Shadow Point Deputy

by Julie Anne Lindsey

  She took a few hasty steps, and he came into view on the first floor, leaning casually against the wall and skimming her with his deep blue eyes. He trailed her with his gaze as she returned to the front of the building and exited into the sunlight. She could feel the heat of him behind her. Watching her. Following her. Dare she think it? Wanting her.

  He followed her into the parking lot at a lumber, close enough to protect her if needed, far enough away to continue the pretense they weren’t together, at least until they arrived at their destination.

  He beeped the doors open when she reached West’s truck and offered a hand to help her climb inside.

  “That was terrifying,” she told him, dropping the files onto the floorboards by her feet. “Isla’s definitely already on the phone telling Cyndi I was in her office today, and Cyndi will probably have my boss on the line before I finish this sentence. I’m absolutely losing my job for playing hooky.”

  Cole shut her door and went to claim his position behind the wheel. He gunned the truck to life and smiled. “If Cyndi’s anything like Isla, she can’t tattle on you until she finds out if you got my number.”

  “What?” Rita smiled. “How’d you know I said I was going to?”

  He laughed, shifted into Drive and pulled away from the building. “I was watching you so closely, I figured Isla would pick up on it. I didn’t know you told her you were going to follow me.”

  Rita smiled back, enjoying the youthful expression on his too frequently distressed face.

  Color bled from his cheeks at the next intersection. “Don’t look now, but it seems there’s a dark sedan following us.”

  “Where?” Rita checked the rear-and side-view mirrors.

  “Three cars back.” Cole pulled into the next available spot against the curb and waited. “No front plates. Dark tinted windows.” He liberated his cell phone and tapped the screen to life. “We’ll let him pass, then get behind him. See where he goes. Meanwhile, I’ll get a cruiser out here to play sheepdog and herd him up.”

  The sedan slowed to a stop in the middle of the road thirty feet back. The two cars in between buzzed past their truck. The sedan idled.

  Rita’s heartbeat thrummed in her ears and throat. “What’s he doing?” She closed her eyes and tried not to imagine the driver climbing into the street with a gun and shooting up the truck. She was with Cole now. He knew what to do. He’d handle this.

  She was safe. She was safe. She was safe.

  The roaring of an engine sprang her eyes wide. Squealing tires turned her on the seat.

  The car pulled a U-turn on the narrow road before tearing away in a fury and peeling out of sight.

  Cole returned the phone to his cup-holder. “I guess he really didn’t want to pass us.”

  Rita rolled her window down and leaned against her door, desperate for more air.

  Cole’s phone rang, and he opened it on his palm. “Garrett.”

  “Hey.” West’s voice echoed through the truck cab. “Where are you?”

  “I’m on Maple, and I’ve got you on speaker. Rita’s here with me. We’re finished at the mayor’s office, but I just called Dispatch with the location of that sedan. It was tailing us, but it’s headed in the other direction now. I’ll fill you in when we get there.”

  West groaned.

  “What do you have?” Cole asked.

  “Good news and bad news,” West said.

  Rita lurched toward the phone. “Bad news first. Then tell us the other thing to cushion the blow.”

  “Well,” West began, “I actually only have one thing. Good news for you, but bad news for Cole.”

  Cole rubbed the back of his head and swore, apparently reading his brother’s mind.

  “What?” she asked, leaning closer to the phone.

  “I’ve got a decoy pen and enough men to cover the drop if you’re still up for it.”

  She raised her determined eyes to Cole’s wary ones. A wave of uncertainty threatened to steal her resolve.

  Walk into a park where I know the man who keeps trying to kill me is waiting? She drew in another breath and let it out to the count of ten. She had to remember what was at stake here. If showing up at the park meant helping the killer be captured, and it would keep Ryan safe, there was nothing she wouldn’t try. “Tell me when.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rita dropped onto Cole’s couch. She’d barely stayed on her feet while they went to pick up the decoy pen from West’s office. The terrifying reality of what she’d volunteered to do was like an anvil in her gut, especially since the standard ballpoint West had given her wasn’t much of a match for the actual device. With any luck, the killer hadn’t gotten a good look at the original, otherwise he’d easily see her delivery for what it was. An attempt to buy time. And if they were lucky, an opportunity to draw the killer into the open for capture and arrest.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Cole said for the fiftieth time. He’d taken a shower and changed into the luckiest pair of jeans on the planet.

  “You know I do.” She forced her focus to remain on his eyes, ignoring the way his soft gray T-shirt clung distractingly to his chest.

  He lowered himself onto the cushion beside her and dropped fisted hands into his lap. “You’ve already done enough.”

  “I’ll be fine. The plan will work,” she assured him. “Either we’ll catch the killer picking up the pen after the drop, or we’ll be able to follow whoever comes for it all the way back to the killer.” Assuming she had a sudden and profound change of luck.

  He cracked his knuckles, bending and stretching his fingers. A stress-release move she’d performed many times after racing deadlines. “I don’t like that the property in question is owned by the state.”

  “Me, either.”

  “Or that Isla agreed the governor might be in town. Something about the way these threads are coming together is making me uncomfortable. Dirty politicians are the worst kind of criminal. They have power, money, influence and endless minions to carry out their schemes or provide alibis. This whole thing is shaping up to be a total nightmare.”

  “Isla could be wrong about the governor. He might have no idea Minsk exists or that our mayor was meeting with him.”

  Cole flicked his gaze to her. “There was three million dollars on the table, and the middleman is dead. When people have that kind of money to spend and don’t get what they want, I worry.”

  Rita relaxed into the hard length of Cole’s side and set an uncertain hand on his forearm. Ropes of hard muscle flexed at her touch, launching a thousand butterflies into her chest.

  “Messing with the mayor is guaranteed to get ugly, but given what we have to go on, I don’t see any way around it,” Cole said. “He’ll have to be interviewed, and one wrong move could ruin West’s career.”

  Rita smiled. In the midst of everything, Cole was thinking of his brother first. She stroked the length of his arm and twined her fingers with his. “I wish we could know for sure if the governor has been in town, and if so, why.” She tipped her head against Cole’s shoulder, loving and hating how easy moments like these had become. How she could pick him from a crowded room in seconds, knew his voice, his touch, his presence instinctively. As if this man, a stranger only days before, had become a part of her, somehow. She snuggled closer and dragged her opposite hand over the firm muscle of his forearm. I bet the rest of his body feels this good, too. She imagined testing the theory inch by inch, exploring and searching, marking her arrival at each new spot with a kiss.

  Cole leaned forward and caught her calves in his hands, swinging them onto his lap and forcing her back against the couch’s armrest, giving her a perfect view of his face. “I’ve got friends in Frankfort. Maybe they can at least confirm the governor’s whereabouts on the days Minsk met with the mayor.” He worked his hands over Rita’s calves, massaging and stroking
the fatigue from her muscles.

  A parade of tiny flames ignited along her skin and slowly climbed north.

  “It’s frustrating to have all those files from the thumb drive and still nothing to go on,” he said. “What do you think is so important? What did we miss?”

  “Something.” Rita mentally revisited the stacks of papers from West’s office. “The drop wouldn’t be necessary if those papers didn’t incriminate someone.” But mostly the documents seemed to tell the story of a dock-buying company that wanted to buy another dock. Not exactly a sinister plot.

  Cole’s hands stilled on Rita’s leg, one at her knee, the other slightly higher. “I don’t like sending you out there without knowing who we’re up against. Truth be told, I wouldn’t want you out there even if we did know.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him, praying that was true.

  “Problem is—” he lifted pleading eyes “—I don’t want you anywhere I can’t be.”

  Breath caught in Rita’s throat. “So, stay with me.”

  One stiff dip of his chin said he would.

  His soulful blue eyes were saying something else, but Rita wasn’t sure what.

  Ryan’s phone buzzed in her pocket with an incoming text, and she unearthed it hoping for another update from Stacy. If so, it would be the third update since they’d left the hospital.

  Rita scanned the message and was relieved, once again, by the content.

  “Stacy?” Cole asked.

  “Yeah. No changes, but that’s okay.” She set the phone on the coffee table with a sigh. “I wish he’d wake up, but I’m happy to know his condition is still stable and no lunatics have paid him a visit in our absence.”

  “She’s been on the ball about sending those texts,” Cole said. “It’s nice. He must be important to her.”

  Rita chewed her lip. Cole’s statement only reminded her of the question she’d been struggling with all day. “What happens when you catch the killer?” she asked. A growing rock of fear lodged in her throat. “I won’t need a personal bodyguard anymore.”

  Cole’s intense expression turned to surprise.

  Good. He’d understood the question. When this was over, what would happen to them?

  A sly smile played over Cole’s lips as he raked a suddenly heated gaze over her body. “No bodyguard necessary? You sure about that?”

  “Well, I’ve never needed protecting before,” she whispered, squirming slightly under the force of his stare.

  “Then who’s going to protect you from me?”

  Rita pulled in a sharp breath. “I don’t want to be protected from you.”

  Cole’s gaze dropped darkly to her breasts. “You sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned closer, sliding one broad palm beneath the back of her shirt and splaying strong fingers against her bare skin. Her back arched slightly in response. “You took a strong No PDA stance at the sheriff’s department. I believe you said you were concerned about how your reputation would be impacted if you’re seen with me. You want to talk about that?” He turned his eyes to her body as his free hand skimmed across her ribs, thumb grazing the thin fabric of her shirt and raising her nipple to attention.

  The heat of embarrassment rushed over her cheeks and throat, but Cole’s lids drooped hungrily over the change he’d created in her.

  “I know your reputation,” she said, doing her best to keep her eyes from closing under the extreme pleasure of his touch.

  “And you’re worried I’m going to walk away because that’s what I always do,” he guessed. “You think my interest in you will end soon.”

  “I’m worried about how silly I must look for wishing that wasn’t true.”

  Cole’s gaze met hers. His jaw set. His hands stilled. “You don’t look silly to me. You look like everything I never realized I wanted, and I want it bad.”

  “Kiss me,” she whispered, desperate to have him closer. “Please?”

  Rita arched farther, rising up to meet him. He was too far away, unfairly watching as her body reacted to the slightest of his touches. She wanted more, and if this was the end for them, the last of her time with the most amazing man she’d ever known, then maybe it was time to make the most of it. “Don’t stop touching me.”

  Cole hovered over Rita in one quick move, legs fixed between hers on the narrow couch. He teased her cheeks and jaw with the tip of his nose and the scruff of his chin, leaving a haze of himself on every inch of her face, neck and ears. His expert hands continued their work on her begging breasts.

  “Cole.” She panted and was rewarded with the sweet taste of his mouth on hers.

  He deepened the kiss slowly, intoxicatingly, lowering his body against her until she felt the hard press of him between her thighs.

  She ruined the kiss with a ragged gasp for air. Unable to resist, she lowered her hand to his jeans in disbelief, shocked and a little concerned by the size of him.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, pulling back for a look at her face.

  “You’re huge,” she stated flatly, contemplating the possibility of losing her virginity to Cole Garrett, a man she admired as much as she desired.

  A small light of clarity flashed in Cole’s lust-filled eyes. He bumped against her palm with a groan. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe now isn’t the right time.” His voice was low and hot with need, but tempered by restraint. “We can take it as slow as you want.” He traced the ridge of her ear with his tongue.

  Her hips rocked against his. “Maybe just a little more?” This might not be the right time for sex, but she certainly had a few questions she’d like answered. “Can you show me how to touch you?”

  Cole swept her wrists over her head and pinned them to the couch. “Not tonight.” He left a path of wet kisses along her jawline and down her throat to her collarbone where he suckled the tender skin into gooseflesh.

  He released her wrists in favor of dragging her shirt over her head and tossing the garment onto the floor. Cole’s warm mouth lowered to the spot where her nipple tested her bra, and he rolled his eyes up to her again in question. One skilled finger slid beneath the thin material, tightening her skin impossibly further.

  Rita curled her fingers into the thick of Cole’s hair and moaned with indescribable need. “Please.”

  With a pinch of his fingers, the clasp at her back was released. He swept the flimsy material of her bra away and cradled her bare breasts in his hands. His tongue passed over his lips as he pulled one budded tip into his mouth and lavished it with tender care.

  Helpless against the raging fireworks inside of her, Rita bent her knees to grip his hips and arched deep into his mouth. “Cole.” She moaned the word, her body squirming, begging for more.

  He pulled his shirt over his head and flung it onto the growing pile of their discarded clothing. The heat of him, the clean, freshly showered scent of him, the feel of his hot skin on hers was nearly too much, and he threatened to undo her with each flick of his tongue. Cole was everywhere and yet not close enough.

  “More,” she whispered, clinging to him with a desperation she’d never known.

  Cole’s hand toured the contours of her stomach, gliding lower until his fingers vanished beneath the silk of her panties.

  “Oh!” Her knees fell wide as he explored the depth of her. Slowly at first, then suddenly more than she could stand. The sensation rode through her like a crashing wave, twisting her hips and drawing out a long, breathy moan of ecstasy.

  Rita opened heavy, satisfied eyes, enjoying the prickles of pleasure still coursing over her sweat-slicked skin. He’d barely touched her and yet...

  Still stroking and petting her heated skin, Cole watched as she fell from the climax. He closed his lips over hers in a kiss that nearly made her see stars.

  “More.” She breathed the word ag
ainst his lips.

  Cole pulled back with a deeply satisfied smile. “Baby, I haven’t even gotten started.”

  * * *

  COLE HAD WATCHED the tension melt off Rita’s face in an explosion of shock and delight. That’s amazing, she’d whispered, utterly out of breath from a tidal wave of orgasm. It was wrong, and more than a little caveman-esque, but his chest had puffed with pride at the accomplishment. She’d offered him full access to her body and he’d signed those papers in full, delivering her first and second orgasms in slow, erotic procession. Whatever else she ever did with any man, those milestones belonged to him. And so did the stubble marks left over every inch of her naked body.

  He ground his teeth at the thought of another man near her like that.

  Not on his watch.

  On his watch, Cole had coaxed her into pieces with the slip of his tongue and skill of his hand, assuring her virginity remained intact, despite her best efforts at handing it over. Which, he hoped, would prove just how much she could trust him.

  Cole double-, then triple-checked West’s plan for the pen drop while Rita dozed peacefully on his couch. She’d barely slept while they were at the hospital, and he’d done his best to wear her out before slipping away to get them both a glass of ice water. She’d been out like a light when he’d returned.

  He hated to disturb her, but they needed to leave for the park soon, so reluctantly, he woke Rita with a soft kiss. “Hey.”

  A blush crept over her skin. “Hi.”

  He scooted himself onto the couch in the curve of her narrow figure, careful not to sit on the quilt he’d covered her with. “West says our team will be in place within the hour. Any chance I can talk you out of this?”

  She wiggled upright, pulling the quilt with her. “About earlier,” she started.

  He caressed her flushed cheek with the backs of his fingers. “We should probably talk about that, huh?” They had talked about it, technically, if he counted her begging for more, and his saying yes. Well, eventually, she’d been the one saying yes, but he’d given her all he could without crossing the line. Not today. Cole was taking it slow for her. He fought a proud smile.