Roan (20 page)

“So what?” The question was distracted, as if his mind had slid off on a tangent.

“Are you going to get off me or not?”

“When I'm ready.”

“And when might that be, do you think?” she demanded.

He gave her his full attention. A slow smile curved his lips. When he spoke, his voice had a deep, silken glide. “Maybe when you agree to do exactly as I ask?”

Her eyes widened. This was not blustering male bravado, but pure intent. Still, it was tempered by something else, a half-tender enticement that invited her to see the humor of their position, and also its unacknowledged dangers.

The problem was that she did see. She felt it as well, felt the slow shift of change within herself that made the weight
of his body less a burden and more a source of sense-gratifying contact, less a means of domination and more an intimate and alluring physical intrusion into her space.

He couldn't do this to her. It wasn't right or fair when he had such power over her freedom. Still, he was also susceptible to her appeal; he'd as good as admitted that much, hadn't he? If he used sexual attraction as a weapon, he could hardly complain at retaliation in kind. How risky could it be when he'd just explained why he'd never go too far?

She lowered her gaze to the star on his shirt that was mere inches from her breast. Shifting her injured arm, she touched a fingertip to its engraved surface, warm from his body heat, then traced its points one by one. In tentative tones, she said, “I don't know why you're so set on making me wear the stupid monitor. It's not as if I have anywhere to go or any reason to want to get away from you.”

He was quiet for so long that she thought he wasn't going to answer. When she looked up, he was watching her with a suspended look in his eyes. Then he gave a slow shake of his head while irony tugged a corner of his mouth upward. “I seem to have made a strategic error.”

“What?” She kept the word as innocent as possible without overdoing it. Roan Benedict was an intelligent man, much more so than Harrell who had never seen through her little ploys or realized how well she understood him. But even intelligent men had been known to underestimate feminine cunning.

“Never mind. The monitor is mostly about protection.”

“Why would I need it when you're around?”

“I'm not always. I can't be, and that's the problem.”

She studied the slash of his thick brows, his square jaw and chin. Protection, he said. As she lay there against him, she could almost feel it surrounding her, enclosing her with
him in a cocoon of safety. It was a sensation she could grow to depend on if she let herself, just as she could get used to reaching out to him, touching him of her own will and purpose.

Lowering her lashes, she let her gaze rest on the firm curves of his lips. Her voice a mere thread of sound, she asked, “But who will protect me from the inside threat?”

“That,” he said, lowering his head so that his breath teased her lips, “is something you'll have to figure out yourself. But if you need a test, I don't mind.”

An alarm bell went off in Tory's mind, but it was too late. He stroked her lips with his in the lightest of caresses, tasting the smooth and moist delicate corners, then returning to their center. With gentle courtesy, he enticed her to open to him. It was impossible to resist. She flowed against him, into him, with her lips molding to the firmer contours of his, seeking their heat and gentle abrasion. His kiss was golden fire, desire and persuasion, endless persuasion. That he wasn't more domineering triggered surprise, then even that disappeared in the sweet magic of joined mouths.

She smoothed her palm across his star and the resilient planes of his chest beneath it, then reached behind his neck to draw him closer, deeper. The crisp feel of his hair between her fingers sent a shiver of pleasure over her. Feeling it, he tightened his hold. She could ignore the incipient pain in her shoulder, but not the hot firmness of him against her thigh. That sign of his involvement was an incitement, and she pressed closer with a soft murmur in her throat. Lost, she was lost in the pure fascination of this backcountry man.

The peal of a bell-like tone somewhere under Roan startled Tory so much that she jumped. He withdrew by slow degrees and with reluctance in the last clinging touch of his mouth. Releasing her, he sat up and put a hand to the
pager clipped to his belt, tilting it to read the display. His chest lifted with a sigh that might have been from resignation, but could also have signaled relief.

“Sorry, but I have to cut this short.”

He didn't mean their embrace, but rather the campaign to attach the monitor. Hard on the words, he clamped a hand on her ankle and slid the black plastic cuff around it. She jerked against his hold, but he pressed tighter, holding her down, while he turned his head and met her gaze with firm purpose. She stared into the faceted steel of his eyes, but could find no relenting there, no hint that anything she'd said or done had moved him an inch or ever would. She swallowed hard on a sudden knot of tears, but resisted no more.

The rest of it took scant seconds. While she stared at his broad back, he fastened the cuff with a special tool he took from his pocket, tested it for fit and the possibility of chafing, and then gave a satisfied nod. He reached to touch her other ankle briefly, perhaps looking at the few remaining scabs that marked it. Then he pushed to his full height and stood looking down at her.

“I'll be back,” he said quietly. “Soon.”

Was it a threat or a promise? She couldn't tell. And what did it matter anyway? He did what he wanted to do, always, and nothing and no one could stop him.

“Don't hurry on my account,” she answered, forcing the words through the tightness in her throat.

He hesitated, watching her. At last, he said again, “I'm really sorry.”

She turned her head, staring out over the water, and did not look around again until he swung away and his footsteps faded down the inside hall. A minute later, she heard his car heading down the drive.

He was sorry.

A hard knot formed in her throat as she digested that idea. Any other man would have been ablaze with satisfaction over his conquest, but not Roan, the almighty Sheriff of Tunica Parish. He was sorry that he had forced his will on her. He was sorry that he had crossed the line with a prisoner, an act unacceptable in his book of restrictive codes and outdated notions.

Roan Benedict held himself to a higher ideal of what a man should be. He was a Southern gentleman, with all the pride and strength and sense of duty implied by that title. The question was, where did that leave her?

She had not acted the part of a lady. She had tried to trick him, to use physical attraction to get what she wanted, and it hadn't worked.

She had been hiding behind Roan Benedict for some time now, using him to keep her safe while endangering both him and his son with her lies. He deserved better.

She didn't like herself all that much just now, especially with her body cooling from the sheriff's heated weight and with the last, drugging seductiveness of powerful emotions fading from her veins. When had she grown so unscrupulous? When had she ceased to care about other people? Had she always been this way, or was it the effect of being around Harrell and her stepfather? Did she really think, as some said, that the rich were different? Did she believe, deep down, that she could get away with anything?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Still, what could she do? If she told Roan the truth and threw herself on his mercy, would it be any different? Would he believe her, or only think it was another trick? If he looked into her background and discovered what she said was true, would he not feel duty-bound to protect her all the more?

She couldn't allow that. No, her first plan was still best.
She needed to get away the first chance she saw, needed to get to Paul Vandergraff and find out where he stood in this fiasco. Once she had straightened out her life, then maybe, just maybe…

Maybe what? There was no place in Roan's quiet, useful, honor-bound existence for someone like her. No place at all. The sooner she got used to the idea, the better off she'd be. So what was left, then, except to go on as she had been, to use whatever means she could to lull him into relaxing his vigilance?

She glared at the black plastic band around her ankle, then lifted her foot and kicked experimentally to test the weight. She hated the thing, not only for the loss of freedom it represented, but for the memories that were now attached to it.

As she set her foot down again, the band scraped over her opposite ankle. The contact grated across her skin with much more roughness than she'd expected. She frowned as she sat up and leaned to inspect the damage.

It wasn't the monitor that had scratched her. It was the chain of her ankle bracelet. Roan had returned it, slipped it on her ankle while she was too distracted by the monitor cuff to notice. It glittered up at her, bearing the name that he knew her by, one as false as she was:
Donna.

She had missed it. But what did it mean that Roan had given it back to her? Had he decided it had no value as evidence? Did it indicate, perhaps, that he understood her need to have something of her own? Or had he simply returned it as recompense for making her wear the monitor?

As she stared at it, Tory wondered what Roan would think when he knew her by her real name. Would he understand her pretense or despise her as a fraud and a coward? Would he ever learn who and what she was inside? It didn't look hopeful.

Depression and disquiet warred inside Tory over the next few days. She stayed in her room, reading, pacing, watching Roan come and go; refusing to admit, even to herself, that she was hiding. The cause, she decided finally, was embarrassment, yes, but also injured feelings. She had almost forgotten that she was not a guest at Dog Trot. The reminder hurt.

She wondered if Allen and Cal and the other deputies in Roan's office knew about the monitor. The idea made her uncomfortable, something to do with privacy, she thought, but also with a feeling that this was a personal issue between Roan and herself. She wasn't wild about Jake being aware of it, either, though she knew he must.

Roan's son brought up her meals as he had before, though he seldom stayed to talk. While it was a relief not to have to deal with his unspoken sympathy, his avoiding her seemed like a slap in the face. Roan himself hardly came near her. He had seen to it that she was unable to escape without detection, had assured himself that she was fairly well recovered, and was no longer interested in her or what she needed. Even Beau deserted her at times, loping off to follow Jake about his chores or on his dirt bike trips. That the solitary confinement was largely her own choice made little difference, Tory still felt like a burden, an unwelcome addition to the routine at Dog Trot.

If Sheriff Roan Benedict thought he could hold her like this forever, he was mistaken. She was going to leave as soon as she figured out how to escape without alerting the world.

She began her campaign near noon of the next day. It had been a sultry morning, with distant thunder that promised to shake a storm out of the gray sky before long. Jake was home instead of out riding or visiting with friends; she'd heard the beep and chime and ear-grating music of
the video game he was playing earlier. Dragging on a pair of cutoff jeans and a “Kickin' Country Y106” T-shirt, she set off in search of the boy. The cuff set off no alarm as she descended the stairs, so she concluded it was all right to leave the upper floor, at least. Not that she'd been in much doubt.

She found Jake in the kitchen, frowning into the pantry as he swung the door back and forth from one hand to the other. He looked up with an uncertain smile as she came into the room, but seemed happy enough to have someone else to help decide what was for lunch. They settled on homemade vegetable soup canned by Cousin Kane's Aunt Vivian the previous summer. Jake introduced her to the delights of floating small cheese crackers shaped like fish in the soup and drinking milk over ice with it. It was comfort food at its finest, and went far to banish the constraint between them.

They talked of this and that, the fish he'd been catching on the lake, the baby shower given for Cousin Kane's wife, Regina, the excitement over the coming baby. All the while, Tory mulled over the best way to approach the teenager about what she wanted to know. At the first lull in the conversation, she said, “You know, this cuff thing on my ankle is really starting to get to me. I can't imagine having to wear it for months.”

Jake's slim face mirrored relief, apparently because she'd brought up the subject. Until then he'd looked everywhere except at her leg. It was as though the cuff embarrassed him almost as much as it did her.

“I don't see why you have to wear it at all,” he said. “It's not as if you're going to welcome the creeps who had you with open arms if they do show up again.”

“I think your dad is more worried about my running off
to find them,” she pointed out in dry humor. “He doesn't exactly trust me.”

“I tried to set him straight about that, but got the ‘You'll understand better when you're older' lecture. Man.” He shook his head in disgust.

His partisanship was gratifying, but also disturbing. She studied the flush of color on his cheeks with distinct misgivings, wondering if he'd developed more than a mere liking for her company. He was at a susceptible age, old enough to feel the first stirring of infatuation, but too young to realize its brief nature.

Compunction, uncomfortable and unwanted, touched her just as it had that day on the porch. To rope in this boy, maybe to pit him against his father, made her feel on a level with an earthworm. And yet, what choice did she have? She needed help, and there was no one else.

“It's like being watched,” she said with a small, brave smile. “Like some perverted little man is following me everywhere I go.”