Lonesome Lawmen Mini Bundle

Three-2

“Not exactly what I had in mind when I offered you food,” Jake said, pulling limp pastries from the convenience store’s microwave oven. The pungent scent of hotdog wrapped around—without making palatable—a body of smells comprised of stale cigarette smoke, popcorn, gasoline, various body odors, wet dog and something that fell under the general heading of dirt. The mix permeated every corner of the dingy store, even the pastries Jake carried to their tiny table. A scratchy radio dispensed a country-sounding wail into the chilled air while the middle-aged clerk desultorily turned the pages of a tattered National Enquirer.

“Small-town Friday night,” Phoebe said, the look in her eyes equal parts amused and resigned.

He crowded the pastries onto the tabletop with her watery juice drink and his over-strong coffee, then squeezed into the seat across from her. The table, wedged between a line of self-serve soda machines and the bathrooms, put them knee to knee and nose to nose. Since she had a nice nose, it wasn’t a problem.

Even with tiredness and fluorescent lighting bleeding the color from her face, she gave off a wholesome, sexy vibrancy that was dangerous to someone who’d been on the go for over twenty-four hours and without feminine contact for longer than that.

Bryn, being a colleague, didn’t count.

He rubbed the back of his neck, hoping exhaustion was why he was having trouble routing out a pesky elemental masculine response to Phoebe Mentel. Suspect, he reminded himself, adding with more emphasis, prime suspect who could lead him to Dewey Hyatt. Just thinking about catching Hyatt helped Jake to sharpen his gaze, probing her expression for weak spots. What he found was strength in her steady gaze and in the line of her strong jaw. He’d seen unlikely people in unlikely places before, but Phoebe wasn’t just an odd peg in a strange hole.

She was on the wrong pegboard.

She sat on the cheap plastic bench in her long-tall-Texan getup with the natural aplomb of a royal, systematically crumbling a cardboard pastry into cardboard crumbs.

A sign she wasn’t stupid.

Her body hummed like a banjo from her performance high, one booted foot tapping out a tune only she could hear while her sad, cynical eyes went over him with laser-powered thoroughness. What she concluded, she kept to herself. A sign she was smart or just had nothing to hide?

No way to know without delving into the puzzle of her mind and life further. He did wonder why he kept seeing her sitting under the spreading branches of a magnolia tree. She seemed made to wear something white and drifting, one of those wide-brimmed hats framing her face, her dark eyes slumberous with longing, her full lips parted for fine crystal instead of Styrofoam, and a big old plantation as a backdrop.

The straight line to knowledge begins with a question, so he asked, “What’s a nice accent like yours doing in a place like this?”

The well-defined line of her eyebrow rose. “From where I’m sitting, cowboy, you’re the one with an accent.”

He acknowledged the hit with a lift of one eyebrow. “Georgia?”

The pause before she answered was just a beat too long. “Texas, actually.”

“I could’ve of sworn I heard Georgia in your voice.”

She pushed aside her mangled pastry, picked up her napkin and dabbed the edges of her mouth. “You have a good ear. My mama hailed from Georgia—moved to Texas when she married.”

Nice and cool. He almost bought it. He took a cautious sip from his Styrofoam cup. “How did you end up in Colorado?”

“Colorado’s got more up than Texas.”

“Up?”

Jake’s puzzled look shored Phoebe’s shaken confidence. She smiled lazily, relaxing in her seat so that her leg brushed his long enough to maybe be an accident, maybe not. Her jacket fell open a bit. A deep breath raised and lowered her cleavage. Nothing. Not even a quick look. She’d swear his gaze hadn’t left her face since that first thorough scrutiny when they’d bumped into each other back in the bar.

“Rock climbing requires vertical terrain; otherwise it’s just hiking.” She moistened her lips with her tongue while her cool gaze turned back his probing one.

He swallowed, a dry sound, and rubbed the nape of his neck.

“Okay.” He met her gaze and raised it a grin that curled fire in her belly and her toes in her boots. She took the charm of it on the chin, a glancing blow that nonetheless went deep, mining for a response she couldn’t afford to feel. Before she could stop it, an answering smile bloomed on her mouth. That only made it worse. His grin deepened, and his blue eyes opened on his soul, giving her a quick, tantalizing peek at things she could never have.

Regret hit her next. She wasn’t expecting it. She’d committed to her course and never looked back. Until today. To stop her fingers from forming fists, she grabbed her napkin and started folding it in an intricate pattern. It calmed her mind, muted despair. To distract him, she added, “And then there’s the garage—”

“Garage? I thought—”

“Climbing is too expensive to support just by playing honky-tonks. The guys are stupid about girls and booze, but they can make an engine purr like a satisfied woman. So they also run a garage here in Estes Park.” She finished her tattered origami bird and set it between them. What could she do with her hands now?

“Everybody’s gotta be good at something, I guess.” He picked up the bird she’d made from the napkin and studied it, giving her a brief respite from his X-ray gaze. “Nice.”

Just when she needed the knife-edge of tension to keep her head clear, it dissolved, letting exhaustion rush in to fill the void. Heaviness settled around her eyes, pulling down the lids with an insistence hard to ignore. She fought a yawn and lost. When it faded, she felt boneless and drifty. Made it harder to remember why she couldn’t lean across the tiny table and taste his yummy mouth for herself. The guys claimed denial wasn’t good for you, but that was just because denial didn’t suit them.

“I can understand the climbing bit, but—” He looked puzzled. A very good look on him, Phoebe conceded, her defenses eroding faster than sand on an ocean beach. “—I thought Texans couldn’t leave Texas?”

“Why not? It’s just a big, flat place.” She heard the words leave her mouth and tensed, waiting for God to strike her down, but He didn’t have to. All He had to do was leave her in the sun of Jake’s smile and wait until she melted from the inside out.

Her gaze slipped its leash, running over the lean, lanky lines of his body as a lazy heat built in her midsection. She huddled in on that warmth. She’d been cold so long, she’d almost forgotten what warm was. Her gaze continued roving. Until she ran into a big question mark in both eyes.

That cleared her head faster than a lightning bolt. She’d heard him asking Chet about the bar. If he was looking for work, why hadn’t he asked her one question about a job? Past his beckoning eyes, past the uniform of worn jeans and flannel shirt worn over his tee, beyond the relaxed air was something else, something that put him outside her world, with its rare questions and rarer confidences. The people in her world usually had something they wanted to keep in the back of the closet.

To distract him from her closeted secrets, she leaned forward and held out her hand. “My turn.”

“For what?”

“Your hand. I wanna read it. Learned from my mama, during one of her rare moments of sobriety.”

The tiny piece of truth came out so naturally, Phoebe almost missed it. Phoebe’s mama hadn’t been a drunk. She hadn’t lived long enough. She was mixing her real past with her fictional one. Not smart. Adrenaline entered her bloodstream in a slow but steady stream, then subsided as the question marks in Jake’s eyes faded like snow in the sun of his smile.

A pity truth was so dangerous. It was so effective.

“Hand? Isn’t it palms?”

“Anyone who reads just your palm is a quack—according to my mama. The palm tells only part of the story.”

“Okay.” He opened his hand for her viewing.

The pouting curve of his full lips started that warm stuff shooting through her blood again. It fused the tiny split in her personality, patching over the pain that tried to push out through the gap. But now she’d have to touch him.

Good move, Phoebe. The skin of her palm tingled in anticipation—

The jangle of the bell over the door as a customer came in made them both jump. Phoebe tucked her hair behind her ear. Jake looked back her way, then, as if he knew she couldn’t do it, did the touching for her.

The feel of his hand on hers sent a tiny shock of delight spiraling up her arm. It felt warm and heavy, the skin pleasantly abrasive where it brushed against hers. Phoebe let her fingers curl up around it, shivering when the pads of her fingertips found skin. Her gaze lowered, a move both defensive and imperative. She wanted to see, smell—she inhaled, filling her lungs with his singular scent—and hear, wanted to engage all of her senses, if only in her imagination. Her exhalation came in a shaky rush.

Good thing restraint had been one of her first, hard-learned life lessons.

Her free hand hovered over his before landing to lightly trace its narrow length. His long strong fingers were well kept but showed no sign of pampering. The pads were softly callused, the flesh beneath firm and capable.

Her nose quivered slightly as it homed in on his scent under the smell of soap and an echo of aftershave, as if it had been awhile since he’d shaved. Going for a Don Johnson scruffy look or just circumstances?

“What do you see?” he asked, his voice turning husky. Did that mean he felt the current running between them?

Her forefinger made a path down his ring finger, her face taking on a sultry look that was easy to assume with her insides doing a slow lava boil. “All sorts of things.”

He cleared his throat. “Good thing I have nothing to hide.”

Maybe he didn’t. She explored the place on his finger where a wedding ring should be, her gaze never leaving his face. “No ring. No wife?”

What would he do with that question?

Jake swallowed, wishing he’d gotten a drink with ice. “No.”

For someone who was supposed to be reading his hand, she was spending a lot of time looking at his face. “Past or present.”

Her low murmur could have meant anything. Each finger was touched, and turned, all surfaces tantalizingly explored. Her smoky gaze pinned him in place and stirred heat in his gut.

“This is interesting.” She waited several seconds, a hundred heartbeats. “You’re a hunter.”

She wouldn’t have felt the flinch if she hadn’t been holding his hand. His brows drew together in a quick frown.

“Hunter?”

She gave him a smile edged with triumph. She’d got him off guard. Good. “Hands can’t hide what you’ve done to them.”

Jake’s stomach felt as if he’d taken a big drop on a roller coaster. He got a grip and asked lightly, “What—do I hunt?”

She shrugged. “Just know it’s personal. And you’re more driven than most.”

His stomach did another drop, until he saw a swiftly veiled gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. Not magic. Just an old fashioned lie detector test, watching his eyes with her finger on his pulse. Damn, she was good. “Driven by what?”

Her lashes lifted, her eyes meeting his. “Justice.” Her fingers stroked his palm, stealing his breath. “But—”

Jake lifted a brow in a question his tight throat couldn’t voice.

“There’s mercy there, too. Like the horns of a dilemma.”

Her gaze locked with his for a long hot moment while Jake struggled to clear his head. With an effort, he leaned into her space, determined to turn the tables on her. “Aren’t you going to tell me who I’ll marry, how many children I’ll have? My mom would like to know.”

Her lashes hid her eyes. “Let’s see.”

She turned his palm up, tracing the lines inside, a sultry abrasion from a finger pad roughened by contact with guitar strings. “This is your life line. It’s very long but bumpy. You take a lot of risks.”

“Is that the tactful way of telling me no woman would have me?”

“That—and this.” The nail of her forefinger, just long enough to be squared and serviceable, marked the place where another crossed his lifeline. “Your commitment line.”

“Commitment line? I’ve never heard of that one.”

“Really? Yours is very short.”

He studied the line she indicated. It was very short. He looked up, his face just inches from hers, and chuckled. The sound emerged huskier than he liked. So far this game was a draw. “Is the divorced pot calling the unmarried kettle black?”

She leaned back with a rich and sultry laugh. “I was sixteen.”

That got his attention. “Sixteen?” He shook his head. “Was it legal?”

“Don’t know. Made sure the divorce was.”

“How long before the waitress?” He was convinced that story was true.

“Six months, more or less. Our Jesse isn’t naturally inclined toward monogamy.”

“Why did you marry him?” Jake hadn’t meant to ask, but their game had turned unexpectedly serious. Her eyes didn’t change, her body didn’t tense at the question. So why did it feel as if she’d moved away from him?

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” At the time. For a moment that time weighed in against her. The girl she’d been pushed at the barrier holding her in. Jake was dangerously easy to tell things to, she’d felt it when they touched. Everything about him invited confidence, promised security, but there was no security for her. She broke contact, sitting back as far as the plastic seat would allow. “And Jesse, well, I think he confused himself with Sir Galahad, what with me being a kid and on my own and all.”

For an instant he caught a glimpse of that kid in her eyes before the protective veil of her lashes dropped. He felt an unexpected distaste for his duplicity. I’m the good guy, he reminded himself. “I can understand the compulsion to play white knight.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve learned to look out for myself.” Her mouth thinned and firmed, clearly setting out a No Trespassing sign. Her eyes warned him to heed it.

He’d never been known to read posted warnings.

“Phoebe—”

“Time to head for the barn. It’s past late, and I was up real early.”

Her withdrawal turned into a pain deep in his gut, but he just nodded. “Sure.”

He slid out and helped her up. He shouldn’t have, but he kept her hand for the walk to his truck. She didn’t pull her hand away, but she didn’t hang on either. Just accepted it. How did he know she’d had to accept a lot of things in her relatively short life?

Inside the truck, she leaned forward, her hand on the radio dial. “Do you mind?”

Jake wasn’t eager for silence either and nodded.

She played with the dial and soon music flowed out of the speakers, filling the silence with a country love song. She relaxed, her fingers absently picking out the chords of the song on an invisible guitar, her musky scent drifting on the cool air coming in the window.

At a light, the sound of her soft vocal added to the mix invited him to look at her. He found her face unevenly illuminated by a nearby streetlamp, her lips in the right shape for her song about shutting up and kissing.

Phoebe felt him watching and looked. The heat in his eyes stopped her in mid-hum, her lips still pursed around the words. She gave a nervous laugh and switched off the radio.

“Good song,” Jake said.

“Yeah, we get a lot of requests for it.” She brushed her hair back. “Light’s green.”

“Is it?” He let up on the brake. “I thought it was yellow.”

She gave a tiny cough that might have been a laugh and said, “Turn right at the next street. It’s up that rise on the right.”

A single lamp glowed behind the curtained window of a small cabin of a house. The light from a streetlight hinted at a well-kept yard, and the porch light showed the way down a straight neat sidewalk through trimmed grass to a blue door. He got out and started around the truck. She didn’t wait for him. He wanted to take her hand again, but it was a line he shouldn’t have crossed the first time. He walked beside her up to the blue door, watched her dig a key out of her pocket, insert it in the lock and push open the door. When she turned to face him, an undercurrent of desire made a circuit between them.

Shut up and kiss me. He could hear the words in his head, waited to see if they’d be in her eyes when she faced him.

Phoebe wanted to kiss him so bad, her lips hurt. It made her nervous as a teenager on her first date as she stepped across the threshold and turned. In the dim glow of the porch light he looked as calm and steady as a rock.

“Thanks—for the food and the ride.”

“Next time I’ll do better.”

Next time. She shouldn’t feel a surge of pleasure. How much time could she spend getting probed by those eyes without spilling her secrets? Her brain sent down excuses, but her mouth said, “Sounds good.”

“Good night, Phoebe.”

“Night, Jake.”

While he waited, just out of reach, she backed up until she could shut him from her view. It seemed a long time before she heard the slam of the truck door, the fire of his engine, the slow fade as he drove away.

She’d taken her share of missteps rock climbing, felt herself tumble through space, waiting for the sharp tug of the belay to stop the imperative summons of gravity. Felt the jarring collision of flesh to rock. But this—this was falling without a belay—

Course, the up side was it wouldn’t be flesh smashing into rock—

She shook her head and tossed her purse onto a table. Only took a moment to shrug off her jacket. She fought with her boots in little hopping steps that took her down the short hall into the living room. The boots got kicked into a corner.

She started working at the stubborn zip of her jeans, determined to be undressed by the time she hit the bed. She needed to get unconscious, the faster the better. There was no tingling, no sense of premonition. Just a sudden awareness of movement behind her.

She felt a hand touch her shoulder.

“Took you long enough to get home, Phoebe,” Earl said.