by Cindy Gerard
Not anymore. Right then, right there, he decided that despite the divorce papers that were still shoved, unsigned in a desk drawer, he was going to fight the fight. And he had no intention of fighting fair.
“Hot damn,” Clay exploded with a whoop of excited laughter as he and Jesse met with Garrett several weeks later. “We’re actually going to do it.”
It was close to midnight as they sat around the table in Garrett’s kitchen and finalized the plan.
“Somehow, the thought of committing a federal offense shouldn’t strike me as something to laugh about.” This from a grinning Jesse, who shoved away from the table and reached into the fridge for another bottle of beer. “But I’ve got to admit, it promises to be one helluva ride.”
Garrett addressed both brothers stoically. “I told you from the beginning, if you want out, tell me now and there’s no harm done.”
As he surveyed their faces, however, he knew they were in for the duration. They had been boys when they’d made their pact to come to each other’s aid, no questions asked. But it was as men that they’d known they would be called on to keep it—just as Garrett had known when he’d placed the calls that his brothers would come. Clay was right here in Jackson, but Jesse, whom he’d caught up with in Boisie, had pulled out of an important competition to help.
The time was finally here, Garrett thought with equal measures of determination and relief. Once he’d made up his mind, it had taken him the better part of a month to set his plan in motion. Too much time had passed already—he couldn’t stand to wait one more minute.
“Let’s do it.” Garrett snagged his black Stetson and settled it firm. Clay and Jesse, also dressed in black, rose with a scrape of chair legs on the tile floor and followed him out the back door.
The night was dark. The thin sliver of moon managed few appearances behind the slow-moving cover of heavy, mud gray clouds. When the black pickup pulling a horse trailer eased to a stop in the alley behind Maddie Brannigan’s apartment building, it blended like the shadows into the night.
Jesse cut the headlights but left the engine softly purring and ready to make tracks. Slipping out from behind the wheel, he hung close to the trailer where he could keep the horses quiet.
Satisfied that Jesse knew his assignment, Garrett, with Clay at his side, rounded the five-story building and punched in the security code Garrett had found tucked inside Sara’s shoe.
“So far so good,” Clay whispered covertly as they sneaked into the building. With a furtive glance over their shoulders, they ascended the three flights of stairs to Maddie’s floor.
“Now don’t get carried away with theatrics,” Garrett growled as they neared her door. “Just stick to the plan, and we’ll get out of here before anyone knows what happened. And whatever you do,” he added, all too aware of Maddie’s hot temper, “don’t tick her off.”
Clay gave him a thumbs-up, drew in a fortifying breath and punched the doorbell. Garrett, standing around the corner and out of the line of vision of whoever opened the door, hugged the wall and waited.
He heard the muted click of a latch, then the clunk of a security chain catch hold. Maddie’s voice, muffled and sounding fuzzy from sleep, hissed into the silence. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Hey, Maddie. Did I wake you? Sony, but I’ve come up with an idea for your shop—trust me—it won’t keep until morning.” Clay played the apologetic but excited businessman with convincing skill.
Garrett held his breath, waiting to see if Maddie would go for the bait. Necessities had outgrown its present location months ago. With reluctance Maddie had approached the James Construction Company about building a new gallery.
Maddie had been reluctant because, in addition to her recent disapproval of Garrett, she and Clay, who’d grown up together, had never let go of a case of adolescent competitiveness. Clay used to beat her at everything from baseball to pool. He’d been a merciless, gloating victor. She’d been a vindictive loser. And she wasn’t the kind to forgive and forget.
In spite of their volatile past, Maddie had a head for business and hadn’t let her childhood vendetta stand in the way of what was best for her business. The James Construction Company was the best value in town. Their product was better than good and their prices competitive.
She’d been at Clay, the more intuitive of the two brothers when it came to envisioning her ideas, for weeks to come up with blueprints for her to study.
Garrett was counting on the blueprints and Maddie’s hunger to get her hands on them as his ticket into the apartment.
When she grumbled but told Clay to hold on a minute while she threw on a robe, Garrett let out a deep breath and waited for Clay to walk inside.
There was no going back now. He was either on the road to getting his life back or tomorrow he’d be facing kidnapping charges.
Garrett waited an agonizing five minutes, then moved silently to Maddie’s apartment door. If Clay had done his part, it would be unlocked and Maddie would be diverted to the kitchen.
His palm was damp when he gave the knob a slow twist. When it opened without a hitch, he let out a pentup breath and ducked inside.
Except for the light coming from the kitchen, where Clay was playing decoy and keeping Maddie occupied with the blueprints, the apartment was darkness and shadows. He shut the door silently behind him, and without drawing Maddie’s attention, sidestepped the cat that sidled lazily across his path and headed down the hall.
He’d been to Maddie’s many times with Emma in the past. Knew the layout well enough to bypass the door that led to Maddie’s bedroom for the next one. With the stealth of a thief, he opened it and slipped inside.
His little sweet pea slept with the peace of an angel. Moving across the carpeted floor, he eased a hip on the bed and bent down to press a kiss on her brow.
She woke up with a sleepy yawn, knuckled the sleep from her eyes and smiled up at him.
“Hi, Daddy.” Scrambling to her knees, she snuggled into his arms.
“Hey, sweetheart.” Her hair was silk beneath his hand, her tidy little body warm and at home against his chest. “Did I interrupt any pretty dreams?”
She shook her head and scooted back so she could see his face in the faint glow of her teddy bear night-light. “Is tonight the night?”
He tucked a ribbon of hair behind her ear. “Tonight’s the night.”
When he’d started making plans, he’d questioned the wisdom of confiding in her. It was a lot to lay on an eight-year-old. It was a huge secret to keep. He’d questioned even more, however, how he could live with himself if her mother’s sudden absence and the accusations that were sure to follow would do more damage than the truth.
In the end he’d told her, just this afternoon, prepared to scrap the whole thing if it in any way alarmed her. He hadn’t had to worry. Sara Jane had embraced the idea of him sweeping her mother away to a secret hideaway with the enthusiasm of listening to a fairy tale.
“Just like Prince Charming.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, she burrowed close again. “Mommy’s going to love it. And when you come back, she’ll be smiling again, right?”
“Right, baby.” He hugged her tight and prayed he didn’t let her down. “When she comes back, she’ll be smiling again.”
Laying her gently back against her pillow, he pulled the coverlet up to her chin. “You go back to sleep now, okay? And dream your sweet dreams. In the morning, when your aunt Maddie is fussing and fuming like an old hen with wet feathers—” he paused and shared her smile “—you remember that your mother is safe with me and that I would never hurt her. You okay with that?”
She grinned up at him and, mimicking the gesture she’d seen her uncle Clay do hundreds of times, she gave him a double-thumbs-up sign.
“I love you, pea.”
“Love you, too, Daddy,” she whispered, then nodded, a delighted co-conspirator, when he pressed a finger to his lips to signal the need for her silence.
Emma didn�
��t sleep much anymore. And when she did, she dreamed. Restless, sultry dreams. Of Garrett. Of the two of them. Together. In love. In bed.
She’d wake up shaken. Shivering. Full of wanting. Empty of him. Always, so empty of him. She hated herself for still wanting him, still loving him after what he’d done.
Tonight was supposed to be different. Tonight she was supposed to sleep. Restful, healing sleep. Maddie promised.
Because exhaustion had taken its toll, the original teetotaler, Emma James, had let Maddie convince her that a little wine to relax her wouldn’t hurt. She was not a drinker. As a teenager when her friends had experimented with alcohol, she’d abstained. Even now, the occasional half a glass of wine with dinner was the extent of her indulgence. Tonight, Maddie convinced her to break the pattern to celebrate Emma’s first full month on the job at Necessities. In truth, Emma had wanted peace, a respite from the constant, suffocating heartbreak of her failed marriage.
So, she’d given in, and with a little too much help from the brothers Gallo, she’d set out to accomplish just that She’d drunk until she’d dropped so she could sleep. Just sleep.
Maddie had helped her to bed hours ago. But here she lay. Eyes closed against the darkness. Head spinning in wild free flight. Heart pounding a heavy, sluggish warning that tonight she was slipping over the edge of yet one more place she didn’t want to go.... It seemed she was dreaming again—only this time, she was wide-awake.
Every element of the night seemed magnified. The sound of her bedroom door opening and closing. The scent—Garrett’s scent—of musk and male and memories of midnights in his arms. The drift of his breath on her brow.
Had the wine not had such a hold on her, she might have been wary of the vividness of her sense of Garrett’s presence. Instead she savored it. Rode with it. She couldn’t let herself want him in the light, but couldn’t fight that wanting in the darkness. So she embraced it for the fantasy that it was.
“Emma,...”
His voice whispered into the night. And when his lips brushed hers—so soft, so tender—she surrendered to whatever madness, whatever magic had conjured sensations as evocative as these. With a sigh of welcome, she opened her mouth. With a soft moan of pleasure, she invited him in.
The sweetness was essential. The warmth a haven she welcomed. She remembered this. Remembered too well the sinking, languid sensation of being surrounded by the scent of him, the heat of him, the heart of him.
How often had she felt his bold heart beat like thunder against her breast? How often had his breath mingled and mated with hers in the darkness? Woman to man. One woman to one man—the only man she’d ever loved.
With an earthy groan, he pulled away. She whim pered, stunned by the loss. Missing him again, missing him still.
“Come with me....” His whispered plea swept through her senses like a silken breeze.
But even in her dreamy, wine-fogged state, she knew she couldn’t go with him. Not now. Not after she’d made it this long. She shook her head to tell him no. Yet when she touched his face, she said, “Don’t go.”
And in that moment of tactile awareness, with the stubble of his beard abrasive and rough against her palm, the warmth of his flesh vital and real against her fingertips, she knew. This was no dream she was spinning. This was real. This was now, and she was caught somewhere between the wanting to believe it and a frantic need to deny that it could be so.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Garr—”
The light touch of his fingertips to her lips silenced her.
“Come with me, Em....” His words were dream soft, his breath a caress in a room lit only by the faint glow of a streetlight filtering in the window. “I want this to be your choice...but, sweetheart, I don’t have time to convince you.”
It all snapped together then. Garrett was really here. In Maddie’s apartment. In her bedroom.
“Wha—”
A gentle but firm hand covered her mouth as he pressed his cheek to hers and shushed her.
With the speed of a lightning strike, outrage set in. He had no right. He had no right to invade her dreams, steal into her bedroom and stir up fires she’d worked so hard to douse. To resurrect needs she’d buried with her hope.
She clamped her fingers around his wrist and fought to break free. Her lack of effectiveness against his strength and his patient “Shush, you’ll wake up Sara” infuriated her even more.
She bucked, surprising him. Temporarily free, she scrambled across the bed—only to have his big hand snag her ankle, drag her back and effortlessly pinbecause everything she felt was steeped in him. His long, hard length nestled like hot steel over her body. His warm breath caressed like a promise against her jaw. His scent and the memories of making love in the dark aroused and enticed, blurring reason, shattering resolve—a resolve she’d worked so long to strengthen.
She wasn’t sure where her fight came from. She wasn’t even sure what she was fighting—him or her own weakness. It was her weakness that had dreamed him here; it was her weakness that had wanted him here. But it was instinct that needed him gone. She’d fought too hard, hurt too badly in her struggle to will him out of her life. She couldn’t give up all the ground she’d gained in one weak, sweet moment of surrender.
The panic of uncertainty, the wild pump of adrenaline and the intoxicating rush of a full-bodied wine combined with inevitable results. She clawed like a wildcat. She fought like a tiger. She actually managed to tear herself away and rise in triumph to her feet on the other side of the bed.
Her victory, however, was short-lived and shaky. The blood left her head about the same time that the alcohol hit it. She swayed once, felt the cloak of unconsciousness surround her, then folded like a losing hand in a high-stakes poker game.
Winded and worried that Maddie would hear their scuffle, Garrett had let Emma go when she’d rolled to her feet and out of his reach. He stood slowly, ready to reason, ready, even, to plead, to apologize—anything to calm her—when he realized something was wrong.
“Em?” he whispered, then in a rare panic, vaulted across the bed and caught her just as her knees gave out.
“What the hell have you done to her?”
Maddie and Clay raised their heads in unison from the blueprints spread across her kitchen table.
“Answer me, Maddie,” Garrett growled as he cradled an unconscious Emma in his arms. “What’s wrong with her?”
Stunned into momentary silence, Maddie’s puzzled gaze darted from one brother to the other. It didn’t take long for her to put it all together. When she did, the fire in her eyes relayed even better than her words that she knew she’d been set up.
“You snakes!” She shot to her feet. “You miserable, scum—”
“Save it,” he snapped, anxious and worried. “I want to know what’s wrong with her.”
Maddie crossed her arms belligerently beneath her breasts. “Nothing that getting you out of her head wouldn’t fix.”
When it was apparent they were at a stalemate, Garrett turned toward the door. “I’m taking her to the hospital.”
A snort from Maddie stopped him. “Put a leash on the heroics. She’s fine—if you don’t count the hangover she’s going to have in the morning.”
Tension strung like a power line between his shoulders as Garrett looked down in disbelief at the limp, lifeless woman in his arms. He’d been so frightened for her. He’d thought—hell, he didn’t know what he’d thought, but it sure as the world wasn’t what Maddie had just implied.
He turned slowly, pinning Maddie where she stood with one hard look. “She’s...drunk?”
“As a sailor on shore leave.” Maddie had the decency to look a little guilty. She shrugged, uncomfortable under his condemning glare. “Well-l-l-l...it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d forgotten she was such a lightweight.”
“You got her drunk?” he ground out, disbelief wrapped around every word.
“No. You got her drunk, lover man,” Maddie flung back, roundin
g the kitchen island and stalking toward the phone. “Now put her down, or so help me, I’ll call the police.”
“You’re not calling anyone.” Forcing a calming breath, he willed reason to outdistance his anger. “Look. I know you love her, too, Maddie. Because of that I’m working real hard on putting up with your lip. But whether you like it or not, I’m taking her with me.”
With a steely glare that reinforced his intentions, and a meaningful nod at Clay, he headed for the door. “Keep her quiet,” he ordered over his shoulder and left with his wife in his arms.
“You heard the man.” An ornery grin tugged one corner of Clay’s mouth. He reached for the phone cord and yanked it from the jack. “I’m supposed to keep you quiet. Now what do you suppose would be the best way to go about doing that?”
Maddie eyed him like he was an oily stain in the middle of her white carpet. “Touch me and you’ll never use those hands again,” she warned, brandishing the phone receiver like a war club.
His grin widened. “Then who would build your new studio? Come on, Matilda—lighten up,” he added, playing on her common sense, even as he baited her by calling her by the name only Emma got away with using. “You know you’re just ticked off because we got the best of you. And you know Garrett would never hurt Emma. He just wants to talk to her. You can give him that, can’t you? You can give her that if you’re really her friend. Or does that viper mouth of yours have a stone-cold heart to go with it?”
The brief flicker of compassion in her eyes said she was weakening. Yet when her gaze darted from him to the door he knew the battle was far from over.
“You’re slime, Clayton James.”
“Sweet talk’ll get you nowhere, darlin’.” His patronizing tone didn’t score him any points. The starch in her back told him this was personal now.
“Really?” Suddenly all saccharine smiles and narrowed eyes, she tossed the phone aside and closed the distance between them. “Then maybe I’d better talk a different language—one even you will understand.”