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“Maybe.” She looked up, slaying him with her baby blues. Only in this light, he couldn’t even really see them, just a shimmer. It was only in his mind those eyes could hurt him. And because he knew that, because he was savvy to her every trick, he pulled his cuffs from his back pocket and slapped one on her wrist.
This time, she laughed, only it wasn’t at all funny sounding, but laced with raspy tears. “I was trying to be serious. You know, open up. But it’s obvious you couldn’t care less how I feel. All you care about is getting your man.”
“Yeah, but you’re a woman,” he said. All woman. Which was why he had to stay strong.
“I’m not going to run again,” she said.
“I know.”
Her face brightened in a smile so hopeful, so lovely and pure that it clenched his gut with ridiculous desires. Silly stupid things like wanting to hold her and protect her and beat the crap out of anyone who dared ruin her pregnancy’s peace. “Does that mean you finally trust me? That you agree I should do the competition?”
“No.”
“Then what? It has to mean something that you finally believe I’m done running.”
“Oh.” He flashed her a slow grin. “It means something, all right.” He slapped his free cuff on his own wrist. “Means you can run all you want, but wherever you go, this time, I’ll be with you.”
Chapter Three
Beau groaned.
Gracie was crying. Big ’ol messy Southern belle tears just a little too over the top to be convincing.
When she got to the point in her show where she gazed up at him, batting long, tear-fringed eyelashes glinting in the light spilling in from the parking lot, he yanked the hand cuffed to her to his free one, flooding the now-silent room with bawdy applause. “Woo-hoo!”
He threw in an ear-splitting whistle, too.
“You’re a beast,” she spat, trying to roll over, taking him along for the ride.
“Hey—my arm doesn’t bend that way, thank you very much.”
“And I wasn’t crying for your entertainment pleasure, thank you very much!”
“Look, lady, how about we agree to disagree and call it a night?”
“I would, but I’m cold. I can’t sleep without my faux mink throw.”
“So you’re wanting me to uncuff you long enough to go get it?”
“Yes, please.”
He sighed. Ran his palm over the day and night’s stubble on his jaw. “Tell you what, you want that ratty old thing that bad, I’ll be happy to walk outside with you to get it from my trunk.”
“But I’m tired and my ankles are swollen.”
“Me, too—on both counts.” He stood, yanked her arm sideways to allow himself the range of motion needed to jerk the spread off the extra bed, then the blanket. After lying down beside her, then covering them both, he growled, “Night.”
“I’m supposed to just lay here flat like this? I don’t have enough pillows, and when my head isn’t high enough, I always wake with heartburn.”
“Here,” he said, yanking his own pillow out from under his head to awkwardly ram it under hers.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
After a few moments’ blessed silence, Beau was finally nodding off when she sighed.
Instantly, he was awake. “What?”
“I’ll never be able to sleep like this. If only I could—”
“Roll over.”
“What?”
“If I have to tell you again, I’ll roll you myself.”
She rolled, his arm flailed up at an awkward as hell angle, and because above all he was a gentlemen, not about to have this very pregnant woman accuse him of not having gotten adequate rest on his watch, he somehow managed to fall asleep.
Staying asleep was a whole other matter.
“Quit,” he mumbled when something kept rubbing his wrist.
“Huh?”
“Whatever you’re doing, knock it off.”
“I’m just laying here, trying to—”
“That! That little movement right there suspiciously close to Chinese water torture.”
“That?” She giggled. “That’s the baby, silly. She’s a night owl. Watch…” She flicked on the wall-mounted lamp on her side of the bed, then rolled onto her back and flung off the blanket. “Just keep your eyes on my belly, and—there! Did you see that?”
“Damn, that was pretty cool. Will he do it again?”
“She. And probably. Just keep watching.”
He or she did do it again—and again.
Watching that all-too-familiar show did something to Beau. As did seeing the wisp of a smile curving the corners of Gracie’s lips. She was proud of this baby—and she had a right to be. As he’d thought many times with Ingrid, having something that big moving around in your gut didn’t look all that comfortable.
“Does it hurt?” he asked with the next alienlike rise in her stomach.
“Not at all,” she said. “More like tickles.”
Well, that was good news.
“I hope this turns out right for you,” he said.
“Me, too.”
He made the mistake of meeting her big, blue stare, shimmering with unshed tears. A mysterious something in his own gut told him this time, her emotion was the real deal. And he hated that he was the one making her cry.
In the vast majority of his experiences with women, usually it turned out the other way around. Them making him cry. Not that he’d actually boo hooed—just that he’d felt miserable enough that if he’d been of the crying persuasion, the night Ingrid dumped him for that stodgy partner of hers would’ve been a legitimate tear-worthy occasion.
It turned out the child she’d carried for the past seven months, the child he’d been celebrating as his own for the past seven months, wasn’t really his, but her partner’s.
After that, how many times had he wished life’s tables could be turned? That he could be the one causing angst in a relationship? But now, even though this could hardly be called a romantic circumstance, he didn’t like the thought of Gracie for real crying one little bit.
A duo of tears slid down her left cheek. Purely on reflex, he brushed them away.
“You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
Lips pressed tight, he shook his head.
“That sucks,” she said. “But I guess you’re just doing your job.”
“Trying,” he said. “But if it’s any consolation, I’m not enjoying this any more than you.” In fact, being forced up against her like this, her lush curves spread before him like a veritable smorgasbord of womanhood, his assignment was growing harder by the second—quite literally. As best he could, he shifted his fly, trying his damnedest to ignore the canyon of heat scorching his legs, chest and shoulder where their bodies touched.
“Good,” she said, casting him a sarcastic smile much more indicative of the woman who’d locked him in a storage closet. Thank God. If she’d maintained her softer side, he’d have been in real trouble.
“Ready for some sleep?” she asked.
Yeah. Oh, hell yeah.
She turned off the light, pulled the blanket back up over her. He braced himself for her roll, and sure enough, there it was. With his arm back up at an awkward angle, his other elbow digging into his ribs, Beau closed his eyes and sighed, telling himself he’d slept in worse places at far worse angles.
Finally, finally, he’d drifted off to dreamland when—
“Marshal Beau?”
“Yes?”
The light switched on. “I really have to go to the bathroom.”
“I’M NOT LEAVING MY CAR,” Gracie said. Around ten the next morning the two of them stood in a chilly drizzle just outside her cabin.
She breathed deeply of fresh-washed, conifer-scented air, vowing today would be a great day. A normal day. Marshal Beau couldn’t keep her cuffed forever. All she had to do was sit tight and plan another escape and she’d soon be back on her way.
Marshal Beau pulled the cabin’s door shut. Gave her that look she was beginning to know and love. The one that said he was counting to ten in his head in a futile attempt to keep from strangling her. She knew the look because for the vast majority of the time they’d been together, she’d been doing the same with him.
“Ms. Sherwood, I’ve called a tow truck, and your car will be safely garaged back in Portland. Your belongings are in the back of my vehicle. I’m doing everything I can to be reasonable. Hell, I spent the whole night with my elbow up my ass trying to make you comfortable, but—”
“You don’t have to be crude. I’m used to being around more refined men.”
He snorted. “Oh, so let me see, all of the sudden, your convicted murderer, drug-dealing, scum of a husband is a great guy because he—”
Pa-ching!
“Shit!” he hollered, roughly grabbing her upper arm. “Get down.”
“Why? What was that?”
“A bullet. Attached to a gun with a silencer. Come on.” Crouching behind shrubs, he pushed her in front of him, then pulled a gun from a shoulder holster and started firing.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
“Oh my God, oh my God…” Gracie chanted the phrase over and over. “I didn’t think any of this was real. That you were somehow just making it all up to get your way, but—”
“Please,” he said, lacing the fingers of their cuffed hands, then giving her a squeeze. “Keep it together for me a little while longer.”
“I can’t, I can’t, I—”
He kissed her. Hard. Fast. “You have to. Come on.”
Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
“See that black SUV?” He pointed five cabins down.
“You kissed me,” she said, fingertips to her lips.
He shook his head.
“Y-yes, yes, you did.”
Pa-ching! Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
“For cryin’ out loud, woman, it was just a kiss. It was the only way I could think to get your attention.”
“You could’ve just slapped me,” she hissed, still reeling from the shocking pleasure of him pressing his lips to hers.
“You’d have rather I—”
Pa-ching!
“W-what about the SUV?” she asked.
He fished for something from his front jeans pocket, then pulled out a tiny key. “If I let you loose, promise to do the smart thing and run for that car?”
Pa-ching! Pa-ching!
She swallowed hard and nodded.
He unlocked the cuffs, and even though their hands were free, he squeezed her fingers again. “On three,” he said.
She nodded.
“One…Two…Go!”
