All You Want

by Rachelle Ayala

  All You Want

  Desiring Danger, #3

  Rachelle Ayala

  http://www.rachelleayala.net

  All You Want

  Desiring Danger Series, Book 3

  Rachelle Ayala

  Lovely Hearts Press

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  Copyright © 2019 by Rachelle Ayala

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real events or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All trademarks belong to their respective holders and are used without permission under trademark fair use.

  Contact Rachelle at:

  http://smarturl.it/ContactRachelle

  For Rachelle’s free books:

  http://rachelleayala.net/free-books

  Description

  I’m Tami King, and I’m proud to be a prima donna. Except I live in a boring, one-corner town, Colson’s Corner, that’s about as far from hip and cool as the Dust Bowl is from Malibu.

  But it’s home, and it’s where my great-great-grandfather, Hank King, made us Gold Country royalty—thanks to a fifty-pound nugget of gold.

  They call me spoiled and say I always get what I want, but that’s not true. I don’t yet have a ring on my finger, and my plans to turn my town into a tourist wonderland is opposed by one stubborn hunk of a sheriff—Todd Colson.

  Not to brag, but this Halloween, our town’s Spooky Fest is going to be one big, hellish hit with the grand opening of my Haunted Hotel of Horrors. I’ve booked a full house of celebrities, sorority sisters, strangers, and actors, as well as ghouls, goblins, hangmen, and freaks.

  What can go wrong?

  Todd Colson. Sheriff of Colson’s Corner.

  It isn’t easy keeping my town safe and secure. Not with all of the threats both real and anticipated. Especially not when the spoiled town princess, Tami King, gets it into her head to invade my peaceful hamlet with a hotel full of troublemakers.

  Oh, she turns heads all right. She’s a blond bombshell whirlwind who never calls it quits, and she’s determined to put my hometown on the map as a tourist trap—literally.

  The last thing I need is the old prospector’s boarding house turned into a theme-park hotel—especially not one catering to unvetted outsiders without proper background checks.

  Things go wrong right from the start—from construction accidents to missing material to dead animals and graffiti scrawled on the walls warning Tami to cease and desist.

  Huh. As if anything can stop that tornado of a woman. I have my eye on her—always. But keeping her out of trouble this Halloween just got harder, and I’m not surprised when the first dead body turns up well before the tricks go a treating.

  Desiring Danger Series

  Welcome to Gold Country, California - love, gold, and psychopaths up in them hills.

  Love Will Stay, Salem & Scott, #1

  Taking Me Back, Linx & Grady, #2

  All You Want, Tami & Todd, #3

  Welcome

  I invite you to explore my world of over fifty romances, from dangerous suspense to sweet family drama, featuring hot, steamy flirts, brainy, strong heroines, and hunky men with big, gigantic hearts and melty, warm hugs.

  For book descriptions, go to the Reading List with Heat Levels section or check out my Reader’s Guide at:

  http://rachelleayala.net/books/

  Don’t forget to download my Free Books from your favorite bookstore:

  Christmas Lovebirds (sweet)

  A Father for Christmas (sweet)

  Going Haywire: Sapphire Falls (steamy)

  Bad Boys for Hire - Ryker (steamy)

  Playing Without Rules (steamy)

  Broken Build (romantic suspense)

  Intercepted by Love: Part 1 (steamy)

  Hidden Under Her Heart (sweet)

  For updates and two more free books, sign up for my newsletter at:

  http://smarturl.it/RachAyala

  To chat and read new works in progress, join my Reader’s Club at:

  http://www.facebook.com/groups/ClubRachelleAyala/

  Thanks for coming into my story world and letting me take you on an unforgettable excursion. Turn the page to begin.

  Bon voyage!

  To my husband, a first responder in the emergency room and in my heart.

  One

  ~ X ~

  He hates her guts, but he’s a patient man.

  He doubts she even thinks about him.

  He was aware of her before he could even speak. He lurked near her crib, and he hid in her closets. She was loud and bold, the little princess born with a golden spoon in her mouth.

  His mother made him be nice to her, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t hate her. He bided his time, and he did things to her that she’ll never know about.

  Oh, they were small victories. Tiny things. Like the time he brushed her toothbrush on his ass, and the poison ivy he rolled her pajamas in. He was careful to cover his tracks, and even though his mother suspected and she warned him with her frightened eyes, she never knew how much he hated that blond little fairy with the sapphire-blue eyes.

  He grits his teeth and grinds his molars, clenching his fists until his knuckles would pop. He kneels on the damp earth and brushes the pine needles off his mother’s tiny gravestone.

  “Oh, isn’t she the prettiest girl you ever laid eyes on,” Mooma would say while ironing and folding the little monster’s many dresses. She was always buttering up her employers with her constant praise and adulation of the pampered puffybutt. It was a wonder anyone could breathe when all the hot air went to pumping up the prissy petunia’s poufy head.

  The tinkling of the piano would draw him to the window, and he’d press his forehead against it to stare at her. He wasn’t allowed to stare or speak to her after his voice turned, and he was relegated to the basement. But his mother always kept him apprised of the princess’s many accomplishments.

  Her flowing hair was light as wheat, and the blue in her eyes were those of an enchanting goddess. The sparkling tones of the piano tinkled and plinked like a colorful waterfall of crystal bells, and rays of sunlight enfolded her like a golden bath showering her from heaven.

  A kick on the seat of his pants sent him sprawling. His mother was always cross with him. “Get back to work, you lazy bum. They raised the rent again, and I’m working my fingers to the bone for you.”

  He picked up the axe and hefted the weight in his hand. How easy it would be to blot her beauty with ugly, dark-red spurts of blood.

  But he was a patient man, and patience was a virtue.

  One day, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

  He raised the sharp axe, swung it high and hard.

  Thwack.

  A wedge of hard oak exploded into splinters.

  He kisses the cold, dead gravestone and vows to his mother. “This is for you, Mooma. This is for you.”

  Two

  ~ Tami ~

  “Yoohoo! Barbecue beef incoming!” I hoot outside the squat cabin containing the Colson’s Corner police station. It’s nothing more than a square building converted from the town’s original bar. Aside from the single administrative desk, there’s a two-cell jail and a picnic table in the back inside a chain-link fence.

  Depending on if the jail is occupied or not, it’s either the eating area for the prisoners, or lunch room for the sheriff and his deputy, or the party place for our tiny one-corner town.

  Yes siree! I’m Tami King, party girl galore! And I’m the one w
ho keeps Colson’s Corner sparkling and lively. I chair every festival committee, and I organize the charity events from food drives to road races. I’m also the one-woman real estate agency and my town’s biggest booster.

  I was born and raised up in these Gold Country hills, better known as the Northern Mother Lode of the Sierra Nevadas. But I never truly fit in. I’m loud and love bright colors; I’m more Times Square neon than National forest green. I’m a glittering iridescent butterfly among the drab, crusty mountain folk of Colson’s Corner—a town founded by men who mined the gold miners and whose heyday passed on more than a hundred fifty years ago.

  If only everyone would get on board to bring our dwindling ghost town into the twenty-first century. The biggest foot draggers are the old mayor, descended from the founder, Colonel Chadwick Colson, and the young sheriff also descended from the founder.

  It’s the sheriff, Todd Colson, who I have the hots for. He’s a big man, as rugged as these hills and as strong as a freight train. Dark-brown hair with a cowlick up top, even darker-brown eyes, deep as twin wells, and a face as rugged as redwood, he’s the storybook hero from the cleft in his chin to his dark-shadowed jaw.

  He’s also a stickler for rules and regulations, and he’s as good at holding the line as he was back in his high school football days.

  “Yoohoo!” I hoot louder because those cops, all two of them, probably have their feet on the one desk between them, snoozing or watching football. “I can’t hold this huge crock pot forever!”

  I’m here to bribe Todd into making a public appearance with me at my newest tourist destination—a haunted hotel all decked out for Halloween. It will be super awesome to have a real sheriff on hand for the promotional theatrics I have planned.

  Besides, I’ll take any excuse to rub shoulders, elbows, and other body parts (I wish) with the solidly hunky grizzly bear lawman, even if it’s to irritate him. Say, doesn’t irritation require friction or chemistry?

  Tee hee.

  Slow footsteps creak over the gray, worn-out wooden floor. It’s Shane Donnelly, the town’s new deputy who opens the door. He’s a tall, lanky city guy who last patrolled the stinky streets of San Francisco.

  “Come in, ma’am,” Shane says, taking the pot from me.

  “Why are you calling me ma’am?” I let my heavy kente-cloth purse of many colors slide off my shoulder onto the floor. It’s filled with apples for Todd. “Where is he?”

  “In the jail cell interrogating a suspect.”

  “Oh! You guys caught a bad guy? Who?” I clap my hands together. Not casting shade on the cops, especially the hunky Todd Colson, but despite the mayhem of arsons and kidnappings we’ve had this past summer, no one was caught. Absolutely no one. How can that be?

  I mean, it’s not like my town’s name is Keystone, is it? We taxpayers should expect some policing around these parts. Of course, things are better now that Todd’s taken over than back in the days of Sheriff Bill Weaver. That man was as crooked as a big city crime family, and his reign of terror drove businesses into the ground or out of the area.

  Shane takes the lid off the crock pot. The mouthwatering aroma steams from the pot, and he licks his thin lips. He has that ferrety look in his eyes, a sharp, pointy snout, I mean, nose, and a grin that swings between sexy and sly.

  A couple of my girlfriends think he’s hot, if they like a lean, mean machine—sleek muscles, and that smoothly metallic pool boy look.

  But give me a heavy-duty, hairy-chested mountain man—Ram truck tough with a heart of gold. Todd’s the only reason I returned from Malibu University in Southern California and parked my butt back in my hometown.

  But I digress, because plasticky Shane is serving himself a bowlful of my beef without asking or thanking me. That grills my guts. The beef is for my soon-to-be boyfriend who’s also his boss.

  I march up to him and stare into his squinty eyes. “I asked you a question. Who?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s police business,” he says, slurping on a delectable chunk of my tender, range-fed beef.

  “I don’t see why we need a deputy when you never catch a single crook.” I hear the clink of the clinker and brush by him to the row of two cells.

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to—” His complaint is cut off by Todd’s deep drawl. Cue wild west lost hills soundtrack with twangy guitar riffs and the galloping beat of gunslingers at forty paces.

  “Miss King, where’s the fire?” Todd Colson, the lawman of my heart, crowds me back from the cinder block hallway. He’s six-feet-three inches of backwoods alpha male, broad-shouldered hunk with brooding brows over coffee-brown eyes, a rugged sturdy man with a heart as brave and steady as the lawmen of the old west.

  The fire’s in my panties, but I’m not that direct of a flirt, so I say, “Brought you boys my famous O King Corral Barbecue beef. I’ve got fresh baked bread in the car, a healthy iceberg and blue cheese salad, and Candy Crisp apples picked fresh from my orchards.”

  “Appreciate it, Miss King, as always.” His gaze shifts toward my bulging purse on the floor. He picks it up and puts it on the office chair. The apples roll out and bounce all over the floor, and he bumps his head on his desk picking them up.

  The poor dear is always bashful around me. I know I’m a lot to take in, and my best friend, Linx Colson, who’s his sister says he’s shy only to me because he’s had a crush on me his entire life, even though he doesn’t show it.

  I’m going to have to try harder to let him know I don’t bite, at least not in the wrong places, hee, hee. So, I flutter my eyelashes, the ones I lengthened with super-duper deluxe mascara and purr, “Why, Todd, I came to invite you to the grand opening of Hallowed Haunts. It’s going to be the biggest, grandest party and the linchpin of Spooky Fest. Guaranteed to put Colson’s Corner on the map of prime Halloween vacation spots.”

  He drops the apples on the desk and props his hands on his hips, taking that macho policeman stance of control. “How are the renovations going?”

  “They’re coming along great.” I whip my hair over my shoulder and jut my chest out at him. “Everything’s on track once my animatronics guy shows up. We are going to have a hundred haunts. It’ll be a big hit. Guaranteed.”

  “I’m more worried about the huge traffic jam,” he mumbles deep in his throat. “How many guests are you expecting?”

  “Why, glad you asked.” I curve around him, circling his fine ass like a predatory ostrich with my skirts fluttering. “All my sorority sisters, their dates, the entire Hart family, celebrities and rock stars and even a budding state senator.”

  “In that case, I need you to fill out an event permit.” He marches by me to his single steel desk and pulls open a drawer full of messy paperwork.

  “Have some of this barbeque beef, Chief.” Shane talks with his mouth full. “I can do the paperwork with Miss King.”

  “That’s why I hired you.” Todd throws a form at Shane and ambles to the crock pot. “Miss King, thanks.”

  “I have a name, Tami.” I shake the ladle at him. “No O King Corral beef unless you call me Tami.”

  I get the cold shoulder, somewhat, but it’s been months and he still hasn’t gotten over the grudge—the one where I bought rounds and rounds of drinks at the Sixty Miners Saloon until the entire city council granted me a liquor license over his objections.

  “Official business, Miss King. This here’s a police station.”

  “Then I’ll just pack up my goodies and leave.” I huff. It’s a well-known fact that playing hard to get works with unresponsive men.

  He rubs his flat and no doubt hard belly and sniffs the tangy aroma. I know he’s weakening, but he’s going to act like he doesn’t care.

  “Fresh bread in the car,” I say with a sing-song voice. “It’s crusty oatmeal bread and so yummy with hand-churned butter.”

  “I’ll get it, Miss King,” Shane says.

  I shoot him a glare. “What’s my name?”

  “Tami,” Todd sighs, beat
ing Shane to the punch. “And thanks for bringing food. I’ve been too busy to eat lunch.”

  “I’ll get it, Tami.” Shane walks out of the station and opens the hatch of my vintage sportscar, leaving Todd and me with our gazes locked.

  It’s moments like this, left alone and in close proximity, that I ought to take advantage of. I move closer, blocked only by my large breasts, and tilt my face up. My lips wet, and I make a Dolly Parton bow-shaped pucker.

  He appears to move closer, looking at me steadily with those deep-brown eyes. His lips part slightly, and I float upward toward him. He turns his head and—

  “Hey, Tami!” a rough male voice calls from one of the holding cells. “Tell that lousy sheriff he caught the wrong crook.”

  Todd snaps back like his neck is made of bungee cords. His demeanor changes immediately, hardening and ready for the challenge.

  “You caught a crook today?” I tell my heart to be still and quash any appearance of being disappointed at the near-kiss. “That’s awesome! On what charge?”

  Thinking positive and a boatload of flattery works on all but the most recalcitrant male.

  “Breaking and entering, resisting arrest, not carrying identification, and vagrancy,” Todd says. “Says he’s a haunted house consultant.”

  I plop the ladle back into the crock pot and charge the holding cell. “You arrested the world-famous ghost hunter, Evan Graves?”

  “He did,” Evan says. “I’m completely innocent.”