Midnight Run

The feeling was bitterly familiar. Orphaned at the age of eight, Jack had grown up in a series of foster homes, some good, some not so good. He’d been moved around so often, the constant shuffling from home to home had become a way of life. He’d dealt with it by convincing himself he didn’t care. If that didn’t work, he went looking for trouble—something he’d always had a knack for finding.

He thought about the man who’d helped him turn his life around and wondered how Mike Morgan would feel about what was happening now. The prospect of Mike’s disappointment left a bitter taste at the back of his throat.

“Why don’t you let me drive you over to the clinic in Provo?” Landis said.

Taking in her wide eyes and pale skin, he almost smiled, realizing that even after everything that had happened between them, he was still hungry for her attention. Hungry for a hell of a lot more than her attention if he wanted to be honest about it. God, he was a fool…

“Because by law all bullet wounds are reported to the police,” he snapped.

“I’m not equipped to treat a wound like that, Jack.”

“It’s only a graze. You can handle a bandage.” He looked down at his muddy clothes. “Right now I’d like a shower and some dry clothes. I need something to eat. Some aspirin and a bed. I need to have a clear head when Aaron gets here.”

He gazed through the French door, gauging the snow. Not exactly a snowstorm, but it was coming down again. In another hour the roads would be treacherous. Hopefully, Chandler kept a set of tire chains in the trunk of his Mercedes.

Surprising him, Landis stepped closer, until she was standing a mere foot away. He knew it was a tactic she’d learned at some point in her education. Some nonsense about invading personal space. Too bad she hadn’t yet learned the tactic didn’t work on him.

“All right, Jack. You can take a shower. I’ll fix you something to eat. I’ll even do my best to get your shoulder taken care of. But the moment Chandler gets here, you become his property, and he’ll damn well take you with him when he leaves.”

Jack tried to be amused, but his sense of humor had all but vanished in the last hours. “And if he doesn’t?”

Narrowing her eyes the way a cat might an instant before it pounced on an unsuspecting mouse, she moved even closer. “Then you can add another twenty years to your sentence for holding me hostage.”

Chapter 3

Landis’s every sense was honed on the man standing at the hearth as she made her way toward the linen closet for a towel and an extra bar of soap. She told herself the only reason she was helping him was because she wanted him gone. The sight of him shivering with cold and pain had nothing to do with it. Damn it, it didn’t. She was immune to his suffering. She might have cared for Jack once, but those days were over for good—for too many reasons to count.

As long as she kept her interaction with him to a minimum, she would get through this. Of course, maintaining a safe distance was going to be difficult considering the size of her cabin. For the first time since owning the place, she wished she’d gone for square footage instead of privacy.

She looked down at the bar of soap in her hand and willed her hand to stop shaking. The last thing she wanted to think about was Jack taking a shower in her bathroom. The image of him lathering that large male body with her perfumed soap disturbed her more than she wanted to admit. Maybe because she remembered every detail of that body with startling clarity. A wide, muscular chest that tapered to a washboard belly. Narrow hips that connected to long, powerful legs. She remembered running her fingers through the dusting of black hair on his chest and thinking she’d found heaven in his arms. She remembered kisses hot enough to melt steel. Lovemaking so intense it had left coolheaded Landis in tears…

With those disturbing memories came the darker memories of their last terrible night together. The night Evan died, it had been Jack who broke the news. It was a night of disbelief, of rage, of wrenching grief. But even as her heart had cried out with the pain of losing her brother, she’d reached out to Jack. He was Evan’s best friend, and it had seemed so right that he would be the one to share her anguish. A man and a woman, lovers bound by sorrow, seeking comfort in each other’s arms. Landis had slept with him one final, earth-shattering time before the investigation and trial tore them apart.

But she’d never been able to erase the memory of his words of solace, the tormenting sight of his tears or the outrage burning in his eyes. Nor had she been able to forget his gentle kisses, his steady, elegant hands, or the way his eyes glittered with passion when he was inside her.

Shaken by the memory, appalled by the thoughts streaking through her traitorous brain, she opened the closet door and yanked a towel from the shelf, vowing not to let the past cloud her judgment. Granted, Jack was an attractive man and they had once been lovers, but she respected herself too much to fall victim to his charms knowing what she did.

“Where do you want me to put my clothes?”

Landis jumped at the nearness of his voice. Realizing he’d come up behind her, she spun and thrust the towel into his midsection hard enough to elicit a grunt. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

Jack studied her carefully for a moment. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were blushing.”

“I’m not blushing,” she snapped, hating it that he’d noticed. The curse of being a redhead, she supposed. Unable to meet his eyes, she focused on the towel between them—only to notice how large and strong his hands looked wrapped around it. She remembered seeing those same hands on her body, touching her, his palms warm and slightly roughened against her most sensitive flesh….

Disgusted with herself, she stepped back. “Take a shower.” She sniffed. “You need it.”

“You’ll come check on me if I pass out, won’t you, Red?”

Her heart did a weird little roll when his hands went to the remaining buttons of his shirt. Jack had never been shy. He was a boldly sexual creature, and Landis had always felt a little overwhelmed by his intensity. She wanted to snap at him to stay dressed until he was locked in the bathroom, but she knew that was silly. She was a grown woman and had seen plenty of male chests. This particular chest shouldn’t be any different. Especially since she didn’t even like the man it belonged to.

“Unless you want to spend the night in jail, I suggest you refrain from passing out,” she said.

“It’d be hell explaining to the police how an escaped con got in your bathtub.”

She didn’t want to think about that. “Toss me your clothes from inside. I’ll throw them in the washing machine.”

Abruptly, he reached out. Landis tried to avoid the contact, but he was too quick. He brushed his knuckles along her jaw, but she felt the contact like an arc of electricity that snapped through her body and went all the way to her toes. Her intellect told her to pull away, but her body refused the order. Instead she found herself melting and softening, and she had to resist the impulse to lean closer….

“Thank you,” he said.

She swatted his hand away from her face. “Don’t read too much into it. You’re not in jail right now because you’ve led me to believe you’re going to turn yourself in.”

A smile traced the corners of his mouth. “You still have a weakness for strays, don’t you, Red?”

“You’re not a stray, Jack. You’re a wolf, and I only hope you don’t turn on me.” She raised her chin and looked him in the eye. A year of bottled-up pain and anger burgeoned in her chest and began to flow. It was as if he’d reached into her and wrested the plug from her damaged heart. “Don’t assume you’re going to flash that smile, hand me a few tidbits on Cyrus Duke and expect me to help you.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” he said dryly.

“Don’t insult my intelligence by thanking me for something I would never do for you.”

“I’m going to enjoy proving you wrong.”

“For your sake, I hope you can. Personally, I don’t care as long as you stay out of my life.”

“A couple of hours,” he said. “Until Chandler gets here. That’s all I’m asking.”

“You have no idea what you’re asking.”

“Listen to your heart, Landis.”

“My heart has been wrong about you every time it got involved.”

“Not this time.” His voice was like a caress, so soft and gentle that for a moment, she wanted to believe him….

Never taking his eyes from hers, Jack worked off the shirt and handed it to her. It took all of her discipline not to let her eyes drop, to explore what she knew was a magnificent chest. But she didn’t; control was too important to her. And Jack had always been a threat to that control. He’d always wreaked havoc on her in one way or another. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. Landis only hoped she could keep a handle on her emotions long enough to get him out of her life once and for all.

Needing to get out from under his discerning gaze, she turned and started down the hall. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even look back. And for the first time since his arrival, she knew she was much more vulnerable to him than she’d thought.

Leaning forward with his hands against the tile, Jack let the hot spray pound away the dirt, the aches and the bone-deep chill. The water felt like a hot branding iron against his shoulder wound, but there was no getting around a shower so he simply endured. He gladly put up with the pain to get clean. The water ran brown with grime and dirt and blood. He’d never wanted a shower so badly in his entire life. Prison had a way of making a man feel dirty right down to his soul.

He closed his eyes against a bout of dizziness, and for a moment the darkness transported him back to the penitentiary. He heard the steel doors banging shut, the locks turning with the kind of finality that could drive a man insane. He heard the crude shouts, listened to the words of hatred and bitterness and felt his humanity slip a little bit more.

Jack had always considered himself a strong, resilient man. But the year he’d spent in prison had come very close to destroying him. He’d tried to adjust to the routine of prison life; he’d tried to accept the reality that he would be spending the rest of his life behind bars. But something inside him refused to acquiesce no matter how impossible the situation.

Back when he’d been a troubled teen, he’d been unable to fight the injustices inflicted upon him by a system that wasn’t perfect. But Jack was a man now. Deep down inside, he was still a cop. And even if that title had been stripped from him, he would draw his last breath fighting for what was right.

Or die trying.