Unbridled

And that had been the most difficult part. Not the injustice. Not that he’d been set up to pay for someone else’s crime. But the loss of his freedom. Of his inability to fight back against an unseen enemy. Especially since his career in the Marines had always presented him with an identifiable target.

He gathered his few prison-issue toiletries and put them in the bag the guard provided and then stood Marine straight at the cell door. The guard motioned toward the block controller. The lock buzzed and the bars slid to the left. Carter turned so the guard could slap handcuffs on him and then turned around again.

Nearby inmates hooted and hollered as Carter followed the guard down the cell block. He kept his gaze forward, concentrating on the neat line of the other man’s neck, urging him to speed up his steps. He wanted to get clear of the building before someone realized they’d made a mistake and locked him back in that damned cell.

What seemed like a lifetime later, a door was opened and the guard stepped aside, motioning Carter to precede him in. Carter was only too happy to oblige, keeping his eyes down.

Almost there…almost there…

The first thing he spotted was a pair of shiny beige high heels. Not the kind that strippers wore, but conservative, neat ones that had the height, but none of the zing.

The legs that belonged to the shoes, on the other hand, were nothing short of spectacular.

“Clear a path, inmate,” the guard behind him ordered with a nudge of his nightstick.

Carter hadn’t realized he’d stopped moving. He continued forward, the cuffs chafing his wrists behind his back. When he looked up, the woman was staring at him. And he felt as if the guard had just used that stick to whack him in the stomach.

He’d known women he’d trust at his side in a combat situation, something they were not legally permitted to do. But the woman in front of him was the complete opposite of any he’d find itching for a chance to fight on the front lines. She looked like a Kewpie doll, like the type of pinup girl men who had served in the Second World War might have taped inside their lockers. She had short, wavy blond hair, a perfectly oval face and flawless porcelain skin. Her bright blue eyes were wide, and her lips were shaped as if they were forever in pucker mode, waiting to be kissed.

Okay, it was official: he was losing it. He’d just spent the past five days swearing off all women. And he knew from experience that women like this one were exactly the kind to avoid at all costs. This bird would stick her bloodred talons straight into a man’s chest and rip his heart out with arteries still fully attached.

The guard nudged him to turn and face him. He did, glad when the cuffs were removed. He absently rubbed his wrists and squinted at the woman, positive he was seeing things. Yes. Right now he was back in his cell, the Steinbeck novel in his hands, the woman before him a product of his imagination, an image sprung from the pages onto the blank wall of his unconscious mind.

Only not even his imagination was capable of conjuring the sweet smell of magnolias that engulfed him as she neared.

“Mr. Southard, I’m Laney Cartwright. Your attorney.” She smiled. “I hope they treated you well.”

His attorney? A couple of days ago he’d met with some snot-nosed public defender who’d looked as if he were two days out of grad school.

“I’m sorry—I’ve confused you,” she said as the guard put the bag containing his belongings down on the counter next to the box of the clothes and watch and dog tags he’d been wearing, confiscated upon his arrest. “I’ve been hired by Trace Armstrong and a certain JoEllen Atchison to make sure you were released properly.”

Carter stiffened at the mention of the couple responsible for his incarceration.

Miss June 1942 smiled again. “The real rapist has been caught. You’re a free man, Mr. Southard.”

Oh, yeah? If he was so free, why did he feel as if he’d gladly trade one prison cell for another so long as the leggy blonde was in it with him?

She looked at him a little too long. He tilted his head. She averted her gaze and then reached into her briefcase for something. She handed him what looked like the ring holding the key for his Harley.

“Mr. Armstrong arranged for your transportation to be delivered. It’s outside now.”

Carter raised his brows. If he didn’t know better, Ms. Cartwright was as intrigued by him as he was by her. Which surprised him. While he’d come across his fair share of uptown women happy to slum it for a night or two, the attorney type barely looked twice at a man like him.

“Oh, here,” she said, reaching into her briefcase again. “This is a letter of apology from Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Atchison. And while our business appears complete, should you need anything, this is my card with my office number in Dallas.”

Dallas. Exactly where he was going.

Was it him, or did she put special emphasis on the word anything?

He grinned.

“As your attorney, it’s my duty to strongly advise you to stay out of trouble, Mr. Southard.”

She turned to walk away. Carter watched her go. He enjoyed the suggestive sway of her hips in the beige designer suit she wore, the long line of her legs and those naughty heels. He shook his head.

The last thing he needed in his life now was a woman. The most recent one had nearly proved to be the end of him.

“Way out of your league, Southard,” the guard said, mirroring his own thoughts.

Carter slapped Ms. Cartwright’s business card on the desk and swapped it for his personal effects. “Pass that on to someone who is in her league, won’t you?”

And he turned toward the doors on his way to figure out the rest of his life. A life that would never include a woman like Laney Cartwright.

Chapter One

WHAT A DIFFERENCE two months made.

Or, rather, it was noteworthy how much the passage of time had affected Carter Southard’s view of reality. He no longer woke up abruptly looking for a wall of bars that blocked him from the rest of the world. He didn’t tense up when he passed a patrol officer on the road while driving his Harley, checking his rearview mirror to make sure the officer hadn’t turned to follow him.

One thing that hadn’t changed was the image of sexy Laney Cartwright standing in the jail’s property room, handing him the freedom that had been ripped from him through no fault of his own. Her face was what he saw the moment he opened his eyes in the morning, and the last thing he thought about when he nodded off at night. And he wasn’t granted a reprieve even then because his subconscious was given free rein over his unsatisfied desires and tortured him with fantasies involving the straitlaced defense attorney, fueling even more erotic images.

He hadn’t seen her since then. But at least five times a day he thought about reasons he could use to do just that. Partly because he hoped another face-to-face might knock some of the air out of his almost too perfect memory of her. Mostly because he hoped it wouldn’t.

Stupid. He knew it was. His recent experiences aside, inviting a woman into his life just now was probably the worst thing he could do.

Carter rolled over in the narrow bed. An ancient clattering fan doing little to cool the hot air in the small, two-bedroom bungalow outside the city.

Then a rancid smell made him draw back. He opened his eyes to stare into the droopy face of the neighbor’s old hound that sat next to his bed, watching him expectantly.

“Damn.” Carter sat up and grabbed his windup alarm clock. Just after eight-thirty in the morning. “How in the hell did you get in here again, Blue?”

All things being equal, Blue was as much his dog as his neighbor’s, but Carter couldn’t remember letting him in the house last night. He rubbed his face. Probably he’d left the back door open again. While he’d repaired the screen on the outer door a few days ago, it wouldn’t take much for a determined dog to undo his handiwork if he put his mind to it.

Carter pulled on his jeans and walked to the small kitchen. Old Blue had definitely put his mind to it.

The hound’s nails clacked against the wood floor as he followed him. He barked once, a half howl that could wake all the neighbors. Of course, at eight-thirty most were probably already up.

“All right, all right. Hush now. I’ll get your breakfast in a minute.”

The dog’s only response was to tilt his head to the side. Which was about as good as it got with him.

Carter washed his face in the kitchen sink and shook out his hands before pouring the last of the sludge in the coffeemaker into a cup and putting it into the microwave. Then he filled the food and water bowls for Blue and took both out to the back porch, where the puddle of slobber the hound would leave behind wouldn’t be as much of a nuisance as it was inside.

He stood next to the dog, looking around the three acres of land that had been in his family for more than a hundred years. The property had once been a couple of thousand acres, but after four generations, the parcel had been chopped up many times for inheritance purposes, and much of it sold off, so all that remained was the piece of land around him. And he was all that remained in the area of the original family. The brush was overgrown, fences were in disrepair. If he needed any further proof of that, he just had to look at the horse grazing in the distance. Another animal that belonged to one of his neighbors, this time the one to the west.

The microwave dinged. Carter let himself back into the kitchen, considering Blue’s handiwork as he did, and took the cup out, downing half the scalding contents before picking up the single telephone on the wall. He put a call through to the Jacksons to tell them to collect their horse before it wandered off where they wouldn’t find it.

“Thanks, Carter,” Julia Jackson said after a long sigh. “I’ll go right out and collect her. Damn horse. She’ll never learn that the grass doesn’t taste any better on your side of the fence.”