Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2) (11 page)

At the time, Julia had been too much of a
fire-breathing wild child to handle . . . without someone hurt in the process. She’d
liked things fast, tattooed, and dangerous.

Jake spent only a few summers working for her father,
Gill. Gill and Jake now had a binding agreement. Jake was to keep away from
Julia and he’d be able to live. Easy enough—because Gill said he would protect
his only daughter to the death, and at the time Gill told him this Jake did
have a great will to live.

Or, at least he had until Liddy suddenly showed up in Preacher’s
Bend unbalancing the universe. Now he wished he’d smacked his head on the
police station window and ended it once and for all, than have dealt with any
of this now.

While he was thinking on what could have been, and Liddy
mulled his suggestion in her head, he knew the women had hung around together;
each technically motherless, at the time; each befriending the other when
they’d needed a friend the most.

“Do you think she’ll really help me? I mean . . . we
haven’t talked in years.”

“It’s worth a shot. And just between us . . . we
haven’t talked in years either, and yet you just kissed me. Surely time stood
still?”

Liddy groaned. “You really are something, Jake. Why I
ever thought to have . . .,” she stalled upon.

“What?” His eyes widened. “Why did you ever think to have
what
?” He knew he was grilling her, yet did not care. “Finish that, if
you please?”

“No, Jake. You would get far too much personal
satisfaction out of its conclusion.”

He smiled; as Liddy turned her head. Calling Julia
Hillard was her only option.

“Why did you steal his car? If he, your um, fiancé` .
. . why didn’t you just ask him for it?” Jake tripped over the word fiancé`,
musing,
How the hell can she have a fiancé, if she still has a husband?
“Or, is he one of
those
guys?”

Liddy looked stunned. “What do you mean one of
those
guys?”

“The non-sharing type,” he replied, tilting his head
to watch her face. He wouldn’t put it past her to pull the wool over his eyes,
making up a lame excuse of another man in her life.

“Mack shares! We share everything. We just don’t share
the Porsche.”

He clenched his jaw. “I’m sure you do share,” he said.
“Yet, the problem is you’re sharing with this Mack guy something of mine. And I
don’t like to share what’s mine, Liddy.”

“Good God! A boldface lie if ever heard. You like to
share plenty, you son of a bitch.”

“Are you referring to something in particular, Mrs.
Giotti?”

She balked considerably at his calling her Mrs.
Giotti, but compensated over it with, “Yes, you . . . with Eliza Porter.”

Jake closed his eyes. “Christ, Liddy! Now we’re
finally getting to the real meat and potatoes as to why you’re so bitter and
angry at life.”

And it was about fucking time!

“For starters, Eliza Porter was a onetime thing. It
shouldn’t have happened, and it certainly never happened again. After you left
me, I guess you could say the kick to the gut had a wounded man mending his
ways in a real big hurry.”

Liddy snorted, but he continued undaunted. “I did
something stupid.  I let the woman into my life just to hear her plead her
case, tell me a bunch of lies, and all hell broke loose. I never meant to hurt
you. Or lie to you. Or ruin us. But she had some pretty hard evidence against
you. Said you were cheating on me, who with and the exact times, and the
detailing in her stories added up. And I sort of believed her and went a little
ballistic. What can I say? I’d made a tremendous error in judgment.”

Liddy looked at him, but held her tongue. She had the
look or real hurt in her eyes.

Okay. So perhaps just now he realized she wouldn’t
have cheated on him. He knew he’d been more than enough man to handle in the
‘talented in bed’ department. She’d even told him a time or two he was more man
than any woman had the right to claim as her own.

“It wasn’t supposed to have happened. But it did. I told
myself our minor problems at the time were slightly bigger than they were; I
deserved a break from you. It was a meaningless romp done only to change your
attitude, and have you crawling back to me on hands and knees, begging for
forgiveness. I’m sorry for even thinking that, Liddy. Once Eliza coming clean
about her lies, I regretted that moment . . . God! You don’t know how badly I
regretted that moment . . .”

Jake took a deep breath to cleanse his soul, adding more
before he lost the nerve. “Our problems were minor, Liddy. We could have fixed
them. I guess I was just being stubborn and pigheaded, and stupid, and threw
away the only real tools that would have fixed us when there’d been a chance. Ten
years is a lot of time to repent for a very minor sin, babe.”

This time it was Liddy who closed her eyes. Instead of
getting angry, and snapping off his head, as she should’ve been doing and as he’d
thought she would, she softly let slip out, “Sleeping with Eliza Porter was not
something I would’ve ever considered as a minor sin, Jake.”

Her eyes reopened to look his way.

Jake let the remark slide off his back. “Besides, you
sort of moved on. I got one really stupid night out of it all, and not a very
good night. And you got the next ten years hopping in the sack with some
hotshot lawyer down in Miami. So who’s the one sinning now, Liddy? It sure as
hell hasn’t been me these last ten years.”

“And I am just supposed to believe this?” she said.

“You could try,” he mused.

She looked him over; head to toe her gaze stung his
pride. She then snorted. “Jake Giotti, you are a born and bred liar. In my
book, no red-blooded female could ever look at you and not want, with dire
consequences, to jump your bones six ways to Sunday. Don’t you dare think to
sit here and tell me you’ve not had sex in ten years? Because I can’t . . . I
won’t
. . .
believe you.”

He smiled devilishly. “No red-blooded female, huh?” He
then nudged her with his shoulder.

This time she did punch him—hard. Lucky for him it wasn’t
on the arm smarting so much.

“I do remember a time when you were the
only
woman who could ever look at me and then be allowed to jump my bones,” he
teased. “Wanna look at me now, Liddy?”

She stuck out her tongue at his face instead, her eyes
closed.

“What? The dare a bit too challenging for you?”

“You’re an arrogant jerk!”

“Maybe so, but I am the only arrogant jerk who is
sitting here with you. Mack, hotshot lawyer
what’s-his-name
sure as hell
isn’t sitting in a holding cell with you.”

“This can be arranged,” she warned quickly.

Jake suddenly played with Liddy’s fragile state of
mind and well-being. “What you gonna do, Liddy? Use your one phone call to call
him
? A guy who you just mentioned is not speaking to you? So he can drive
all the way up to Preacher’s Bend in another of his really expensive man toys and
do his damnedest to defend your honor? Do you really expect him to come all
this way just to beat me up? If so, I’m pretty certain he’s not man enough to
actually pull it off. But I’ll let him have his fun, and allow the creep at
least one try; only for the hell of it, and only because I’ve been a little
bored lately. And only two punches. But none to the face.”

When she did not sass back, he added, “Then it will be
my turn. And believe me, Liddy,
Lover Boy
will not be able to stand
upright to take a piss after I get my turn at him. He took something from me
not his to take.” His teeth ground together due to this fact. “And I don’t know
how many times I have to say it, but I don’t share what is mine.”

Liddy’s eyes locked with his and didn’t let go.

Chapter Eleven

Liddy jumped from the bench, stormed over to the door
of the cell, and started to bang her forehead against the bars. It hurt. But she
really didn’t care what hurt her anymore. It was better than sitting here listening
to her husband belittling her hopefully soon-to-be new husband.

She worked too damn hard at gaining an intern
partnership in
Wells, Namsley, and Sherwood
through the definitive route
of marriage. Then, to lose it all now, over one terribly lousy, done-in-haste
marriage she wanted out of?

Hell no!

An annulment would’ve been easy for all parties
involved. There were no kids to divvy up custody, no home that needed a
fifty-fifty value placement. Just him and her and a separation of vows that
needed to be annulled.

Jake followed her to the bars and pulled her from them,
keeping Liddy from hurting herself any further. She turned to him and started
to cry all over again.

He maneuvered her into his arms and held on tight.

“I’m sorry. I should not have said that.” He then ran
his hand over her forehead, into her hair, cupping the back of her head with
his palm.

“No. You should not have,” she sobbed out. “You should
just keep your big, fat mouth shut for a change.” She slammed her fist against
his bared chest hoping to get her point across.

“It’s just . . .” Jake’s sigh so heavy, he leaned his
forehead to hers. “It’s just with you being here, most everything I had thought
never to say again seems to be slipping right out of my mouth unchecked.”

Liddy moved her head and looked up, Jake wiping away a
single, lingering tear off her face with his thumb.

“And most of what I thought never to do again seems to
be the only things happening.”

He quickly leaned down to kiss her yet again and this
time she let the man get away with it. Hot and heavy too tame to describe how
either was feeling at the moment. Steamed? Saturated? Engulfed in a blazing
white-hot fire? Surely those fit much better than just hot and heavy?

Jake kissed her with ten long years of strong emotions
buried deep inside the both of them. Liddy, with ten long years of incredible
hurt bottled up in her gut. Ten year of passionless nights unfulfilled, and
plenty of years waiting for these facts to change before it was too late.

Coming up for air, he smiled down into her eyes. “See
what I mean?”

A grin slowly formed on her lips. “No. Not really. I
think you steamed up my eyeballs. I can’t see a thing.”

At the wisecrack he released her; although it seemed reluctantly.
He ran his hand through his hair, then over his face.  His sight trapped hers.

“Boy! If Debra does not come back to this police
station, and soon . . . I might find myself doing something
really
stupid.” At this thought he groaned aloud.

Liddy slid her gaze without regret to her husband’s
lower half, grinning shamelessly.

Stupid?
No.
Stupid wasn’t exactly the word she would have used. Try idiotic, or foolish, even
incomprehensible.
But stupid?

Besides, had Jake not found his own grip with reality,
she might have wanted to do something really
stupid
herself. She could feel
the tightness growing in her lower half, increasing tenfold. The ache that
signaled to a woman who’d been without for so damn long as pure unadulterated
danger.

Jake making her feeling this way . . . was not good. He
wasn’t supposed to be making her wanting him so badly her teeth ached. Liddy
was supposed to want Mack Wells in this way; so strong, so violently sexual; so
mind-blowing and completely out of this world.

Thus far, in their rather tame relationship, Mack made
the good parts of her anatomy simmer. There was no mind-blowing sex between them.
In fact, there was no sex between them at all. Not yet anyway.

But Jake surely should not have this particular
information supplied to him.

He glanced at his watch and groaned all the more.
Sixty-
seven hours and counting.
They simply had to get through sixty-seven more
hours with each other. And hopefully not rip each other’s clothes off just to have
their way.

Liddy watched Jake move his eyes about the police
station, looking for something. What? Signs of hidden cameras?

If there were any, half-sister Debra was smart enough
to hide them.

The pure temptation of getting caught in the act had
always been his downfall. The man lived by the edge of the sword. A few
well-placed cameras would not have stopped his taking her ten ways to Sunday
ten years prior. But this was not ten years ago. This was now. Liddy was not
the same person she’d been when he married her. In fact, she could see he still
hurt from her seemingly easy abandonment of their marriage.

Ten years was a long time not to take what was yours
with no regrets.

Jake groaned.

“What? Did I hurt you?” Her voice had turned soft,
alluring, almost unrecognizable.

“No. But can you?” he suddenly prodded, winking at her
face.

With breakneck speed, she snapped out of the trance he’d
put her in. “You are incorrigible, Jake Giotti. A complete, irresponsible, incorrigible
ass.”

“Maybe so, but I also have the added benefit of being an
extremely horny man with my wife in the near vicinity. And maybe good old Larry
was right.”

Lucky Larry’s advice came back to the brain swiftly,
with dreaded vengeance. “Right? About what?” Liddy wondered aloud, pretending
ignorance.

“About the fact no one would ever know . . . if we do,”
he said, raising a thick brow.

Liddy’s eyes widened. Her gasp was audible. “You can’t
be serious?”

Jake moved forward, placing his body just inches from her.
His hard cock under his suit pants even closer. “I’m as serious as ever, sweetheart.”

He then grabbed her right hand and hauled it down to
the juncture between his legs. “
Very
serious,” he repeated; as she
gasped at the size and thickness of him trapped under the expensively tailored
pants.

Liddy yanked her trembling hand out of his grasp.
“Jake Giotti! I am not suddenly brain-dead while locked in this holding cell
with you. You and I are not . . . we are
not . . .
” She managed to moan
out the rest under the barest threads of her still intact sanity. “Damnit,
Jake! We are
not
having
sex
with each other inside a police
station.”

“Why not?” He grinned, shameless of all fault. “Too
chicken? Too uptight? God! We’ve had sex in far worse places, if you remember
correctly.”

Trying very hard not to remember those places, Liddy
snapped, “Because, it is just . . .wrong!”

“What? Wrong to have sex inside a police station?” he
asked, raising another brow. “Or just wrong to have sex with your
husband
?”

“Both!” she sputtered.

“Oh, well, if that’s the case.” A harsh shrug made
with his shoulders, he backed away from her. “Then I assume it is all right for
you to have sex with a man you’re not married to?”

Oh! That’s rich, coming from a womanizer . . .

“I haven’t had sex . . .”

Liddy caught the foolish words by their tail, clamping
her mouth shut. Her husband, however, hadn’t missed the slip of the tongue. He
pulled her eyes back to his by strong fingers clamping her chin.

“What was that, sweetheart? Please don’t tell me you
are keeping yourself
virginal
for your up and coming wedding night, and
haven’t had sex with Mack
What’s-his-name
? You plan to marry this guy
once you can actually rid yourself of me. The Liddy I knew would not be saving herself
for anyone. The Liddy I know loves sex. She can’t live without it. So why would
she even try?” He paused, drawing in a sharp breath. “Unless . . .”

Her hand rose and she slapped him as hard as she could
right across the face. This was the exact moment Debra walked through the door
of the police station, and the exact moment Liddy’s heart sunk to her knees.

Jake could do nothing to retaliate, simply taking the
biting sting with a grain of salt. He moved to his side of the cell to drop
down on the bench, now glaring at her.

While Liddy stood by the cell’s door, trembling all
over, head to toe, her remorse set in. It was only inevitable he’d think she’d
been trying to trap Mack into marriage.

“So? I see the two of you are now resorting to
smacking each other around? Ain’t that precious?” Debra’s tone was caustic.

She stormed over to her desk, grabbed a manila folder
from it, and stormed right back out, locking the station’s door.

“Debra!” Liddy yelled. “You can’t leave me in here
with this man!”

“She can’t hear you,” Jake flipped out.

Liddy turned her head and hissed. “Shut up, Jake! Not
another word out of you. Not another fucking word!”

His eyes widened to what he must have considered as a
rather pathetic and useless threat. “Oh, really? And just how the hell are you
going to stop me, might I ask?”

Angry red marks were marring his right cheek. His arm,
the spot where he’d been trying to remove her name from a chain around a snake
late last night, was bleeding once again.

“Damnit, Jake! Why are you being like this?”

He leaned his head against the wall, closed his eyes,
held the ice pack to his upper arm, and told her flat out, with no regrets, no
hesitation, just the real meat and potatoes of a very real problem between them,
“Forget about it,
Mrs
.
Giotti
. I don’t feel much like arguing
with you. I’m hurting. And listening to the sound of your voice compounds any
pain, quite unnecessarily.”

“I hope it really hurts. I hope it hurts so damn bad
that you can’t stand the pain. I hope that it . . .”

She never quite finished these thoughts.

Liddy was too afraid of them all of a sudden. His gaze
had slammed into hers, and the ghosts of the past which seemed to haunt them at
every turn came forth, and neither could hide from its destructive path to save
their souls.