9781618854490WildChelceeNC Read online

  “I don’t know, either.” He hesitated, wondering if he’d done the right thing back then. Damn it! Yes, he had. He couldn’t let her do this to him, make him second guess his decision. He’d made the only choice he could at the time, the wise choice. “Turning my back and walking away that day was the smartest thing to do. For you. For me. If you’re honest, you’ll admit it.”

  “I understand. I do. I wasn’t your problem then. I’m not your problem now.”

  “Huh.” Wild scratched his jaw. There was no way in hell this woman was this meek. Her poor, pitiful me act didn’t fool him for a minute. She was killing time, trying to find his soft spot so he’d cave. By thunder, he didn’t have a soft spot. “So far as I can tell, you’ve always been my problem.”

  “I’d go away…if I could.”

  “Uh-huh.” Did she have to sound so docile? She was killing him here. “That’d be too damn easy.” He shifted, uncomfortable with the way her nearness affected his body, uncomfortable with her being here, period. How was he going to get her out of his hair? “Things have never been easy between us.”

  “So you’ll help me?” she chirped.

  Wild shook his head at the hopeful look on her face. “Nope.” He roamed his gaze over her, returning to her face. She looked chalky as the overcast sky. “Damn it,” he exploded. She couldn’t do this to him.

  “You’ll help?” she asked again. Fainter.

  Shifting his weight, he realized he was going to buckle after all. “Maybe. Hell. I don’t believe in taking chances.” Something was definitely wrong with her. Until she told him, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon her.

  “What about giving second chances?” She sounded hopeful.

  “Not so much.” Man, did she have to come across as a pathetic waif? Don’t let her do this to you. He hardened his heart. “Nope. I discovered in prison there’s no such thing as second chances.”

  “I’m sorry you went to prison. You have to believe that.”

  “Uh-uh. I don’t believe anything outta your mouth. The truth isn’t in you. Toss the gun or I’m outta here. Last warning.”

  “All right already! It only had the one bullet in it anyways.”

  “Toss it. Now.” He made his voice flint hard. “Then I might listen to your sad tale. Maybe I’ll even rescue you, but don’t think I’m making any promises or giving second chances. I don’t owe you one damn thing.” He kept his tone deliberately harsh. He didn’t want her getting the idea he was a softie.

  “I know you don’t owe me, but you’re a man of—”

  “What?” he snapped. “I’m a man of what?”

  “Uh…honor?”

  “Lady, I lost every bit of honor I possessed the five years I spent in that suck-hole prison. There’s not one thing good or decent left inside me. My heart’s dead, my soul’s blacker than a tar-pit. If you came here seeking forgiveness or mercy, forget it. I have no forgiveness left in my heart. No mercy.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Jayla flung the gun onto the back seat and stepped away from the car. She staggered, paused, took a deep breath, and started toward him. “I refuse to believe that. I can’t—” She stumbled, but caught herself. “I–I really need you, Wild.”

  He scowled. Hell, no one had ever needed him, but if someone did, why of all people did it have to be this woman? “Why’d you come back here? Didn’t you ruin my life enough the first time ‘round?” Huffing, he squared his shoulders. “What do you want from me?”

  She stopped a few feet in front of him. “I told you, I need you.”

  He took the coat from her and worked her right arm inside the sleeve, but when he moved her left one, she gasped and clenched her fist against her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” Wild stepped back.

  “Nothing.” She lowered her hand. “I’m fine.” She blinked away tears. “I’m always fine.”

  But he heard the low groan she tried to smother.

  “Sure you are.” He stared at the bright red liquid wetting his fingers. “What the—? There’s blood…” His words trailed off when her eyes welled with tears. “Aw, hell, don’t cry.”

  She swallowed hard. “I–I…uh, you know how I told you I’m in trouble?”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t like the sound of where this was going. He eyed the red stain on his fingers. It wasn’t from the wound on her temple. So where the hell had it come from?

  Shit. This was going to be bad. He felt it in his bones.

  He didn’t like the peculiar feelings twisting his gut. Seeing her, seeing the lousy shape she was in physically, hit him like a herd of wild mustangs stampeding across the plains. His chest squeezed. His lungs felt as deflated as an old inner tube. He couldn’t catch his breath.

  Hating her was one thing, knowing she sported an injury bad enough that she bled and left her ready to collapse at his boots, was quite another. Hell, guess that made him an old softie after all. Wild clenched his jaw tight enough his back teeth ached. “Stop holding back. You came here for my help. If you want it, the least you can do is tell me what kind of trouble you’re in.”

  Don’t yell at her. It’ll only make her cry.

  He needed to remain cool and level headed, not grab her and shake some sense into her, which was what he wanted to do. He shouldn’t give a shit what she’d got involved in, but hell, he wasn’t that cold hearted of a bastard. Lifting a brow, he waited for her explanation.

  She sniffed, shrugged, immediately winced. “It involves bullets, one exactly…for now. I’ve been shot.”

  “Where?”

  “Shoulder.”

  He clenched his jaw. It took every ounce of his willpower to hold onto a cool head. Idiot woman! “Did you shoot yourself with that damn gun?” He couldn’t keep the gruffness out of his voice. Jesus, she could have killed herself.

  “No.”

  “You’re telling me someone shot you on purpose…before I got the chance?”

  She nodded. “Don’t stand there acting like you wanna kill me, Wild Remington. You had your chance to do whatever you wanted to me a long time ago. You might feel the urge to strangle me, but it wasn’t at the top of your list then. It isn’t now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You walked away instead.”

  “Huh.” He scratched beneath his chin. “You’d think I’d still be that smart.”

  “Things are different now.” A soft moan slipped past her tight lips when she moved the tiniest bit.

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m not an innocent fifteen year old anymore.”

  “I doubt you were ever innocent.” He regretted it the moment the words were out of his mouth. Truthfully he figured she was innocent that day. He’d got on his horse and rode away, determined she stay that way. She hadn’t made his leaving easy.

  Son of a gun, she was sure right, things were different now. True she wasn’t fifteen, stars in her eyes, and anticipating her first kiss, her first taste of love, but he was no longer a twenty-year old male who had to leave her untouched because she was jailbait and it was the right thing to do, either.

  Eyeing her, he decided that this time, he might not be so willing to do the right thing and refuse what she freely offered.

  “I haven’t been for a long time,” she agreed.

  “What?” Wild frowned. Somewhere he’d lost the thread of their conversation. He felt his face heat. Shit. He shouldn’t have his mind where he’d had it. The last thing he needed was a sexual encounter with Jayla Ross. She’d wring him out and leave him hanging on the line to dry like an old pair of faded jeans. Yep, he’d be limp as a noodle.

  Her face darkened with regret. “Innocent. I haven’t been innocent for a long time.”She squared her shoulders and met his gaze head on. “I’d give anything if I could turn back the hands of time and return to that day.”

  Wild clenched his fists. “Hell, not me. I don’t wanna go back to that day.”

  He preferred to forget it.

  Water under the bridge.
>
  He figured what happened right here, right this moment, was much more important.

  She moved her injured arm and winced. “God, don’t let anyone ever tell you it doesn’t hurt to get shot. It hurts like the devil.”

  “Who shot you?”

  Her gaze slid away from him. “I don’t know.”

  She was lying. Wild narrowed his eyes. She couldn’t fool him. He heard the untruth in her words.

  “How could you not know?”

  “I just don’t, that’s all.”

  “Jayla—”

  “I didn’t see his face,” she hurriedly inserted.

  “His?”

  “I assume it was a man, but I swear I didn’t see him. It was dark.”

  “Lawman?”

  “No! I’m not running from the police if that’s what you think.”

  “I don’t know what to think.” He worked her injured arm inside the coat sleeve as easy as he could. Scowling, he pulled the oversized buttons through their slots. “We need to get you outta the cold.”

  Gingerly, Wild brushed strands of her dark hair away from the nasty wound at her temple and studied it.

  “How bad is it?” She bit her lower lip and held her breath.

  “Not bad, a quarter moon shape, a little ragged, near your hairline. It’ll leave a scar, but your hair will conceal it.” He shook his head disgusted. “It needs stitches.”

  “Well,” she said on a short breath. “So you’ll have to patch me back together. Can you?”

  “I can. It’s not going to be pretty.” He dropped his hand to his side, stepped back. Maybe then he’d be able to breathe. Standing this close to Jayla had an odd effect on his lungs. He couldn’t breathe for breathing in her scent, breathing her into his lungs.

  A ghostly smile settled on her lips. “I’ll have battle scars to show my grandkids one day.”

  Battle scars?

  Wild glowered. A woman who looked like Jayla Ross should never sport battle scars.

  Now him, he was an old warhorse. He had plenty of ugliness, some on the surface, but most remained hidden deep inside, so deep he never planned to share them with anyone.

  A woman like Jayla Ross…

  The last time he’d seen her, she’d been a skinny teenager with gangly arms and legs. One lie after another rolled off her tongue as she swore under oath he’d raped her. Wild thought back to the last day inside the courtroom, how she broke down and cried when the judge sentenced him.

  Tears streamed down her face. She stared straight at him from across the room and mouthed, I’m sorry.

  Too numb to give it much thought at the time, he later realized that no matter how sorry Jayla Ross felt about her lies, it hadn’t stopped her from telling them or prevented the guards from leading him away in shackles.

  Part of him died that day. Maybe not physically, but a part of the light deep inside him had been snuffed out, his spirit beaten down. Looking around, seeing the hard, cold faces of his brothers in that courtroom, the tears in his sister’s eyes, he’d known he had to be dead to them too.

  Like a surgeon using a sharp scalpel, he meticulously cut them out of his life, refusing to see them when they came to visit, until finally, they stopped coming. That’s when he accepted he was truly alone. His family had given up on him and wasn’t that what he’d intended? Still, he died the small deaths from the pain it brought him.

  During the trial, Jayla put on a convincing act, no doubt about it, but there’d been truth in her words, in the black and blue bruises dotting her throat, face, arms, and legs. They’d been significant enough to convince the jury of his guilt. Hell, if he hadn’t known better, he’d have believed he was guilty.

  It hadn’t helped that he’d been present at the crime scene, his boot heels in the soft dirt. At some point, his wallet had slipped out of his jeans pocket without him noticing. Sheriff Danger Blackstone found it lying on the ground a few feet from where Jayla claimed he’d attacked her.

  He’d been there. She’d been there.

  He had scratch marks on his face, his DNA under her nails. The lack of sperm inside her hadn’t mattered. She’d had bite marks, but there were Secretors and Non-secretors. Her rapist was a Non-secretor, so no antigens or antibodies in his saliva to prove or disprove Wild’s innocence.

  She identified him as her attacker.

  He had no substantial proof he wasn’t. He’d been there. They’d fought. He had the scratches to prove it.

  His admission that he’d been there, coupled with everything else, presented enough evidence to the jury to convict him. The evidence might have been circumstantial, but no one doubted, not even him, that Jayla Ross had been brutally raped. Both her eyes were nearly swollen shut. Her lower lip puffy and her wrists bruised where the rapist gripped her. The doctor testified to vaginal tearing and bruising. In the eyes of the jury, he was guilty.

  The one thing he’d never understood was why her mother hadn’t made an appearance in the courtroom. Supposedly Mrs. Ross was away on a long cruise to Europe, but he found it strange she couldn’t be bothered to return to her daughter’s side.

  According to Jayla’s stepfather, when she didn’t return home that afternoon, he went to look for Jayla and found her near the creek. He’d been the one to take her to the hospital. Jayla verified his story. It had all been a little too neat and tidy, but the jury believed her, believed the senator’s testimony.

  Even after seven years, helpless rage still simmered in his gut. She’d been young, yes, but old enough to realize, to understand the kind of trouble she’d get him in with her false testimony.

  She’d known.

  He’d seen it on her face when she looked at him.

  She’d known, and lied anyway.

  No amount of bullying from his attorney persuaded her to change her story. Then, after five years and no pressure, she suddenly confessed her lie—sort of.

  Why the hell had she decided to come forward and tell the truth?

  But then she hadn’t, not really. She’d merely stated she’d been confused at the time and accused the wrong man. Jayla denied having any memory as to who the real rapist had been. She hadn’t spoken the truth when she denied knowing who the man was. She’d lied when she accused him, and lied when she got him set free.

  Yes, she’d lied all right, about everything. He wouldn’t rest until he got her to admit who the man was that attacked her. Jayla had spent so many years living with lies Wild wondered if she even knew how to tell the truth anymore.

  Sure, she’d been a kid back then, but this was no teenager standing here gazing back at him with big, soft-looking Bambi eyes, a mouth to die for, and nice rounded breasts he suspected would fill a man’s hands just right. Nope this was pure trouble in a sexy red sweater, but then she’d always managed to get under his skin.

  Wary as an injured wolf, Wild decided if he possessed any sense of self-preservation, he’d turn and run, climb upon Rosie, and haul ass—get as far away, as fast away from this woman as the mare could haul him.

  Instead, he stood here watching her, wondering if his damn tongue was hanging out. No sir. He might want to do her, but it was more than that, more than just an urge to ride her. He didn’t like this feeling, this desire to hold her, pet her.

  Where the hell had such a need come from?

  Eyeing her, he decided she looked too damn shaky. Any second now, he figured she’d crumple. He hoped not. He didn’t want closer contact—“Shit!” There she went, a tiny, broken doll collapsing like a wilted flower. Wild sprang forward, shortening the distance between them in a single leap. “Whoa, now. Easy, sweetheart.” He caught her, lifting her in his arms. “Damn, woman, a little warning next time.” He turned and headed toward the horse.

  “Sorry, didn’t see it coming.” She nuzzled his throat.

  Hell. She shot him down with that light touch. This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to get any closer to her or touch her. Wild muttered something unintelligible, but he couldn’t control the t
ightness that curled through his belly and settled in his groin. All she’d had to do was fold and he rushed in like a knight in shining armor, only his armor was tarnished, and he sure as sweet hell wasn’t hero material.

  Wild swore, though the words were all said in his head.

  How did a woman, who looked so nicely put together, weigh next to nothing in his arms? Too delicate by far, her bones felt as fragile as a bird’s. Probably been on one of those low-calorie diets women thought they needed in order to stay skinny.

  “What do you eat for Christ’s sake, bird seed?”

  “Lettuce.” She smiled and somehow managed to move closer.

  “Rabbit food,” he said with disgust. “What you need are a few meals of steak and potatoes.”

  She scrunched her nose at that. “I’m a vegetarian”

  “Huh. Who’d have guessed? What’s wrong with a little meat?” He glanced down, saw her lips twitch and felt heat spread up his face. “Hell, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant.” She blinked. “I’d still love to answer the question.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Pity.” She grinned. “I think it might be worth exploring.”

  “Stop it,” he snapped.

  This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t going there with her. Dynamite was dynamite, no matter how small the package came wrapped.

  “You started it when you called me sweetheart.” Her dark eyes twinkled with amusement.

  “A slip of the tongue, I call my horse sweetheart.”

  She puckered her lower lip and flashed him a sour look. “If you’re comparing me to your mare, I swear I’ll put another bullet hole in your hat.”

  “Nah, you’re a high-strung filly in need of breaking.”

  “You wanna be the one to do the breaking?”

  He nearly tripped. Clearing his throat, he glanced at her. “I learned not to play with fire a long time ago.”

  Besides, he preferred a female with a little something to hold onto in the night. Not that he’d been doing much holding. Lord knew he hadn’t touched a woman in a long, long time. Prison had pretty much whittled away his sexual appetite, or at least he’d thought it had. Holding Jayla close and feeling how his body reacted to hers, he wasn’t so sure now. Maybe he’d simply needed the right stimuli.