Temptation, The Complete Serial Series 1-4 (The Temptation Serial Series) (15 page)

The headphones were creeping me out. They blocked out the noise of the gun firing, but not the sound of Colt’s voice. No, they drew it closer, made it clearer. And his raspy tone in my head was more than enough to send me into a frenzy.

The target was fifty yards away and shaped like a man, which made me nervous. “Why isn’t the target like a ring?”

He smiled. “They have those too, but you wanted to protect yourself, right?” I nodded. “Rings don’t attack people, B.”

“B?”

“Yeah, B. You hate it?”

Did I hate it? Not really. “Just wondering why you suddenly came up with a pet name for me.”

“You’re like a honeybee. You enjoy the flowers, collect the nectar, make the sweetest honey ever tasted, but you’ve got a stinger on you.”

“How would you know?”

“You’re learning to shoot a gun, for one thing. Most girls wouldn’t touch the things.”

I froze. “I have my reasons.”

He pinned me with a stare. “Care to share?”

“Not right now.”

“Later then.”
Bossy man.

“Maybe,” I retorted.

“Maybe, my
ass
. If something bad is following you here, I need to know it. I need to be prepared and damn it, Brooklyn, I need to look out for you.”

I swallowed. “I don’t think trouble will find me here.”

“That’s the problem; you don’t think! Trouble can find you anywhere, B. And sometimes, you have to ask for help.”

With only short, gruff instructions, he helped me shoot the target. My first shots went into the dry earthen hillside, with only tiny plumes of dirt wafting up to tell me where they landed. Colt stepped behind me and re-positioned my arms. With his knee, he nudged my legs further apart and the jolt from the contact went straight to my core.

I breathed an unsteady breath when his stubble grazed my cheek. “Aim for his heart, B,” he rasped.

Pulling the trigger on an exhale, the bullet found its mark. I ripped the headphones off my head and with shaking hands, surrendered the pistol to him. Colt swiftly made sure the safety was on and that the gun was pointed toward the ground. “I hit him!” Two hours later, I finally hit the target where I was supposed to. “It was a fluke, but I hit him!”

“You need more practice, though,” Colt warned.

“I need to practice with my own gun.”

“You have a gun?”

“Not yet. I was hoping you’d take me to buy my own.”

He gave a small grunt of approval, took off his ball cap and raked his fingers through his short hair. I finally saw his eyes closer. Light brown with a green circle around the iris, streaked with gold. They were beautiful.

“You probably want a pink one,” he teased.

I smiled brightly. “How’d you know?”

“Call it a hunch.”

***

The only place to buy a gun was about twenty miles away in Roseburg, he told me as he got into the truck with another huff because I still wouldn’t let him help me up. When would he get it? I didn’t need help to plant my ass cheeks in the seat of his truck.

“If you buy one, there’s a waiting period of twenty-four hours.”

“Okay. I can get Morgan to take me to pick it up tomorrow.”

He put the truck in drive, leaving the target range behind us. “I’ll take you. I get off at six tomorrow. We’ll go get your gun and practice for a little while afterward.”

I nodded. “That would be great. Thanks, C.”

“C?”

“Yeah. I’m B, so you’re C.”

“You’ll forever think of this when you hear the term BC—it’ll stand for ‘Before Colt’.”

I rolled my eyes and started singing Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”.

He chuckled as he drove through town. “That song was about him, so why’s she accusing him of being vain?”

It was my turn to laugh.

Colt put his hand on my thigh. “I love the sound of your voice. No wonder you’re in a Vegas show, B.”

I smiled, my entire body warming from his touch. “Thanks,” I croaked, my throat suddenly dry.

He kept his eyes trained on the road, removing his hand from my leg and squeezing the steering wheel instead. “You wanna have dinner with me? Roseburg has a few places.”

“Sure. I’ll text Morgan and see if she wants me to order dinner for her.”

I busied myself with texting Morg. Colt nudged me. “You can tell me what has you so scared over dinner.”

My fingers stilled over the screen.

“You can trust me, B.”

I swallowed. “I know.”

***

Briar Ridge Gun and Pawn was a tiny store, but every inch of the walls held firearms of some sort. They were in stands in the display cases. Tiny guns. Enormous guns. Shitballs, there were guns everywhere. This was a gun enthusiast’s wet dream.

With his hand on the small of my back, Colt introduced me to Harm, the owner of the establishment. Harm, a man who looked to be about Willy’s age, with a shiny bald head and a white mustache that curled up to meet the wire rims of his glasses, reached his hand out for me to shake. He was so sweet. “What can I get for ya, son? And how’ve your folks been? Been too long since I seen your snake of a daddy!”

Colt laughed. “They’re doing good. Dad’s thinking about retiring.”

Harm chuckled. “He’s been thinking about retiring for four years. Loves what he does too much to hang it up.”

“I guess so,” Colt started. “Do you have any .38s in pink, Harm?”

His eyes lit up. “You buying a gun, Brooklyn?”

“Yeah. He’s teaching me how to use it,” I replied, nudging Colt in the arm.

“Just so happens that I have a .38 in pink. Taurus Ultra Lite, too! Want to see if it fits?”

I looked at Colt and mouthed the word ‘Fits?’

He leaned in close while Harm rifled around beneath one of the counters. “See if it feels good, B.” I’ll tell you what felt good: his breath on my ear. Holy shit. Maybe Morg was right. Friends with benefits could be a good thing. Friendly rebound sex. Erasing Mopy Dick from my memory, along with all the other memories BC (Before Colt). I sighed.

“You all right, B?” He smirked, grabbing my side and jerking me into his own.

“I’m fine.” I straightened and tried to pull away, but he held me tightly. When Harm turned around, his bushy white eyebrows raised, taking us both in.

“Well, I’ll be!”

Harm left it at that and got to business showing me the pink handgun. It was an automatic and Colt promised to show me how to load the cartridges, clean it, yada, yada. “I’ll take it.”

Too much paperwork and seven hundred-eighty dollars on my credit card later, I was one step away from having my own gun!

It wasn’t until we were seated at Ginny’s Family Restaurant that I realized what I’d done. “Oh, shit. Oh, no. I’m so stupid.” Hyperventilating at dinner would
not
make the friends-with-benefits conversation with Colt that I’d rehearsed in my mind on the drive over go well. We’d just been given tall glasses of water, so I shoved my straw into the glass and tried to inhale as much as I could. Tears threatened to spill over.

Morgan and I would have to leave now.

He could track it.

But could he really?

Did he have that capability?

I used my credit card. Morgan told me that Riley said not to use it; not to leave a paper trail or an electronic one. And I forgot. In a moment of passion with that pink Taurus, I forgot about
him
—which was crazy because
he
was the reason I needed that pink pistol to begin with!

Colt moved. He was seated in the booth across from me and now he sat beside me, his thigh against mine. “Breathe.” He pulled my face up from my drink and held it in front of his own. “Breathe, B.”

I nodded, the tears escaping and streaking hot down my face.

“I’m so stupid!”

He pulled me into his shoulder and let me cry. The server and everyone else probably thought I was a complete mental case.

When I finally composed myself, I dabbed at my eyes with the paper napkin. “Now,” Colt said, rubbing circles into my shoulder. “You’re gonna tell me everything.”

So I did.

I told him about working for Manny. I told him about Peter and Kate and admitted that I was a vandal, that the Good Samaritan in me didn’t volunteer for Habitat, but was ordered to make restitution via community service (and of course to pay back every cent of the damage that I caused to Peter’s vehicular baby). I told Colt about
him
, about the notes, the roses, the weird pendant and coin stamped with the snake symbol and how
he
broke into the only place I felt safe, only to try to invade Shane and Morgan’s house too. I told him about the trip to New York and how he found me there. I explained how I tossed our phones into the busy highway when Morgan helped me disappear.

He sat silently, taking it all in; his eyes locked on mine as they kept leaking all of the pent-up tension from the past several months.

When I was finished, he hugged me tightly to him. “Don’t worry, B. We’ll figure it all out.”

“We?”

“Yeah. We.”

He placed a soft, warm kiss on my forehead and when I felt better, we ordered dinner and then ate side by side in companionable silence. I could almost see his mind working out the problem. I just hoped he would find a solution, as no one else had been able to.

“I think we’ll have to leave now,” I admitted as he helped me into the cab of his truck. I was too spent to fight him on it.

“Nah. You just got here. I promise to help you figure it all out. Besides, Morgan’s father isn’t the only one with connections around here.”

When he steered the truck into his driveway and put it in park, I suddenly got nervous. What if
he
was coming? Colt walked me to the door and made sure I was safe inside before walking away.

It was hard to tell Morgan that I was an idiot, but I had to do it. I put her in danger, too. She relayed the information to Shane, who told Riley, who went to work trying to hide the charge on my account electronically. I didn’t know if it was even possible or if we were wasting our time. Maybe
he
wasn’t looking for that. Maybe
he
didn’t have that capability.

But maybe he does.

My conscience even hated me.

***

Lunch at Lyra’s was pure torture. I’d decided to watch what I was eating again. It wouldn’t be long before I was back in Vegas with Manny, right? So I picked at my garden salad while Sin stuffed her one-third pound, all beef cheeseburger in her mouth, the juice dripping down her chin. It was gross. And I wanted my chin to match.

The smells alone tortured me; sizzling grease, fatty food. I wanted it all.

Sigh.

Rose was ornery as ever, and we noticed that she focused most of her serving attention on Willy, who happened to be dining out today, too. He was seated at the bar on one of the swiveling stools and Rose kept leaning across that counter at him, pushing her more-than-ample bosom toward his face while he smiled from ear to ear. I couldn’t help but giggle. Dirty old manther.

“What’s on tap for this afternoon?” I asked her, but was almost afraid to hear. That morning, she photographed me by the pool. I mixed paint to match the gentle turquoise of the pool’s liner and the water. Somehow she managed to find the exact shade in a very scandalous bikini while in D.C., and ordered me into cold water at six-thirty AM this morning—because of the lighting, she claimed. I came out shivering. She applied paint where she wanted it and had me lower my legs into the water, holding myself up with my arms. “Look sexy! Part your lips,” she demanded.

I rolled my eyes but complied. About that time, Colt walked out of his condo dressed in his uniform, looking sexy enough to eat. He turned, locked eyes with me, and his mouth gaped open. He stopped in his tracks and then, as if he remembered he was supposed to be walking, started down the steps looking all pissed off.

“What the hell is this?”

“More pictures,” I grumbled.

“That bathing suit barely covers you!”

Morgan giggled and answered, “That’s kind of the point.”

He flashed an aggravated look in her direction, making me laugh. As his eyes raked over my skin, they paused on the droplets of paint.

“Oh! I promise we won’t get paint anywhere. We’re almost finished, and I’ve been careful not to brush up against anything,” I said hurriedly.

The muscle in his jaw worked back and forth. “Six. Be ready at six tonight.”

“Sure. Thanks, C.”

As he walked away, he glanced back and smiled. “Six o’clock, B.”

Morgan waited until he was out of earshot before saying, “B? C? You two sure have gotten close.”

My arms were burning from holding myself up for so long. “Shoot the damn picture, kid. I’m about to break my word and get paint all over the pool.” My arms quaked, waiting for rest. She snapped away.