FIVE

STARING AT MY REFLECTION in the bathroom mirror, I wondered for the third time in the same night where my brains had gone. I’d done it again. I’d lost all control and forgotten about birth control.

“Reckless. Stupid,” I mumbled to my reflection, freaked out I could be pregnant. Yet, without conscious thought, my hand came up to my belly in a protective hold. Looking down at the flat surface below my belly button, I tried to envision it swollen with the heavy burden of a child.

“Susan?” James said, his voice creeping in from the other side of the bathroom door.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and looked up at him, feeling exposed, vulnerable. I’d finally found the guy of my dreams, and it could all be at risk because I hadn’t protected myself.

James must have read the fear on my face because he pulled me into his arms, resting his chin on my head. “I take it we’ve moved from great back to panicked?” he mumbled into my hair.

I tightened my hold on his waist and said nothing, a million thoughts rolling around my head.

“Told you I wouldn’t leave unless I knew they had Sullivan in their sights. I promise you’re safe here, baby.”

He thought I was freaking out about Sullivan again, which in a sense I was, but it wasn’t the only reason I was on edge.

“It’s just a lot has happened in a short amount of time, James. Sullivan, you and me. It’s a little overwhelming,” I finally replied.

Freaking out about a possible baby also had me doubting what was happening between James and me. We’d only known each other three days and it was already intense between us. What if it burnt out as quickly as it started and then we’re left with a baby on the way? What if his feelings for me were amped up because he cares enough to worry about me being in danger, but once Sullivan is behind bars he’ll realize he made a mistake?

“Hey,” he murmured softly, tipping my chin up so he could look into my eyes. “Look at me, babe.” He cupped my cheek like he’d done at the police station, running the pad of his thumb across the apple, and it felt so damn good my bottom lip trembled a tiny bit. He made me feel cherished when he did things like that, and I didn’t want to lose that. “Whatever’s runnin’ through that head of yours, I’m here to tell you it’s not gonna work. I’m not gonna let you retreat from me because you’re scared.”

I blinked, then narrowed my eyes. “Get out of my head.”

He shook his head slowly, a grin pulling across his full lips. “Not gonna let you shake me off. Not after I’ve had all the facets that are Susan. Been waitin’ for-fuckin’-ever for you to show up. So brace, babe. It’s full steam ahead.”

I guess I’d been holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it left my lungs in a whoosh. “Facets?”

“Yeah, the layers that are Susan Elizabeth Montgomery.”

I raised a brow at the man and cocked my head. “And they are?”

He tangled a hand in my hair, tugging gently until my neck was exposed. Then he held my eyes briefly before he leaned in and touched his tongue to my neck, whispering, “Cute Susan,” against my skin, and I shuddered. “Smart-ass Susan,” he continued, dipping down to taste the skin at the top of my chest, and my knees grew weak. “And my fuckin’ favorite . . . Sexy Susan.”

He may not be a player, but the man still had serious moves.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he asked, nipping my earlobe.

“Okay, I’ll try not to freak out.”

He pulled back and I expected him to be smiling, but he was intense instead. “No, you won’t. ‘Cause as long as you’re mine, you don’t need to worry about a fuckin’ thing. That’s my job. I want you cute and sweet, smart-ass and sexy, but never,” he ground out, “scared. Freaked out. Or worried about anything but bein’ you.”

I blinked. “I’m not sure I can promise that, Wild Man. Anytime you walk out a door with a gun in your hand, I’m gonna worry.”

His lip twitched and I realized I’d called him Wild Man without thinking. Dangitalltohell! It’s my motto that when you’re in a situation you want to crawl into a hole and die from, it’s best to just act like it didn’t happen. So I did.

“You’ll get there,” he vowed, still grinning.

“I really don’t think I will.”

“You will when I come back each time I walk out that door.”

“You were shot three days ago,” I reminded him.

“It was four, and I’m standin’ right here, babe.”

“Because you were lucky, James.”

“Because I’m good,” he stated arrogantly. “I got hit with friendly fire when a new recruit freaked out and discharged his weapon prematurely before the firefight even began.”

My eyes rounded and I bit my lip. I’d really hate to be that guy right about now.

“Yeah,” he nodded, reading my thoughts again. “I had my eye on the prize, not lookin’ behind me at men who should have had my fuckin’ back. That won’t happen again because I’m not takin’ on any more new recruits until they’ve proven themselves.”

“But Rutherford County is so small. Do you really have that much crime here that you need a S.W.A.T. team?”

“No, but we’re growin’. Nashville is spillin’ over its borders, so we’ve had an increase of violence over the past few years. It’s only a matter of time before all the departments increase in size. So we were bein’ proactive. We back up Davidson County Sheriff’s Department when they need it, which helps us prepare for the day that Rutherford County doubles in size.”

It was clear James was no small-town deputy. No Barney Fife bumbling around town looking for adventure. He was a badass living on a picturesque farm because he preferred it to the big city.

“How long have you been with S.W.A.T.?”

“Since day one. I applied to the sheriff’s department, right out of college, when I was twenty-one. After two years on the job, I saw how the big city was crowdin’ us and knew we’d need more protection.”

“You graduated in three years?”

His mouth twitched. “Told ya already when I wanted somethin’ I go after it. I was in a hurry to get on with my life, so I studied nonstop.”

Then how did he have time to be a serial dater in college?

Further proof that the gossip about him was nothing but lies.

“So you knew the city was encroaching . . .” I prompted, wanting to hear the rest of his story.

“That’s right, so I convinced the sheriff, who was good friends with my father, that we’d need a S.W.A.T. team eventually what with the city bleedin’ in. He saw my point and eventually agreed, so he got permission for me to train in Nashville for two years before we started recruitin’ here.”

The word overachiever ran through my head. In a few short years he’d accomplished more than most do in their careers.

“So S.W.A.T. is your baby?”

“It’s been my single focus for years,” he agreed, “until you. Now I have new priorities.”

My stomach flipped and I melted into him. Was he really saying that I was more important than his brainchild? “You do?”

“Yeah, I do,” he answered, his voice soft. “Makin’ you mine in every way possible.”

Oh. My. God.

“James.”

He drew me in tighter against his body. “I don’t play games. When I want somethin’ I go after it. So like I said, brace, baby. I never lose. Not when it’s somethin’ I want.”

____________________________

James kissed the velvet skin at the base of Susan’s neck, then pulled the covers over her body slowly to keep from waking her. She’d fallen asleep on his bed from sheer exhaustion, while they waited for the call that would send him out into the morning light. He’d gotten that call five minutes before and he was headed to a remote farmhouse as backup. Pike had lead in apprehending Sullivan, so James and his team would cover the perimeter in case Sullivan made a break for it, or take lead if the situation went south.

He started to leave, then he hesitated. He’d taken the call for S.W.A.T. assistance close to a hundred times in the past few years, and not once had he hesitated to grab his go-bag. But now he had a reason to come home, and it gave him pause.

“Fuck it,” James bit out, then he bent at the waist and ran his hand across her cheek until Susan’s eyes opened. He wasn’t leaving without saying goodbye, and he sure as hell wasn’t leaving without tasting her lips again. “I’m leavin’. Keep the doors locked and don’t answer it unless it’s me.”

Sleep vanished from her eyes instantly. “They know where Sullivan is?” she gasped, sitting up.

He nodded. “Pike sent a car out to the house and says it’s lit up and music is blarin’.”

She turned her head and looked at the clock. “It’s seven a.m. Who plays music that loud at seven a.m.?”

“Assholes who sell drugs and murder good women to keep their mouths shut,” was his reply. “They live in a different world than we do, baby. They sleep all day so they can conduct their business beneath the cover of night.”

Her eyes clouded at the mention of murder, then she reached out and wrapped her petite hand around his neck, squeezing once before saying, “I know you’re a badass S.W.A.T. leader, but please don’t take any risks on my account.”

His chest tightened in response to her touch, the powerful sensation of being exactly where he was supposed to be had him claiming her mouth roughly so he could show her without words what it meant that she cared enough to worry about him.

When he pulled back from her mouth, her eyes were dazed, her lips swollen with the evidence she was his. His lip twitched when she stared back at him as if he’d kissed her senseless, a dreamy look of passion in her eyes, but he grew hard when she mouthed, “BOOM!”

Thank Christ, she finally got it, and felt it too. That indescribable feeling of belonging.

Closing his eyes in relief, James dipped his forehead to hers and whispered, “BOOM!”

____________________________

I’d never been good at waiting. Especially when there was nothing I could do to facilitate an outcome. So I paced, stared out the window looking for James’s truck, and then paced some more. An hour into the waiting, the phone rang on the kitchen wall. I ran to it, hoping it was James calling from the Sheriff’s Department with news, and answered.

“James?”

I was met with silence.

“Hello?

I heard the rustling of clothes, then a dial tone. Sighing, I hung up the phone and stared around the kitchen. I was too keyed up to eat, but I figured James would be hungry when he got home, so I opened the refrigerator and started digging around for something to cook. There was a huge bowl filled with eggs that looked like he’d gathered them himself, and a slab of bacon in butcher’s paper. The man might be single, but he was stocked with food.

I dug around for his skillets and found a cast iron monster that was seared black with age and use. It was heavy, almost requiring two hands to lift it to the stovetop. Then I searched through his drawers looking for a spatula. I found his cooking utensils opposite the stove, on the other side of the kitchen.

“That’s not efficient,” I scoffed and looked for a basket or old Mason jar that could house the utensils. I found a large glass jar, with a chip in it, on the top shelf and transferred everything from the drawer to the jar, setting it next to the stove.

Now what?

The wind kicked up outside, so I moved to the window to watch the trees billow back and forth in the breeze as their leaves broke free and danced on a current to the ground. Then I stared at the gossamer clouds until my eyes hurt, looking for hidden objects, but none appeared.

“I’m gonna go stir-crazy if I don’t find something to occupy my time.”

With a sigh, I moved to his bedroom and made the bed, then picked up his dirty clothes and opened his closet door, looking for a hamper. For an old farmhouse, it had a surprisingly large walk-in closet in the master bedroom.

James’s uniforms were neatly hanging, his shoes and boots lined up in a row on a shoe rack. My hand brushed across the starched shirts, then I leaned in and took a deep breath, pulling in his unique scent. It was just as wild and free as his looks.

I found his hamper and picked it up, accidently kicking a box that was on the floor in the process. Pictures and letters spilled out, so I dropped the hamper and picked up the box to stuff its contents back inside. I started to put it back, but image after image of James looked back at me and I hesitated. I really shouldn’t snoop through his things, but it was hard to resist the opportunity at a glimpse of his past.

“It’s just pictures,” I told myself. “I’m sure he won’t care.”

I moved to the bed and sat, flipping through a few, smiling at images of James with a dog, his arm around a younger version of himself. Brother maybe? I found one with an older couple and smiled. It had to be his parents. The man was tall and solid just like James, a glint in his eyes as he curled the woman in his arms close, one hand on her ass possessively. And the woman, she had her head tipped back looking up at the man like he hung the moon. What made me chuckle was the couple were clearly in their fifties, yet the clinch they were in spoke of intimacy you would expect to see in a younger couple. The image clearly said they were hot for each other in a way that would never fade until the day they died.

As I picked through the images I came across one of James that made my heart stutter. It couldn’t have been more than a few years old based on his looks, but it was devastatingly beautiful. He was standing in a field with his shirt off, a western hat that had seen better days rested in his hand as he scowled somewhat at the camera. He had dirt on his chest, smears on his jeans, his hip cocked out at an angle, and the sun was setting, backlighting him like some sort of god. The image was so haunting it belonged in a magazine. Maybe a cologne ad that stated if you wear this scent, you might be lucky enough to become him for a single, solitary second in your life.

I set aside the box and stared at the picture. A million emotions coiled around my heart as I looked into his guarded eyes, because this man was mine.

“BOOM,” I whispered, because I’d truly, finally, gotten its meaning. It was the shock to your system when the right person waltzed into your life. The overwhelming need to be with them at all cost. A sense of two souls finding each other, of belonging to someone so completely that you didn’t know where one began and the other ended.

Susans look like home, hearth, and family.

I stood and walked into the kitchen to check for his truck again, then grabbed the phone’s receiver off the cradle. I needed to know that James was okay, that he hadn’t been hurt while apprehending Sullivan, because I doubted if he had, they would know to call me here. I put the receiver up to my ear to call the station, but noticed there was no dial tone, so I reached up and flipped the cradle a couple of times. Then I spun in place when the front door splintered off its hinges with a deafening thud, and I screamed.

____________________________

“Don’t fuckin’ move, bitch.”

I thought I’d been scared before, but nothing compared to the terror pouring throughout my body as I stared at a man, who could only be described as my worst nightmare. He was big, with tattoos covering his arms. His long hair stringy, as if he hadn’t bathed in days, and the cold steel of his eyes told me that he wouldn’t hesitate to stab the knife he was holding deep into my body.

“I don’t know anything. Sara didn’t say a thing to me,” I said, my voice quivering.

“Yeah? Well that tells me you do.”

“I swear I don’t know anything, Mr. Sullivan.”

He took a step forward and sneered. “Do NOT mistake me for that shithead, Sullivan.”

I stiffened at his expletive, confused, and then I knew. Oh, God. I knew, I knew, I knew I was in so much trouble. Because if this man wasn’t Sullivan, then James was still out there looking for the wrong man, and he wouldn’t be home anytime soon.

I was on my own.

“Now,” the man who wasn’t Sullivan said, raising his knife to clean underneath his nails, “let’s you and me have a little talk about what that bitch told you.”

“She didn’t tell me anything. Just that she needed to get out of town,” I shouted, backing up to put distance between us.

“If she didn’t tell you anything then you don’t have anything to worry about,” he lied.

I looked around the kitchen for a weapon and saw James’s knife set, but it was too far away. I needed to stall until James could get here, so I figured I’d ask some questions of my own.

“How did you find me?”

The man flinched forward, leering like he was going to rush me and I jumped back and hit the stove. He smiled like he was enjoying himself. “Since it won’t matter in a few minutes, I’ll indulge you,” he stated, and the blood washed from my face. “I’ve been monitoring the police band. Heard plenty last night. Figured out there was another Susan Montgomery in this shithole town, so I kept an eye on the cop since he seemed to know you and he led me to you.”

“So you’re one of Sullivan’s men?”

He leered again. “No. Sullivan was one of my men, but I ended our association after his bitch took off with a trunk full of my product.”

“You were at the diner, weren’t you? You followed her and then killed her.”

I was in so much trouble.

“You’re quick for a woman. Yeah, I watched from outside the diner. Saw her talkin’ to you, but I couldn’t go after both of you, so she and I had a chat when I caught up with her. That’s how I learned your name.”

It hit me then who this was. Detective Pike mentioned Sullivan had an association with a drug dealer in Nashville.

“You’re Rudy Jackson aren’t you?”

His eyes narrowed, changing his face from scary as hell to frightening. “What the fuck did that bitch tell you?” he roared, and then lunged for me.

I reached back to steady my footing as he charged and my hand landed on the stove, right on that huge cast iron skillet. I didn’t know what I was going to do until I did it, but one second he was across the room and the next he was in front of me. And I swung.

____________________________

It took close to an hour to get everyone in place before Pike approached Sullivan’s door and knocked, calling out, “Mr. Sullivan, this is Detective Dan Pike with Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department.” James was positioned several feet behind Pike with the sights of his M-16 set at eye level. He and his team were in full battle rattle, prepared for any situation should Sullivan refuse to come in quietly. Even though the temps had dropped into the low sixties the night before, he had a bead of sweat on his brow as he stood motionless. His eye twitched as he drew in a breath and held it, his trigger finger at the ready to engage any hostiles. As James’s blood pounded in his ears, and his heart rate accelerated a tenth of a degree, Pike cocked his head to the left and leaned down, looking for all the world like he was sniffing the door.

“I smell decomp,” Pike shouted, then stepped back and kicked in the door with no warning.

Pike turned immediately as the odor of human decomposition poured from the house, stinging the eyes of every officer within a twenty-foot radius of the door.

James moved then, his assault rifle swinging back and forth as he scouted the area for any threats. He and Pike cleared the entryway one after the other, their weapons at the ready as they took in the carnage. Three men lay dead in the house from gunshot wounds to the head. And from the amount of decomp visible, they’d been dead days, not hours.

Pike and James looked at each other.

“No way Sullivan killed those two women,” James growled.

“Agreed,” Pike said, “From the looks of it he’s been dead as long as Sara.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Both men looked down at the bloated body of Josh Sullivan, then bit out, “Jackson,” in unison.

Cold fear tore its way through James’s chest and settled like lead in his gut. Grabbing his handheld, he barked out, “Nettie, this is Mayson. Call my house and tell Susan Montgomery I’m on my way home, and to lock herself in the root cellar off the kitchen until I get there.”

James was moving as he spoke. His truck was back at the station, so he turned to Pike, who was barking out orders as he followed James, and asked him for his keys.

“I’ll drive,” Pike ordered, and James didn’t argue. Pike knew the roads as well as he did, and felt the same urgency to get to his house.

James ripped open the passenger door just as his handheld crackled to life. “Base to Mayson.”

He closed his eyes when he heard Nettie’s frantic voice. Even Pike heard it and ground out, “Goddammit.”

James slammed his door before answering her so they could get underway. “This is Mayson.”

“She . . . Ms. Montgomery didn’t answer. I’ve tried the number three times.”

Instead of answering, he threw the handheld at the dashboard, thundering, “FUCK! I promised she’d be safe.”

Pike threw the Crown Victoria into drive, the tires squealing as they flew down the road. With cold efficiency, James drew his Colt .45 and checked the safety. “If he’s laid a hand on her he’s leavin’ in a body bag.”

Pike didn’t answer, which was the only confirmation James needed that he understood and accepted that if Jackson was there, and Susan had been harmed, James would put Jackson in the ground.

It took twenty of the hardest fucking minutes of James’s life to get to his house. Pike had called in for backup, but with James across town, they would reach his farm before anyone else.

With Susan’s car parked in the garage, there was no vehicle out front of his home when they pulled to a sliding stop, but the front door was wide open. James bailed out of the car, his long legs eating up the distance within seconds. With gun drawn he entered, swiping from left to right with his sight as he moved through the living room and into to his kitchen, stopping in his tracks at what he found. Rudy Jackson was laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood while Susan stood over his body, his huge-ass, cast iron skillet raised high in her hands, shaking from the weight of it. Her eyes were wild with fear as she stood sentry over Jackson’s prone body, tears falling silently down her face.

“Baby?” James said softly, relief choking his voice that she was alive.

Sluggishly her eyes rose to his, and she blinked as if to focus on him. “I think I killed him,” she murmured then dropped the skillet to the floor, and James moved, sweeping her off of her feet and out of the house.

____________________________

“How you doin’, slugger?” Detective Pike asked as he approached. I was sitting in the back of an ambulance having my blood pressure checked.

Rudy Jackson was headed to the hospital with a fracture to his skull, but he wasn’t dead, thank God. James was inside his house, packing a bag, and grabbing my stuff because his was now a crime scene. We were headed to my rental when they were done with me, with plans to stay there until they released his home. James thought it would be sometime tomorrow, but in the meantime; we were to lay low.

“Will I be charged with murder if Jackson doesn’t survive?”

“He’ll make it, but even if he doesn’t, it was self-defense.”

“Will I have to testify in court?”

Pike shook his head. “We found a gun with a silencer in his jacket. Caliber matched the bullets we found at Sullivan’s apartment. I’m confident it will match, so we’ll be able to hold him on three counts of murder. If they don’t, then he’s wanted in Nashville on a dozen warrants. Either way, we’ll be able to keep you out of this by the sheer fact that he won’t want anyone knowing he was brought down by a half-pint of a woman with a frying pan.”

There was a commotion and I looked up. Then watched James exit the house with a face that still looked like thunder. He was still pissed about Jackson assaulting me, and from the looks of it, he’d worked himself into a fine lather. When he bit off the head of a deputy working the crime scene, Pike turned his head and looked at him, then back at me and mumbled low, “He blames himself. Said he promised you’d be safe here. My advice, let him vent ‘til he gets it out.”

“No one could have predicted Jackson would be listenin’ to the police band and followin’ us around. He’s not exactly Superman, for goodness sake.”

Pike grinned. “Okay, Lois Lane. I’ll leave him in your capable hands, then.”

I bit my lip to keep from grinning as my wild man stormed across the yard toward me. He stopped in front of me, scanned my body from head to toe without mumbling a word, then bent at the waist and picked me up.

“I can walk,” I chuckled.

Silence.

“James, this wasn’t your fault. Please don’t beat yourself up over this.”

Still nothing.

I sighed and figured I’ve give him more time.

He stopped on the passenger side of my car and opened the door without putting me down, then gently set me inside. I opened my mouth to say something, anything that would break the ice that was forming around us, but I gasped instead when he grabbed my face and kissed me so deeply that a gun could have been fired and I wouldn’t have noticed.

“Thank Christ, you’re okay,” James murmured against my lips.

“I’ll be better once you get me home and into bed,” I whispered back.

His eyes flashed to ink and then he kissed me again, as thoroughly as any woman had ever been kissed in the history of the world.

“You got it,” he returned then slammed my door, rounded the car, and climbed inside.

It was less than a five-minute drive to my house. When we arrived, James’s brow furrowed in anger as he stared at my front door.

“Stay here,” he ordered, then opened his door without waiting for a reply.

He was pushing open my front door, a door that should have been locked, when I walked up behind him.

“Thought I told you to stay in the car?” he bit out, but didn’t turn back to look at me.

I grabbed the back of his shirt and held, stating, “The last time you told me stay put, I almost got dead. I’ve decided the safest place in the world is right by your side.” He stiffened at my comment, then looked back at me.

His eyes had gone indigo again.

“Can we find out if Jackson broke in or what?”

“I’m gonna have my hands full,” he muttered, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.

“Oh. My. God.”

My house had been torn apart. We checked every room and it was as if a tornado had spun through. Pictures. Pillows. You name it. Destroyed. All of it. I had nothing left. Just the clothes on my back and what little I had in my overnight bag.

I started to pick up a lamp, too much in shock at the destruction to even mourn the loss of my things, when James grabbed my hand, pulled me back out to my car, and locked me in with a raised finger pointing at me to stay put. Then he went back inside and used my kitchen phone to call Pike. Twenty minutes later, the crime scene had moved from James’s house to my house, and James and I were on our way to the nearest motel.

I should have been inconsolable about all my worldly possessions being destroyed, but considering I could have been dead, I just sighed and made a mental note to call my insurance company in the morning, then began to make a list of what I’d need to purchase.

“How long do you think it will take to clean up that mess?” I asked the passenger side window as I watched cattle grazing in a field.

“Doesn’t matter, you’re not going back.”

I blinked, and turned my head. “I’m not going back?”

“Nope.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And where exactly am I going to live?”

His answer? “With me. Where you fuckin’ belong.”