CULLEN'S BRIDE

by Fiona Brand

  * * *

  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

  Epilogue

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  Cullen Logan slammed on the brakes and swung out of his truck all in one smooth motion. He was dead tired, every muscle he owned ached, and his thigh throbbed where one of the bawling, bad-tempered steers he'd spent the day drenching had caught him a glancing blow.

  At ten o'clock on one of Northland's humid summer evenings, most people wouldn't have noticed the frantic movement down the narrow side alley.

  Cullen wasn't most people. It was second nature for him to probe the shadows, searching for a darkness he knew too much about. Swearing a low litany beneath his breath, he grabbed his keys, stuffed them in his jeans pocket, then loped across the deserted street. He would be damned if he was going to let another violent bastard get his rocks off by cornering a defenceless woman.

  Defenceless? A gritty black humour surfaced as he entered the alley. The woman was holding her own, a spray can clutched in one hand, a big straw bag swinging from the other like a primitive bludgeon. She'd succeeded so far in keeping the guy at bay, but she was too small, too slight, to come out the winner.

  Cullen didn't bother speaking. In the murky half-light, he touched the man gently on one shoulder. The variety of ways he could end this encounter slid through his mind as smoothly as a well-honed knife gliding from its sheath. But when the man jerked around and Cullen got his first look at the glazed wildness in the overgrown youth's eyes, he bit out a curt Anglo-Saxon phrase and clipped him with surgical precision on the point of his chin.

  It was no contest. The boy stumbled back against a concrete block wall, then slowly subsided until he was sitting in a crumpled heap on the dusty gravel drive.

  The woman's jerkily expelled breath had Cullen turning in time to see her stumble. She cursed in a low, rich contralto as she overbalanced and landed on her rear.

  "You all right?" he asked quietly, offering his hand.

  "Apart from the piece of me I landed on," she muttered with surprising humour, "I'm fine. Thanks to you."

  She gave him a smile that was a little shaky around the edges. Her fingers closed on his, baby-soft against his work-calloused palm, but there was a capable strength in her grip as he pulled her up. Cullen released her the second she was on her feet.

  The woman barely reached his shoulder. She stared up at him, gaze steady in a darkness that had taken on an odd intimacy.

  "I'm Rachel Sinclair," she announced huskily.

  Cullen's eyes narrowed. The name Sinclair was more than familiar—Cole Sinclair's expensively manicured acres eased right alongside his own wild piece of dirt. Sinclair wasn't that uncommon a name, but, in a town as small as Riverbend, the chances were better than even that she was some kind of relation.

  "Will he be all right?" She nodded in the direction of the boy, who still hadn't stirred, then grimaced as a wave of dark hair slipped from its knot and flowed half over her face. She pushed the hair away, then began uncoiling and recoiling the silky mass with an unconscious, natural grace. Against the crude background of the alley, she was startlingly feminine and delicate, and with every movement of her arms and hair, her scent wove around Cullen—flowers and freshness and the subtle earthy warmth of woman. It sank into him and hardened him with a primitive fierceness he hadn't experienced since his early teens.

  Oh, man… Cullen almost groaned the words out loud as he backed off a step. Clamping his jaw tight, he forced himself to breathe evenly. Oh, baby, he forced himself to breathe. He was riding hell's own adrenaline rush. Nothing more. This was just some kind of weird reflex. He'd been alone too long and hadn't talked to a woman in weeks in any personal sense—let alone one who sounded like she could make a fortune just fuelling men's fantasies with the sexy, honey-warm flow of her voice.

  "I chin-tapped him," he growled. "He's staying down because he's already wired on something else."

  "Something else? You mean he's—?"

  "I don't know what he's taking," Cullen stated, then instantly regretted his curtness. He could feel the adrenaline fading, leaving him twice as tired but just as edgy. If he wasn't careful, he was going to end up scaring Rachel Sinclair more than the guy on the ground had. "I'm a little out of touch with what kids use to blank out the misery these days."

  Rachel stared at the man who'd despatched the youth with such ease. His cool statement had temporarily defused the nervous reaction twisting in her stomach, and she supposed she should be grateful for that. But the coldness in his deep, rasping voice was like a slap in the face, reminding her that he, too, was a stranger.

  A raw shudder swept through her as she relived the moment when the boy's slurred demand had penetrated her fog of tiredness and she'd realised he'd wanted her bag. It had taken her precious seconds to assimilate that what was happening was real, that she was being attacked in her safe, sleepy little home town. She still felt dazed, disoriented. And in the confines of the alley, the man who'd saved her seemed inordinately big. Six foot four if he was an inch, maybe even taller, and all of it hard muscle barely contained by tight, faded denim. The streetlight outlined the long, powerful shape of his body, the mane of hair that grazed his big shoulders. The rest of the stranger was … darkness. Shadows clung to him, obliterating everything but the narrow glitter of his eyes, the skim of light across one harshly sculpted cheekbone and the strong sweep of his jaw. He smelt of horse and hard work and, with the restless prowling grace of his movements, looked infinitely more dangerous than the young guy he'd just decked.

  But his touch had been … more than gentle. Her palm still held his warmth beneath her tightly curled fingers.

  The breath lodged in her throat at the ridiculous notion. Deliberately, she opened her fingers to dispel the vital heat of the stranger's touch—the small act vanquishing the even more ridiculous urge to reach out and stake another claim on the hot strength that flowed through him with an almost visible force. Either she was going crazy or she must be more shaken than she'd thought; if there was one thing in life she'd leant, it was how not to cling.

  But now that the immediate danger had passed, the tiredness that had had her falling asleep over the day's accounts rolled over her again. Her tailbone throbbed from her heavy landing, and her palm began to sting where she must have scraped the skin off it. Logically, she knew she should pick up her bag, walk to her car, seek out light and safety. But she was loath to leave the security the stranger represented as he squatted beside the boy and checked his pulse with the calm efficiency of someone who'd had medical training.

  Another shudder of reaction moved through her as her gaze skittered over the unconscious figure. "I'm glad you showed up," she said tautly. "Even if he looks too young and thin to do anyone any damage now."

  The man shifted the intensity of his gaze back to her. The streetlight cast his features in frustrating shadow, but she didn't need light to see his impatience; it radiated from him, infusing his deep voice with a cutting edge.

  "He was going to hurt you. Don't make the mistake of assuming that small towns are safe just because the big cities aren't. The next time you have to work late, leave by the front door and stick to the lighted areas."

  Methodically, he began gathering up the various items that had flown out of her bag and slipping them into the straw holdall she'd dropped when she'd fallen over. His unexpected consideration confused her. Especially since now that her dazed disbelief was fading, she was working up a healthy temper. She was twenty-seven, and the brand-new owner of her own hair salon. The only crime she'd committed tonight was stupidity. She hadn't tried to hurt or rip off anyone. "He was after my bag," she retorted. Ignoring h
er stinging palm and the swimmy sensation in her head, she snatched up her wallet and a crushed lipstick. "Maybe I should have given it to him, but I didn't think. And if I had taken time to think, I definitely wouldn't have handed it over. I've lost too much to give anything up easily, and I'll be damned if I was going to let him rummage through my personal things!"

  Her words sank into silence. Mortification at just how much of her inner vulnerability she'd revealed burned through her. How on earth could she have let something so intensely personal slip out? The answer was more than obvious. On top of the physical exhaustion of uprooting her city existence and moving to Riverbend, she was now probably suffering from shock.

  The glitter of his gaze swept over her again, and she felt an unsettling sense of being examined with stillness and patience and, oddly enough, empathy. Rachel blinked at that last notion. Oh, yeah. Now she knew she was going crazy. Next thing you know, she would be asking the guy for counselling services and sobbing her life story onto his considerable shoulder. Only somehow she didn't think her rescuer wanted to chew over just why it was that the people she loved could never seem to love her quite enough.

  She swallowed, fiercely squashing the unwelcome urge to wallow in self-pity, recognising that the rigid control she'd garnered so carefully over the past two years was dangerously shredded. "Don't worry," she said, injecting maximum frost into her voice. "You won't be called on to rescue me again. If I make a mistake, I only make it once. Then I learn from it."

  He straightened and handed the holdall to her, carefully avoiding brushing her fingers with his.

  For some reason, his detachment and unwillingness to touch her added to her distress. "I don't know your name. How can I thank you?"

  His face, half in light, half out of it, froze her off. Something about the distinctive line of his profile, the slant of his cheekbones, tugged at her memory. But the recognition was as elusive as it was fleeting. She'd never met him before; she was sure of it.

  Striding over to the unconscious boy, he picked him up and draped him over one broad shoulder as if he weighed no more than a child. "You can thank me by going home before something else happens that your can of Mace can't handle."

  "It wasn't Mace, it was hair spray, and I didn't invite—"

  "Hair spray?" He made a sound, halfway between amusement and disbelief.

  Rachel's jaw clamped tight against a whole list of seductively horrible insults that she would normally never dream of using. But anger was better than vulnerability. If she could keep her anger simmering, she could get through this. "It was better than the alternative."

  "Next time, Rachel Sinclair," he growled in his shiveringly deep, rough-velvet voice, "try a little prevention."

  His footsteps echoed down the alley. Rachel stared after him, waves of temper pulsing through her as she watched him cross the deserted street with a stride that wasn't as smooth as she'd expected it to be—as if he were favouring one leg. He dumped his limp burden in the passenger seat of a dusty truck that was loaded down with fencing materials, climbed in behind the wheel and drove away without a backward look.

  As the sound of the truck diminished, she glanced around the alley. The anger drained away, leaving her cold, almost dizzy with exhaustion and oddly bereft. While the big, objectionable man had been there, he'd blocked out the shock and terror of the attack. Now that he'd gone, she began to shake.

  Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to traverse the narrow length of the alley, eyes raking the pooling darkness either side of her in case there was another wild boy crouched ready to spring. The turn of the stranger's head replayed itself through her mind, and that maddeningly elusive sense of familiarity tantalised her again before dissipating as abruptly as the shadows did when she walked into the warm yellow glow of the streetlamp.

  Damn it all. She still didn't know his name.

  * * *

  Cullen drove a couple of hundred yards down the road, made a U-turn and parked far enough down from the alley that Rachel Sinclair wouldn't notice him. Switching off the engine and lights, he waited while she gathered herself together enough to get in her car and drive home.

  The click of her high heels sounded on the pavement as she hurried toward a small, classy hatchback, unlocked it and tossed in her bag. The creamy-coloured dress she was wearing crept up as she bent, revealing even more sleek, pale thigh. Her legs were smooth and long, like the dark hair that had slid out of the knot at her nape.

  She made him think of silk and moonlight. Of delicious coolness coupled with a startling inner heat. God knows how, but some of that heat had sunk into him, leaving him hungry for more.

  And she hadn't been all sweetness and light. Once he'd started in on her, her eyes had narrowed and the languid flow to her voice had been replaced by a clipped coldness that had been exactly what he'd needed to remind him to move his butt out of there before he did something he would have cause to regret. Like find out whether she was married or single, where she lived, and what her telephone number was.

  Her keys jangled as they hit the road, and he heard another one of those muffled, completely unladylike curses as she retrieved the keys before slipping into her car, starting the motor, then accelerating way too fast down Riverbend's shotgun street.

  Cullen's fingers tightened on the wheel. Despite her capable front, she'd been distressed and he'd wanted to comfort her. He wanted to follow her now and see that she got home safely. Closing his eyes, he drew a measured breath. Damn, he must be tired, because he had no business even thinking about reaching out for a woman like her. Rachel Sinclair would demand a lot more than the casual liaison which was all he could ever offer. He doubted the lady had a casual bone in her body.

  Grimly, he assessed the slumped form of his passenger. The glow of the streetlight washed over the too thin features that would have been handsome if the boy had ever had a chance at a life. Dane Trask. Cullen had seen him around town, strutting cockily with a couple of other local down-and-outs, and several weeks back he'd pulled Dane out of a ditch where he'd collapsed after drinking himself senseless.

  He checked the boy's pulse and respiration again, relieved to find both steady. He hadn't hit Dane too hard.

  Relief shuddered through him, and for a moment everything shimmered out of focus. Intellectually, he knew he'd used minimum force. The short, sharp blow had barely registered; his knuckles weren't swollen, and the boy's chin showed only a faint red mark. His training and discipline had held, despite his fury that a woman was being cornered and threatened. Despite the corrosive backlash of memories that just being back in Riverbend inspired.

  With a last brooding glance at his passenger, Cullen turned the key in the ignition and headed for Dan Holt's place. Riverbend was too small a town to have a permanently manned police station, but they were lucky enough to have an officer living there.

  * * *

  It took Rachel almost twenty minutes to drive the ten winding kilometres from town to her family's farm. Nearly twice as long as usual. But then, she was still shaking, and she wasn't stupid enough to have a car accident as well as get attacked by a deranged teenager all in the same night.

  The house was in darkness except for the porch light. She and her half brother, Cole, were the only ones in residence at the moment. Cole was managing the sheep-and-cattle station while her father was down south in the Waikato, dabbling in his favourite pastime of raising race horses. Her other three half brothers, Ethan, Nick and Doyle, could be in any of a half-dozen cities or countries, pursuing their various business interests.

  The dogs barked as she slotted her car into the four-bay garage, then settled down when she called their names. She'd only been back home for a week, but the adjustment from city living to country was unexpectedly sweet. After the break-up of her marriage, she'd needed the change more badly than she'd been prepared to admit to herself or any member of her nosy, overprotective family.

  Music drifted up from the common room, which was down by the single
men's quarters, signalling that a group of the men who worked for Cole were still up and socialising, probably playing pool. But Cole's BMW was missing. Rachel locked her car, then let herself into the graceful old house. She didn't know whether to be upset or relieved at Cole's absence. Her older brother would have comforted her, but he would have dressed her down just as thoroughly as the stranger in the alley had.

  She couldn't get him out of her mind.

  Or the danger that had appeared out of nowhere, shattering her image of small-town New Zealand—and Riverbend in particular—as a safe, cosy haven. After all the normal security precautions she'd taken for granted while living in Auckland, she still couldn't believe how naive and careless she'd been.

  * * *

  Rachel was pouring coffee the next morning when Cole padded into the big, sunny kitchen.

  Typically, her older brother didn't bother with pleasantries. "Dan Holt just rang. He said you had some trouble last night."

  Rachel set down the coffeepot and leaned against the bench, cradling her cup and deciding that today she was going to need every last ounce of caffeine kick she could get. Despite her exhaustion, she hadn't slept well. The scene in the alley had played itself over and over in her mind, and her reaction to the dark stranger had permeated what sleep she'd managed to get, making her toss restlessly until finally she'd given up trying and had lain with her eyes open, waiting for dawn. "I was accosted by a drunk when I left the salon. Fortunately, someone stopped and helped me out."

  Cole's jaw tightened as he busied himself at the stove frying bacon. "The drunk who attacked you is a seventeen-year-old kid named Dane Trask, and that 'someone' who helped you out was Cullen Logan."

  Cullen Logan.

  Shock jerked through Rachel, almost making her spill her coffee. Every town had its bad boy—its outlaw. Cullen Logan just happened to be Riverbend's.

  Rachel had seen him once, years ago, when she'd been home from school for Christmas. She'd been standing on the sidewalk, soaking up the warm summer morning, waiting for Ethan and Cole while they made some purchases in the supermarket, when a biker had pulled up at the adjacent petrol station. The big, leather-jacketed man had straddled the throbbing monster of a bike while he eased his helmet off, peeled gauntlets from his hands, then slipped a pair of dark glasses onto the bridge of his nose. He'd killed the engine, then made a leisurely survey of Riverbend's Saturday-morning-busy street.