He pounded on the front door. Hard. Over and over. Looking between the lock and the window. Breaking the window would be quicker...
The latch clicked.
Easier than either breaking the window or kicking the door down. Still holding his weapon, he lowered it. Wondered if she was looking out through the peephole, seeing him standing there like some kind of possessed idiot.
If it was even her on the other side of the door...
For all he knew, she had a friend over. He had no idea who her friends were—besides Larissa. Or what she normally did on a Sunday night.
But had a pretty good idea that sitting in the dark wasn’t it.
The door opened. “Clarke?”
She was still in the jeans and sweater she’d put on at his place that morning. Her hair was a bit more mussed. Hard to tell about the rest of her. She still hadn’t turned on a light.
“I brought your bag back.”
No way she had a man in there.
Did she? Oh, God. What if she did? He’d given her no reason not to turn to someone else. What an ass he was sometimes. Cutting off his own nose to spite his face? He couldn’t have blown this...could he?
Maybe she’d liked what he’d shown her the night before. Had gone out and found herself another man. She had every right.
And then some.
The woman had been faithful her entire life, and life hadn’t been faithful to her.
She was free.
“Thank you.” She opened the door, stuck her hand out for the bag.
He didn’t want to give it to her and then leave. “Can I come in?”
He’d done worse.
“Of course,” she said, turning from the door to flip on the light in the vestibule. And then bent to turn on a lamp as they entered the living room.
His gaze immediately homed in on the bottle of wine. The half-empty glass.
He hadn’t figured her for a wine drinker. Or much of a drinker at all, in spite of the fact that she’d worked in a bar. “You got an extra glass?” he asked. The bottle was more than half-full. It would do.
She didn’t answer that time, but she left the room and came back a few seconds later with a second glass. Poured wine into it. Held it up to him.
All good signs.
And reason to put down the suitcase. Take off his coat. Settle back into the couch as though he’d been hanging out there all his life.
“This is good,” he said, sipping the wine. Needing a gulp.
“I get it at a winery up north,” she said, settling on the other end of the couch, those long, luscious legs tucked underneath her. “Gram introduced me to it years ago.”
She didn’t question his presence. Or call him out on his rude departure at the prison. She just...accepted that he’d come.
If he hadn’t already been head over heels in love with her, he’d have fallen right then. Maybe he fell a little more anyway.
Maybe he’d be falling further and further for the rest of his life.
He could live with that.
“I have something to show you,” he said, standing up. He wasn’t going to wait and let wine do his talking. He reached for his belt buckle, pulled the strap through the latch, unhooked the latch...
“Clarke...” She’d taken a sip of wine. Put the glass down. But hadn’t stopped staring at his fly. Of course, he was growing rapidly, so there was plenty for her to see.
But his penis wasn’t the star of this show.
He undid the button on the top of the pants. Found it fascinating, and way too fun, that she didn’t tell him to stop.
He wasn’t even sure she felt the same away about him yet and she was welcoming him into her home, letting him get inappropriate without even offering an explanation.
Or a promise.
But he needed a promise from her. There’d be no more one and done.
No sex, period, until he knew the score. Knew that she knew. That they both wanted the same thing—one another, forever.
With his belt out of the way and the button on the top of his jeans undone, he’d completed the easy part. The rest...was way more tender than he’d expected.
Which was stupid of him, really, knowing, as he had, what the plan had entailed.
Lifting his jeans out away from his skin, he lowered them down to the middle of his hip.
It hurt like hell, but he got it all done. He had a plan, and nothing was getting in his way. It was how he rolled. How he’d always rolled.
When he knew something was the right thing for him to do.
“What did you do...?” Everleigh stared at the raw skin he’d exposed, leaning forward to get a closer look.
He waited.
“What...?” She leaned in even closer. Then looked up at him.
“You named your hip after me?” She didn’t sound appalled, though he did detect a note of concern in her tone.
“Look again,” he told her.
She did.
And this time when she looked up there were tears in her eyes.
“A guy can promise you his fidelity every day until the day he dies, but a promise isn’t going to be enough for you. At least for a while,” he said. “Because your trust was given in the purest sense and was twisted and broken.” He’d planned more, but as the tears rolled slowly down her face, he forgot most of it. “I figured the only way for you to know for sure that my fidelity was always yours was to have the fact that I’m yours permanently emblazoned on me.”
She was sobbing, which might have bothered him more if she wasn’t smiling, too, and kneeling down. Her lips were even with the very sore tattoo he’d just had inked onto his hip: low enough that it would never show unless he was nude. She kissed it gently. And then sat back, staring at it. As though, if she looked away, it would disappear. Clearly, she liked what she saw.
He liked it, too.
Everleigh’s. To show that he was hers, now and forever.
His buddy had done a good job.
And the rest was up to him.
Gently covering his very sore hip with his underwear, but leaving the fly undone because it wasn’t at all comfortable, he sat down, holding both of Everleigh’s hands, as she sat beside him.
“I know we’ve only known each other a few days,” he said. “And that you’re a recent widow, though I think that’s less of an issue...but... I’m forty years old, Everleigh, and I’ve realized I’ve spent my whole life waiting for you. I don’t want to waste any more time.
“Unless, of course, you need it,” he amended. “I’m probably not going to make it home in time for the dinner you spend two hours cooking, and I’ll get on a case and forget to call, and sometimes I get an urge to see if I can catch a fish with my bare hands in an ocean full of sharks...but I can promise you that, while I don’t always follow the rules of polite society, I always abide by the law, and I will always, always, always be faithful to you. I love you,” he told her, as serious as he’d ever been.
“I love you, too,” she said while crying again. Harder. And even that he figured out. She had a lifetime of grief to expel. And a lifetime of the promise of happiness surging through her, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling, wiping her eyes and smiling, too. “I never cry. But I do need to ask you something.”
“Shoot.” He’d tattooed himself for her. He’d happily committed his life to her. He could handle whatever else she needed.
“Clarke Colton, will you marry me?”
His lips trembled. His eyes grew moist. His darling, sweet and so-strong Everleigh was asking for what she wanted.
“As soon as it can be arranged,” he told her. And then kissed her until neither one of them had any air left in their lungs.
He sucked in breath only when he had no other choice. He’d found a way into his woman’s heart
and never, ever wanted to leave.
“And...do you mind if we get out of here? Before we’ve had too much to drink to be able to drive? I’ve realized I hate this place, Clarke. I want to go home.”
Home.
She meant his condo.
Their home. He could hardly comprehend all of the changes that were happening so rapidly. Could hardly comprehend the opportunity and open doors they were bringing into his life.
The condo had always just been a place to him.
But Everleigh had made it a home.
Her home. With him. And whoever else they brought into their family.
Maybe the child she’d once said she wanted. She was only thirty-eight. There’d be precautions, but he knew that there were things that could be done to see a child safely into the world into a woman’s forties.
But for starters... “How do you feel about dogs?”
“I love them.”
“I’m thinking two,” he said. And maybe two kids, too. If they were lucky.
“Two’s a good number,” she agreed, smiling. Holding both of his hands. “For dogs...and other family members. If it works out that way.”
“I have a feeling that, if you want it badly enough, it will work out that way,” he told her, pulling her up and into his arms.
When she smiled, he kissed her hard. And long.
And then, grabbing their coats and the bag he’d left by the door, he took her home.
* * *
Don’t miss Book One in the
Coltons of Grave Gulch series
Colton’s Dangerous Liaison by Regan Black
And keep an eye out for Book Three
Colton’s Nursery Hideout by Dana Nussio
Available in March 2021 from
Harlequin Romantic Suspense!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Hunted in Conard County by Rachel Lee.
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Hunted in Conard County
by Rachel Lee
Prologue
The house was dark and quiet, the silence punctuated only by the sound of the refrigerator ice maker dropping ice cubes with a clatter. Digital clocks on appliances cast an eerie green glow, but enough to see by.
He knew where her bedroom was. He’d waited patiently, walking along streets and alleys, waiting for the light in that room to go out. When it did, he waited another hour, keeping to the shadows, ducking from the occasional police patrol. Conard City, Wyoming, was soundly asleep, most of its activity now relegated to the truck stop at the western edge of town. Even the state highway stretched in endless silence, offering little traffic.
Inside the house, he no longer cared about such things. A small pocket penlight with a red lens guided his feet.
He was wrapped in long sleeves, long pants and quiet athletic shoes. A knit ski mask covered his entire head. It muffled his breathing even as the moisture from his breath dampened it. These were accelerating breaths, because he was excited. His heart hammered wildly.
Gloved hands gripped a long, sharp hunting knife. The door to the bedroom stood open. The woman in the bed would have seen no need to close it. She was alone in her own house. This was a generally safe town.
Not any longer. Not for her. He crept to her bedside and passed the beam of the small flashlight over her. She didn’t stir.
He knew the lay of the land now. In an instant, he ripped the blanket off her and straddled her in the bed, holding the icy blade of the knife to her throat.
“Scream and I’ll cut your throat,” he half whispered as her eyes opened wide in terror, glistening in the darkness. He waited for the situation to penetrate.
Then the whimpering began. The pleas. How he loved the sound of that. The smell of her terror intoxicated him.
His fun had begun.
Chapter 1
Two weeks before...
Kerri Lynn Addison sat at the desk in her minuscule faculty office, her service dog, Snowy, lying beside her on the floor. On her desk was a volume of Homicide Detective’s Crime Scene Manual. The written one, not the companion book with all the graphic photos. She didn’t want some unprepared student walking in on the visual presentation of ugly crimes. The book was useful to her, however, in prepping lessons for her criminal justice classes.
But she wasn’t reading. She was awaiting Sergeant Stuart Canady of the Conard County Sheriff’s Office. As a former cop herself, she shouldn’t have been nervous about the meeting, but she was.
She was a former because she now suffered from a type of epilepsy as a result of being shot in the head. She didn’t have convulsions, for which she was grateful, but instead had absence seizures. That meant that for anywhere up to a couple of minutes, she might as well be unconscious. Out of touch, unaware of anything around her. It was not necessarily something anyone else would notice, unless it went on too long, and she couldn’t tell when it happened herself, unless something in the world around her had changed.
It was like a movie that skipped. Sometime during her absence, new characters would appear or people walking in front of her would suddenly be way down the street. Or an animal would come out of nowhere. At least that’s how it seemed to her. And when things had changed, she felt confused until she sorted those changes out in her mind, which further froze her. It was even possible that the confusion was part of the seizure itself.
That’s why she had Snowy. He was trained to tell when a seizure was coming and would persistently poke her with his snout, giving her time to stop whatever she was doing. When it came to crossing streets, for example, that early warning might be a lifesaver. He kept her safe while the confused aftermath stymied her.
Leaning over, she patted his back. He lifted his head briefly, acknowledging the touch, waiting in case she wanted to rise. Nope. She just wanted the comfort.
He was a snow-white dog with a kind of gray mask, like a husky or a malamute, but the trainers had said he was probably mostly German shepherd. He was an unusual mix for a service dog, labs being recognized among the best, but Snowy had an instinct for predicting her seizures. It was a relatively rare ability and, since she didn’t need him to do anything else, they were a perfect match.
Right now he was calm, watchful and totally comfortable. The minute she put his vest on him, he became the epitome of a professional. Let loose to run in a safe place, he became all energetic, playful dog.
Since her office door was closed, she spoke to him. Her confidant. His ears pricked as he listened.
“I shouldn’t be nervous, Snowy. I used to be a cop, too. But... I don’t want to have a seizure while he’s here. I’d be embarrassed.”
Snowy answered with a quiet, short huff.
Embarrassment was one of the things she still struggled with. It could be awful to drop out in the middle of a conversation and come to, finding others looking at her, wondering why she hadn’t responded. One friend had told her that she looked coldly angry at such times, but she didn’t know if that was true. Either way, she didn’t want her first meeting with Stuart Canady to start like that.
A rap on the door, even though expected, startled her and she straightened in her chair. “Come in,” she called.
The man who walked through the door was the stuff of a Western movie hero. Rugged, face aged a bit by sun and wind, but clearly not that old. He filled his khaki uniform with a body that must be trained to a perfect peak. The belt around his waist carried his pistol and all the other accoutrements a police officer needed right at hand from a loop of black plastic handcuffs, like zip ties, to a Taser and auto reload cartridges. So they still used revolvers around here. Or
maybe it was a weapon of choice for him.
Her gaze swept upward, taking in the seven-pointed brass star on his chest, the name tag, the rank pinned to his collar, then met eyes the gray-green color of tornadic clouds. They riveted her.
Then he smiled. “Ms. Addison? I’m Sergeant Stuart Canady, Conard County Sheriff’s Department.”
She rose from her chair, smiling in return, and offered her hand, inviting him farther into the cramped space. She waved him to the chair on the other side of her desk. “I really appreciate you coming and being willing to give your time to my class.”
“My pleasure,” he said as he sat and crossed his legs loosely. “A change of pace.”
She resumed her seat, leaning a bit forward so her forearms rested on her desk. “It’s my first semester of teaching, but I believe it would do the students good to hear what the job of police officer is really like.”
“You were law enforcement yourself, weren’t you?”
She forced a small laugh, uncomfortable though the question made her. “The uniform helps, Sergeant.”
His smile widened. “The gun on the hip probably does, too. And Stu will suffice. I’m not used to formality anymore. We have very little of it around here.”
She wouldn’t know. Since her arrival, she’d been avoiding law enforcement officers because they reminded her of what she’d lost. In fact, except for her classes, she’d been avoiding people in general. Now she had to deal with it.
“Call me Kerri,” she answered. Suddenly she was remembering all her fellow officers back in Tampa, and all the support they’d tried to give her. Maybe she’d been nuts to strike out on her own.
Bringing herself back to the present, she added, “The important thing is that the students know what they might be getting into. All of it, including the boredom between bouts of terror.”
A snort of laughter escaped him. “Like the way you feel every time you stop a car for speeding?”
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