Make You Feel My Love: A Small Town Romantic Suspense (Wishing For A Hero Book 1)

by Kait Nolan

  She trailed her boss up the stairs to the office.

  “Explain yourself,” Mitzi demanded.

  “What exactly do you want me to explain? Am I writing? Yes. I had to do something to make ends meet when my hours got cut. But I did it under a pen name, and I told no one here about it. I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

  “You’re telling me this,” she slapped the paper on her desk, “isn’t some kind of a publicity stunt?”

  The accusation sent Autumn’s temper soaring. It took three long breaths to reel it in enough she could speak. “I did not do this,” she repeated. “Why would I? I’m well aware of how you feel about romance as a genre. Why would I do anything to imperil my position here? That makes absolutely no sense.”

  “I found this on the copy machine. Someone made these copies right here. If you didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “I don’t know. Probably the same person who broke in here to vandalize the place last night. The one who posted a picture of me and outed me about my pen name on the bulletin board where everyone could see. This was an attack on me. Just like the arson on my house. Or are you going to accuse me of doing that, too, as some kind of a cry for attention?”

  “Everything okay here?” The sound of Judd’s voice caused a few knots to loosen before Autumn remembered why he was here.

  Striving for calm, she turned toward him. “It seems last night’s vandal also decided to make use of the copier. A number of…explicit passages…were printed and randomly inserted into books throughout the library.”

  Something flickered in his eyes at “explicit,” but he remained professional. “It’s likely our perp wore gloves doing that, too, but I’ll check for prints. I’ll need copies of the pages.”

  Of course he would. “I’ll get them for you. If you’re finished with me?” She looked back at Mitzi, who looked at least a little abashed.

  “Yes, for now. We’ve got a couple of our volunteers coming in this afternoon. Let them man the desk while you and Livia search the stacks.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Judd caught her eye as she strode toward the door, and she recognized the question there. Are you okay?

  Not even a little bit.

  He frowned as she scurried past. The door shut behind her and she heard the rumble of his voice as she hit the stairs. She told herself she didn’t care what he was saying to Mitzi. That it didn’t matter what he was sharing to try to protect her. But it was a lie. Her personal business was spreading through town. It was only a matter of time before this went beyond gossip and into the actual media, and every hope of privacy she had would be lost.

  “What happened?” Livia whispered. “Did she fire you?”

  “Not yet. But if this keeps up, I wouldn’t put it past her. How far did you get?”

  She pointed to a shelf, and Autumn automatically moved to continue.

  “I’ve got to give the stack to Judd.”

  “Seriously?”

  “They’re evidence.” Not that she was under any delusion that they’d lead him to who’d done this. It was just another way to undermine her and destroy the life she’d made for herself.

  They’d found three more by the time Judd joined them in the children’s section.

  “Well, that’s a wrinkle. Sorry about all this.”

  “Not your fault.” Autumn reached for the next book, shook it, put it back.

  “Firefly.” He gripped her hand, tried to turn her to face him.

  “Please don’t,” she whispered. Tears of frustration and sheer mortification were threatening to choke her, and if he held her, did anything to comfort her, she was going to break. There was too much work to do for that.

  “Do you want us to save all the ones we find?” Livia asked.

  “If we don’t find prints on these, we probably won’t find them on the rest. But hang on to them for a bit just in case.”

  Autumn just nodded and reached for the pile. She couldn’t look him in the eye as she handed it over. All her heroes were Judd in some form, but these scenes in particular were from her first book, the one that was most obviously him. Now he was going to read them—out of context—which was somehow worse. And it was going to force the conversation she wasn’t yet ready to have because she hadn’t figured out how to approach the whole thing. She didn’t know how that conversation would go, didn’t know how he would react. Either way, time was running out.

  Judd took the papers. “I won’t bring anyone else in unless I have to.”

  “Okay.”

  He waited, but what else was she going to say?

  “What time do you get off today?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be here well after hours going through every book in the building, looking for more.”

  “Not alone?”

  “I’ll be here,” Livia promised. “And Riley’s coming to help when she can.”

  “All right. I’ll be by when I’m finished for the day, and we’ll head home.”

  She nodded, still looking at his shoes.

  Judd chucked her under the chin, tipping her face up toward his. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “How will it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.” Even his crooked grin and a quote of one of her favorite lines from Shakespeare In Love couldn’t drag a smile out of her.

  “You’ve got work to do, Chief. And so do I.”

  He dropped his hand and stepped back. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  Livia waited until he’d walked out. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I really don’t. Let’s just get this done.”

  Chapter 11

  Judd hadn’t planned to read the book, not when Autumn was so clearly shut down about sharing anything about it. But in the course of trying to suss out how Jebediah could have found out about her work, he’d looked her up online, read the book descriptions. Forged In Blood was all about the daughter of a cult leader. Jebediah hadn’t been that, but certainly the twisted religion he’d espoused would’ve lent itself to that kind of narrative, and Judd had been curious how much personal experience she’d drawn from.

  “Daddy, no! Nothing happened.”

  “I got eyes in my head to see otherwise, girl.”

  “It was just a kiss.” But it wasn’t just a kiss. It was everything. He was everything.

  Jesus Christ. She’d put it all in here. Almost every fucking detail. Except Cooper had gotten the kiss Judd never had. He’d been there that day. He’d thought he’d known what she’d gone through. But reading it like this… It was like his own memories had been covered by a haze of smoke and with her words, she’d stripped that away, leaving the stark, unvarnished truth.

  This was their story. Or something very close to it.

  No wonder she hadn’t wanted him to read it.

  Hell, anybody in town who’d been here when the whole thing went down would recognize it in the thinly veiled backstory. After he and Autumn had worked so hard to curb the rumors, she’d gone and written this?

  And dear God, the love scenes. It had been obvious they were erotic when he’d skimmed the passages that had been hidden in the stacks. But reading them in context, knowing he was Cooper… He’d spent so many years actively avoiding thinking about her like that. How the hell was he ever going to unsee those mental images? He’d spent most of the afternoon hard as a rock. It was as if she’d reached into his brain and unearthed every dark fantasy he’d never allowed himself to have and spilled it onto the page. Along with quite a few he couldn’t have imagined but now desperately wanted to lose himself in. With her.

  This was a nightmare. He needed brain bleach. A mind wipe. Something to help him get back the status quo.

  What he had, as he pulled his cruiser into the library parking lot at the end of the day, was a whole lot of pissed off.

  This wasn’t the time or place for a confrontation. He’d just hold it together until he could get her home, and they’d talk about this like
civilized people.

  Nothing Cooper and Lilah did was civilized.

  Shut the fuck up, he told himself as he stepped inside and followed the sound of voices. He could carry on a basic conversation. He could be normal.

  But the moment he spotted Autumn by a library cart full of books, wearing one of those prim little librarian dresses that only made him wonder what she had on underneath, his mouth ran away without his brain. “You could’ve warned me.”

  He could tell by the look on her face that she knew he knew. With obvious resignation, she slid another volume onto the shelf. “What would I have said? How would that conversation go?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe, ‘By the way, Judd, I poured every detail of our own private hell into a book that who knows how many people have read.’”

  He’d expected some kind of contrition or embarrassment, but what he saw in her eyes was a spark of temper. When she spoke, her voice was deadly quiet. “I had to put it somewhere.”

  “Put what somewhere?”

  “The truth,” she snapped.

  Autumn rarely lost her temper. Growing up in a house of violence, she considered it the ultimate loss of control. But Judd could see the simmer and bubble of it in her eyes.

  Fine. If she wanted a fight, he’d give her one.

  “What you put in there wasn’t the truth. Cooper walked away. I stayed.” And damn, that chapped his ass.

  “No, you didn’t walk away. What you did was almost worse.” She turned away from him, head dropping, shoulders slumping, as if he’d hurt her somehow.

  Insult added fuel to an already raging fire. “What the hell are you talking about? Everything I’ve done has been to protect you!”

  Autumn rounded on him, hands fisted, eyes blazing. “I am not a fucking job! I don’t need you to protect me! I need you to love me!”

  The shot hit him straight in the heart. It took everything he had to recover, to try and salvage something of what was because he knew everything they were was collapsing around him.

  He aimed for reasonable. “Of course, I love you. You’re my best friend.”

  “No.” She stalked toward him, the expression on her face dialed to a level of fury he’d never seen in her before. “You don’t get to hide behind that excuse. I’m done being quiet. My father spent seventeen years trying to make me and nothing ever worked. Not his hand, not the switch, not the flogging with his thick leather belt. Seeing you take the bullet meant for me is the only thing he’s ever done that scared me into silence. Not because he meant to end me—because I resigned myself to the fact that he hated me a long time before that—but because you were the only thing I ever cared about, and I saw how easily he could rip you away from me. So I’ve stayed quiet, swallowing down everything I feel because you seemed to want it that way. You decided—without ever giving me a say, giving me a voice. But I’m done. I’m done with censorship, with judgment. I wouldn’t be quiet for him, and I’m done being quiet for you. I won’t let you ignore what’s between us anymore.”

  Before Judd could process any of her accusations, her hands fisted in his shirt, hauling him against her. Her mouth crushed his in a savage kiss, and he stopped thinking at all as every drop of his blood drained south. Shock held him immobile as she assaulted his senses.

  She tasted of devastated fury and desperation and heat—so much unrestrained heat, he wondered she didn’t incinerate them both. With his head full of every erotic image she’d written, his traitorous hands curled around her hips and dragged her closer. He couldn’t keep up, couldn’t stop himself from responding to the demanding thrust of her tongue against his. He growled, every possessive instinct he had roused beyond belief.

  But just as he slid his hand into her hair, she shoved with both hands, propelling him back a full step. “I’m moving out,” she snarled. “Good luck putting me back into your goddamned box.”

  Move out? Autumn couldn’t move out. They had to discuss this. Because she sure as hell had obliterated the goddamned box, whatever that meant.

  But as he stepped toward her, hands outstretched, his radio crackled. “Chief, we’ve got a situation here.”

  It took him a full five seconds to scrape together enough brain cells to answer the call. “This is really not a good time, Inez.”

  “But Chief, the rookie ran his squad car up a tree.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t quite know the details of what happened, but Officer Raines ran off the road and hit a tree. There was something about a cow.”

  Judd pinched the bridge of his nose, responsibility to the job warring with the need to finish this. “Is Raines injured?”

  “His status is unclear. He’s not responsive. The home owner called it in. Medical’s been dispatched.”

  “Just go.” Autumn’s words, an echo of Mary Alice’s just days ago, reverberated through him.

  This was bad. So very bad. But they’d find their way back. They had to.

  On a rough exhale he radioed back. “Send me the address. I’m on my way.”

  “Incoming.”

  “This isn’t finished.”

  Autumn’s face was ravaged, tears magnifying those big, green eyes. “Yes, it is. I can’t live like this anymore.”

  The declaration slid into his gut like a knife and panic spilled out like so much blood. He’d done everything right. He hadn’t rocked the boat, hadn’t taken any risks, hadn’t given in to everything he’d wanted for years. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t.

  “Autumn—”

  “No. You have a job to do. And so do I. Go, Judd.”

  Greasy terror held him to his position. “Promise me you won’t run off. Promise you’ll wait and talk to me when I get loose from this shit.”

  She just stared at him, indecision written all over her face.

  “If the last twenty-five years have meant anything to you, then you’ll promise me.” It was a low blow, and he knew it, but he was desperate.

  At last, she nodded, and his feet unfroze from the floor. Duty alone had him moving toward the door, knowing somehow he’d just made the worst mistake of his life.

  The snick of the closing door echoed like a gunshot through the library. Autumn trembled where she stood, her blood pounding with a mix of fury, arousal, and fear.

  She’d been prepared for his anger. She had written in explicit detail about an experience that had been intensely personal and horrifying for them both. After all the efforts they’d made toward privacy in the wake of the shooting and the trial, she understood he’d feel that was a betrayal on some level. But for him to continue to willfully behave as if he didn’t understand what the rest of it meant, when she’d poured out her heart and soul on those pages, laying out everything she felt for him? That had been the last straw.

  She’d wanted to scream and rage. She’d wanted to punch him. Instead, she’d kissed him, holding nothing back as she’d ravaged the mouth she’d dreamed about for years, irrevocably shattering his carefully constructed status quo.

  “Oh God, what have I done?”

  Riley’s arm slid around her waist, holding her up. “What you had to, I think.”

  “In spectacular style, I might add. Awards for best impassioned speech and best on-screen kiss, for sure.” Livia fanned herself.

  “He kissed me back.” Autumn lifted a hand to the lips that still tingled from his. The erosion of his iron control had been glorious.

  “Yeah he did!” Livia started to lift her hand for a high five, then dropped it with a wince. “I feel like it’s too soon for that.”

  “Maybe a little. The whole damned thing might backfire on me. I could have stopped with kissing him. It made my point. But I know him. I knew if I didn’t keep pushing, didn’t do something to unequivocally show him that I won’t go back to what we’ve been, he’d just backpedal and start herding me like a damned border collie back to what we’ve always been. The fact is, I broke us. I did it knowing that we can’t ever go back. I’m trusting in him, in wha
t I know we can be together. At the end of this, we’ll either be more or we’ll be nothing.”

  The idea of nothing had the bottom dropping out of her stomach. “I feel sick.”

  Riley squeezed her shoulders. “I saw the look on his face, honey. He doesn’t want to lose you. And with Mary Alice finally out of the picture, there’s nothing stopping him from meeting you exactly where you are.”

  “Except whatever’s been stopping him for fourteen years.” Autumn had never known what that was and hadn’t ever been brave enough to broach the subject.

  “Listen.” Livia cupped Autumn’s shoulders. “I don’t know what lies he’s been telling himself all this time, but it’s obvious to everyone with eyes that he loves you, and I know exactly where I’d lay my money on this. In fact, you should lay your own money on it.”

  “What?”

  “March yourself down to Dinner Belles, right now, and put money on yourself in the pool. It’s good karma. A sign of your faith that everything’s going to work out.”

  “What about finishing up in the stacks?”

  “Riley and I can finish up this section. Then we’re down to the areas people almost never browse in. You and I can get to that tomorrow. You’ve been here since before opening this morning, and it’s been a stressful day. Go, place your bet, then go home and do something to destress before your conversation with Judd.”

  It was crazy, probably foolish. But what the hell did she have left to lose?

  Dinner Belles was in the midst of the dinner rush as she shoved through the door. From the surprised glances that came her way, Autumn had the sense she must look a little like a wild woman. Well, she felt it.

  With purpose, she strode to the counter. “I need to see Omar.”

  Mama Pearl just arched a brow before calling back to her son in the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, the former Ole Miss running back emerged, a broad smile on his dark face. “Hey there, Lady Luck. What can I do for you?”

  “I want to put five hundred in the pool for this week.” The low hum of the diner’s patrons fell silent as she slapped the bills down on the counter. It was the last of the cash she’d pulled out for her essentials shopping.