to reconstruct what had happened for the police. She went over it again and again and she still couldn’t find a plausible, painless explanation for everything.

  After another hour of hashing it out with herself all over again, her fatigued system simply refused to let her think about it anymore. Yawning widely, she gave up. After switching off her phone, she dropped off into a sound sleep.

  By Thursday morning the news of Eric’s arrest was splashed over every newspaper in the country. The phone rang incessantly with reporters begging for interviews, but years of experience during her father’s illness had taught Willa how to handle them. And she put up with it mainly because she was reluctant to unplug the phone in case Nick or Sky called. But they didn’t. Even when she’d swallowed her pride and placed a few calls herself, she’d been unsuccessful in reaching either of them.

  Looking out her bedroom window, Willa finally accepted the devastating truth. Eric had been arrested, as had Doc Abbott—another devastating blow—and if the media could be believed, it was a foregone conclusion that they would be convicted. So except for her testimony at their trials, her usefulness to Nick had ended in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

  When the yawning ache in her chest threatened to open up and consume her, she turned to the only defense strong enough to get her through the next minute, and the next one, until she could find some way to survive: anger.

  Turning away from her bedroom window, she threw the empty suitcase in her hand onto her bed, then started methodically emptying her drawers into it. She’d decided just that morning that she wouldn’t call Nick or try to reach him again. She’d also decided to get out of town for a few days—to escape the press, she told herself.

  She angrily wiped the tears that had started coursing down her face. “Don’t you dare cry for him, Willa Trask!” Going to the armoire, she swept the jumbled contents into her arms and threw them into a second case she’d dropped on the floor earlier. You knew this was going to happen, she lectured herself sternly, so you have no right to feel sorry for yourself.

  On her way to her car she paused by her answering machine, her eyes misting again as she pulled her hand back from activating it, reaching instead to yank the cord out of the wall. The last thing she needed when she returned was to wade through endless messages in the vain hope that Nick would have called to beg forgiveness. The deafening silence of the last two days had been enough. She peered out the front window to make sure there were no more reporters lurking about.

  Throwing her bags in the back of her car, she spun gravel as she headed down her driveway. She’d decided to take a couple of her father’s old friends out in Middleburg up on a standing offer to stay at their bed-and-breakfast. The state district attorney had asked that she remain accessible during the trial preliminaries, so she’d alerted him regarding her plans, adding a polite request that he not tell anyone where she was.

  Nick drove down the rutted lane to Willa’s house, breaking every last one of his doctor’s orders about resting after knee surgery. His knee felt like someone was poking hot daggers into it, but the pain was nothing compared with the ache in his heart when Willa failed to answer the door. He banged a crutch against it and swore. He’d told Sky this would happen.

  Damn the doctors and those incompetent nurses for not telling Willa he was in the hospital when she’d called. He’d told himself over and over that that could be the only reason he’d awakened from surgery to peer up at Sky’s hulking frame bending over him, instead of opening his eyes to her beautiful face.

  While Nick had been in the operating room Sky had tried, unsuccessfully, to get the hospital administrator to change his position on not releasing Nick’s identity. The media circus that had resulted from Eric’s arrest and Nick’s redemption had made every hospital in the area prime hunting ground for the gaggle of snooping reporters who had ferreted out the information that Nick had reinjured his knee during the melee and were looking to get the scoop on an exclusive.

  Still groggy from surgery, he’d tried to call her Tuesday afternoon, but either she wasn’t answering or her machine was broken. Sky had tried again and again on Wednesday, but had been unable to get through. When they questioned Box, he said she’d been in Wednesday m
orning to give her statement. Sky offered to go hunt her down, but by then Nick had begun to sense that something was terribly wrong and knew he had to see her face-to-face.

  He demanded to be released as soon as they could do the paperwork, but his doctor had refused even to consider it until Thursday morning. Had it not been for Sky’s threats, he would have gotten up and hobbled out of there, release or not. He couldn’t fight the notion that every second he wasted in not finding her was one more second she’d have to run away from him forever. And he wouldn’t let that happen.

  Nick eased his aching frame down until he was sitting on Willa’s front porch. He absently noticed how the bulbs in the flower bed under the window had been trampled as if someone had been standing on them trying to get a look into the house. He briefly thought about doing the same thing, but looking up, he saw that the drapes had been tightly drawn. He hadn’t even known the front window had drapes.

  “Damn,” he swore loudly, swatting at his leg, then cursed a blue streak as the pain made him see stars. Because he’d been shielded from them, it hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that she’d be a focus of the media’s attention too.

  He had to find her. He already knew that she’d taken a leave of absence from work. He thought she’d done the right thing, but apparently she’d felt the need to get away from everyone … including him.

  He levered himself up and went to his car. He drove—more slowly this time—back out to the highway. One way or another he’d find her. And when he did, he wouldn’t leave her until she’d agreed to be his forever.

  It had been three weeks since Eric’s early-morning arrest. His trial wasn’t scheduled for another month. Willa almost hoped it would be delayed. “You’re going to have to face him sooner or later,” she murmured to the empty room. Saying it out loud didn’t make it easier to accept. She’d successfully eluded the press, but escaping the memory of Nick Logan had proved impossible. She couldn’t stop thinking about him—or stop loving him.

  She didn’t have much pride left where Nick Logan was concerned, and she was afraid she’d lose what was left when she saw him again. The trial loomed on the horizon and she could only hope that the impersonal nature of a courtroom would help her maintain her composure.

  After that, she would never have to face him again.

  She sat at the table, tears streaming down her face, damning herself for not being able to stop loving him. Her mind kept traveling back to that wonderful time spent with Nick in his large mahogany bed. The soaring highs he’d taken her to, the tender words and teasing laughter they’d shared. She had replayed it in her mind so many times, she was sure she had idealized it beyond reality. In a way it was both a salvation and a curse.

  She let her mind drift away yet again, then decided she needed to stop once and for all when she heard what sounded like a medieval rendition of the theme from Rocky. “Now you’ve gone completely around the bend. You’ve even added music.”

  Realizing the sounds were coming from outside, curiosity drew her to the front door. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and blinked again. Standing, or rather prancing, looking larger than life in the postage-stamp-size front yard, was a magnificent white stallion. Astride the humongous beast, his black hair whipping in the spring breeze, was Nick. He was wearing western boots, faded jeans with worn knees, and if she wasn’t hallucinating—an armored breastplate. He wielded a very large shiny shield in one hand, and the music, which she realized now was a royal fanfare, blared from the boombox balanced on the saddle horn in front of him.

  He was an incredibly potent mixture of modern-day cowboy and medieval warrior. He was her knight in armor.

  Hands trembling, she opened the front door, but remained standing on the threshold, unwilling to be the first to speak.

  “I understand there is a damsel here in serious distress.” Nick’s deep, powerful voice reverberated across the tiny yard. “I am here to relieve her of all doubts, fight to the death if necessary, to prove her knight’s steadfastness.”

  Fresh tears glittered on her lashes. Drawn by the sheer force of him, she slowly walked out onto the porch. Shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun, she looked up at him; the fierce look of desire and yearning blazing from his eyes immobilized her.

  Without taking his eyes from her, Nick leaned over to drop the shield and boombox to the ground. Neither noticed the clang of noise or the music that wobbled to a halt. Next came the breastplate. It crashed to the ground, leaving him bare-chested and strangely vulnerable to her, even from his lofty perch.

  After Sky had intercepted her call to the club earlier that day, he’d told Nick she’d been distant, her voice flat and unemotional. Sky’s theory was that Willa was still dealing with the hurt she’d experienced in seeing Eric’s true nature revealed, followed by the painful betrayal of Doc Abbott.

  But the mere fact that in the few minutes she’d spoken to Sky she’d never voiced any interest in Nick or his well-being fairly shouted at Nick her frame of mind. It had taken fifteen minutes of sweet-talking and cajoling to come up with the address belonging to the phone she’d called from.

  “Willa.” He spoke quietly. “I know I’m no knight. I told you once that I wasn’t a hero. But I sure as hell wanted to be one for you. Tell me where I went wrong.”

  Emotions warred inside her, part of her angry that he couldn’t imagine what her problem might be. But his stated intentions along with the honest confusion she heard in his softly spoken request sent her heart soaring.

  Yet she stood her ground, gripping the railing to keep from doing something foolish like flinging herself across the yard into his arms. “There are a few things I would like to know.”

  “Ask me anything.”

  Willa looked away for a moment, shaken at the intense emotion he’d packed into those three words. The effect of Eric’s duplicity had been like a bubble of innocence bursting, Doc’s betrayal had been a pain of a different kind, even Sky’s loyalty to Nick had hurt, though she understood it. But Nick’s ultimate distrust of her after what they’d shared—that had been the crushing blow. “Why didn’t you tell me? About the drugs?”

  Nick looked confused for a moment. “Didn’t Sky explain that when you talked to him? He told me he ex—”

  “He told me some of it, but said it was really up to you.”

  Nick swore softly, her defiant tone and defensive posture announcing that he was dealing with the unapproachable Willa. “Thanks, pal,” he muttered. “Some friend you are.”

  “Oh, I’d say he’s a very good friend,” Willa retorted. “He broke into my house for you and lurked around the club for months for you. You couldn’t buy that kind of loyalty.”

  Nick winced at her sarcastic tone. She thought he still didn’t trust her! As the full implications of that sank in he felt the first twinge of panic. She was feeling betrayed by him, something he’d sworn he’d never do to her. “If it’s any consolation, Sky wanted me to tell you right from the start.”

  “It’s not his trust that’s important to me.”

  “Princess, I trust you. Hell, I trusted you with my life. More importantly, I trusted you with my heart. Willa, I love you.”

  Tears started to trickle down her cheeks and she moved to the stairs. She wanted to believe him so badly that it was a physical ache in her heart.

  “Willa, I never meant to hurt you. I’ll try to explain why I did what I did, but I need to ask you something first.”

  “Go ahead.”

  The first hint of Nick’s heart-stopping smile stole across his lips. “Would you happen to have a stepladder?”

  She blinked, certain she had heard him wrong. “Stepladder?” When he nodded, his expression grave, she asked, “What the devil for?”

  “Because when I hauled myself up on this beast, I didn’t plan ahead, and getting down with a bum knee is a bit tricky. And if I don’t touch you, kiss you, very soon, I may have to risk surgery again and leap off this damn nag.”

  Willa swip
ed at her cheeks, unable to keep her mouth from twitching. She gave up and laughed out loud.

  “That does it,” Nick stated, and hauled his leg over the saddle to dismount.

  Seeing what he was about to do, Willa rushed down the steps to help him, but got caught up in the tangle of legs and stirrups. They both went crashing to the ground.

  Somehow Willa landed on top of Nick. She dragged her hair out of his face, to discover Nick was lying very still beneath her, his lashes thick on his cheeks.

  “Nick.” She put her hands on either side of his face, peering closely at his closed eyes. “Are you all right?”

  He opened one eye and said in a sexy drawl, “I will be as soon as you kiss me. After all, it isn’t every day that you have a man literally fall at your feet.”

  Willa smiled, unable to resist the teasing grin she’d missed for weeks, but made one demand before granting his wish. “Look at me when we kiss?” He immediately opened his eyes. She drew a shaky breath at the desire she saw in their smoky depths.

  Nick lifted his hand to the nape of her neck, sliding his large palm beneath her tangled hair, guiding her lips to his, his kiss tender and seeking. Willa let him probe her lips and drop kisses on her chin and ears before responding and becoming an equal partner.

  Nick pulled back slightly and whispered hoarsely against her cheek, “As much as I’d like to make sweet love to you like I have dreamed about every night for weeks, I want everything cleared up first.”

  Nick waited in the small sitting room while Willa made coffee, glad for the chance to get his raging libido under some semblance of control. He glanced at the stairs that led to the upper rooms, unable to keep from picturing Willa’s body arching up to accept him, sinking into her, being possessed by her again.… Nick shifted uncomfortably. Being noble had its downside.

  Willa entered with two steaming mugs of coffee and Nick was relieved when she sat down next to him, though not as close as he would have liked.