Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2) (28 page)

“Stay!” I pointed at Romeo, the black Labrador retriever I had just liberated from doggie jail, and who was the party responsible for me potentially heading to
human
jail, and instructed him to remain in the back seat.

He whined as he wagged his tail rapidly. I decided to take his behavior as a declaration of obedience. I had a flannel blanket that I stored in my car so I could sit on it during Movies in the Park—which was an outdoor movie shown on the side of the three-story courthouse every Saturday night in my hometown of Wishing Well—and I grabbed it and tossed it over the Lab’s head in an attempt to hide the evidence, and also hopefully make him feel safe from the thunder and lightning.

Today was Texas weather at its best. Hotter than Hades, so humid my thighs were sticking to my leather seats like they’d been superglued, and the cherry on top of the bad weather sundae was a thunderstorm the likes of which I’d never seen. All day, the sky had lit up with lightning and cracked with thunder. Since I was a kid, I’d always counted the seconds after the flash until the boom struck, then divided it by five. That was supposedly how many miles away the lightening had struck.

After this last strike had flared against the dark clouds, I’d only gotten to four before the boom of a thundering crack sounded causing a terrified, one-hundred-pound Romeo to jump onto my lap. In the domino effect from hell, I lost control of my car and slid off the road before coming to an abrupt stop. Which was how I found myself in my current predicament.

“Okay, everything’s going to be fine,” I mumbled under my breath as adrenaline flooded my nervous system.

I turned so that I was facing forward in my seat. My fingers wrapped and tightened around the steering wheel as I stared straight ahead at the patrol car that I’d just rear-ended while it was parked (yes,
parked
!) on the side of the highway.

The driver’s side door opened and a large boot was the first thing to exit the vehicle. It landed on the asphalt with a heavy thud. Or maybe that thumping sound was my heart pounding, since it would be nearly impossible for me to hear anything inside my car being that the windows were all rolled up and the AC was blasting. In an almost cartoon-like fashion, wavy lines surrounded the black leather footwear. On this uncharacteristically sweltering hot, stormy spring day, steam rose from the pavement, causing the entire scene to have a dream-like appearance. Although, in this case, the “dream” was a nightmare. One that I wished I could wake up from.

Following the boot, an all-too familiar profile appeared and my breath caught in my throat.

No! Please, please, please God, no! Anyone but…

As the imposing figure stood to his full height there was no question in my mind that my prayers were
not
going to be answered today. My pleas had obviously fallen on deaf ears since the one person that I did not want to face in my current predicament was the man I was staring at.

Hudson Reed.

Seriously?

Clover County was the second largest county in Texas, covering over five thousand square miles. Only Brewster County beat us, clocking in at six thousand one hundred and ninety two. So my question was—why? Why did
he
have to be on the side of
this
road when I had my unfortunate accident? There were five thousand other miles he could have been patrolling.

My pulse sped like I’d been mainlining coffee as he began walking back towards my vehicle. I couldn’t read the expression on his chiseled-to-perfection face. His eyes were really the only thing that ever gave a hint to what was going on beneath his calm all-alpha-all-the-time demeanor. And since the windows to his soul were currently concealed behind dark aviator glasses…I was screwed.

With each step he took, my fight or flight instinct intensified. My initial impulse was to simply backup and drive away. But a voice in the back of my head piped up, saying that fleeing the scene of the “crime” (no matter how harmless) would only make matters worse. With that option vetoed, I cut the engine and knew that I had to fight my way out of this. My mind began racing with plausible explanations—AKA excuses.

“Stay!” I once again instructed the terrified bundle of evidence to remain in my back seat and, fingers crossed, out of sight.

The only hope I had of getting out of this unscathed was to put out this small rear-ending blaze before figuring out how to extinguish the larger wildfire that I’d set when I’d freed Romeo from behind bars.

Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on the task at hand. I could say that there was a turtle in the road that I swerved to miss and ended up
barely
tapping his bumper. No. He would just look and see if the turtle was still there. Those suckers didn’t move that fast. A deer maybe? No, I didn’t think that there was a large deer population in the flatlands of Clover County, Texas. What if I said I’d suffered a mini-stroke and lost the feeling in my arm? No. I was pretty sure that medical conditions could be easily disproven.

A knock on the glass beside my head startled me and I knew that my time was up. From the backseat Romeo barked loudly and jumped into the front seat.

Okay, so hiding the evidence was out.

I knew my canine companion was only trying to protect me from what he perceived as a threat, which was sweet. Unfortunately, the only physical threat that the man knocking on my window posed was to my heart and there was nothing my four-legged defender could do to shield me from that.

“Romeo, sit!”

At my command, Romeo’s hind legs lowered and he sat obediently in the passenger seat.

Why can’t men obey like that?

“Good boy!” I praised him.

The knock sounded again, and going against every self-protective instinct I had screaming at me not to, I placed my finger on the button to roll down the window. Stiffening my back, I made sure all of my internal armor was secured in place.

Emotional walls up? Check.

Swoon-guard in place? Check.

Arousal blocker activated? Well…two outta three ain’t bad.

Just the knowledge that Hud was standing on the other side of the steel and glass that separated us had my inner thighs quivering, and tingles that would make a nun blush if she felt them on the tip of her pinky spreading through my
entire
body.

“Here goes nothing,” I mumbled beneath my breath as I pushed my index finger down.

Before the glass even reached the half-way mark, a deep, sexier-than-sin voice filled the small space in my sedan. “License and registration.”

“You’re joking, right?” Irritation replaced the lovely sensation that been rolling through me in pleasure filled waves.

Thank God!

Anger, aggravation, frustration—all of those were much easier to deal with than the alternative. I shot a look up at him to let him know that he was crazier than a Betsy bug if he thought that I was going to hand over my license and registration.

“License and registration,” he repeated, his jaw was set in a stone cold expression.

“Hud, you were at the hospital when I was born! You know who I am. You’ve been to every single one of my birthday parties. Including my twenty-first, where I received
this car
from my parents as a gift! You know this is my car.”

Was I grabbing at straws? Yep.

Was I being ridiculous? Absolutely.

Was it all I had? Unfortunately.

If there was one thing that I’d learned being the youngest of nine and the only girl, it was to always be on the offense and not the defense, even if you were the guilty party.
Especially
if you were the guilty party. And after establishing your foothold, never back down. The longer and harder you stood your guilty ground, the better the chance that you could wear down the person that was firmly planted in the right.

“Want to tell me what happened?” His no-nonsense, all-business tone should
not
have been a turn on…but dear lord, it was.

Hud had a special talent of reducing me to a puddle of lust with a look, a word, a grin. No other man affected me the way he did.

Clearing my throat, I tried to ignore my traitorous body. Since Romeo had already blown his cover, I opted for telling the truth. “Romeo is scared of thunder and that last one really got him. He jumped in my lap and next thing I knew I was kissing your bumper.”

The corners of Hud’s mouth twitched and his right brow raised. “
Kissing
my bumper?”

Oh…that was interesting.

Normally he was a by-the-books, take-no-prisoners, ballbuster—but maybe, just maybe, there was a human heart beating beneath the muscled plains of his chest. And in spite of the fact that the one time I’d attempted to charm his snake it had been a colossal failure and the most humiliating night of my life, maybe he wasn’t quite as robotic and immune to me as I’d thought.

A smile wider than a mile spread on my face as I dropped my chin in a nod. “Yep.”

“Since when do you have a dog?” He folded his arms in front of his chest and the motion caused his bulging biceps to pull the material of his uniform taut.
Oh my…

Of their own accord, my eyes traveled down his body and back up again. His stance reminded me of a gladiator ready to battle in the center of the Roman coliseum. Feet shoulder-width apart, arms crossed. The bad-ass, domineering authority he exuded was running over my arousal-blocker and swoon-guard like a sexy freight train.

“Harmony. The dog?”

I blinked up at him as I told him a version of the truth. “I’m dog sitting.”

He didn’t speak and my body was reading his silence as foreplay, but in fairness, anything Hud did around me my hormones put into that category. My throat constricted as I tried to ignore the lust that was rushing through me. Focus. I needed to focus. All I had to do was get him to forget about this fender bender and let me go on my way. Otherwise I was in trouble. All kinds of
trouble
.

“If there’s any damages, just let me know what I owe you.”

His head tilted slightly to the right and I could hear the amusement in his voice as he asked, “You in a hurry?”

“Yeah, actually I am. I need to get over to Destiny’s.”

Okay, using my pregnant best friend/sister-in-law as a get out of jail free card was definitely not my proudest moment, but I was sure that she would forgive me.

“Is she in labor?” Hudson’s voice deepened, the way it did whenever he was worried or concerned about something or someone.

The baritone rumble sent a shiver dancing down my spine. I’d always wondered if there were other times that his voice grew even deeper. Like say…intimate times. That thought immediately pushed play on one of my most frequent fantasies. Hud and I were in bed. Naked, of course. He was hovering over me, my legs wrapped around his hips, and his lips brush my ear as he tells me how bad he wants me. How bad he’s always wanted me….

“Harmony.” Hud’s bark hit the stop button on my erotic daydream. “Is she in labor?”

Oh right. My get-out-of-jail-free card.

“No. She’s just miserable and she needs me to distract her from the fact that she’s two weeks overdue.”

Hud and my brother JJ, who had married Destiny last summer, were best friends. I knew that he was aware of her uncomfortable condition. Last Tuesday at the boys’ weekly poker game, JJ had hosted and Destiny had broken down in tears because she could no longer see her feet. She’d told Cara, who was the third in our best friend trio, the next morning about the horrified looks on the male attendee’s faces when the waterworks had started.

I sat, semi-patiently, tapping my fingers as I waited for him to decide my fate.

His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply before he leaned down, resting his forearms on the frame of my driver’s side window. “You need to pay attention when you’re driving. Someone could have gotten hurt…”

He paused, but I was already doing my internal happy dance. It looked like I would be getting off with a warning.

Then, in what felt like slow motion, Hud reached up and took his glasses off. When his eyes met mine I sucked in a startled breath. The look in his dark gaze was TNT to my carefully constructed emotional walls. He demolished them with a single stare.

“
You
could have gotten hurt,” he gritted out in a gravelly tone.

It took me several seconds to absorb the gravity of the words he’d spoken because I was so busy reeling from the aftermath of his explosive gaze. When the initial stun wore off, the combination of the intensity in his deep brown eyes and the emphasis he’d put on
you
had goosebumps breaking out on my skin as the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up. And if the man staring at me was
anyone
but Hud, I would bet my family farm that he was about to kiss me and that he was genuinely concerned about my driving habits. But it was Hud, and he’d always treated me like an annoyance. Something that he had to put up with. So why was he looking at me like the thought of something happening to me was too much to bear?

Did he care if something happened to me?

I mean
really
care?

Did he want to kiss me?

Or even do
more
than kiss me?

When I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out. Me. Speechless? No, that wasn’t possible. I had to say something. I needed to find out if I was crazy. If what I was feeling was real or just a figment of my overactive imagination.

“Hud…” I said hoarsely.

Before I had a chance to form a coherent thought, the small black radio that was clipped to his shoulder crackled and a voice came over it.

Between the static I was able to make out numbers that I didn’t understand. Then, I heard key words and sentences that were loud and clear. Break in. Parrish Creek Animal Shelter. Female suspect. Brown hair. Approximately five foot four. Black Labrador retriever. Suspect driving 2 door Mazda 3. Red. Partial license plate Bravo. Tango. Four.

Shit.

Without breaking his piercing stare or looking particularly surprised, Hud reached across his chest and touched the radio. “Copy that.”

We remained locked in a staring contest as he lowered his sculpted arm and rested his hand on my door. I was almost positive that he was waiting for me to speak, but that was not going to happen until I had some idea what to say. Tapping the back of his cruiser was one thing. Breaking and entering to kidnap a canine may not be as easy for him to overlook.