by Leigh, Lora
Sheila’s brows lifted. What in the world had Casey told Sarah? It wasn’t like him to tell anyone anything about his private life.
To say she was shocked he had even let on that they were sleeping together was an understatement.
Sarah rolled her eyes, almost laughing back at her.
“His truck has been parked at your house the past two mornings and several of the bar’s customers just happen to be working on your father’s landscaping.”
Sheila grimaced. She had forgotten about that. She should have thought. There were very few members of the community who hadn’t been in the Broken Bar at one time or another.
“Oh well, he can deal with it then.” She shrugged as though it didn’t matter when she knew very well it did. She detested being gossiped about. But even worse, she knew for a fact that Casey had broken off relationships with other women for no more reason than the fact that his personal business with them had become public knowledge.
She didn’t need this.
She didn’t need to be forced to grapple with her own emotions and fears while wondering who in her father’s employ would dare to gossip about his daughter. Because she knew every damned one of them would. It was the reason why her father employed them.
How better to stay below suspicion where the wrong men were concerned than by employing the worst gossips in the county? Men and women who knew or worked with the very men that Ethan Cooper and his bouncers watched on a nightly basis.
“So when did all this begin?” Sarah propped her cheek in her hand as she stared back at Sheila. “Come on. Give deets. Ethan so refuses to allow me to take an interest in his bouncers’ buff bodies.”
Sheila winced as the bouncer behind the bar, Morgan, stared at his boss’s wife in amazement. He was only seconds from blushing, and Sheila had a feeling he rarely, if ever, blushed.
“I’m not giving you deets, Sarah,” Sheila informed her, well aware of the fact that the other woman would be horrified if she did attempt to do so.
Sarah pretended to pout before giving Sheila a subtle wink and turning to Morgan once more. “Perhaps Morgan will satisfy our curiosity then.”
Morgan lifted his gaze from where he was cleaning a whiskey glass and stared back at Sarah with an expression of baffled concern. And for the smallest second, Sheila could have sworn she saw something more there.
Did Ethan Cooper’s new bouncer have a crush on Mrs. Cooper?
“Curiosity regarding what?” Morgan asked warily.
Sheila almost laughed. That wasn’t concern. Morgan was bordering on fear. It was one of those rare times anything managed to bother him.
He was saved at the last second, though, as Casey and Cooper stepped from the office. Cooper took one look at Morgan’s face, then at Sarah’s, and shook his head with a chuckle.
“Is she causing trouble, Morgan?” Cooper drawled with an edge of laughter
Morgan grunted. “She’s dangerous, Coop. You should lock her up for our safety.”
Sarah smiled back at him sweetly, but Sheila was aware that the other woman had noticed where Casey stopped. And she was very, very curious indeed.
Because Casey had stopped right behind Sheila.
Then his arms slid around her and a small kiss was pressed to the top of her head.
“Evening, sweetheart,” he drawled. “Are you having fun out here with Sarah?”
She barely managed to hide her shock at the public display of possession. She had never, ever known of Nick Casey to show such attachment to any other woman. Neither in public nor a hint of it having been shown in private.
“Observing Sarah is always fun,” she assured him as she fought to ignore both Sarah and Cooper’s curiosity.
“I live to entertain,” Sarah sighed, her dimples peeking out again.
“Then you will live a very long, happy life,” Sheila informed the other woman as she held back her own laugh.
It was hard to pay attention to the conversation, though, as Casey stood behind her. His hands rested low on her stomach; placed flat, they drew her closer to him, holding her firmly as her back pressed against his torso.
She could feel the strength and the warmth of him, as well as the sensuality that seemed to wrap around her. Against the small of her back she could feel the jutting arousal contained by his jeans, and in his hands, the firm strength that anchored her to him.
She had never felt that before with Casey. As though he were trying to seduce her with more than the pleasure he gave her body.
“Oh yes, Sheila—Cooper and I received our invitations to your father’s barbeque this month. I can’t wait. I hear the Rutledge party is the event of the year,” Sarah stated happily as a glimmer of excitement filled her vivacious brown eyes.
And Sheila felt a twinge of remorse that she had been unaware Sarah had lived in the county for more than a year before Ethan had finally claimed her. Everyone in the county was invited to the Rutledge barbeque. Catered, rousing, and filled with food and laughter, the yearly party was Douglas Rutledge’s way of giving back to the community his wife had loved.
It had been their hometown, but it had been Eleanor Rutledge who had wanted to come home when Douglas retired. She had died six months before that retirement of a heart attack.
“Well, it’s an event, anyway,” Sheila agreed, her smile almost shaking as she felt Casey settle his chin at her shoulder.
“Do you have a partner for the Rutledge party yet?” he murmured at her ear. “Or the ball?”
Sheila swallowed tightly.
The barbeque was her mother’s dream, but the ball a week later was the captain’s baby. Inviting officers of all the military branches as well as political and private sector law enforcement officials. The ball was the captain’s excuse to be more than the stern, supposedly disillusioned army captain whose friends were generals, admirals, and senators.
It was also his chance to revel, even if privately, in the fact that the job he had accepted while in his prime, the one that had required he remain a captain rather than advancing, was succeeding.
The position of head of the National Covert Information Network.
“I don’t have a date yet,” she answered quietly. She had never had a date for her father’s balls unless she did the inviting. She had stopped doing the inviting the summer she turned nineteen. And she’d gone alone ever since.
“You do now,” Casey informed her as her eyes narrowed on him in the mirror behind the bar.
He stared back at her, his gaze heavy-lidded, his expression reminding her of the night he had taken her on the bar. That memory was seriously messing with her ability to stay angry with him.
“Do I really?” she murmured, aware of the fact that Sarah, Ethan, and Morgan were attempting to carry on another conversation despite their rabid curiosity.
“What do you think?” The look in his eyes dared her to refuse.
“I think I don’t recall giving the invitation,” she replied smoothly, careful to keep her voice low.
Casey smiled, his lips curving with cool warning.
“I don’t wait on an invitation,” he informed her, his tone warning now. “I was informing you, Sheila. You have a date. Period.”
Oh, now that just wasn’t going to do.
Sheila turned to him slowly.
“Choose your fights, sweetheart.” If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a sudden edge of anticipation in his voice. “And choose them wisely.”
Her mother had warned her of that once as well. She’d told her that one day she would come across a man who didn’t give a damn who her father was, or how strong she had become. He would sweep into her life and leave her heart, her mind, in disarray.
“Choose your fights, sweetheart, and choose them wisely,” Eleanor had warned her. “Otherwise, you’ll destroy yourself, as well as him, fighting against him.”
But her mother hadn’t known Nick Casey.
She was almost anticipati
ng a fight with him, as much as he seemed to be anticipating one with her.
She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice.
Hell, she could feel it radiating in the sexual intensity that suddenly seemed to consume them both.
“They need to get a room,” Cooper grunted behind Sheila.
“You are becoming such a fuddy-duddy,” Sarah laughed. “Tell him, Morgan, he’s becoming a prude. Nothing like the wild man I married.”
Morgan was turning away as she spoke, his expression somber as he poured drinks, his eyes downcast.
“Sarah, sweetheart, you’re too nosy,” Casey warned her as he laughed back at her, though he didn’t release Sheila, and it seemed he had no intentions of doing so.
“And you are being way too intense, Casey.” Sarah shook her head.
“And this conversation is beginning to bore me,” Sheila informed them all, though the look she shot Sarah was filled with an apology.
She wasn’t bored, but she could definitely feel the fear beginning to travel up her spine.
Not a fear of harm. Or at least, not a fear of personal harm.
A fear of having her heart broken was another matter entirely.
“Bore you?” Casey growled. “I rather doubt it.”
“Dance with me or shut the hell up, Casey,” she finally demanded in exasperation. “If you’re going to stand around holding on to me like a damned junkyard dog, then the least you could do is make it worth my while.”
It was her mother’s advice to choose her battles wisely that rang through her head as Casey led her to the dance floor. A slow, sensual beat began to fill the air, drawing couples to the floor and heating the building with the power of human lust.
At least, that was what she tried to tell herself as she felt Casey’s arms wrap around her and allowed him to draw her to him. Possessively.
“What is with you and the ball-and-chain attitude?” she asked, genuinely bemused with the way he was acting.
“Trying to become a ball and chain?” he asked.
She almost stopped in the middle of the dance floor.
“Are you proposing, Casey?” She could feel her heart beginning to race in her throat. “Because if you are, then this is a lousy way to go about it.”
He snorted back at her, pulling her closer once again as he bent his head against hers and swayed to the lazy, sexually charged music filling the building.
“You’ll know when I’m proposing, Sheila. There will be no question about it.”
Son of a bitch.
Casey was cursing silently with every four-letter word he could come up with and a few he knew were illegal in several parts of the world. Probably in the States as well.
Yeah, it was sort of a proposal.
Casey was a man who accepted what he knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of changing. And the feelings burning inside him for Sheila weren’t going to change.
Fidelity being the key. In the months he had been slipping in and out of her bed, not even once had he found another woman attractive. It purely, simply sucked, though, that she seemed to think he was so horrible at the whole proposal thing.
What did he have to do, anyway? Get on one knee?
He scowled back at Cooper as they swayed around the floor. This had to be his fault. That big lug had gone down on his knee to Sarah and presented her with a diamond the size of a tennis ball.
Okay, so maybe it had been slightly smaller, but that had to be where she had come up with these ideas. Sarah had to have told her.
“You’re acting strange, Casey,” Sheila informed him. “Like a man making a claim, and I’m not some pretty doll you can claim and expect me to fall into line with it.”
“Darlin’, I wouldn’t expect you to fall into line with anything. We’ll just keep on keepin’ on till you see things my way, is all. I didn’t say I expected you to agree with me overnight.”
“Until I see things your way, huh?” He could hear the amusement in her tone, along with a rather vague confusion. As though she weren’t entirely certain how to deal with him.
That was a good thing. Keeping Sheila off balance was always a damned good thing if a man could manage it.
“Yep,” he agreed, hiding his smile in her hair. “We’ll get along better that way, you’ll see.”
“You know, I can’t decide if you’re truly insane, or if you’re just trying to make me crazy.”
And if it were the latter, he wondered, was it working?
Of course, it could be the former as well, because God knew she had managed to turn his life upside down.
“Does it matter which?” he asked softly against her ear, feeling that little shiver of response as it raced down her back. “Tell me you really want me out of your life, Sheila. Go ahead, lie to me and I’ll walk away.”
Could he walk away? He didn’t think it was possible. Not as long as he could feel her body heating for his, as long as he could feel that response for him in her kiss.
“No, you wouldn’t, Casey,” she denied as he finally felt her softening in his arms. “You’d just try to find another way to convince me.”
Hell, she knew him too well.
He hadn’t expected that.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you want from me, Casey.”
They both came to a stop as the music faded away.
His head lifted as she turned her gaze up to him, those deep violet eyes nearly drowning him in the knowledge, the sadness that filled them.
“Tell you what?” he asked her softly. “How much I want you? How hard you make me? Hell, Sheila, you already know all that.”
She shook her head softly. “No, Casey. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me what you want from me, or from my father. Don’t you know I still want you so desperately that I’d probably give it to you, or convince Dad to do it? You don’t have to play these games with me. You never did have to play these games with me.”
You never leave a lady standing on the dance floor.
Never curse a lady.
A lady was a lady even when she wasn’t behaving like a lady.
Never embarrass a lady in front of friends and coworkers. Especially if she holds a position of power.
Those lessons had been drummed into him as a child before his parents’ deaths.
He could remember lazy summer mornings as a young boy spent fishing on the banks of the river that eventually killed his parents and listening to the amusing assortment of rules his father had attempted to teach him where women were concerned.
Those lessons came in handy now.
He allowed his fingers to deliberately curl around her upper arm as he led her from the floor and back to the bar. He should have left her at the bar. Hell, he should have parked her right at the bar with Sarah and Cooper and left himself.
Hanging around was the worst thing he could have done. And allowing himself this confrontation with Sheila was sure a real bad decision.
He just couldn’t seem to help himself.
Anger, resentment, and pure male pride had him by the throat while lust still had him by the balls.
It was a hell of a combination.
And even as he pulled her past a watchful Morgan and shouldered open the swinging door that led to the kitchen and offices, he knew he was making a damned mistake.
It might even be the biggest mistake of his life.
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SIX
This was what she got for being honest, Sheila thought as she allowed Casey to pull her into one of the small offices. This was what she got for trying to lay to rest the doubts that filled her own mind, and to get whatever relationship they had on an equal footing.
He was pissed.
She could feel that anger vibrating through his body and threatening his control.
She didn’t know whether to be frightened or turned
on, because she had never seen Casey like this. She had never seen him so angry that his eyes glowed like burning chocolate, backlit with a tobacco flame.
She had a glimpse of those eyes as he swung her around at the desk, placed his hands on both sides of her and leaned into her until they were nose to nose.
“Do I look like a fucking man whore to you?” he snarled into her face, causing her to flinch with the rage in his voice. “Do I look like someone who would fuck a woman to gain anything other than both their damned pleasure?”
His words seemed to pierce a part of her that instantly latched on to the end of his statement.
“Their pleasure,” he said. As though it was a lover’s pleasure and satisfaction that caused his own.
“Casey, I never meant—” She hadn’t meant it to sound that way.
But the rest of the words were cut off.
“The fucking hell you didn’t.” His nose was touching hers.
His eyes were so dark they were nearly black, body heat pouring from him in waves as rage seemed to burn through his system. “That’s exactly what you meant, Sheila. Was I a fucking man whore willing to climb between your legs for a favor from you where your damned father is concerned? Do you want to know what I think of any favors your father could fucking give me? Do you, Sheila?” he all but yelled in her face.
“Not really.” Weak, more submissive than she liked, her voice trembled as her gaze held his.
Not in fear, but in a variety of other emotions. Emotions she wasn’t certain she knew how to adapt to.
She only wished her response to this new, volcanic Casey was fear. Fear would have been easier to handle. It would have been far easier to understand than the other emotions she felt.
Especially the lust. The hunger.
The angrier he became, the more she wanted him.
She could feel her nipples hardening and tightening, growing more sensitive by the second as he glared into her eyes.
“Not really?” he snarled back at her. “Maybe I want to tell you anyway. Just for the fucking hell of it.”
“If you feel you have to.” She shrugged, almost catching her breath at the feel of her nipples raking against the material of her bra.