CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

Oh, God… what have I done?

Kinley was staring up at the ceiling of Reed’s master bedroom, listening to him snore deeply and evenly. He was in a dead sleep, his arm around her torso possessively, a hand still on her breast. Every so often he would squeeze it, gently. It was those squeezes that had invited non-stop sex for the past three hours. He loved her breasts and it was obvious. Being that the wine had made her extremely horny, Kinley had given in to every touch, every kiss, and Reed wasn’t shy about sharing his. He was a generous lover and Kinley was fairly certain she’d had five or more orgasms in that three-hour period. It hadn’t been hard with him. It had been some of the best sex of her life.

But now she was lying awake as he slept, absolutely terrified of the man because she was quite sure she’d fallen in love with him. What wasn’t to love? He was handsome, sweet, kind, and had the patience of Job. He’d done all he could to be compassionate and patient with her as she worked through her many fears and phobias. He could have walked away at any time; he should have walked away at any time. No man in his right mind would have kept pursuing her after the crazy things she had done.

But Reed had.

Which made things worse. He was a sweet, normal guy without any hang-ups and she was a basket case. Well, at least she had been, but the past couple of days had seen vast improvements in that area thanks to Reed. He’d helped her grieve in a way she hadn’t wanted to, openly and painfully, but he’d been there to hold together the pieces when she was in danger of falling apart. What kind of guy did that? A very special one. A very special guy who didn’t need a woman with the kind of baggage she had.

But she loved him and that thought was terrifying enough. The last people she’d loved had been killed, ripping her guts out and leaving a great big hole in her. She was terrified to love, terrified to feel, but Reed had made her feel something she thought she’d lost. Turning her head slightly, she could see him as he lay on his belly, his face half-buried in the pillow. He looked so peaceful. Very carefully, she disengaged his arm from her torso and climbed out of bed.

Her clothes were all over the house, it seemed. She found her bra and pants in the bedroom but her shoes and shirt outside in the hall. The big dogs were sleeping in the hallway outside, lifting their heads to look at her as she tiptoed by. Her clothing was back on, she found her purse in the kitchen, and the house phone, and quietly called information for a taxi service. There was no local taxi service but there was a ride-share service, so she called that number. A driver was promised within a half hour, so gathering her things, she crept out of the house, into the dead of night, to wait by the main gate for the driver.

As she waited in the cold and darkness, she tried not to feel guilty for leaving Reed without telling him why. I’m in love with the guy, she thought. I can’t love him and burden him with all of this baggage I have. It isn’t fair. She’d been avoiding him and sneaking out on him since they’d first met, so this wasn’t any different. Maybe this time he’d finally get the hint and leave her alone for good. It was better for him that way. But something told her to expect a visit from him in the morning.

She was right.

After an hour of sleep, maybe, Kinley was at The Coffee Cakery before dawn, opening it up for her employees. The sous chef and the line cook and a couple of the kitchen workers went inside, into the kitchen, to begin preparing for the day, as Kinley went back to her office.

She was settling down to do some paperwork when she heard some voices in the front of the house. It didn’t concern her in the least because she knew the cooks were up there and people would soon be arriving for work, but suddenly, the cooks were all in her office and there were two men with shotguns following close behind. Her heart sank at the sight.

It was a robbery.

It was pretty early in the morning for this kind of thing which told Kinley that the robbers must have been staking the place out. This time, however, she didn’t have a rifle underneath her desk that she could use to defend everyone with. She had a hand gun in the bottom drawer but couldn’t get to it without them seeing her move. But there was a gun in the safe. If she could only get them to have her open the safe, she might have a chance. The man who seemed to be doing all of the shoving and talking had on a baseball cap, a bandana over his nose and mouth, and a sawed-off shotgun.

“Stand up, lady,” he told her, pointing the gun in her direction. “I hate to ruin your morning, but we need something from you.”

Kinley put her hands up slowly as she rose from her chair. “Okay,” she said steadily. “But don’t hurt anyone. There’s nothing here worth anyone dying for.”

The other guy with a shotgun, wearing a military-looking knit hat pulled down over his ears, reached out to grab her by the arm.

“That depends on how you look at it,” he said. “Where’s the safe?”

Kinley didn’t like being yanked around. “It’s here in my office,” she said. “In the closet over there. But if the manager followed protocol, he took yesterday’s receipts to the bank last night. There will only be a couple of hundred dollars in it.”

The guy let go of her hand and jabbed the shotgun at her. “Open it.”

Kinley sighed faintly and opened the closet, leaning over to get a better look at the combination lock on the safe. She tried to position her body so that the robber with the shotgun pointed at her back couldn’t get a look at what was inside the safe because once she got the gun in her hand, he was the first one she was going to take out. The robber, however, had other ideas; he was rather turned on by the woman’s ass in his face and he reached out to put a hand on it.

“Nice,” he commented, snorting lewdly.

Kinley kicked back at him, right in the knee, and the guy grunted in pain as he nearly dropped the shotgun. Kinley spun around with the intention of grabbing it but the robber was a hair faster than she was. He held the end up into her face and Kinley literally found herself looking down the barrel.

“Don’t do that again!” the guy yelled. “I swear to God I’ll kill you next time.”

Kinley didn’t back down, angry and frightened now. “Then don’t you touch me again, or the next time I kick, it’ll be aimed at your balls,” she snarled. “Get it?”

The guy shoved the barrel closer to her face. “Open the fucking safe!”

Furious, Kinley turned back to the safe, knowing she had to get her hands on that gun right off the bat. If she didn’t, she suspected things might go very badly for them all. But she remained cool, her hand steady, as she began to work the combination of the safe. The guy behind her with the shotgun aimed at her head spoke quietly.

“You and I are going to spend some time in this office when this is over,” he said suggestively. “Hurry up with that safe.”

Kinley knew exactly what he meant. Heart pounding against her ribs, she dialed the last number on the safe and it popped open. As she pulled the door open, she could see the handle of the gun tucked against the side of the safe and she immediately grabbed for it, throwing herself to the floor of the closet as she spun around, hoping to avoid most of the shotgun spray. She knew at this range, however, she was bound to catch some of it so she simply tried to keep her head down.

Lifting the gun, she fired off one round when the entire world exploded.

 

***

 

She’d left him. Again.

After what was inarguably the best sex of his life, Reed awoke to an empty bed unless he wanted to count the dogs that had crept in to sleep with him when Kinley opened the door. His German Shepherd was snoring very happily next to his head, but no Kinley.

Goddammit!

Now he was just plain angry. Angry because he knew they had something wonderful going last night, one of the best nights of his life, and he knew she felt it, too. They’d had such a great time sharing dinner and conversation, and then the sex… she had instigated it and as he got up out of bed, he suspected she left because she was ashamed and frightened of having been so wild. Maybe she had awoken to a bad case of regrets. In any case, he wasn’t going to let her get away with it. He wasn’t going to let her get away.

So he took a quick shower and shaved, and pulled on his uniform that was still hanging in the dry cleaners bags in the closet. All the while, he was thinking about what he was going to say to Kinley when he showed up at The Coffee Cakery. Hi, honey… I love you? Well, it was to the point because he did. He had been in love with the woman since nearly the day he’d met her even though she had been a basket case and continued to be.

So what made him love her? He wasn’t exactly sure, but it had something to do with the look in her eyes on that day at the Hi-Way Café that seemed so long ago. She had been cool, steady, calm, and brave. So maybe it was the bravery that he loved. Or maybe it was the silly giggle she had, or the moments of brilliance he saw when she came out of her shell. Or maybe it was just the feeling of her in his hands last night when they had made love. It still made him hot to think about it and, like it or not, they were going to explore it together. Frightened or ashamed, he didn’t care what she felt. He was going to soothe it, smooth it over, or whatever he had to do in order to work her through this.

He wasn’t about to let her go.

So he put on his Sam Browne and pulled on his duty jacket, set the alarm, and left the house to the patrol car that was still parked outside. He couldn’t imagine how she got a ride back to Riverton but she somehow must have because there were tire tracks in the dirt outside of his security gate that he didn’t recognize. Throwing the car into drive, he took off to Riverton.

The sun was just starting to come up as he entered the town. He thought about stopping to get coffee at his favorite coffee house but decided against it; he was going to have coffee at The Coffee Cakery and make Kinley pay for it in punishment for running out on him. For running out on them. He just wasn’t going to let her run any longer.

So he pulled up to The Coffee Cakery in stealth, like he usually did, because the sight of his unit might send her into hiding. He pulled up across the street where he normally sat, beneath the trees that camouflaged his vehicle, so he could see most of the parking lot towards the rear and the front door at the same time. When he first arrived, there was no one there, but soon Kinley’s non-descript Toyota pulled up, followed quickly by two more cars that parked near her.

Kinley got out of the car and his heart leapt at the sight of her; only an idiot in love would feel like that over a woman who had been running from him since the moment he met her. He grinned to himself as he watched her cross the parking lot with a few employees, disappearing from his view when she went to the back door to open the place up.

Another employee arrived and he saw Kinley as she unlocked the front door of the restaurant. He figured now would be a good time to go in and hash it out with her, before her day officially began and before more employees arrived, but just as he began to pull his car out of his hiding spot, another car pulled into the parking lot and he saw two young men get out. He thought they were more employees until one young man pulled a shotgun out from beneath his coat. Both young men were heavily dressed, one with a shotgun, as they headed for the back door and disappeared from sight.

Startled by what he had just seen, Reed had a split second of disbelief before his training kicked in. He immediately called for backup but he knew he couldn’t wait for them. Whatever was going down, Kinley was inside and he couldn’t sit by while she faced an imminent threat. He had to get in there to help her.

He had to save her.

Bailing from the car, he ran across the street.

Reed ended up in the shadows of the building, peering around the front to see if he could see any movement. He caught the tail-end of the robbers moving the people in the front of the restaurant towards the back, now both of the robbers with shotguns. They were moving towards the back door where Kinley’s office was. He then moved swiftly down the side of the building, waving off a few more employees who just arrived, signaling for them to get back into their cars and leave, which they hurriedly did. Whenever a deputy with his service weapon out gives an order, the command is not meant to be disobeyed. The employees scattered.

With the employees gone, Reed peeked around the side of the building and could see the back door, but there was no movement. The door remained shut. He paused a split second longer to see if the door moved at all, but it didn’t, so he raced to the back door, keeping his back pressed up against the side of the building. There was a glass panel in the door, protected by safety bars, and he rolled slightly in the direction of the door so he could catch a glimpse inside. Kinley’s office was right by the back door and he could see that her door was partially open. He had two of her cooks in his line of sight and they had their hands up.

So it goes down in her office, he thought grimly. He could hear some yelling at that point; someone was unhappy. Unhappiness during a robbery was never a good thing. He could hear sirens coming in the distance and it infuriated him; he specifically told dispatch to roll officers Code Two. If the robbers heard the sirens, it would spook them and he feared what would happen. He had no choice; he had to move.

Carefully, he opened the back door and one of the cooks caught the movement and turned to look at him. Reed quickly held a finger up to his lips, a gesture of silence, and the cook fearfully turned around to pretend he hadn’t seen him. The air was full of anxiety as Reed entered the back hall, pressing himself against the wall and staying clear of the door. He was about to move when he heard a round being fired inside the room. With no more time to waste, he kicked the door open wide about the time a shotgun blast took out several ceiling tiles.

The blast had come from a man falling backwards, a man with a shotgun in his hand. As the man fell on to his back, Reed caught sight of another man with a shotgun aimed right at him. Reed threw himself out of the doorway, back into the hall, as a shotgun blast ripped out part of the door jamb. But then he was back in the doorway, as quick as a flash, his service revolver firing and taking out the man who had just fired at him. As that man went down, the man on the floor rolled to his knees but he wasn’t able to bring his gun up before someone from the closet put a bullet in his brain. He fell to the floor like a stone, bleeding out on the carpet.

Reed still had his gun out, leveled at the cooks now. “Is that all there is?” he demanded. “Are there any more?”

The cooks shook their heads, all in a panic. “No!” one guy yelled, “Just two that we saw.”

Reed kept his gun leveled for a moment longer before lowering it, taking a moment to survey the carnage of the room. Outside the back door, he could hear police sirens blaring as deputies began to run in through the door, weapons brandished. Reed called them off.

“All clear,” he said, turning to see two wide-eyed deputies in the doorway. “Get these guys out of here. Make sure they’re okay and then we need statements. And someone get on the radio and get my dad down here. We’re going to need him.”

The deputies began moving, pulling the cooks out of the office as Reed went to the closet where Kinley was just getting to her feet. Their eyes met and a thousand sharp emotions filled the air between them; it was like a cavalcade of angst and relief and joy. Reed was the first one to speak.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did they hurt you?”

Kinley had never been so glad to see anyone in her entire life. “No,” she said. “Thank God you came when you did.”

Reed simply nodded, his jaw ticking as he holstered his weapon. He was trying very hard to remain calm, to think deliberately and to speak deliberately. But it was very hard to keep the emotion out of the equation so he simply gave up.

“I was only here because you left without a word,” he said, looking at her and trying not to feel hurt. “I came to see you like I always do when you run out on me, Kinley. You’ve been running out on me since the day we met and I came to tell you that you’re not going to do it anymore. You’re a grown woman and you need to start acting like one.”

Kinley felt a good deal of shame with his tongue lashing, which was well overdue. Even she knew that. “I know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I left, Reed. I just… it’s just that you shouldn’t get mixed up with someone like me. But if we keep going the way we’re going, we’re going to have five kids and twenty years under our belt and you will have spent those years with a broken woman. That’s not fair to you. Don’t you get that?”

He sighed heavily. “I will have spent those years with the woman I love,” he said, watching her eyes widened. “That’s right; I love you. You were broken but you’re on your way to healing yourself. I can see it in you; yesterday was such a big day for you, Kinley. You worked through so much pain yesterday. And I want to be there for your continued journey but if you keep running out on me, at some point, I’m going to get sick of bringing you back. I love you and I want to marry you, but I can’t do that if you keep running.”

Kinley simply stared at him, her mouth working as if she were trying to speak but the words wouldn’t seem to come. Finally, she hissed. “I don’t know if I can open myself up again,” she whispered. “I love you, too, and I’m scared to death about it.”

Reed had been waiting his entire life to hear those words come out of her mouth. He went to her, cupping her face between his two big hands, and fixed her in the eye even as men from the sheriff’s department came into the office and began surveying the two dead men on the floor. To Reed, there simply wasn’t anyone else in the room. He had something to say to Kinley and no death or blood or carnage was going to stop that.

“So am I,” he confessed. “But I swear to you that nothing is going to happen to me. I come from a long line of knights and that makes me invincible, remember? I’ll always be here for you, to walk beside you as you heal from your past and whatever comes, I will love you for the rest of your life. Will you at least give me that chance?”

Kinley’s eyes filled with tears, but this time, they were tears of joy. For the first time in three years, they were not tears of sorrow. “So I have my own knight in shining armor?” she said hoarsely. “I kind of like that.”

He smiled because she was. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“Will you give me the chance to love you?”

Kinley nodded. “I will.”

“No more running?”

She shook her head. “No more, I swear,” she murmured sincerely. Suddenly, she didn’t feel any shame or confusion. When she looked at Reed, all she felt was… hope. She definitely felt hope, as if it had been there all along. “I feel as if… as if my running has ended, here in this little hick town. When I came here, I always thought I was running from something but now… now it seems like maybe I was running to something. I was running to you.”

Reed’s answer was to kiss her, more deeply and more emotionally than he had ever kissed anyone in his life, ever. From that moment forward, Kinley’s healing in earnest began with the deputy whose life she once saved. He had been her destiny all along.

Here, in the town named after the river, Kinley’s running finally ended.

 

~THE END~