Unstoppable (A Country Roads Novel)

A Country Roads Novel

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To Kaitie Hotard, no matter the distance you continue to be a constant source of encouragement and strength in my life. It’s always a comfort to know you’re just a phone call away. To Stephen Hotard, you’ve become a close friend over the last couple of years. Thank you for being such a good husband to my best friend.

To Sarah E. Younger, you are beyond wonderful. You’ve become my guru on all things book-related, and on more than a couple of things life-related. You help me work past the rough spots and never hesitate to lend a helping word or two (thousand). Thank you isn’t enough for what you do for me.

To my editor Megha Parekh, you were so excited about Mel’s story and your help during the planning and editing process was indispensable. You continue to make me a better writer and I love working with you. And to everyone I’ve worked with at Grand Central Publishing, especially my publicist Julie Paulauski and the amazing art department. I love my covers. They are beyond beautiful.

To David McCue, for working out the beginning of
Unstoppable
. Thank you for going over the dozens of scenarios and potential recovery methods for Mel. You helped me put my beloved character through the least amount of pain as possible. I’m forever grateful for your patience and your friendship.

To Marina Coleman, for talking me through things (both with writing and life) and just for listening. You are fabulous and I’m so grateful to call you a friend.

To William Isaacs, sometimes you find friendship in the most unexpected places. Thank you for answering more questions than I can count on topics ranging from the military to dog training, and a few things in between.

To Ken Kenyon and Kenny Miller, real-life handymen, who gave me more than a few tips on construction and building. You wear your hardhats well.

To Rachel Lacey and Annie Rains for making RWA 2013 so much fun. You guys are awesome, and I hope to have many more conferences laughing over a bottle (or two) of wine.

To Gloria Berry, for supporting my writing from day one, and for dragging me to frozen yogurt when I’m in desperate need of a mental break; nothing says happiness like Nutella goodness.

To my parents, for giving me life and all, and everything else you do because it’s a whole heck of a lot.

To Katie Crandall, we were kindred spirits from the start. You share my love for one Fitzwilliam Darcy (and all things Jane Austen), sunflowers, Scotland, and strawberry wine. You named the ever adorable and lovable Teddy, and you helped me figure out a lot of what makes Bennett Hart tick. You are, as always, invaluable.

T
he pain was incredible. It was like someone had drilled a hole into her shoulder. And she was cold, oh so unbelievably cold.

She’d been shot. At least she was pretty sure she’d been shot. The gun had gone off and then someone had been screaming. Was it her that screamed? Was she screaming now? She thought she was. She felt like she was. Or was the screaming all in her head?

No. No, there was definitely something blaring. A loud, piercing noise, and it wasn’t in her head. It was everywhere.

And she was flat on her back. When had she fallen? She didn’t remember going down. Just opening her eyes to a world of pain.

“We’re at Rejuvenate,” a panicked voice said. “We walked in on Chad Sharp and Hoyt Reynolds breaking in, and they shot Mel. They shot her.”

Okay, so she
had
been shot.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” another panicked voice said. This voice was much closer. It was above her.

The room was dark. Blurred images moved around in a dim light, but she couldn’t make them out.

Warmth was leaking out of her, spreading out over her shoulder. There was pressure, pressure, over the pain. Someone was trying to hold her together.

She closed her eyes. Maybe then the pain would go away. Maybe then she’d be okay.

“Mel, look at me,” the panicked voice said.

She opened her eyes and tried to get past the pain. Tried to come back. Harper, it was Harper above her. She focused on Harper’s face. There was blood smeared on Harper’s cheek and she was crying.

The rest of the room slowly came into focus. The loud blaring was the alarm and Grace was on the phone, talking to someone.

“Mel, say something. Please,” Harper begged.

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

“I know, I know.” Harper’s voice shook along with her hands.

“Jax is here,” Grace cried out, shooting across the room.

More voices, and the floor underneath Mel shook as people walked across it. And then someone was kneeling on the other side of her. Mel looked up into the last face she’d expected to see.

Bennett.

His piercing bluish gray eyes were intently focused on her.

“Mel, it’s going to be okay,” he said calmly as he put his hands over Harper’s trembling ones. “Understand? You’re going to be fine.”

“Okay,” she whispered as tears streamed from her eyes.

“I got it.” Bennett looked up at Harper.

Harper nodded and pulled her hands out from under his. And then Bennett was in Mel’s face, his calm, beautiful eyes staring straight into hers and his voice the only thing she could hear.

“Stay right here, Mel. I’ve got you. I promise.”

I
t had been eight weeks since Melanie O’Bryan had been shot, eight weeks since she’d gone to a spa after hours and walked in on a burglary in progress. She’d been with her two best friends, Harper Laurence and Grace King. It wasn’t like the three girls had done anything wrong; Harper was a massage therapist who worked at Rejuvenate and was able to go in and out of the spa as she pleased. They’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mirabelle, Florida, was a small beach town. Its six hundred square miles boasted a population of about five thousand. Even though there were very few saints in that five thousand, the burglary spree that had hit the town had been out of the norm. Chad Sharp and Hoyt Reynolds had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from over a dozen businesses and houses.

No one had known who was behind the burglaries until Mel, Harper, and Grace had walked in on the one at Rejuvenate. Chad and Hoyt had gotten away that night, but their greed caught up with them, and so had the law. Now the two thieves were sitting behind bars, awaiting trial. With any luck they would be in there for a
very
long time.

Chad had been the one who shot Mel in the shoulder. The bullet hadn’t hit anything vital, but she had required physical therapy for the past six weeks. She’d actually just finished her last session the day before. Her shoulder was still sore for the most part, but little by little she was getting back to a full range of motion.

Things were slowly getting back to normal for Mel. It was the middle of August and school was starting on Monday. The teachers had spent the last week planning, and Mel couldn’t wait for her students to be back in the classroom.

It was just after four on Friday when Mel pulled up in front of her little two-bedroom house. It had belonged to her grandparents and she inherited it after both of them had died. Otherwise Mel wouldn’t be a home owner; her salary as a math teacher at Mirabelle High School didn’t bring in the big bucks. She’d always loved the little buttercream yellow cottage, with it’s robin’s-egg blue shutters and doors.

Mel grabbed her purse and groceries from the trunk of her black Jetta. She had just enough time to put everything away, jump in the shower, and get ready for tonight before Grace and Harper came over. There was a crawfish boil over at Slim Willie’s, and they were going to head over together. But only after they spent a little while catching up on each other’s lives. They’d all been so busy lately that they hadn’t really gotten to see each other.

Mel had been best friends with Grace since birth. Well, since two months after Mel’s birth, as that was how long it took Grace to join the world. Their mothers had been best friends as well, so Mel and Grace hadn’t had a choice, and really, they wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. They’d been pretty inseparable over the years, and when Harper had moved to Mirabelle in the sixth grade, they’d eagerly accepted her into the fold.

Harper was now a massage therapist, and she’d been booked solid all summer with clients. Mirabelle had a fancy little resort out on the beach called LaBella. They tended to draw in clientele with pretty thick pocketbooks. Harper also worked at Rejuvenate, the spa in downtown Mirabelle where Mel had been shot. Between the two places, Harper barely had enough time to think, let alone go get dinner.

Grace had been busy planning her wedding to her fiancé, Deputy Jaxson Anderson, and it was about damn time. The girl had been in love with her stubborn redhead since she was six years old, and they’d only just gotten together last April. It had taken Jax a while to figure out he was in love with Grace. The boy had always been ridiculously protective of her, but in his stupid-boy mind he’d thought he wasn’t good enough for her. He’d finally gotten a clue.

Mel opened the door and walked into her house. The air conditioner provided a welcome relief to the humidity that was Florida in the summer. She locked the door behind her and made her way down the hall, dropped her purse on the dining room table, and went into the kitchen. She put her bags on the counter and headed for the cabinet, where she grabbed a cup and filled it with ice water. Once she downed half of it, she pressed the cold glass to her forehead.

In all truth, there was no point in taking a shower to wash off the stickiness from the day. As soon as she walked outside again, the heat was just going to coat her skin and frizz up her hair. Mel had long, honey-blonde corkscrew curls that were a royal pain in the ass to maintain.

But Bennett Hart was going to be at Slim Willie’s, and even if it was just for five minutes, Mel wanted to look halfway decent. She might’ve had a small crush on the guy.
Small
meaning that whenever he was around she went all warm and gooey and felt like a freaking sixteen-year-old again.

But really, how could she not? He was gorgeous, all six feet and however many inches of him. And he had muscles everywhere. Toned arms and legs and abs of wonder. And don’t even get her started on his eyes. They were some sort of icy gray-blue that sucked her in. He had dark blond hair that he kept cut close to his skull. He hadn’t let it grow out when he’d gotten out of the military. But he had gotten a little more lax with shaving, and he now had perpetual five o’clock shadow on his square jaw. Mel had always been a sucker for a scruffy man.

Not to mention he’d been there the night Mel had been shot. But she’d liked him long before that fateful night at the spa. Him saving her life hadn’t started those feelings.

When the 911 call had gone through to dispatch, the closest deputy to the scene had been ten minutes away, so the deputy had called Jax. He had been hanging out with Bennett that night, and both of them had rushed over to Rejuvenate.

Mel had never been more terrified in her entire life. The pain had been unbelievable, and she’d been on the brink of passing out when Bennett had showed up. He’d been so calm as he talked her past the panic. His voice had been the only thing that had grounded her.

Bennett had stayed at the hospital all through her surgery and waited to see her after. He’d also been around for the last couple of weeks, checking up on her recovery often and going to more than one of her physical therapy sessions with her. He’d dealt with his own recovery a couple of years ago after he’d survived being shot in Afghanistan. He’d been more than aware of what was going on with Mel, and he’d helped her out in more ways than one.

He’d given her something to watch during her recovery time, too. He’d gotten her hooked on
Lost
, and he’d spent more than one night sitting on her couch with her and watching episodes. And then Bennett just had to go and do something that made her like him even more. He was going to volunteer at the school, working with Mel and her students.

For the last year, Mel had wanted to do a hands-on project with her students to show them how math could be used to build things. The former superintendent, Keith Reynolds, hadn’t given Mel or her project the time of day. But after more than one scandal had hit the Reynolds family, Keith had tendered his resignation over the summer.

As it turned out, Keith Reynolds was Grace’s father. This little tidbit of information had been revealed in a very public way, at a dinner honoring the superintendent. Over the years, Grace and her older brother, Brendan, had been the center of more than a little bit of gossip in Mirabelle. The mystery of Grace’s father had been a big part of it. It had also been a pretty big blow to the Reynolds family when it was discovered that their son, Hoyt, had been involved in all of those burglaries that had plagued Mirabelle.

So there was a new superintendent now. It had been only two months, but Fred Stafford was leaps and bounds better than his predecessor. The library at the high school was in desperate need of some new bookshelves, and Mel wanted to build them. She’d presented the proposal to Stafford, complete with costs and how she planned to raise the money. He’d approved it right away, thinking it was a fantastic idea.

Bennett had helped Mel with that proposal, and Bennett would help her out with the project. He was going to be at the school often, working with her and the students on a regular basis. For free.

But Mel had to keep telling herself that this didn’t mean anything. This didn’t mean he had feelings for her. No, he was just her friend. And so what if she had a
little
crush on him? Okay, so it was a
massive
crush.

Mel put the groceries away before she went into the bathroom and promptly stripped down. She hesitated in front of the mirror before she walked to the shower, her amber eyes dipping down to the scars on her right shoulder. One, the size of a dime, was where the bullet had gone in; the three around it, all surgical scars, were about the size of pencil erasers.

She reached up and touched the bullet wound, her fingers tracing around the small pucker on her skin. Even if her arm healed completely, the scar would always be there to remind her of that awful night.

Mel dropped her hand and got in the shower. The hot water poured over her, and as she stretched her arms up to wash her hair, the tight pain in her right arm made her wince. It might still hurt, but it felt loads better than it had.

When she got out of the shower she grabbed her blow dryer. Wrapped in her towel, she methodically dried her hair, doing her best to shape the curls into a manageable style. She put on a light coat of makeup, then went into her bedroom.

Mel stood in front of her opened closet, staring at her clothes and trying to figure out what she was going to wear. The winning combination was a flowing, knee-length, green cotton skirt and a white V-neck shirt. After she was dressed, she went into the kitchen to uncork a bottle of wine. If the girls were going to talk, they were going to be drinking as well. That was just how it was.

She grabbed three glasses from the cabinet, the corkscrew from the drawer, and the wine from the fridge. The kitchen had a view of the front yard, and as Mel finished pouring the wine she saw Harper’s car pull up. Grace got out of the passenger side, and the two girls made their way up the front porch.

There’d never really been a chance for the three friends to share clothes growing up—or even now, for that matter. Grace came in at a whopping five foot four. She had light blonde hair and a heart-shaped face that framed her blue eyes and pouty lips. She was tiny, with an A-cup bust and a slim waist, though she did have a fairly round butt that she was proud of and that Jax was pretty fond of. She wore tight jeans that accentuated said rear and a cute, little hot pink tank top that only she could pull off. Said tank top would’ve looked more than somewhat scandalous on Mel and just downright indecent on Harper.

Harper had been a little overweight when she’d first come to Mirabelle, and most of the boys in school hadn’t been very nice about it. But it had taken her only a few years to grow into her body. Now she was all curves. Men had absolutely nothing negative to say about how her D-cup breasts filled out a shirt or anything else. She was currently wearing a form-fitting, light blue dress that made her violet eyes pop, and it looked incredible with her long black hair. Yeah, Harper didn’t have any issues catching a man’s eyes these days. Problem was, no one was catching her eye.

Both Mel and Harper were five foot seven, but that was where all the similarities stopped. Where Grace had most of her curves below the waist, Mel’s were above. She had a decent C cup, no real butt to speak of, and thin legs. But at least she had good thighs and calves, so she didn’t have a lot of complaints.

Mel put the bottle of wine on the counter and went to open the front door.

“Oh, no,” Harper said as soon as she saw Mel. “Oh, no, no, no. You get your skinny ass in that room of yours and change.”

“What’s wrong with this?” Mel asked, looking down at herself.

“It’s flirty. You don’t want flirty. You want
sexy
.” Harper grabbed Mel’s hand and pulled her down the hallway.

“Yeah, you need to show off those legs of yours,” Grace said as she shut the door and followed them.

“That’s what’s going to help you in your man-catching endeavors,” Harper added.

“What man-catching endeavors?” Mel asked, coming to a sudden stop.

“Bennett,” Grace coughed.

“Excuse me?” Mel, rounded on Grace.

“Oh don’t even deny it,” Harper said as she dragged Mel into the bedroom. “You
sooo
want to have that man’s babies.”

“Oh. My. Gosh. It isn’t anything like that,” Mel said a little bit too loud.

“Whatever you say. Now take off that skirt.” Harper let go of Mel’s hand and looked at her.

“You’re being ridiculous. My skirt is fine.”

“You don’t want fine, you want
fine
.” Except Harper pronounced it
fwine
. “And you wouldn’t be this resistant if Bennett were asking you to take off your skirt.”

Yeah, if Bennett were asking her to take off her skirt, she’d be completely naked in three seconds flat.

“Strip. Now,” Harper demanded.

“I’m going to go get something for us to drink,” Grace said and left the room.

“The wine’s already poured and on the counter,” Mel called out after Grace as she pushed her skirt down her thighs.

“Pretty pink panties?” Harper asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Just find me something to wear so you’ll shut up.”

Harper turned to Mel’s closet and started looking through it. “No, no, no,” she said as she pushed through the hangers.

Grace came into the room holding three glasses of wine. She handed one to Mel and smirked as she looked at Mel’s undies. “Wow, those are nice. Were you planning on someone seeing those tonight?”

“Are the two of you quite finished?” Mel asked before taking a sip of her wine.

“We’re never finished.” Grace handed Harper a glass of wine and then sat on the bed.

“I see that teddy bear he got you is still on your bed,” Harper said, turning to them. She took a drink of wine.

Okay, so Bennett might’ve brought Mel said bear when she was in the hospital. And it was possible that she’d slept with it every night since. It was just because it was soft and cuddly and…