by Kait Nolan
His eyes skimmed over her back, automatically tracing the scar from her heart surgery. He hated what she’d gone through to get it, hated that she’d been so near death. But he loved it, too, because it meant she’d lived. She’d lived and healed, even thrived, rising above her origins to become this beautiful, vibrant woman. To become his.
He’d crossed the room before he realized, catching her softly by the shoulders and bending to press his lips to that scar. There were others, scars that didn’t show on her creamy flesh, that ran deeper, older. Remnants from carefully delivered beatings designed not to leave a permanent mark. He skimmed his lips over her skin, everything in him needing to erase her memories of pain, to replace them with tenderness.
Autumn dropped the shirt as he slid one strap of her bra down. “What if you get called in?”
“I’m going to be an optimist and say I won’t be.” Judd unfastened the clasp of her bra and let it slither down her arms, to the floor. Sliding his hands around her waist, he drew her back against him. “I need this. I need you.”
Autumn turned in his arms, eyes searching his as she reached for the buttons of his shirt. He set the duty belt aside and shrugged out of the shirt, the Kevlar vest, and the undershirt. Her hand reached out to trace the puckered knot of his own scar, and she echoed his movement, leaning forward to lay her lips over it.
His heart kicked into a faster rhythm, strong and steady beneath her kiss. For her. Always for her.
Taking her hands, he drew her out of the closet, toward the big bed they shared. He wanted room, wanted time, to linger, savor. He laid his palm over her heart, feeling the healthy thud of it quicken as he spread his fingers to stroke over her breasts. They pearled at his touch.
She sighed, gliding her hands over his chest. “I’ll never get tired of touching you. Of having the right to.”
Judd caught one of her hands, kept his eyes on hers as he pressed a kiss to her palm. “All that I am, all that I have, is yours. Always.”
“Judd.” Voice drenched with emotion, she rose to him, twining her arm around his shoulder. “I’ve always been yours.”
The kiss tasted of promises, past and future. Judd wanted to make them to her in front of family and friends. When this was all over, when the danger was done, he’d see about that.
For now, in the golden afternoon light, he laid her back on the bed, pleasuring them both with long, drugging kisses. With focused intensity, he pulled her under, then drove her slowly up, until she quaked under his hands and slid shuddering over the first peak.
As the shadows lengthened, he took her up again, worshiping every inch with aching tenderness. When his name was a plea on her lips, at last he covered her body with his, slipping inside her for the long, gentle rise. Breaths caught, skin slicked, but he didn’t hurry the pace. And in the stolen afternoon, he gave her everything he was.
Chapter 17
Starting her morning with lovemaking had quickly become Autumn’s favorite way to begin the day. But the fight they’d started after was really killing her afterglow.
“I’m not going with you to work,” she insisted. “I’ll just be in the way. And your officers have better things to do than babysit me.”
“Then you go to Mom or Dad or Leo or Eli.”
“Reporters are roaming all over town. They’re going to mob me wherever I go. I’m not going to have them interfering with your department, the paper, or anybody else’s job in the name of chasing a story. Now that my library job is gone, I need to finish this book more than ever, and I need quiet to do it.”
“You can’t stay here alone.”
“I don’t intend to. I want to go to the farm, see Pop and Nanna. I need to get out of town. I’m feeling stir crazy looking over my shoulder here. Nanna wants to see me, and the press won’t look for me there. I could pack a bag, spend a day or two.” Or maybe not. Fight or no fight, she’d gotten used to sleeping with him again and wasn’t sure how sleeping alone would go. She just flat didn’t want to be away from him that long.
“I don’t—” He broke off as his phone rang. “Hamilton.” His face smoothed out into his cop stare as he listened to the voice on the other end. “Yes ma’am, I’ll be there. Nine-thirty.”
“What’s going on?”
“City Council meeting.”
Autumn frowned. “There wasn’t one on the books, was there?”
“No. They want to talk about my performance as interim Chief.”
“All the more reason for me to be out of the way. They’re bound to be unhappy with you for putting so many police resources into my protection.”
Judd’s jaw took on a belligerent set. “Your safety is my top priority. I haven’t neglected the rest of the town because of it.”
Autumn moved into him, keeping her voice gentle. “I never said you had. But in case their feathers are ruffled about it, be able to honestly say you aren’t tying things up with me today.”
Though he didn’t soften, his arms came around her. “I don’t like it.”
She snuggled in, stroking his back to soothe. “I know you don’t. It doesn’t make my plan any less practical.”
He heaved a sigh, and she knew he was weakening. “I don’t have time to take you all the way to Lawley and get back for that meeting.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m perfectly capable of driving myself. It’s a straight shot. Forty-five minutes. I’ll lock the doors and call you when I get there. It’s a last minute plan. No one knows about it but you. And, of course, Nanna, when I call. Reporters won’t have a chance to get wind of it. Really, it’s the perfect solution.”
“Nothing about this is perfect.”
It was Autumn’s turn to sigh. “Judd, please. I know you’re worried, but I’m suffocating here.” When he stiffened, she hurried to explain. “Not with you. Never with you. Just this whole situation, being under house arrest. I need some room to breathe somewhere I’m not worried every other minute.”
“Fine. Call Nanna. See what she says.”
Nanna was totally on board.
“Come on! Stay as long as you like. I’ll see you when you get here. I’ve even got the last of the purple hull peas we put up. I’ll put them on, and we’ll have a bowl with some cornbread for lunch.”
Autumn gave a groan of appreciation. “You do love me. I’ll see you in a little over an hour.” She hung up and arched both brows at Judd. “Satisfied?”
“I’d rather you not stay gone overnight.”
She paused in the process of slipping her phone into her purse. “Do you think someone might try to get to me there?”
“No. I wouldn’t let you go at all, if I thought that.” The hard lines of his face softened as he reached for her. “I just don’t want to sleep without you.”
Well didn’t that just turn her heart to goo? “I don’t want to sleep without you either. So I’ll come back tonight. We’ll talk later. You can let me know what your day shapes up to look like, and I’ll time the return trip to get home when you do.”
With a modicum of additional grumbling and a lot more orders and cautions, he finally agreed. They both took another minute or two to fuss over Boudreaux, pulling out his favorite toys, checking his water.
Judd walked her out to her car, giving her a lingering kiss he probably didn’t have time for. “Be careful. And call me when you get there. Actually call. Don’t rely on a text to get through.”
“I will. I’ve got my taser. And my locator app is on.” She cupped his cheeks. “I love you. Good luck with the City Council.”
“I love you, too.”
Then she was on her way and finally, blessedly, alone.
Autumn hadn’t been entirely truthful when she’d said he wasn’t suffocating her. She loved him so much, but she’d lived alone for a very long time. As glorious as the past few weeks with him had been, circumstances had dictated very little time to herself. Once the case was resolved, he’d relax and give her more of the space she craved. For now, she was looking
forward to the drive and the chance to decompress a bit.
Because she was belting out Lady Antebellum’s latest album, Autumn was halfway to Lawley before she really noticed the truck. Had it been there since she left Wishful or turned on at Chapel Springs? Certainly, it had been behind her for the past several miles. But this was the main route to Lawley, the county seat. There was no reason to be alarmed that someone was taking the same route. Lots of people had reason to go there.
Still, something about the vehicle bothered her. It was just a truck. Maybe ten years old, a nondescript gray, with a brush guard across the grill and mud spattered across the headlights. Like half the trucks in the state, this one obviously had a lift kit installed. It was far taller than her car, sitting up at such an angle that she couldn’t see the driver for the glare on the window. Maybe that’s what was bugging her. The faceless driver, like that eighteen wheeler in that ridiculous Stephen King movie from the 80s that she and Judd had watched back in high school. What was it called? Something Overdrive… Horror had never been her genre of choice.
Because she couldn’t shake the prickle, Autumn decided to take the next county road she came to. Plenty of them criss-crossed the highway and the rest of the county and most were low traveled. The likelihood that this guy would take the same turn was slim. So she’d turn, let him drive on by, and she’d turn around and get back on the road to Nanna’s with no more than a few minutes’ detour.
Slowing, Autumn made the turn at a sign for deer processing. Several car lengths behind her, she expected to see the truck roll right on down the highway. Instead, it slowed and turned onto the county road behind her. Her heart bumped hard in her chest.
Okay. Okay, this is not a crisis. I’ll just keep driving until I come to a house where someone is obviously home. I’ll pull in the driveway, and he’ll keep going.
But the county road turned from blacktop to gravel and there were no houses, just endless acres of farmland and a few ramshackle barns. The deer processing sign must’ve been old and out of date. If she pulled onto one of the rutted side roads, she had no way of knowing where any of them went. He could block her in.
Regretting her decision to detour instead of heading straight for a populated area, Autumn reached for her phone in the cup holder.
Behind her, a big engine roared. Her body whipped as her car was struck from behind. She screamed and the phone fell from her hand, sliding across the passenger side floorboard.
On the stereo, Hillary Scott sang about love coming in circles.
It had come in circles back to her, and she’d be damned if she’d give it up to this asshole.
Clamping both hands on the wheel, Autumn struggled to gain control of her vehicle, coming out of the fishtail and flooring the gas. Her car shimmied some more in the loose gravel before finally finding purchase and leaping forward. The truck gunned its engine, already closing the distance again, its knobby tires much better suited to the back road.
“C’mon, c’mon!” She urged her little car faster as she shot up a hill.
Behind her, the truck closed in again, the brush guard ramming into her bumper again. Her car lost its tenuous grip on the road, catching air at the crest of the hill.
For an endless moment, she seemed suspended. It was long enough for the horror and grief to close in on her, along with whispered apologies that Judd would never hear. Then her car plummeted to earth, hitting on one side with a bone jarring rattle. The airbag exploded and the car continued its crashing roll. Then Autumn’s head struck something and everything went black.
~*~
Made it!
Judd stared at Autumn’s text and scowled. He’d told her to call, damn it. At the hurry-up gesture from Mayor Crawford’s personal assistant, he flipped the phone to silent and shoved it back into his pocket. He’d have to call her after he’d dealt with whatever they were about to dump in his lap.
Rolling his shoulders to try and release some tension, he walked into the conference room. This wasn’t the sort of performance review he was used to. Likely they wouldn’t be going over his cases, his close rate. He hadn’t even been in the job long enough for there to be a follow through conviction rate based on his investigations. Because investigations were no longer a primary focus of his job. Not directly.
Mayor Sandra Crawford sat at the head of the table, flanked on either side by the five City Council members and her personal assistant, Avery. They’d been in much the same configuration when he’d been brought in three weeks ago to take the job. His shoulders tightened up again because they looked every bit as grave now. This didn’t look good.
Understanding his role in all of this, Judd sat in the remaining chair at the opposite end of the table from Sandra, facing both her and the Council.
“Chief Hamilton, thank you for joining us,” Sandra began.
The radio at his shoulder crackled. With one ear, he listened to the call from dispatch about the fender bender on Lawson Street, heard Darius take it.
“Could you turn that off, please?” Sandra asked.
That was tantamount to being blind to what was going on in his town. Judd didn’t like it. But conscious of the need to play nice here, he hit the call button on the handset at his shoulder and hailed his dispatcher. “Inez, I’m going radio silent. If anybody needs me, I’m at City Hall for a meeting.”
“Got it, Chief.”
Judd switched the radio off and immediately felt the weight of silence descend on the room.
“Thank you. Let’s get started.”
They began with the budget.
“It’s been an expensive few weeks,” Hank van Buren observed. “Totaled cruiser, training courses, the cost of bringing on reserve officers while most of the department was attending the training. And I see here another equipment request?”
“First, what you have in your hands is an inventory of the department’s equipment, outlining the condition of our resources and making recommendations about the extent and order of replacement as the budget allows in the future.” It had been a project he’d assigned to the rookie since Raines was riding the desk with his injuries. “It’s for information purposes. Second, the training for my officers was long overdue. We are, thankfully, generally a sleepy town, but that’s no excuse for ignorance of current investigative techniques. We hope they aren’t called into practice, but in the event that they are, we ought to be prepared to do the job to the best of our abilities. And third, I had no way of knowing Officer Raines would panic when faced with a cow in the road. The loss of the cruiser is unfortunate, as are his injuries, since it leaves us short staffed on patrol duties, but it is what it is.”
“When you were appointed to this position, you were informed that the position was probationary, pending review of your performance.” Connie Lockwood folded her hands. “How do you feel that performance has been?”
For fuck’s sake, really?
“I have never given this department anything but my all, as I believe my record indicates.”
“What about the execution of your duties as pertains to Jebediah Buchanan?” asked Ed Falk.
Judd fought to keep his hands from curling to fists on the table. “My duty pertaining to Jebediah Buchanan, or any convicted felon released back into our community, is to make certain they cause no harm or disruption to the community, most especially the victims impacted by that release.”
“A noble intention, but surely you’re somewhat biased in this particular case,” Hank suggested.
“Bias has nothing to do with the facts.”
“Doesn’t it? Does it really justify round the clock guard of one person, when the department is, as you’ve already indicated, short staffed?”
“Mr. Van Buren, if someone tried to murder your wife and was then released from prison, coincidentally the same day your house burned to the ground, I assure you, I’d be arranging around the clock guard for her as well.”
“But you haven’t managed to tie Jebediah Buchanan to the fire,�
� Grace Handeford said.
“The investigation is ongoing and not a matter of public record. There’s been a documented string of harassment aimed at Autumn since Jebediah’s release. And in case you missed it, the fire also burned the home of another Wishful resident. There’s no way of knowing how escalation could affect others in town, so my use of departmental resources is not just for Autumn.”
“How many officers are assigned to Miss Buchanan today?” Hank asked.
“None.”
“Not even with all the reporters roaming town?”
“Against my better judgment, no. While the press is a definite nuisance, they generally do not justify protective custody.”
Hank scribbled something on his legal pad.
In Judd’s pocket, his phone vibrated. Autumn finally calling to check-in? He itched to check but knew better than to pull the phone out in the middle of all this.
“What about the reason they’re in town to begin with?” Connie asked. “These books she wrote.” Her tone dripped with contempt.
Judd was willing to bet she’d been one of the people to sign the petition that got Autumn fired. “That has no bearing on today’s proceedings.”
“No?” She feigned surprise.
“Fiction has no bearing on my ability to do my job.”
“I’m afraid I disagree. It impacts how the public perceives you and this position is one that demands respect.”
Judd ground his teeth. “With all due respect, ma’am, that’s ludicrous. My record with this department stands. My actions, both as an officer and as Chief of Police, have been exemplary.” He’d stand by that statement with his hand on a stack of Bibles.
Sandra held up a hand. “Okay, I think we’re veering a little off topic here.”
“Respectfully, madam Mayor, what is the topic? Why am I here? Are you actually dissatisfied with the performance of my duties?”
“We simply have concerns,” she said easily. “Chief Curry had reservations about our putting you in this position. We’re merely exploring those. We have continued with the nationwide search and have two other candidates for the permanent position. The first was interviewed last week and the second should be arriving any minute now.”