“You make me different, you make me want to be different.”

A startled glow went through Janina. She blushed for the first time in…well, it felt like forever. Maybe it was. “I—I don’t know what to say. Thank you. You—I—”

The oh-so-gentle tip of Russ’s forefinger touched her mouth. “Dance with me?”

“Yes.”

The one word was like magic, as though she’d said “Abracadabra.” Just that quickly, the outside fell away, she was in his arms and the music and Russ’s heartbeat were the only things she heard, felt, knew. The rhythm of her heart keeping time to Russ’s was what she moved to, the feel of his body against hers was all the cue she needed, the slightest pressure of his hand in the small of her back, of his thighs against hers, his knee between them while they swayed.

She reached her arms around him as far as they would go, to hold him, hold on to him. Make sure he was really there. “Neither one of us is dreaming. We’re both really here. Together, same wavelength. For a change.”

Dear Reader,

No doubt your summer’s already hot, but it’s about to get hotter, because New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham is back in Silhouette Intimate Moments! In the Dark is a riveting, heart-pounding tale of romantic suspense set in the Florida Keys in the middle of a hurricane. It’s emotional, sexy and an absolute edge-of-your-seat read. Don’t miss it!

FAMILY SECRETS: THE NEXT GENERATION continues with Triple Dare by Candace Irvin, featuring a woman in jeopardy and the very special hero who saves her life. Heir to Danger is the first in Valerie Parv’s CODE OF THE OUTBACK miniseries. Join Princess Shara Najran as she goes on the run to Australia—and straight into the arms of love. Terese Ramin returns with Shotgun Honeymoon, a wonderful—and wonderfully suspenseful—marriage-of-inconvenience story. Brenda Harlen has quickly become a must-read author, and Bulletproof Hearts will only further her reputation for writing complex, heartfelt page-turners. Finally, welcome back Susan Vaughan, whose Guarding Laura is full of both secrets and sensuality.

Enjoy them all, and come back next month for more of the most exciting romance reading around—only from Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Editor

Shotgun Honeymoon
Terese Ramin

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TERESE RAMIN

The granddaughter of an Irish Blarney Stone kisser (who, lowered by her ankles to do so, kissed it last at the age of ninety-six) and the oldest of eight, Terese Ramin has been surrounded by kids, chaos and storytelling all her life. At the request of her siblings she told outrageous stories late into the night, which caused a great deal of giggling among the kids and aggravation for her parents, who merely wanted them all to Go To Sleep! Terese lives in Michigan with five dogs, three cats, two kids and a husband who creates sawdust.

To all the waitresses who have waited on and fed me throughout the years, especially the ones at Little Chef in Brighton, MI. You guys are the best. And to the gang in the BT Bayou: thanks for the silliness factor.

For my darling daughter, Brynna, who goaded me into writing a different book from the one I originally had in mind. I love you with all my heart. Also for C. Rita Brigham, friend and student, who at eighty-plus may be full of vinegar but has failed miserably at turning into it. To shared laughter. Love you, my dear.

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to the following people: Annette Mahon, Cat Brown, Kristi Studts, and Karen K.—Arizona. Lillian Stewart Carl—title. Special thanks to Intimate Moments authors Melissa James, Lindsay Longford, Vickie Taylor and Linda Wisdom, who responded to a friend in need. As ever, all leaps of faith, lapses of reality and flat-out mistakes are wholly my own.

“Like newborn calves we will not be afraid of tigers.”

—2000 Chinese men’s Olympic gymnastics team motto

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Prologue

Winslow, Arizona

July 17. Thirteen years ago

The worst nights didn’t start with a body on the ground. They began with a dispute that could end with a body on the ground, possibly his.

Russ Levoie, nineteen, and only three months out of the police academy, had known this going in. He’d seen it up close and personal on the Havasupai reservation where he’d grown up—not in his own family, but in too many of the other families. Poverty begat fear begat the need to numb it begat drinking—or some other form of self-medication—begat dispute begat violence. And the cycle didn’t alter with the scenery, it simply changed addresses. Nevertheless, here he was, headed into a trailer park on his own on a “see the woman” domestic-violence call because no one else was close enough to take it with him. And hot damn, didn’t that just make him feel peachy-safe.

On the other hand, if he’d really meant to feel safe for the rest of his life, he’d have chosen another line of work. But this was all he ever remembered wanting to do. Adrenaline pumping, he parked his car, radioed in his position, alighted and slid his nightstick into place on his left hip before unsnapping the holster flap on his right.

Across the dusty street, he saw a white curtain flutter back into place. The neighbor that had called in, he guessed, peeking out to see who’d arrived. He headed in that direction. The door was cracked open and a hand beckoned him through the chicken-scratch front yard. “They’ve stopped now,” the woman behind the screen said. Her voice was hushed as though in deference to the dusk. She carried a cigarette to her lips, lit it, inhaled and blew smoke from the corner of her mouth back into her trailer, away from Russ. Crossed an arm beneath her flat chest and propped her other elbow on it. The hand that held the cigarette to her mouth trembled.

Behind her, almost hidden in the shadows, was one of the young waitresses from the diner he frequented almost every evening before he went on duty. Janina. Young, pretty, everyday made astounding by a pair of huge heavily fringed mahogany eyes and a thick, roughly halved mane of hair the midnight side of brown. His heart and libido did the same damn telltale hop-skip-and-pucker it’d done any time he’d wound up in her vicinity lately. Damn because at maybe sixteen and still in high school Janina was jailbait. Still she was a cute little thing. He hoped her future would be more attractive than her present appeared to be.

“I don’t get involved,” Janina’s mother recalled his attention by saying, “but this time it’s bad, worse’n I ever heard. Hadda call, y’know? Lotta bangin’ around—someone gettin’ hit, like. Body hittin’ walls, furniture bustin’ ’n all. Then I hear her scream and she runs out the house all bloody. Her brother runs out after, drags her back in. Their old man’s waitin’ for ’em in the door, hits her good in the stomach ’afore he and the boy throw her inside an’ it sounds like they start goin’ on her again.”

Russ flicked a glance at the teenager who nodded slightly in frightened confirmation. Russ’s mouth thinned. Nobody’s kid should have to live in a place like this.

No woman of any age should have to live here, either.

Once again his attention stuttered. His libido loosed its hold on him, turned over to his youthful heart. One regulation-clad foot slid him protectively nearer to the screened door and the young woman inside the trailer. Her eyes flared at the movement, lit with something akin to…

Welcome, worship, recognition…

Skittishness.

And more insight than he wanted her to possess.

Russ felt his Adam’s apple bob, his sliding foot stammer and slip back where it belonged: under his control, no longer betraying him.

Or his seditious heart.

Deliberately he returned his attention to the mother. She put the cigarette between her lips and dragged hard. “Little while later I hear this sound, pop-pop, like that. Then it comes again, pop-pop, an’ I see the old man run out the door lookin’ like he don’t believe what happened. I see he’s been shot, ’cuz he’s bleedin’ down the side of his head somethin’ fierce. Don’t slow ’im down none, though. He just gets in that old car ’a theirs an’ takes off. All the while I hear this pop-pop-pop-pop goin’ off over there. Then it went all quiet. That’s when I called you.”

The demon of Russ’s temper battered his temples, demanding release from the cage in which he kept it. He short-chained it to the floor. “You waited until after to call?”

The woman nodded. “Seemed safest.” She cast a suddenly wise glance over Russ that seemed to take in his youth and his lack of backup. “Fer ever’body.”

Except the woman in that trailer, he wanted to snap at her. But didn’t. Instead he asked, “There was only the three of them in there?”

She nodded again. “Far as I can tell. Three of ’em’s all there ever is—’cept when they bring in paid company t’bang on that girl. Wasn’t none of that today though.”

“And you haven’t heard anything more from inside?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know their names?”

The woman shrugged. “Ever’body knows ’em ’roun’ here. Girl’s kinda the local hooker. Her daddy an’ her brother bring guys to her. Don’t think she likes it none, but she ain’t got much choice. Name’s Maddie Thorn, her brother’s Harold, daddy’s Charlie—”

“Damn.” At Maddie’s name, Russ yanked his handie-talkie off his shoulder and radioed for help, crossed the street and unholstered his gun before crashing through his former high-school classmate’s—his best friend’s, his prom date’s—front door.

And damn her to hell for not asking him for help.

As Russ crossed the narrow street, Janina Gálvez flew across the room to lift her absent father’s ever-loaded Winchester down from its rack on the wall. Weapon in hand, oblivious to her mother’s weak protests, she fled out the far door to carefully work her way around the edge of the trailer.

She wasn’t stupid. She kept to the shadows behind the propane tank and beneath the awnings as much as possible. She knew how to handle herself and her daddy’s gun and she really couldn’t let that boy-cop go out there alone. She just couldn’t. If anything happened to him, she wasn’t sure she could bear it. Not when she’d only just made up her mind three weeks ago that the instant she could, she intended to marry one rookie police officer named Russ Levoie, the most wonderfully gorgeous hero she’d ever laid eyes on. And if he got himself killed trying to save Maddie Thorn again, why she’d…

Janina swallowed. She didn’t know what she’d do. The only thing she was certain of was that she intended to save the taciturn hero from himself for herself.

Period.

Chapter 1

Winslow, Arizona

July 17. 7:00 p.m. Present

He lived like a freaking monk.

Frustrated and furious with himself because of it, Russ Levoie slammed through the door of his trailer, causing it to bounce on its hinges. For the first time in his thirty-two years he was really sitting up and taking notice of all the things he’d never done, didn’t have in his life.

What he noticed most was that he was damn-it-to-hell lonely in a way he’d never felt before.

All because of his brothers and their wives.

Damn them and bless them.

Jamming a fist through what there was of his neatly trimmed hair, Russ made his way to the refrigerator, yanked it open and grabbed a beer. For an instant he studied the unopened can, then loosed a virulent oath and threw the brew the length of the neat-as-a-pin trailer. The can burst against the far wall, spewing beer floor to ceiling, and spraying the sofa he spent most nights sleeping on—alone, always alone—as well as the table and chair beside it.

“Damn.”

He viewed the mess tiredly. He rarely lost his temper, and certainly not like this. Not that he didn’t have one. No, he had a decided temper. He’d simply learned young that allowing it to have its way with him tended to frighten people and got him nowhere.

Of course, holding it in check all the time wasn’t necessarily the best alternative, either.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness. His elderly sixth-grade teacher, Sister Ann Henry, niggled across his memory. Turning, Russ grabbed a couple of rags and a bottle of spray cleaner from under the kitchen sink, strode across the trailer and began to mop the beer off the industrial-grade tile flooring he’d put down a year ago.

Judas-stinking-Billy-goats, he was envious of his brothers. Shoving air between his teeth in disgust, Russ caught up the exploded beer can, drained what remained of the beer in a long swallow then angled his body to pitch the can the length of the trailer. The can bull’s-eyed the kitchen sink, clattered briefly about the stainless-steel sides and settled. He grimaced. He hadn’t been a three-letter jock in high school for nothin’.

Tiredly he turned back to the job at hand. He’d never before envied his brothers anything. Guy, Jeth and Jonah were all younger than him and there’d never been anything they’d had that he’d wanted. Sure, he’d occasionally wished he could be as laid-back about life as Guy, and once, he’d wished for a little of Jeth’s recklessness, but he didn’t remember ever wishing for a bite of Jonah’s loose-cannon hotheadedness. He had enough of that commodity of his own to worry about.

Not that he let anybody see it. Hell, you couldn’t be a hothead and maintain your cool as one of only two local police lieutenants.

But his lack of sibling envy had been before Jeth and Guy had gone off and found themselves wives.

Russ moved up to scrub the wall paneling. He’d known before he’d gone out tonight that he should never have agreed to have dinner with the lot of them. He’d needed tonight’s guys-only annual blowout, dammit, but not the way Guy and Jeth had set up this particular so-called remembrance day.

He never liked remembering what had happened thirteen years ago today, what he’d walked into the middle of in that trailer. So much blood, the terrible disfigurement Maddie had suffered—the nightmares that hadn’t ended there but begun. But this year was worse than most. This year he’d had to go tell his best friend that her psychopathically abusive, pedophile of a father had been released from prison and was looking for her. She’d spent the past twelve years learning to feel safe for the first time in her life, learning to have a life at all, because Russ had assured her Charlie would be permanently incarcerated for the things he’d done to her. And now he wasn’t. Because Russ had missed one parole hearing in twelve years and the psychologists and psychiatrists had gotten their way.

But of course, he couldn’t back out on his family. They’d expected him. They’d done the bar thing for him tonight. Instead of it just being Guy, Jeth, him and a rip-roaring drunk to the destruction they too often saw on the job, they’d all been there, including Jonah and their brilliant oldest sister, Mabel, who hated boredom, dabbled in herbs and did investigative work for the state’s forensics crime lab when she wasn’t needed elsewhere. Including Jeth’s glowing-with-new-pregnancy wife, Allyn—now teaching marine paleontology for the University of Arizona in the field at her grant-approved study site not far from Havasu Falls—and Guy’s nearing-delivery pregnant wife, Hazel. Even his youngest brother, Jonah, the newest addition to the Levoie law enforcement legacy, was present. The only one of his siblings who was missing was the youngest, Marcy, killed on this date several years ago during a kidnapping gone wrong on Jeth’s watch. It had taken them all a long time to get over that one, Jeth especially, and then only with Allyn’s help.

Russ knew Marcy’s murder at age ten was part and parcel of what ruled him now where his life on the job was concerned, this annual drunk he and his peace officer brothers went on “in memory” of both their baby sister and the piece of his soul Russ had lost on this same date thirteen years ago when he’d burst into Maddie’s trailer and seen for the first time what her father and brother had been doing to her for years.

Life was not always as easy as it seemed in a small town, especially for a cop whose best friend was both abuse victim and whore. Suspicion followed one like gossip, and these annual nights out with his brothers were a lifeline he needed to keep him sane, grounded—and also, sometimes, to keep him from thinking too much.

Thank God they’d left Guy and Hazel’s adolescent daughter, Emily, and Jeth and Allyn’s almost-four-year-old son, Sasha, at home. If they’d brought the kids, too…

It would be one thing if he envied his brothers the love they’d found or their subsequent happiness, but he didn’t. No, his envy was far more complicated than that.

What he envied was their contentment.

With a snort of self-derision, Russ gave the wall a final swipe and returned the rag and spray to the kitchen. The blinking red light on the counter caught his eye. He punched the button to listen to his messages. A reminder about a meeting in Gallup scheduled for the following morning. A suspiciously timed call from his mother telling him she hadn’t heard from him in too long. A circumspectly inquiring message from Jeth and a follow-up one from Guy, neither of whom had missed the tension vibrating through him by the time he’d left the restaurant.

And finally a voice almost too deep and husky to be feminine, though it was: Maddie. His best friend since as long as he could remember, his first adolescent crush, his prom date—and the child-girl-woman he’d spent most of his life trying to rescue and protect from more horrors than he cared to remember.

Maddie Thorn, who’d been abused unmercifully by her father, before he had finally attempted to kill her that night thirteen years ago…

“Russ?”

She sounded edgy, as though she looked over her shoulder while she spoke. Not at all the way she’d sounded three weeks ago when he’d let her know that her father was going to be released from prison early because the psychologists and psychiatrists who’d been working with him thought he was rehabilitated enough—medicated enough—to walk about in polite society again despite his track record as being, well, not.

Russ, who’d seen the man over the years, listened to his rambling assertions on having found religion and wanting to set things right with his daughter, had told Maddie that Charlie might be looking for her. Maddie, truly and completely happy for the first time in her life and with other things on her mind, had more or less blown him off.

And now here she was, exactly as he’d known—as he’d felt, with that strange extra sense with which he’d been gifted, with what his brothers called his spider sense—she’d be.

“God, Russ, where are you? I need to see you. You were right about him. He found me. He said you—” She broke off suddenly. He heard her breathing, raggedly. Afraid. “No,” she whispered, though not directly into the phone. “Oh God, no. He can’t have. He couldn’t—no.” Then a deep, steadying breath and more strongly, firmly, “No!” And into the phone again, “I have to go. But God, Russ, please. Be there. Please.”

The receiver on the other end of the line clattered into place hard, and Russ’s machine beeped once and announced, “End of messages.”

Russ could only stare at the message light for a moment. He’d come in not quite thinking about her, his heart on Janina—the woman he’d wanted across almost every single hot cup of coffee she’d served him for the past thirteen years—and the current Maddie-involved reasons he’d yet to act on his longings for her.

And here Maddie was calling him.

Needing help again.

Palms flat on the counter to hold himself erect, he gave her call for help some thought. Whispered “screw it” to the cupboards because he knew there was no way he’d ever walk away from Maddie, no matter what happened.

Maddie had been a different person when they were younger, a messed-up abuse case beyond what even he’d realized at that time. And he’d been the only friend, only person, to see her, know her and love her for who she was.

And now she’d gotten herself together and found Jess, the life partner who made her happy and…

Now this.

All of this.

Her father out of prison and looking for…something. Revenge, maybe. Reconciliation, he’d said, but Russ didn’t believe that for an instant. The cop’s gut in him crawled, remembering Charlie’s eyes. The man in him, the friend, simply unhooked the chain that held his temper and withdrew any pretext of masking the savage within the trappings of civilization should Charlie get too close, legally released from prison or not.

Russ rubbed his hands hard across his eyes. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Because as well as he understood Maddie, as good as he was at working with wounded females, he was no damn good at emotions, or at figuring them out. Not his own, and not women’s. Particularly not while Maddie needed rescuing by him yet again, and Janina—who constantly tortured his dreams—seemed to him about as obtainable as the moon.

Always had been, truth be known.

Emotions. Geez-oh-Pete. God save him from female best friends, who pulled themselves out of hell by their toenails when offered the slimmest of chances, feminine soul mates with nerves of steel and hearts of gold and courage as raw as anything he’d ever seen—yeah, Janina thought he didn’t know about her shadowing him that night thirteen years ago, right? Wrong!—and freaking, obfuscating emotions.

With an oath, Russ turned his back on the kitchen and headed for the small room at the back of the trailer that should have been his bedroom but was now where he kept his silversmithing and lapidary equipment. He opened the heavy safe he kept there, withdrew the envelope he’d placed inside six months prior and emptied its contents into his hand. It was a sort of Guinevere-style ring he’d designed in platinum with a single large not-quite-square piece of green Baltic amber canted diamondwise in the center and offset by a small but exquisitely cut and flawless diamond at each of the amber’s points. The wedding ring lay heavy in his palm, spoke to him of plans and cowardice, a life lived in faux courage.

Oh, he could take down bad guys, face bullets, walk into domestic quarrels, go through fire with the best of ’em—hell, he’d even had enough chutzpah, damn it, to make her a ring—but put him in front of Janina and say anything remotely having to do with a you and me—a we—and ha! It came out sounding like, “I’ll have today’s special and coffee.”

Dating was simply beyond his limited verbal capabilities.

Russ started to drop the ring back into its envelope, putting Janina away for another time once again in favor of seeing what he could do to help Maddie, always Maddie. Suddenly he felt the hair on his neck stand up and stopped, hand poised.

Even before the knock came low on his screen door he knew Maddie was there.

Nerves alight, he shoved Janina’s ring into his pocket and went to push open the door.

“Hey, Maddie,” he said quietly, and stepped aside to let her in.

“Hey yourself.” She crossed the threshold with a shaky laugh.

Then she flung herself forward, threw her arms around his neck and hung on for dear life.

Without further thought, he folded his arms around her and held on tight.

No matter how hard she worked at it, no matter how disgusted she got with herself, nor how unrequited she knew her feelings were, every time she saw Russ Levoie, Janina Gálvez Carmichael fell smack-dab right back head over heart over heels in love with him again.

Had ever since the first time he’d walked into the Fat Cat Diner thirteen years ago when she was a sixteen-year-old waitress and he was a fresh-from-the-academy rookie working his first evening shift for the Winslow P.D.

It still happened now that she was a twenty-nine-year-old working-her-way-through-college-a-class-at-a-time waitress who’d been around the block a few times and who damn well knew better than to fall for a guy who carried a torch for someone else and who wasn’t going to budge from that path no matter what.

The idiot.

Him and her. Meaning not only her as in herself, Janina Gálvez Carmichael, but as in her, that blasted Maddie Thorn that Russ couldn’t seem to let go of long enough to notice the girl with the heart-on-her-sleeve look who’d served him coffee, flirtation, offhand friendship, advice and good humor almost every day of the week for the last thirteen years.

Geez, what a fool.

Both of them.

No, make that all of them, because though she seemed to count on his friendship like a lifeline, Maddie’d never really given in to Russ in a one-on-one love-me-tender-and-forever way, either. Which was pretty damn stupid of her, in Janina’s oft-considered and far-less-than-humble opinion.

Fuming, Janina watched Russ seat himself and the ice-cool Sharon Stone look-alike, wearing the expensively cut slim white designer sheath, at his usual back booth. His concern for the beautifully coiffed and manicured blonde was plain, spelled out something subtle to the green-eyed monster Janina knew she wasn’t entitled to harbor yet harbored anyway. Maddie’d had to scrape and scrap hard to pull herself out of the hell she’d grown up in, Janina knew that. Once Maddie had made her own way through beauty school—with Russ’s help, damn it!—she’d gotten a job, worked hard, paid him back and she was now one of the most sought-after stylists in Phoenix.

And that was not to mention the time Janina knew Maddie put in at a couple of Phoenix battered women’s shelters doing corrective makeup and makeovers for girls and women trying to get out of situations similar to her own past.

Janina also knew that Russ never brought women into the diner. In fact, she’d never seen him out with anyone other than his brothers or other cops unless it was in a crowded social situation like a community barbecue. And even then he never paid particular attention to anyone special.

Especially not to her, Janina Carmichael née Gálvez—and chalk that married name change up to one truly witless mistake. Damn it.

On all counts.

She grimaced wryly at herself in the revolving dessert-display cooler mirror. Russ was thirty-two years old, for pity’s sake. He had a life, presumably. She didn’t own him, more was the pity. And other than the little time they spent flirting when she waited on him, Russ probably barely thought of her or remembered she was alive.

Another glance at Maddie Thorn made Janina growl unintentionally under her breath.

A half snort, half chuckle at her shoulder made her catch herself, realize what she was doing and redden. In self-defense she snatched up a pot of coffee and a rag, preparing to head over to the table to greet Russ and his…

Guest.

“Don’t say anything,” she said without looking back.

“He’s got a friend tonight,” Tobi Hosey observed, ignoring her. Tobi usually ignored Janina when Janina wanted Tobi to say nothing. It was the basis of their friendship. Tobi spoke her mind regardless of the tact involved and Janina swallowed it and spoke her own back, no baloney involved. Which meant they each had someone who’d laugh at their bouts of temperamental stupidity.

Which was exactly what Tobi was doing now.

Which was exactly what Tobi did each and every time Russ came in and left without Janina saying one word to him about going to a movie or dinner or anything else that resembled something that might turn out to be romantic or relationship-developing—or that might at least get him home and into Janina’s bed. Because they both knew that Russ Levoie did not do casual in any way, shape or form. Hell, the creases in his uniform and even his jeans were knife-edged. Of course he didn’t do casual—any kind of casual. And if you wanted confirmation, all you had to do was ask his brothers.

Janina and Tobi had each, in fact, casually dated—as in “hung out with” not “bedded”—all three of Russ’s younger siblings. And enjoyed themselves tremendously in the process. But Janina really wasn’t interested in casual dating anymore. She was interested in Russ, pretty much constantly, nonstop.

But there had been moments in her life when she got intensely, out-of-control lonely and had to do what she had to do to keep her sanity intact. These were past tense, of course. Still, they’d led to the smart-girl-doing-stupid-things someone had written the book about.

Like letting herself be flattered into her first romantic relationship with and then marrying that good-for-nothing bruiser Buddy Carmichael a couple years after high school just because she thought she’d finally gotten over Russ, lost her mind and fallen for Buddy, let him have her virginity and then thought he’d gotten her pregnant.

Which would have been a mistake of gargantuan proportions even if he had, which he hadn’t. Because not only had she not been pregnant, but Big Man on Northland Pioneer College’s Campus, Buddy Carmichael, had turned out to be a drinking-man’s wife beater with friends in high places and an ability to manipulate the system to his own ends.

And so much for doing what some desperate mutation of yourself thought you had to do to keep yourself from being lonely!

After the Buddy idiocy Janina had started hanging out with Russ’s brothers, almost exclusively. They were fun and they didn’t stray beyond boundaries they all knew existed but none of them mentioned.

True, they weren’t Russ by a long shot, but they shared minor similarities and were a fairly safe substitute for, not to mention a good source of information on, the real thing.

Foolish, but there she was.

Head high in refusal to succumb to the truly moronic things she knew about herself, Janina slung a pair of brown coffee mugs from a finger and sashayed out from behind the counter, hips swinging in her best “I don’t give a damn what you’re doing or with whom, Russ Levoie” style.

Not that he’d get it, but that wasn’t the point.

At least not entirely.

“Damn the torpedoes,” Tobi suggested helpfully, grinning.

“Shut up,” Janina retorted and, head high, huffed off.

“I don’t know how I can help you, Maddie,” Janina heard Russ say as she approached. She watched him run a hand over the back of his freshly shorn neck in a gesture of frustration with which she was all too familiar. He accepted responsibility for the world, and when the world didn’t cooperate, it got to him. “It’s not like—”

“I know you don’t have jurisdiction, Russ,” Maddie said, not quite able to keep the panic out of her voice. “I just thought maybe…” She swallowed, drew herself together. “Hoped maybe there’d be something…” Her voice trailed off.

Janina paused, watching.

Maddie’s face grew shuttered, her troubled hazel eyes clouded, and the perfect bow mouth took on the edgy shape of self-derision. “I don’t know what I hoped. Aside from—from…” She swallowed convulsively, clenched her fists and looked away, at the table, at the window, anywhere but at him. “Aside from the other stuff…m-my fath—Charlie getting out an-and coming for me…” She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Shrugged. “Other than that, I dunno. Maybe I hoped partly that you’d changed your mind about what I asked you. Or something.”

She looked at him, suddenly in command of herself again. “I’m sorry, this was stupid. What am I thinking? You’d think I’d have learned how to rescue myself by now, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe not from this,” he said quietly then eyed her directly, hard. “But is that what you’re here looking for, Maddie? A knight-in-shining?”

Maddie laughed without humor. “Wouldn’t that be a kick if I were. Why? You looking to joust windmills again, Russ?”

Russ shrugged. “We all need a little rescuing once in a while.”

“Even you?”

“Not by you, Maddie.” The comment was terse, accompanied by an unconscious, half-reflexive glance that skimmed the room and brought his gaze to rest for half a second on Janina.

She stopped dead in her tracks. He needed to be rescued, but not by Maddie. Not by Maddie! And he’d looked at her—her, Janina!—when he said it. So he did notice her—maybe. If she was reading correctly the signals he might not even be aware he was sending.

A frisson of—Janina wasn’t sure what—shimmied down her spine. Fear and anticipation, caution and recklessness, pure unadulterated and exhilarating hope.

In less than a heartbeat, hope changed the “I don’t give a damn” swing of her hips into a “come-hither” sway-and-roll, turned her step into a glide, sparkled her eyes, instinctively curved her mouth into its most welcoming and flirtatious “hey-how-you-doin’” smile, and focused her entire attention on Russ.

In just longer than that same heartbeat, and seemingly from out of nowhere, a large, booted foot shot out and tripped her, sent her sliding and sprawling across an empty table that tipped and dumped her, the burning-hot coffee, the mugs and the chair she smashed into, crashing to the floor.

Somewhere off to the right the air filled with raucous, full-bellied, hatefully familiar, cruelly delighted laughter surrounded by shocked silence.

Half-stunned, Janina lay in the middle of the mess, feeling the bruises gather and the coffee scald its way through her skimpy pink uniform. She couldn’t quite find her right wrist, and the left fingers that had carried the coffee mugs felt pinched and a trifle slick.

The spiteful laughter lasted for less than a moment longer before Russ jerked Buddy Carmichael out of his seat by the throat, slammed him backward into the wall, tripped him face-first onto the floor beside his ex-wife and handcuffed his beefy wrists behind him.

Oblivious of her expensive white designer sheath, Maddie knelt amid the debris beside Janina and gently began to feel for broken bones. Tobi arrived at Janina’s other side almost simultaneously to do the same.

Not far from Janina’s face, Russ gripped a hank of Buddy’s hair and lifted his head, forcing him to look at Janina. “This what you think’s funny, man?” Fury tightened Russ’s voice to a whip crack. “Seriously, man, you find this funny?”

Apparently unaware of who had him pinned, Buddy sneered, unrepentant. “Yeah.”

Russ dragged Buddy up farther, hard, by the hair. “What?”

Buddy’s smirk wavered hardly at all. “Yeah—sir.”

The chains on Russ’s temper seemed to snap. Even as the rolling whoop of sirens filled the air outside the diner, he dropped Buddy’s face onto the floor and hauled him up for another go.

Suddenly, Buddy was neither cocky nor smirking. He also no longer found what he’d done to Janina funny, and croaked that to Russ through bruised and bleeding lips. Hardly satisfied, but knowing it was the best he’d get, Russ removed his knee from between Buddy’s shoulder blades, released the man’s hair, jerked a nod in his brother Jonah’s direction as he came into the café and moved to squat beside Janina.

Casting a wry look at his oldest—and tallest—brother, young officer Levoie went to collect Russ’s prisoner.

Gently, Russ touched Janina’s cheek. “How you doin’?”

She tried a wobbly smile on for size. The man had reduced her ex to pulp for her, for her, the least she could do was smile at him and say thank-you. Because no one had ever done that for her before, had ever even tried to rescue her.

Janina blinked. Her eyes watered and tears spilled. Russ stroked her cheek and she’d never known a man’s hand to feel so gentle, so calm, when less than two minutes ago he’d been Buddy’s terror from hell. Why had she never asked him for help when she’d been married and needed it? He’d have given it. But she hadn’t asked because she hadn’t wanted Russ Levoie, of all people, to know how stupid she’d been over a man who wasn’t him.

“Hey,” Russ whispered, spotting her tears. He pulled a clean hankie out of his back pocket and blotted her cheeks awkwardly. “It’s okay. You’re okay now. We’ve got you, Janie. You’ll be okay. It’s only friends here now.”

It’s only friends here now.

The problem exactly. Because of all the people in the world with whom Janina didn’t want to be “only friends,” Russ Levoie was at the top of the list and had been for the better part of a baker’s dozen years now.

Unable to contain her multihued emotions, Janina let the sobs loose. Without thought, Russ sat down on the floor, carefully gathered her into his arms and held her close while the EMTs checked her over and Janina cried into his chest.

Chapter 2

July 18

Janina stood in front of her closet and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror.

“Very attractive,” she muttered, taking in the fuzzy, yellow Woodstock-the-bird slippers on her feet, the overly warm plaid flannel magenta pajama bottoms, the Remember 9/11-2001 emblazoned in navy and white on red alongside the U.S. flag on her ragged-edged, oft-worn, long-sleeved gray T-shirt, the bright turquoise Ace-wrap peeking out from the pushed-up sleeve on her right wrist and forearm that protected the slight sprain to her wrist, and the green tape wrapping the stitched-up fingers on her left hand. “Absolutely blasted ducky brilliant.”

She studied her face, the small, relatively minor bruising below the eye on her right cheek and beside it the butterfly bandage where she hadn’t needed stitches to close a laceration. Then she examined the lumpiness on her upper lip where it had taken a plastic surgeon a surprising number of stitches to close the small but deep cut inside. “You look stinking beautiful. No wonder he had to leave. Sheesh.”

Or rather, sheesh and damn. Because the reason Russ had given for leaving after he’d brought Janina home from the hospital three hours ago was so he could see Maddie home.

Maddie, who’d refused to leave Janina’s—or Russ’s—side and tagged along to the hospital with Tobi while Russ rode the back of the ambulance with Janina.

Maddie, with whom Russ had been in love since he’d been, oh, six. And twelve. And sixteen. And forever.

Maddie, who lived in Phoenix, which was in the neighborhood of one hundred and eighty miles away.

Seeing her home. Yeah, right. His trailer home maybe. Where he didn’t take anybody.

Which she knew because Jonah had told her.

Janina fumed.

Then she eyed herself in the mirror again, stuck out her tongue at her reflection and decided to act. Because by the time Russ had brought Janina back to the apartment she shared with Tobi, Jonah had turned up to see Maddie off to wherever. Right?

Right. So Russ had gone home by himself after all.

Groggy or not at the time, Janina had made a clear note of that smidgen of information. Which meant that whatever Russ had said when he’d left, it was an excuse, pure and simple, a means to leave her alone to…

Get some sleep and recover from her ordeal, let’s say.

She tried to purse her lips—a painful move—and considered that thought. As thoughts went it had real merit, showed tremendous consideration by him for her welfare and boded well for her desire for a relationship with him.

And it had absolutely no Maddie in it.

Especially, no Maddie and Russ. As in together, paired up, in the same place, where there might be a bed.

Janina breathed out, an action of both decision and courage, and took the thought a step further. Actually, she took it several steps and a leap of faith further.

She might have a slightly sprained wrist and be on mild painkillers, but she was sober, she hadn’t been told not to drive and Tobi was asleep. Right?

Right.

So, darn it, she was going to see him. Russ, not Jonah.

Now.

Because clearly though he was the kind of guy who might want a girl—she hadn’t imagined the look he’d sent her tonight right before Buddy had tripped her—but he was also the kind of guy who was damn s-l-o-w about getting to what he wanted. So if the girl had mutual feelings for him, then she’d better do something about it herself.

Like go and attack him, or at least throw herself at him and tell him exactly what she wanted of him. And how often. And for how long. And maybe, while she was at it, say something about forever. With him.

Or something like that.

Oh, geez. Janina covered her face with her left hand—gingerly. Maybe she shouldn’t drive, she thought. She wasn’t making sense anymore, even to herself.

She checked on Tobi to be sure her roommate was sleeping then got dressed anyway, makeup and all, then found her keys and purse, and headed out to find Russ.

Two cars were parked outside of Russ’s trailer, one of which was Maddie’s—Janina swallowed jealousy—but neither of which was his.

Surprised, she pulled over to the side of the road and studied the darkened trailer. She was pretty sure she knew everyone Russ knew, knew their vehicles, or so she thought. If Maddie was inside, where was Russ?

Hope sang through her in a low thrum. Maddie was inside and Russ’s car wasn’t there. Somebody else’s was.

Janina’s mouth trembled. She almost smiled. Almost.

She wanted to. But she was afraid.

A Winslow police cruiser coasted up beside her car, startling her. Janina grabbed her heart, winced when her hands objected, then, recognizing Jonah, rolled down her window.

“You supposed to be out ’n about?” Russ’s not-so-babyish baby brother asked.

Janina looked at him. Lightning-quick onyx eyes set in a deceptively youthful native nutmeg face stared back. As usual, Jonah’s straight ebony hair stood on end because of his constant need to do something with his hands, attesting to the lack of stillness that was both his strength and nemesis. Though he was shorter and slighter than his brothers, his slim, wiry body made him quicker than any of them, had stood him in good stead as a wrestler in both high school and through the academy. Didn’t matter the size of the prisoner he put a hold on, if Jonah Levoie didn’t want to let someone go, they stayed held on to.

“Fine,” Jonah said. “Let me rephrase. You’re looking mighty dressed to kill for someone who maybe oughta be home in bed. You stalkin’ my head-case brother?”

Janina blinked. She’d handled Jonah before. He was merely an outspoken, sometimes arrogant, frequently youthful hothead. Silence on her part would trip him over his tongue sooner than byplay.

Jonah sighed. “I ask because if you were stalkin’ him and if he was here, I’d open the door for you because I think he could use a good dose of takin’ care of you right now, and vice versa. Get Maddie out of his system but good. But since he’s not here and I dunno why he asked me to run extra patrols past his place tonight, I can’t do that.”

“Where is he?” The question was out before Janina could stop it.

Jonah grinned. “Knew you were interested.”

Janina, the would-be grown-up of the two of them, stuck her tongue out at Russ’s baby brother.

Jonah laughed. “Can’t hide, Janie. You’ve been hot for him since before I knew you. The only reason you went out with me was to get closer to him.”

“Not true,” Janina protested far too vehemently and transparently. “But a girl can’t sit around all her life waiting for Russ Levoie to get it into his head to ask her for a date.”

The mild painkillers must have made her tongue looser and her head muzzier than she’d realized. “And if you tell anybody I said that…”

Jonah didn’t laugh. He smiled slightly and nodded, two months to twenty-five and grown-up for a change. “Mum,” he said. “Heard nothin’. But…”

Janina glared at him. He grinned slightly and shook his head.

“Nope, no strings. Just thought I’d mention I think I saw Russ’s car parked down at the Bloated Boar an hour ago. My guess, I’m gonna get a call to haul him out of there in about twenty minutes. He’ll be on his feet, but he won’t be drivin’ anymore tonight. And…” He hesitated, looked Janina over as though making a judgment call. Shrugged and gave it up. “He’ll need a place to stay because he said he won’t be stayin’ here.”

Janina’s breath flipped in her lungs, and her heart hit the back of her throat. Something in the early-morning air made her unaccountably dizzy. “He will?” she said.

Jonah nodded. “Yeah. And he took tomorrow off.”

“Oh.” Janina swallowed. Fear, anticipation, excitement, hope, nerves—readiness. “Thanks.” I think.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Jonah muttered almost too low for her to hear.

Hands tense on the steering wheel—she needed to hang on tight to something right now—she watched Jonah sketch her a two-finger salute and peel his cruiser into a tight U-turn, returning to his third-shift prowl. Then trying not to wonder what Jonah had meant by his last cryptic remark, Janina, too, pulled back onto the road and made tracks toward the Bloated Boar Saloon.

The Bloated Boar Saloon.

July 18, 3:17 a.m.

Nothing and everything about the Bloated Boar was unique.

Situated off a dirt track in the middle of nowhere and a goodly distance from anywhere else, the Bloated Boar boasted a badly taxidermied mascot protected behind a scarred, bulletproof Plexiglas shield below the carved sign that bore the saloon’s name. The shield was bulletproofed because of weekend revelers intent on trying their luck at taking out the mascot’s shiny glass eyes.

Contrary to the stories they put out, the owners did not hail from London or anyplace resembling it, but had once had a great-aunt who was an Anglophile and who’d willed them enough money to open the Bloated Boar if they called it the Bloated Boar, decorated it to her specifications and gave it the legend she wrote for it. Tall-tale-tellin’ Texans, the lot of ’em, they’d willingly complied with the great-aunt’s request, and the Bloated Boar was now in its third generation of fake Cockney-accented or East End-accented Texans.

At various hours of the day the saloon was peopled with busty serving wenches and unsavory-looking serving pirates. There was also a full-figured barmaid who often chose to dress the part and a six-foot-six-inch ruddy-cheeked swallow-tender barman who also acted as the saloon’s bouncer.

Any number of colorful “plants” among the customers added to the atmosphere when tourists—who found the out-of-the-way place in surprising numbers—were present. Janina knew the place well as it was a favorite haunt among the locals, too. The Boar opened at 7:00 a.m. for breakfast and closed only briefly twenty-one hours later. The food was good and plentiful, the drinks ran freely, and it was a rowdy place in which to have a good time.

And for the life of her, Janina couldn’t believe Jonah had sent her to find Russ there. She’d have bet money that the overly intense Russ Levoie didn’t believe in rowdy good times, or relaxing good times, or maybe even just simple good times, come to that. She wasn’t even sure he knew how to relax and have a good time. Janina wheeled her vintage Chevy wagon into the Bloated Boar’s parking lot. Sure enough, parked well away from the scarred display box and sign sat Russ’s immaculate white Jimmy. Though a classic with a removable hard top and hardly new, the vehicle always managed to look it, despite the rough and dusty country Russ drove it through. Spoke to the man’s character, Janina was pretty sure.

She simply found an empty parking place, took a deep breath, released her seat belt as she exhaled, and launched herself on her search for Russ.

He was difficult to find in the dim light, despite the waning number of patrons left inside the pub. When she did spot him, Janina nearly dropped her charmingly crooked teeth in astonishment. Because there was Russ Levoie as she’d never thought to see him: relaxed, a pint mug of dark ale in one hand, head thrown back in laughter, with one of the lustier-looking saloon waitresses perched on his knee.

Janina saw green at once. Green-eyed monsters, green-eyed fury, a murky, jealous green haze. She also felt green moths floating in her stomach and a hot green fire roiling up through her veins. The bastard’s brother had thought he might be drunk, but if this was what it took to get him to pay attention to a woman…!

Then Janina remembered who the man she’d long wanted—forever longed for—was, who the Russ Levoie she knew was.

Swallowing hard, she made herself locate his other hand. Sure enough, it was curled loosely in a fist on the table and nowhere near the girl, who shoved herself out of his lap with apparent regret and offered him a slip of paper. He shook his head. The waitress pressed what must have been her phone number on him anyway, bending forward and tucking the bit of paper into the left front pocket of his shirt.

Janina watched something flicker across Russ’s face, not quite regret, less than revulsion, a jaw-tightening away from awkwardness, then it was gone. His lips twisted, a travesty of a smile to someone who knew him at all. The waitress twitched her hips at him as she walked away. Russ blinked and grimaced at the woman’s departure, and downed his drink in a long gulp.

Janina breathed deep and went to the bar to order two large dark beers. God help her, she was stupid when it came to Russ. She should have tackled him the way she’d done everything else in her life: head-on and face-first and a long time ago. Then she’d have known one way or another about that long-standing “if,” and she wouldn’t be standing here worrying about whether or not she had a shot with Russ. Plus, she wouldn’t be jealous over nothing if she didn’t have a chance with him.

Well, maybe she would, but then there’d be a reason for it, instead of this nebulous sensation of “get away from him, he’s mine” when actually he wasn’t. Yet. Or maybe ever.

No, she told herself firmly. Yet. Yet. Yet. Yet.

Be careful what you wish for, Tobi’s demon whispered in her ear.

“Go to hell.” Janina barely moved her lips but the barmaid eyed her askance. Janina tried a grimace, winced when the stitches pulled and shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”

The barmaid grinned. “Bet I do.”

Janina shook her head. “Trust me.”

“You got it for that one?” The woman lifted her chin in Russ’s direction while she pulled Janina’s beers.

“Mmm.” Janina sighed. “Obvious?”

“Only to someone who reads the signs.” Another flashing grin from the woman tending bar. “Good luck. He’s waitin’ on something. Though he doesn’t seem to know what. Won’t cotton to anybody here, fact. Most of the girls have tried.”

“They have? He won’t?” Hope soared. She gave the barmaid a crooked smile. “Thanks. I feel like I’m in seventh grade asking for info on the varsity quarterback.”

“Eh, s’okay.” The other woman shrugged and winked. “I was in seventh grade myself last night. Good to know I’m not there alone.” She nodded at Janina’s hands and face. “Wasn’t him did that to you, was it.” Not a question exactly.

Janina’s smile tumbled in her belly, felt tremulous on her mouth. “No. He saved me.”

The barmaid grinned happily, as though Janina had confirmed something she’d long thought—and hoped. “Don’t look like you can manage these. Why don’t you go sit. I’ll bring ’em over. I’m Shelley, by the way.”

“Janina.”

Sending Shelley a grateful smile, Janina did as she’d been told, preceding the woman across the room to slide onto the bench beside Russ even as the beers were placed on the table in front of him. He didn’t even glance up.

“Thanks, but I’m still not goin’ home with you, Marg,” Russ said slowly but firmly. His words didn’t slur, but he definitely sounded too comfortable to either be the real Russ Levoie or to be Russ Levoie sober. “Doesn’t matter how many drinks I have. Told you it wouldn’t be fair to either of us, I got somebody else on my mind.”

“And I’ll bet she said it didn’t matter to her whether you’ve got someone else on your mind or not, didn’t she?” Janina asked. She thought she heard a tinge of that green-eyed thing in her voice but she couldn’t be sure. If Maddie was the other person he had on his mind what the hell was she doing here?

“Janie?” Russ cocked his head and looked at her. “What’re you doin’ here? You’re supposed to be home takin’ care of yourself. I knew I should’ve come back and made sure you did.”

Damn straight, Janina agreed silently. Saved me a trip out.

“Couldn’t sit still,” she said aloud. “Needed company. Wish you had come back. I wanted to say thank-you. Anyway, I went out looking for you, and Jonah told me you might be here, so here I am.”

Russ smiled. “That’s good,” he said simply. “I’m glad. I wanted to see you, too, but I didn’t know how to ask and I didn’t want to wake you if you were sleepin’.”

Janie’s heart flipped, and knocked aside any common sense she might still have possessed. “Really?” she whispered, as shy as she would have been if he’d noticed her way back when, hero to her hero worshipper.

Inhibitions lowered by the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, Russ turned to look at her full on. His eyes were dark, smiling, full of promise. He reached up to trace the uninjured right side of her mouth with the tip of a forefinger in the lightest of caresses. “Oh, yeah,” he whispered, so close she could taste his breath on her lips, feel the heat of him on her skin, know the touch of him throughout her body by the single contact the pad of his finger made at the edge of her mouth. “Very much. Definitely.”

Janina’s eyes drifted closed. Opened. She had to watch him. She swallowed and her own mouth seemed to float gently closer to his yet not close enough. He played with her mouth without touching it, moving as though to nuzzle her smile, teasingly pulling his own mouth back until she thought she’d go mad, until she was breathless with laughter.

“Russ,” she murmured, “what are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never done this before. What am I doing?”

“What do you mean?” She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to think. She’d known being with Russ would be special and this was only a kiss, not even a kiss. “Please, Russ. You’re making me crazy. Are you going to kiss me? Please, Russ, kiss me.”

“Might.” His mouth came closer to hers and withdrew slightly. The tip of his forefinger drifted across her mouth, barely tracing the outer edge of her lips, finding the bruises, investigating more gently and carefully than she’d known it was possible for a man to touch a woman. “Don’t want to hurt you. You’ve been hurt too much. Never want it to be me who hurts you.”

The simplicity of libido fled in the face of something else entirely.

Startled senseless by the tenderness of touch and statement, Janina blinked. Her eyes burned with sudden emotion and a lump lodged tightly in her throat. The butterflies and moths that had been churning up her stomach suddenly fuzzed into warmth at the same time that the rest of her body became suffused with the loveliest sense of chills and confusion and warmth and safety and…

And a whole lot of something more. She blinked again. The world, made up of Russ’s face, swam before her eyes. The lump in her throat dissolved, and whatever toughness she’d developed through the years puddled in Russ Levoie’s hands. Tears ran down her face and collected along the lump at her lip.

“Oh, Russ.”

“What?” His surprise was the genuine surprise of a drunken man. The distress was a drunken man’s distress, too. Normally Russ knew exactly what to do with crying women—or seemed to. “Janie, don’t cry. I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Russ.” Laughter and wry despair mixed with the tears this time. Janina placed her less injured left hand against Russ’s chest. “You always know what to do.”

“Don’t.” He was thoroughly helpless.

She lifted her face, smiling, and snuggled into him because it seemed like the natural place to be. “Do.”

He turned toward her. His arms pulled her close, instinctively seemed to claim her, the same way he’d wrapped her up and taken her in earlier at the diner. “No, I don’t.” He bent his head to rub his cheek against hers. “Doesn’t matter though. I can learn. Just don’t let me hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me, Russ,” Janina whispered against his throat. “You can’t. It’s not in you.”

“I could,” Russ warned her honestly, enunciating each word with care. “If I wasn’t drunk I probably wouldn’t even be able to talk to you.”

Janina lifted her chin to look at him, gave him a slow, woman-for-her-man-only smile and nuzzled his jaw. “Then drink your beer,” she murmured suggestively, sliding the two not-taped fingers on her left hand inside between the buttons of his shirt. “And let’s go back to my place ’n see what we can do about making you comfortable enough to still be able to talk to me tomorrow.”

Chapter 3

They didn’t make it to Janina’s place.

Instead, Russ smiled his slow, sideways smile down at her and once again didn’t quite brush her mouth with his. Then he released her, downed half his beer, sauntered over to the big, old-fashioned jukebox, fed some coins into it and punched a few select buttons that he didn’t seem to have to look for.

Everything inside her, every nerve, every sense, every particle of her being zinged alert, alive, awake. As though she’d been sleeping every moment before in her life.

Awake.

Electricity charged through her, then exhilarated pulse points, titillated nerve endings, thrilled along her spine and laid a fuzzy, sizzling pool of restlessness in the small of her back.

Whatever leftover aches she had from her bruises fled and she blessed Buddy for unwittingly giving her a moment she’d never otherwise have had the courage to pursue.

Then Russ hooked a glance at her over his shoulder and all thought fled.

He stood in front of the jukebox for a long, drawn-out moment during which Janina’s heart felt as if it beat in some sort of slow-motion animated suspension. The pure masculine intent in the look he sent her snapped the suspension. Her heartbeat turned staccato, her breathing stuttered and the safety that had flooded her moments before fled, to be replaced by a flood of liquid heat, a sense of pure elation, a knowledge and anticipation of a danger she couldn’t wait to face. Want coursed through her veins, sang a tightening song through her lungs, pushed like wildfire into her belly.

He wanted her.

The rawness of what he wanted was written on his face. Her beneath him, her atop him, her around him. Her with him. Her.

And more than that, he needed her.

She read need in his eyes, on his face, and it wasn’t just anybody he needed. It was her, Janina.

Janina caught her breath and rose unsteadily to stand between the bench and the table. He was coming for her. Not Maddie. Not Marg. Not anybody else who’d offered or thrown herself at him.

For her.

Only.

She saw the “only” written on his face, too, and stopped breathing. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She couldn’t…

And then he was there, leaning down to grab his beer, draining what remained of it before he cupped his palms beneath her elbows and carefully lifted her out of her prison to stand in front of him.

“Liquid courage,” he said regretfully. “I’ll be sober in the morning. If I don’t do everything I’ve always wanted to ask you to do now, I may never get around to it again. Okay?”

She swallowed. “Okay?” It came out as a question because nothing in her life could have prepared her for the way he made her feel.

He grinned. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”

She laughed nervously. A teenager if ever she’d been one. “I know. It’s just…I’ve never seen you…like this.”

He shrugged. “I’m never like this. Sober, I don’t know how. Drunk, I don’t usually know how either. Tonight’s different. You make it different. You make me want to be different. You make it special.”

A startled glow went through Janina. She blushed for the first time in what felt like forever. Maybe it was. “I— I don’t know what to say. That’s good. Thank you. Both of them. You—I—”

The oh-so-gentle tip of Russ’s forefinger touched her mouth quiet. “Dance with me?”

“Yes.”

The one word was like magic. Just that quickly the outside fell away, she was in his arms and the music and Russ’s heartbeat were the only things she heard, felt, knew. “When a Man Loves a Woman,” she thought the song was, but couldn’t be sure because the rhythm of her heart keeping time with Russ’s was what she moved to, the feel of his body against hers was all the cue she needed. His hand drifted upward through her hair, his head bent to hers, his tall, muscular body stooped low to accommodate her shorter height and much softer curves. “Perfect” was the only word that came to mind when any word did, and even that single word was a wisp of smoke in the fog of the moment.

“Janie.” His breath was warm, moist against her neck, his whisper disbelieving in her ear.

“I’m here, Russ.” Heedless of the protests in her right wrist and both hands, she reached her arms around him as far as they would go. To hold him, hold on to him. To make sure he was really there, too. “Neither one of us is dreaming. We’re both really here. Together.”

She felt him smile into her neck and fold her tighter into his embrace. “Good. My dreams are vivid, but I usually only imagine I can feel you, touch you, taste you, smell you.” He shifted his lower body uncomfortably and groaned.

She gasped and laughed softly when the same charge that beat through him coiled hard through her, pinching her breasts and spinning wildly, almost violently into her belly. Want, need, more, infinitely more—she’d never felt this before. And whatever it was, he made her feel it by just saying a few words.

“It’s okay, Russ. Me, too. My imagination is pretty vivid, too.”

He lifted his head slightly. “You’re hurt, it’s not okay.”

She kissed a spot as near the center of his chest as she could reach, nuzzled his jaw, brushed her cheek across his. “It is, trust me. I’m not that hurt. Really. Some bruises, a couple stitches, a mild sprain. Nothing to prevent us from what we both want. Together. Now let me take you home, okay? So I don’t have to worry about you.”

Hesitation was plain. “Janie, I don’t… I can’t—”

He stopped. He might be drunk, but he had self-imposed rules that wouldn’t be broken easily. Janina planned to break them all if she could.

“You can’t drive yourself, Russ,” Janina reminded him. “Jonah said you needed somewhere to spend the night. It was my long weekend even before Buddy tripped me, so I’m not working tomorrow.”

“Janie—” Again he said her name and stopped.

And capitulated.

“All right,” he agreed. Then his lips twitched and he offered her a rueful grin. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, all right?”

“’Bout what?” Janina, reaching for her purse, looked back at him.

Russ picked up the remains of her beer, raised the mug to her in what was halfway between a salute and a silent apology, drained it and shrugged. “The drunk and relaxed man you take home with you tonight will not be the sober, somewhat anal man you wake up with in the morning.”

Janina laughed outright at him. “Russ, I know that man, too. I’ve seen him almost every day for thirteen years and I’ve wanted to take that man home with me longer than I’ve wanted the man I’m with tonight, so I don’t see the problem.”

“You might tomorrow,” Russ muttered darkly.

Janina slid her arms around his waist. “Tomorrow, if I put my arms around you, will you tell me to stop?”

The slow, sideways smile tilted Russ’s mouth. “Prob’ly not.”

“Then shut up about tomorrow and let me drive you home.”

“Because tomorrow I’ll be too inhibited to open my mouth and say anything to you,” Russ finished belatedly, deliberately baiting her, and ducked away laughing when Janina swung at him.

“You—”

Grinning the charming, devilish Levoie grin that Janina associated with his brothers but couldn’t remember ever seeing on him, he offered her a broad, two-handed, supremely innocent shrug. “What can I say? I was an Eagle Scout. Honesty is bred in the bone.”

“That sounds like something your brother Guy would say,” Janina returned dryly.

“Where d’you think he got it from?”

She found herself laughing up at him, astonished herself by teasing him. “Not you.”

Russ draped an arm around her shoulders. A natural move from a man who never made this kind of move naturally. “Yeah, me.”

Janina found herself sliding easily beneath his arm, fitting close against his side where she’d been made to fit, born to belong.

She wanted to touch him, to have as much of him as she could in the here and now, but she couldn’t comfortably fit an arm around him so she settled for pulling his hand down where she could hold on to it, could at least keep her left hand in his.

Could feel every bit of warmth, every pulse in his fingers in the way his fingertips tickled her palm, traced the inside of her wrist, seduced and tempted and… She closed her eyes and her stomach tightened, body vibrated, became heavy, turned to liquid.

And suddenly her panties, that sexy, almost nonexistent scrap of a silk thong she’d put on in hopes of finding him, of being with him, was…wet. She was wet.

For want of him.

From simply imagining him.

“You sure?” She sounded breathless, and was.

The look he sent her from those deeper-than-midnight, clearer-than-the-full-moon, more-powerful-than-any-tide eyes of his when he said, “I’m sure,” made Janina lose her grip on his hand, drop her own to his waist and tip her head up to his.

Her eyes widened when his released fingers quite casually, naturally, instinctively grazed her nipple, brushed her breast, then closed over it to gently squeeze.

And her body burned with awareness, with desire, with excitement…with need. And with the sudden, absolute and potentially embarrassing recognition of where they were and the fact that she wanted complete, utter and immediate privacy. Where was not a factor, so long as it was right now, at once, instantly and without delay.

“Russ?” Urgent, a plea.

He offered her a slow smile. His fingers played with her breast, found her nipple once again. She lifted into the pleasure of his touch, pressed into it, and her breathing grew ever more shallow. They were in public and she couldn’t make herself—and didn’t want to—step away. But heaven help her if she wasn’t alone with him soon…

“We have to get out of here.” The effort it took to manage seven short syllables was amazing.

Without taking his eyes off her face or his left hand off her breast, Russ pushed open the Bloated Boar’s outer door.

“We’re outta here,” he promised.

“Oh.” Stunned, Janina drew a half breath and swallowed the taste of dawn. She’d been so mesmerized she hadn’t even realized they’d been moving. “Good.”

Russ’s laugh was deep, his voice gravelly with need. “Take me home, Janie.”

Urgency became a frantic blast of something beyond want, beyond desire, beyond simple need or even passion, became quite suddenly a critical piece of her existence, a fundamental element of survival, of life. Her life, his life, their life. One life combined. One life only.

“Yes.” Her voice shook, her heart grew three, four, ten sizes—grew big enough to hold a man who stood six foot four-plus inches in a barefoot slouch, but who never slouched. Her knees were jelly. She fumbled for her keys. “Yes, Russ. I will. I am.”

“Good.” He folded to nuzzle the side of her face, her ear. “The night’s short, dawn’s shorter and there’s a lot I want to do with you before I wake up and turn into a pumpkin again, ya know?”

Janina turned her face into his mouth and kissed him furiously, pouring all of herself into it. “It took me a long time to get up the gumption to do it, but I found you now, Russ Levoie, and I’m not letting you back off. So consider this fair warning. You’re making me believe in magic right now and I want it and everything you’ve got to give that goes with it. So you go shy and tongue-tied on me tomorrow, it won’t matter ’cuz I know who you are underneath and I know you want to be with me. So I won’t let who you seem to be intimidate me. You got that?”

Dazed and bemused, Russ ran his tongue around his mouth to taste the kiss she’d left there, then touched the tip of his finger to the stitches in her upper lip. “If we kiss again, will that hurt?”

“It’ll hurt more if we don’t,” Janina whispered, sliding her arms, sprained wrist and all, around his neck.

“Good,” he muttered, “because you taste incredible. I’ve never tasted anything like you, and I really have to kiss you again.” Then he caught her around the waist, lifted her high against his chest and did just that.

His kiss was careful, mindful of her bruises and almost, Janina realized somewhat fuzzily, out of practice.

Then she stopped realizing anything at all, stopped being able to think, stopped being and simply became absorbed in and by the kiss.

Thrilled to it.

The instant held beauty, power and enchantment, oneness and an absolute absence of alone. Breath shared became needed oxygen, air and life, a place beyond passion and pleasure, an existence within heart and soul, pure, complete, without boundaries.

It was a place Janina had never before been.

Arriving there left her breathless.

It made her afraid.

And she never wanted to come back from it.

“Janie.” Russ broke the kiss, raised his head and gave her what she’d craved since she’d been a starry-eyed but not-so-innocent sixteen-year-old schoolgirl ready to worship and adore her tall, dark and hunky hero. “I-40’s right out there, it’s not five hours to Vegas. Four hours with a cop in the car, maybe less.” He groaned when she wrapped her arms more securely around him and her belly rubbed provocatively but unintentionally against his. His muscles went taut, his breathing went harsh and ragged, his arms contracted around her. “Definitely less. Has to be less. We could go, find a chapel, not an Elvis one, though, and—”

“Yes,” Janina interrupted, wild and giddy from the magic, the enchantment of the moment, the pure unadulterated impossibility that made her sure she should pinch herself to see if she was awake. She had to be dreaming because this was what she’d wanted since the moment she’d picked up her mother’s shotgun and skulked after him without him knowing it to make sure he’d be safe until help arrived the night Maddie Thorn had shot her father and killed her brother in self-defense and Russ had gone to rescue Maddie, the always-victim, again.

But Maddie wasn’t here and Russ was thinking of her, Janina, and only of her. Of her, Janie. And that was what made Janina look deep into his midnight eyes, touch her nose to his and know she wasn’t dreaming. That’s what made her repeat, “Yes,” breathlessly, with her heart in her throat, and then again, shouting, joyous, loud, clear and strong, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Then, laughing and oblivious to her bruises, to the consequences of dreaming without a thought to what came after you woke up—without a nod to anything but the unbelievable reality of having achieved your heart’s desire—she wriggled out of his arms, grabbed his hand and made a beeline across the Bloated Boar’s parking lot to her car.

And no, she didn’t listen to that far-off whisper, that superstitious mother-warning fading in the desert dawn: Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it if you don’t watch out.

By 6:30 a.m., they’d stopped for gas on the other side of Seligman, and Janina was feeling more than wild, beyond anxious, outside of nervous. Russ was no longer quite drunk, but he showed no sign of swaying from the path they’d set out on.

His hand resting on her thigh while she drove had played havoc with her concentration, her pulse and her blood pressure. The hand, the fingertips on her thigh had roamed up and down the inside of her leg, just high enough under her short dress to sketch ticklish, teasing circles that claimed her attention and made her catch her breath before stroking back down to the inside of her knee and letting her almost—almost!—relax.

Then he’d settled his arm around her shoulder, slipped his hand along her collarbone, over her throat, caressed the delicate skin there and slipped his fingers inside the deep neckline of her scooped-neck sundress to draw patterns along the top of her breasts, never quite touching where it ached.

And all the while he leaned close to her ear and told her to mind her driving, to watch the road, to concentrate on the horizon and not on what he was doing to her….

Thank God there’d been little traffic to speak of.

Even though she’d done as he’d instructed and kept as much of her mind as possible on the road, if he touched her again, she’d explode, she was sure. Because by telling her to concentrate on something else, he’d heightened the suspense, sensitized her awareness of him at the same time that he kept her focus elsewhere, sharpened the surprise behind what he did to her, and intensified the sheer eroticism and anticipation of what he didn’t do to her.

She was beyond needy, beyond ready, beyond…fevered. Her body wept to hold him, cried for his touch, begged—no, pleaded—to take him in. Literally ached to do so.

She had to do something about that. Had to. For her sake, his sake and the safety of any other driver on the road, she had to find some quiet little private nook and do something to relieve that ache.

Soon.

Russ glanced up at her from under the hood of her car and his hot gaze lingered on her mouth, her breasts, her legs, her thighs—the places he’d touched and the places he hadn’t quite—and Janina’s breath tripped, heart hammered. She felt the heat everywhere his gaze touched, as though he made physical contact.

She had to have more than his teasing.

Quickly.

The corner of his mouth tipped up. He knew, damn him. And then she didn’t care what he knew. Because he gently closed the hood, leaned on it to make sure it snapped tight and moved toward her. And backed her into the side of the car, between the open driver’s door and the back door he also opened to keep them out of the way of prying eyes.

Belly to belly, loin to loin, they rocked together lightly. Frustrated, tormented, tempted; his breath on her neck was ragged, and then his mouth closed on her pulse, his hands molded her rump, hoisted her against his erection and he ground himself against her. She whimpered softly and her body quickened instantly. She arched her throat then hooked an ankle around his calf both to balance herself and to give him better access to the center of her need.

His need.

Her entire body sang, from her belly outward, inward, hot and hotter, seeking flame to flame…when Russ abruptly gasped and raised his head. Untangled himself and thrust her away.

Separated himself from her, breathing hard.

“No,” he said emphatically—and more to himself than her, “Not yet. I promised. Not yet.”

Dazed, needy, frustrated and more than a little bewildered, Janina could only blink at him, reaching to draw him back. It didn’t matter where they were, he couldn’t leave her—them—now. He couldn’t.

“What? Russ, please. I need to finish this. We need to—”

He looked at her, stunned, and ran a hand over the side of his face, trying to collect himself. “I can’t, Janie, we can’t. Not yet. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that to you. Not yet. Not here.”

“Why, Russ, why? Please. You don’t know where you’re leavin’ me hangin’. I need you.”

His snort of laughter was short and harsh. “Trust me, you don’t know what need is till you’re standin’ in my skin. If I can’t have you soon…” He shut his eyes and swallowed.

She’d dated, been married, and there’d been other guys. A few at least. It didn’t matter. When he’d met Janina she’d been too young and too innocent, and he’d never quite been able to get over thinking of her that way.

He’d known that no one else would satisfy, no other woman would do since very shortly after he’d first seen her. Known it so hard that he’d been Celibacy R Russ because he didn’t want anyone but her.

But he also understood that most people wouldn’t understand things the way he did. They wouldn’t believe that he, a man—and not a particularly tame one at that—could live his life in so-called innocence—or at least without the trappings of sex—while the woman he craved seemed to live hers on the other side of it, because marrying Buddy certainly hadn’t kept Janina innocent. But he didn’t see it that way.

Because the one thing he knew after a lifetime of living, of friendship with Maddie, of growing up Indian on the reservation in Supai long before he’d become a Winslow cop, of watching people and being a cop was, that innocence was not a by-product of virginity the way the romance novels Mabel was always reading suggested. Janina had been married to a bully and dated and probably had sex, but compared to him…innocent of the world’s evils didn’t begin to cover it.

He knew in his heart which of them was innocent and which of them had never been. And sex and virginity had nothin’ to do with it.

Wherever she’d been, whatever she’d done, Janina had managed to come through it with hope, faith and self-possession intact. For whatever reason, he’d been born wearing the raw material of an adult: uncertainty, cynicism, irony, a sense of desperation and fear. And he knew gut deep to the soles of his feet that she would be better for him than he could ever possibly be for her, and that if she ever figured that out…

She couldn’t be allowed to ever figure that out.

He shut his eyes, rested his forehead on hers, put an infinitesimal distance between the length of their bodies with great care and cupped her face between his palms. “Just leave it at I promised myself I wouldn’t do that to you. Wouldn’t use you. Wouldn’t be anybody else you might…know. That for us—between us—it’d be different than…anybody else. Any other guy and you. That we’d be married first. Do you see?”

“No.” She couldn’t understand anything yet. Her body was still too focused on what it wanted and needed from him. She caught his hand, held it, grounded herself. Her body was still on high alert, strung taut, but her immediate concentration was on him. “No, I don’t quite see. No.”

He swallowed and looked down at their joined hands then turned his gaze to the desert for several long moments before bringing it back to her face. The sober man was taking over and the Russ who’d seduced her at the Bloated Boar fought him valiantly, warred to communicate with her still.

And then he did.

“I promised myself a long time ago to wait to bed my woman until after our wedding,” he said simply. “We’re getting real close to me breaking that promise and I don’t want to, not with you. You’ve been hurt enough. You’ve had enough promises made to you and broken. I don’t want something to happen to get in the way of the wedding even for a minute, so…” He hesitated. “I want you badly. I also very much want to marry you. But I don’t have a lot of control left on the want you part. So if we could just get in the damn car and break the speed limit to Vegas I’d appreciate it.”

Chapter 4

Puzzled, Janina stared up at her fiancé, trying to sort out the subtleties of what he hadn’t said.

And then she did.

Stunned, dumbfounded, she swallowed. Hard. Waited, had he said? As in waited? As in there was nobody before her? Not even…

Maddie?

With all that history, all that time, all that everything?

She looked up at him for confirmation. He shrugged.

“Why?” Not, perhaps, the most sensitive thing she might have said, but her mouth wasn’t taking orders from her brain at the moment. “How?”

He snorted. Grinned. “Opportunity. Desire. Your lack of availability at the…ah…fitting moments. My lack of verbal…um…eptitude in the dating game. Never got around to it I guess.”

“That’s not a word.” Obviously she was in shock and couldn’t be held accountable for what she said.

He canted her an odd glance. She deserved it. “What’s not?”

“Eptitude.”

Another snort. “Sue me. It fits.”

“But, Russ, what about Maddie?”

“Who?” The uncharacteristic looseness, the remaining uninhibitedness brought about by his beer consumption faded. “What?”

“Everybody said…they knew…they thought—” She floundered, lost in repeating gossip from the trial.

Thirteen-year-old gossip that had followed him from the moment he’d started defending Madelyn Thorn from an overabundance of small-town speculation. Because he’d known Maddie since long before either of them came to Winslow.

He went rigid beneath her hands. “Everybody knew nothin’,” he said harshly. “Everybody knows nothin’. Not about Maddie, not about me. What they think or thought’s got nothin’ to do with anything.”

She was trembling under his hands, the wide brown eyes looking up at him, the same brave but frightened ones that had peeked out at him over her mother’s shoulder, her body half hidden behind her mother’s skinny, unprotective frame. Oh God, he’d never been able to get past that picture of her, of the girl who’d taken down a shotgun and followed him to make sure he didn’t get hurt when he went into a lethal situation alone.

Of the woman who didn’t know he knew what she’d done for him. And therefore by default for Maddie.

“Ah, screw it.”

“Russ, don’t. Wait—”

Shaken, sobered—and sobered up—he released Janina and slammed shut the wagon’s rear door, shoved himself away from everything he wanted-needed-craved, and turned to long-leg-it to the highway’s edge. Emptiness crossed by electric lines and black ground spotted by straggles of vegetation and lumps of sandstone against a spectacular rising-sun backdrop—Arizona at its finest—spread out before him. He saw it and didn’t.

“Russ!”

He heard but ignored her.

“Russ, damn it.”

She was angry, but still he didn’t turn. There’d been reasons beyond simple choice he’d kept body, soul and self to self where women—and Winslow’s women in particular—were concerned since he’d taken Maddie’s father down.

Since the publicity from the trial had raked him and his lifetime connections to Maddie over, dissected him and them, and changed him.

There was more that he’d protected Janina from than him simply thinking she was too innocent for him.

More that he’d forgotten in his annual drunks with his brothers than he realized.

When he’d burst into the Thorns’ trailer that night to find Maddie disfigured, torn up and bleeding to death, he’d also found her holding the bloody weapon that had been used to shoot her brother over—and over. Cherry on the job that he was, he hadn’t thought about gunshot residue or anything else that might clear her—he’d thought only about the horror in front of him, and he’d taken the weapon from Maddie, cleaned her fingerprints off it and thrown it into Lake Havasu on his next trip home to the difficult-to-reach Havasupai reservation he’d grown up on. He and Maddie had never talked about what had really happened, because she couldn’t remember, so he simply covered up what he assumed happened at her hand. She’d suffered enough—nothing could be proved….

But the suspicion he’d brought on himself by standing by her, being her friend, had been considerable. She’d been used, abused and pimped out by a pedophile since she was twelve and Russ hadn’t known, but the looks he’d gotten when the defense got him on the stand and asked him about Maddie, about knowing her in high school, about the things she’d done for his football, basketball and baseball teammates, and that they insinuated she’d done for him when she hadn’t because he wouldn’t let her, had been enough to label him for life.

The term conflict of interest had been flung about when his captain found out about Russ’s past relationship with Maddie. Cover-up was what the newspapers wondered when it couldn’t be proved definitively one way or another whether or not Maddie had killed her brother that night in self-defense, or someone else had done it.

Small towns had long memories for gossip and innuendo and Winslow was no different than most. The couple of times he’d gotten his verbs together in coherent order and thought about dating respectable town women way back when, he’d been discouraged from it in no uncertain terms by “right-thinking” moneyed types like Buddy Carmichael’s father, who’d…

No. He didn’t like remembering what he’d worked hard to put aside. He didn’t want Janina thinking what others thought—used to think—about him, ever. He didn’t give a flying fig in hell about anyone else and never had, but Janina…

Was standing in front of him. Slapping his chest with the edge of her fist—she winced—and kicking him once in the shin with the side of her foot for good measure to get his attention. He looked down at her, bemused.

“Hey,” she said, almost loudly enough to wake the dead. “You got a problem I oughta know about, maybe you should tell me before we get to Vegas.”

Russ frowned and canted a brow, remained silent. He was good at silent. Best to stick with his strengths in unfamiliar situations.

Janina sighed. He’d startled her with his admission and she didn’t do surprise or silence well. Both were designed to elicit comments that could leave her with her foot in her mouth. This time she had a feeling she’d stuck them both there.

“So.” She tapped a foot, wondering where he wanted to be. To go. Trying to decide where she should be. Because reckless or not, the road to Vegas with Russ Levoie still looked like the most awesome, and the most right, ride to her. “I take it you’ve suddenly sobered up and gone taciturn on me again?”

Russ tried not to smile. Tried to maintain a straight face and not to acknowledge the question at all. If you wanted to call failing at both by giving in to lip tugs and twitches some kind of success, he almost succeeded.

“Yeah.” Janina gave him wry face. “That’s what I thought.” She considered the space between them for a moment, opened her vista to take in the light khaki tan of his neatly pressed short-sleeved shirt, the triangle of white T-shirt showing where he’d left his collar buttons open, the healthy expanse of native bronze skin above where she wanted to place her open mouth, leave her unmistakable “do not poach” brand….

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