by Jenna Ryan
“By your father’s measure, only the bad die young.”
She dropped her dark glasses back in place as he rounded a bend and the last rays of daylight streamed through the windshield. “If his measure had any merit, McBride, you’d have been dead long before we met. I’m glad you weren’t and we did meet, but we’ve strayed miles from our original topic.”
Which was—and he had to think hard because he’d had as many nightmares about that crash as she had—whether a horse trainer named Ryder might have been bribed, talked or manipulated into avenging his father-in-law’s grievance. And that was understating the matter.
“I don’t think Ryder would go that far,” Alessandra remarked, eerily reading his mind. “I’m not even sure I think Hawley would.” She leaned forward to peer through the windshield. “Is that a cop?”
“Squad car gave it away, huh?”
She grinned. “You’re so busted, McBride.”
“For what? Driving a borrowed truck?”
“Doing thirty-five in a fifteen-mile-an-hour zone.”
“For a small-town girl, that’s a bitter stereotype.”
“You never met my childhood sheriff. By-the-Book was his first, middle and last name.”
In this case, it wasn’t the sheriff who pulled them over, but a rail-thin deputy named Barney Pepper. He sniffed as he stuck an envelope and a jar of honey through McBride’s rolled-down window. “Welcome to Loden and the one hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of our town’s founding. Honey’s local. Hotel’s full. Lakeside and mountain cabins are mostly empty on account of Hank Tupper’s a mean old cuss who hates people, especially strangers, so he charges sky-high prices hoping folks’ll just move along and leave him be. Still, if you don’t mind getting hosed, he’ll probably accommodate you, seeing as he likes to drink and gamble and he can’t do those things for free. Enjoy your stay.” With an attempt at a smile, the deputy touched his cap and stepped back.
Amusement swam into Alessandra’s eyes. When McBride pulled away, she glanced back at the man, then down at the honey in her hand. “Just imagine all the people, places and events I’d have missed if we’d never met. Hit men, fugitives, Larry, Curly, Moe, Three-Fingers Morley, a cook who swings a mean spatula and now Deputy Barney Fife, handing out jars of Aunt Bea’s honey, except here, they spell it B-E-E.” Leaning across the seat, she kissed his cheek. “He calls it Loden, but I say welcome to Mayberry.”
Emotions he’d been struggling to lock down coiled and thrashed in McBride’s belly. But it was the kiss, that soft brush of her lips across his skin, that did it.
With the deputy out of sight, he whipped the truck onto the shoulder, hit the brakes and, before she could sit back, snared her wrist. “Not so fast, darlin’. First up, this isn’t Mayberry, or anywhere close to it. Second, people, places and events aside, I never meant to put your life in danger. And third, I’ve been waiting to do this since I saw you in that parking lot Friday night.”
“McBride, don’t.” She set a warning palm on his chest.
Ignoring the protest, he drew her forward. “Welcome back to my life, Alessandra. And everything that comes with it.”
He gave her two seconds to pull free, then hauled her across the console and crushed his mouth onto hers.
HEAT AND HUNGER swirled up so swiftly that the denial, partly formed in Alessandra’s throat, emerged as nothing more than a moan of pleasure.
His tongue plunged into her mouth, and made her blood sizzle. No one could throw a kiss into sexual overdrive like McBride.
Images of the two of them skin-to-skin, exploring and rediscovering each other’s bodies, streaked through her mind. But they were in a truck on the side of a road with a deputy less than half a mile away. She knew it, and she still wanted to strip away McBride’s shirt and his jeans. Worse, she wanted him to tear off her clothes so she could straddle him.
All that pent-up desire unleashed from a single mind-blowing kiss that got more and more potent the longer it went on. Part of her was stunned.
She should end it before her sanity dissolved. But his hands were cupping her face, the back of her neck, holding her in place so he could ravish—yes, actually ravish—every inch of her mouth. And she was loving it.
Instead of going with wisdom, she bunched his hair in her fists and matched him stroke for delicious stroke with her tongue. There was a certain smoky darkness, an element of danger in the way he touched her. It hinted at some never quite spoken vice she’d been warned by her father not to want or accept. And never, ever to enjoy.
The memory of that warning had her lips curving as McBride shifted his mouth to her neck, and his hands to her breasts.
Even through her bra and T-shirt, his thumbs on her nipples made her purr. Her eyes opened briefly, and she realized with a choked laugh that she was, in fact, straddling him. God, the things that happened when McBride blindsided her.
It wasn’t wanting him to stop so much as the sound of a vehicle approaching from behind that had her planting her hands on his ribs and pushing herself away.
“Someone’s coming,” she said, with more reluctance than was probably wise. “We need to keep moving.”
“Plan to,” he returned, and dropped his mouth on hers for another heart-stopping kiss.
He took her under again, into that lovely forbidden place where common sense evaporated and sensation ruled.
Tiny jitters like bursts of electricity raced along her nerve ends. She remembered everything about him so well, as if no time had passed since the last night they’d made love. The taste of him that was all McBride, the smell of his skin, the feel of his hands on her breasts, her hips, her thighs, her—
Whoa! Like a whip snapping in her brain, Alessandra dragged her mouth free and caught his wrists. “Are you crazy?” With her hands firmly engaged, she tossed her hair back to see. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
His storm-dark gaze fastened on hers. “The location supports my action more than your objection, Alessandra.”
She spied a 4x4 coming up behind them and slid down to his level. “Pretty sure it doesn’t since the middle of this particular nowhere leads directly into town. We can’t make out in this truck, McBride.”
A light of challenge burned in his eyes. “Wanna bet?”
“No… Yes… No!” She squeezed his wrists and tried to wriggle free. When he smiled, she twisted just enough to threaten him with her knee. “Okay, I know you could get out of this all too easily, but I’m trying to convey a message about time, place and the fact that we’re separated for a reason.”
“One that has nothing to do with sex.”
“Truck, road, town,” she reminded him for lack of a better comeback.
His eyes traveled to her navel and the jeans he’d managed to unzip. “Sex was never the problem for us. But I don’t suppose it’s the answer, either.”
“Just a fun trip.” Sidestepping regret, she worked the zipper up and climbed off him.
She was doing up the buttons and willing her heart back to a seminormal rhythm when she heard the sounds—two echoing gunshots, fired from a point directly ahead.
Chapter Ten
Alessandra knew he took her with him because to leave her alone in the truck would have been even more risky. But while these were gun and not rifle shots, the weapon sounded powerful, and the third one sent a shower of bark flying in all directions.
McBride pulled her to a halt, then into a crouch behind a tall pine.
“Is it Rory?” She squinted over his shoulder.
“Not unless he’s decided to wear a fake beard—” another bullet whizzed past “—lost six inches and dropped eighty pounds. Could be last night’s rifle guy, though.”
Alessandra ducked as two more shots lodged in the trunk. “If it means anything, Ryder—Hawley’s son-in-law—doesn’t have a beard, he’s over six feet tall and he’s built like a heavyweight boxer. Hawley’s a bit shorter and looks like a bulldog.”
“Good to know.” McBride nud
ged her back. “Stay down.”
She pointed toward a swaying thicket. “Someone’s in there.”
He nodded, aimed his gun skyward. “Can you keep him busy while I circle?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Even as she said it, her heart hammered, her eyes stung and her palms went damp. But she steeled herself and fired shots around the thicket at intervals she hoped would allow McBride sufficient time to work his way through the underbrush and ambush the shooter. She was waiting out a fresh flurry of bullets and starting to worry about how many of her own she had left when she heard a sharp crack of branches breaking. A loud “Oomph” and a great deal of muffled swearing followed.
Releasing the trigger, Alessandra offered a cautious, “McBride?”
“Back here,” he called above the curses. “I’ve got the shooter and his gun.”
It didn’t take her long to find him—and the slight man with the mangy red beard who was his prisoner.
Bare-chested and wearing a pair of torn overalls, he looked like a cross between a biker and a cartoon hillbilly. Every inch of exposed skin below his chin was covered with tattoos. His feet, also bare, were the same color as the dirt, and she seriously doubted he’d used a toothbrush in the past decade.
McBride was crouched several feet away. His captive had pushed himself to a sitting position, and was currently scowling at the ground.
“You got no right.” He glared at McBride, then at her. “You can’t just… Woo-hoo.” He cut himself off, blinked, gaped. “You are a looker, aren’t you?”
“Interesting inflection,” McBride remarked. “Gives me the impression someone’s described her to you.”
The man’s mouth clamped shut, and he returned his eyes to the ground. “I’m not saying another word.”
“No problem. We’ll just take this to the sheriff and see what he makes of it.”
“I was shooting squirrels,” the man maintained. “Nothing to prove I wasn’t.”
McBride grinned. “Nothing at all, Billy. It’s our word against yours.”
“That’s right.” The man spit into the weeds. “Even a toad with a badge can’t say different unless he’s got a wit—” He stopped midword but didn’t close his mouth. Only his eyes moved back and forth between them. “How’d you—er, what’d you call me?”
McBride snapped a fresh clip into his gun, offered a lethal smile. “Word is you and Rory go way back, to a time when he was looking to break away from the family and set up a little out of country business of his own. Didn’t happen, and Rory slunk home with his tail between his legs a whole lot poorer after all the payoffs had been quietly dealt with. But the important thing was, his family never really knew what went down during that fourteen-month stretch of time, or who it went down with.”
Billy’s tongue flicked out to moisten his lips. His eyes under bushy brows turned to slits. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do,” McBride said with an easy shrug. “But it doesn’t matter. Not to me, anyway. Your sheriff might have a different view of things.”
His captive blustered up. “All I hear is blah, blah, blah, lawman. And don’t ask how I know what you are. Badge is right there on your belt loop. Sheriff here’s got no reason to question me. I don’t cause trouble, and he doesn’t bug me on account of I keep the local riffraff in line because they’re all talk, and I can shoot the wings off a gnat at fifty paces.”
“Lots of useless information in there. Now tell me where Rory is before I do a little shooting of my own.”
“Go ahead,” Billy sneered. “If you got the balls.”
Alessandra sighed and stepped back. McBride held the man’s gaze and squeezed the trigger. A rock jumped up from between Billy’s legs, caught him on the cheek and had him scuttling sideways in startled fear.
“You’re crazy,” he accused. “Really crazy. You coulda shot my… Man, it’s no wonder Ror—” He broke off, wedged himself against a tree trunk. “Crazy.” Anger and resentment joined the fear. “I didn’t come anywhere near that close with you.” He fingered his cheek. “Am I bleeding?”
“A little,” Alessandra told him. “Look, Billy, McBride doesn’t care about you.”
“I can see that.”
His baleful glance brought an absurd swell of humor to her throat. “If you tell us where Rory is, it can end right here.”
“Is that you saying so, or him?”
“Her.” McBride’s lips formed a pleasant smile. “Best you can hope for is that the crazy man’ll go along with the lady and not turn you into a eunuch.” All amusement vanished. “Where Rory, Billy?”
The man’s shoulders hunched. “Maybe you should shoot off one of my toes or something so I can prove how loco you are.”
“If you say so.” McBride took aim, while Billy snatched his feet up under him.
“Yeah, okay, I get it. He’s here, but I don’t know where. My place for about five minutes before a truck backfired and spooked him. He told me what you were driving and asked could I throw you off the scent if you showed up. Throw you off,” he repeated. “Not shoot off body parts or even draw blood. I said sure and scampered on over to the detour route. Saw you stopped, and figured I might as well go for it.”
Alessandra nudged Billy’s dropped gun in McBride’s direction. “You do know there’s a deputy just down the road.”
The man snickered. “Yeah, good old Barn’s a real worry. He’s so useless, he helped a thief get away from Ike’s corner store one night. There’s old Ike shouting and Barney boy telling him to zip it and holding the door for the thief’s lady friend. Luckier for you than me, he didn’t come barreling in to help. There was this other time, too—”
“Rory,” McBride interrupted.
“Hey, I was just—”
“Stalling.”
“I don’t know where he is,” the man repeated.
“Yeah, we got that part. Tell us where he might be.”
Billy shrugged a shoulder. “Bar, maybe. It’s getting late, and he probably figured I’d be able to do the pied piper thing and lead you away from town like he wanted, so he… What?” He scowled when McBride motioned him to his feet. “You think I’m gonna march you around until you nab him?”
“We can start there,” McBride agreed. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll move on to plan B.”
Billy’s lip curled. “Would that be the plan where you haul my butt into the sheriff?”
“No, the sheriff’s plan C.” Keeping his eyes on Billy’s face, McBride pointed the gun at the man’s bare feet. “Plan B’s where I start shooting off toes.”
OF COURSE IT WAS a bluff, but while it got Billy moving, Alessandra didn’t expect it to work. They might have gotten farther, though, if barefoot Billy hadn’t stomped across an unpaved parking lot outside one of the seediest bars Alessandra had ever seen, stepped on a broken wagon bolt and punched a hole the size of a nickel in his sole. The shaft was jagged, over two inches long, and if the head was any indication, rust was its main component.
Billy screamed like a girl while Alessandra worked it back out. When he saw the blood that came with it, he turned green and promptly chugged back half the bottle of bourbon someone from inside the bar shoved in his hand.
“Shoulda had a pair of work boots tattooed on your feet,” a middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair and tight red jeans scoffed. When he let out a series of high-pitched squeals, she kicked his hip. “Oh, grow some balls, Billy Joe. My baby girl didn’t carry on like you when she had three molars yanked last month and the freezing didn’t take.”
Billy gave her a horrified look and chugged again.
While the bystanders wandered back inside the poorly lit building, the woman plunked her ample butt on a felled log and lit a brown cigarette that smelled like smoked cherries.
“Ad says they’ll help me quit. So far they just make me sick. Name’s Barb Winchell. Now you—” she one-eyed Alessandra “—you’d be some kind of doc. And you—” she s
tabbed her cigarette at McBride “—you’re either my fantasy come to life or a cop from someplace hell and gone more interesting than this spit hole of a town. Did you get your honey jar coming in?”
“Aunt Bee’s famous,” Alessandra confirmed. “This is going to sting,” she told Billy, who shrieked before she pulled the antiseptic from the medi-pack.
“You don’t do teeth, do you?” Barb asked.
“Only for animals.” McBride went to his haunches to watch and have a deceptively affable chat. Or maybe not so deceptive, Alessandra reflected with a glance at the woman’s fox-sharp features. “Got any games going inside, Barb?”
She blew a stream of smoke. “Depends who’s asking and why.”
“I’m looking for a man named Rory Simms. Big, ugly, hands the size of bear paws, diagonal slash across his collarbone.”
“Mud-brown hair,” Alessandra added. “Acne-scarred face.”
“Sounds about average for this place. But since the one you mean’d be a stranger, answer is the same as before. Depends who’s asking and why.”
At Billy’s sour expression, McBride grinned and explained in fifty words or less. Which was approximately forty-five words more than Alessandra had gotten out of him under similar circumstances during their marriage.
“U.S. marshal, huh?” Barb shrugged with her mouth. “That’s a new one in these parts. And it doesn’t surprise me that Billy here’d be pals with an escaped felon. I can’t say as anyone with a diagonal scar’s been here, but you could try Luke’s place. Luke’s my cousin. Real tight-ass. He has a bar in town. South end, two blocks off Main on Hooper Street. I gotta tell you, hon, that man’s got more stuff going on than a Las Vegas fun house. I run a few games, but nothing like Luke’s. Nothing rigged, but plenty of players every night.”
“Rat,” Billy slurred. Then his head lolled, his eyes crossed and he toppled from the log onto the gravel lot.