MAD DOG AND ANNIE (12 page)

The hand on her butt tightened and then slowly relaxed. The hard arms fell away. Maddox dropped his head. She winced at the sound of his skull hitting the porch.

"I'm sorry," she blurted. "I can't do this."

His face gleamed with sweat. His eyes were nearly black. "Okay," he said through his teeth.

She struggled to sit up. "I'm sorry."

"I said
it's
okay." He gulped in air. "I was too rough."

 
"No."

"Yeah, I was. I scared you."

"No." She twisted her hands together.
I am responsible for my own life
, she recited silently.
I can decide for myself what is best for me
. "
I
scared me."

He rubbed his face with his hand. "Look, it's all right. You didn't want to."

"I did." she practically shouted at him, frustrated by his patience and his total lack of understanding. "That's what scares me. I can't make that kind of mistake again."

He shook his head, curling up effortlessly from the floor. "You lost me."

"I'm just getting out of one bad marriage. I can't afford to get carried away."

He gave her his hooded look. "Darlin', I'm not saying something didn't come up between us, but I don't remember marriage being raised."

Her cheeks burned. Something had "come up," all right. "I'm just saying the two aren't necessarily separate issues."

"They are for me."

"Well, not for me," Ann snapped. "I got married once because I got pregnant, and I'm not going to risk it again!"

Chapter 8

«
^
»

D
ear
Lord.
She'd told him. Of course, most of the town knew or guessed. What else could you expect from a Barclay? She covered her mouth with her hands.

"Pregnant," Maddox repeated. He sounded
poleaxed
. Ann nodded. She couldn't even look at him. "Mitchell?"

She nodded again.

His breath whistled out. "That explains a lot."

She put her chin up against the familiar accusation. "Why Rob would marry me, you mean."

"No. Why you would marry him."

Without anger to brace them, her shoulders slumped. "Oh."

He rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand. "And why you're not big on unprotected sex with me."

Really, he was being nice about this. The thought only depressed her further. Even with a nice man, she didn't have any luck.

She sighed. "So, here we are, back where we were thirteen years ago."

"Not quite," Maddox drawled. "You're not a fifteen-year-old virgin anymore."

Not
that
nice, she thought, startled. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Well, it makes
me
feel better," he said frankly. "I won't have to run myself in for statutory rape."

She bit her lip to keep from smiling.

He reached out his big hand. She sat very still as he smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. His touch was light, but it reached down deep inside her.

"If
it's
protection you need," he said, "I'll bring some next time.
Just in case you decide to live dangerously."

She felt the draw of him all the way down in her belly and did her darnedest to ignore it. "I don't think I'm ready for dangerous."

His smile was an invitation to trouble. "It's like messing around with fireworks.
Nothing wrong with it, as long as we take the proper precautions."

She crossed her arms against temptation. "Uh-huh. I bet that's what you told Tom Creech in eighth grade right before you two blew up the
chem
lab."

Maddox laughed.

* * *

The judge peered over her reading glasses at the elderly shoplifter before the bench.

"How many years would you say we've been going steady now, Mr. Nash?"

"Your Honor—" the defense attorney protested. Maddox smothered a grin and edged toward the courtroom door. This was going to take a while. For his first day in court, he had half a dozen cases on the calendar—a DWI, a Peeping Tom, a couple of speeding tickets—but he wouldn't be called until the judge got through with the lawyers.
Plenty of time for a smoke.

He slipped out past a couple of cops from nearby Benson and a highway patrolman built like a mountain. He was used to waiting to testify. That didn't mean he couldn't think of things he'd rather be doing. He could follow up on last night's B and E. Return Detective Greene's call. Drive Annie Barclay out on the river road and show her everything he'd learned in the past twelve years…

Yeah, right. Like
that
would impress her.

He prowled the long passage to the building's only smoking area, the lobby connecting the civil, criminal and superior courts.

Ann was struggling free of a lousy marriage to an abusive jerk. She wanted safe. She needed gentle. She deserved somebody with money and class.
Somebody like Rob.

Maddox's jaw set. Not Rob. Marriage to the Golden Boy had cost her.

He found a spot against the wall with a view of all the doors and took out his first cigarette of the day. Ann didn't want a man who smoked. Hell, she didn't want a man, period. But he thought, or at least he hoped, he had a shot at changing her mind. Maybe he wasn't rich or smooth or subtle, but he'd take a bullet in the head before he'd touch her.

No, that wasn't true. Maddox dragged on his cigarette. He'd like to touch her.
A lot.
It remained to be seen if she'd give him the chance.

He blew smoke. Two nights ago on her porch he'd established Ann could still respond to him. His blood ran hot at the memory of her sweet little body pressed against his, her soft hair brushing his chin as she bent to take what she wanted.

As she hadn't wanted Rob, all those years ago.
The knowledge stirred Maddox at a gut-deep level, surprising and gratifying. She hadn't married the one-time quarterback for his money or his blond good looks. She hadn't fallen for his perfect hair, house, manners, teeth, clothes. She hadn't preferred Rob, the way everyone had always preferred Rob.

Although she must have wanted him once upon a time.
Or she wouldn't have let him knock her up.

Son of a bitch.

Maddox stabbed out his cigarette in the dirty sand by the door. He looked up to see Rob Cross promenading across the lobby.

For a second Maddox thought he was imagining things. But it was Rob, all right, gliding across the fake marble floors, his steps only a little quicker than they were on the golf course. He had a laugh for his lawyer and a smile for the lady, yellow and brittle as cured tobacco, who guarded the information desk. It was a good act, and it played well to a receptive crowd.

It pulled Maddox like a drug deal going down.

Rob's blond hair and heavy shoulders disappeared through the paneled doors of civil court. So he wasn't here in connection with his felony trial. Both the room and the timing were wrong. Frowning, Maddox tailed him into the high, crowded chamber.

It only took a minute at the back of the room to figure out that the court was running divorces like train cars through a tunnel. Rob was getting a divorce.
From Ann. Today.

Satisfaction almost robbed Maddox of breath. No way did he want to interfere in that.

He eased back toward the door. And then he saw her, Annie, sitting straight and quiet and alone, near the front of the room.

Her thin, squared shoulders snagged his heart. What the hell was she doing here? Only one party needed to show in an uncontested divorce. Rob's lawyer had already handed the decree to the judge. Rob himself stepped forward to testify, suited, serious and handsome. He answered the judge's questions in a low, sincere voice, the perfect picture of a responsible husband sorrowed by his wife's disloyalty.

Yeah, a good act. And even though it would leave Ann free, Maddox found himself resenting it. He leaned against the doorway, crossing his arms against his chest. Maybe he'd stick around. Not that his undisclosed presence was likely to do Annie any good. But he found he couldn't leave her sitting there all alone.

The judge, gray-haired, black-robed and closely
shaven,
looked up from the judgment in his hand. "Mrs. Cross?"

She stood, dwarfed by the courtroom and her husband's splendid appearance. Maddox felt his jaw tighten.

"Yes, sir?" she asked in a faint, clear voice.

"The court is not used to seeing both spouses appear in cases of this kind. Did you have anything you wanted to say?"

She shook her head, making her smooth hair swing.
"No, sir."

"Nothing to add?
No objections? All issues of custody and support resolved?"

"I guess. I mean, yes, sir." Her hands fluttered at his evident displeasure. The room was very quiet, the judge waiting, the lawyers waiting, the other plaintiffs waiting for her to finish so they could get on with their scheduled divorces and their lives.

She put up her chin, saying softly, "It's just … I was there at the beginning, and I thought I should be here at the end."

Her words, plain and brave and decent, restored dignity to the train-station rush of the court. Maddox could have saluted. In the no-fault atmosphere, her quiet acknowledgement of past misjudgments and mistakes, her simple assumption of responsibility, stood square and true. Her sincerity trembled in the high-ceilinged room like the echo of a bell.

Rob's face flushed. His lawyer looked down.

The judge cleared his throat.
"Very good, Mrs. Cross.
Divorce granted."

Ann blinked. She felt a little stunned. She'd come for closure. And now she had … what?
Freedom?
Could she really be free?

Rob's lawyer approached the bench to collect the papers from the judge. Ann gathered her thoughts and her purse and turned to go. She did not look at Rob. She did not want to check her reactions in the mirror of his mood, to let his response define hers. It was over.

Her shoes made too much noise as she walked between the rows of chairs, awkward as a mourner at a funeral. She was here to bury her beaten-down hopes, to mark the death of her naiveté. She didn't feel free. Her bones felt heavy. Her head felt light. She almost stumbled into someone on her way out of the courtroom.

Someone broad and solid in a dark blue uniform.

"You should have been the one to divorce him," Maddox growled over her head.

She raised her gaze from the center of his chest—he blocked her way like a building—and stammered, "
Wh
-
what are you doing here?"

"It's my court date." She must have looked confused, because he explained. "I get assigned once a month to come in and testify on all my collars." He stooped to examine her face with his cop's eyes that saw too much. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

He raised one of those sandy eyebrows at her, and she flushed, the memory of her own words rising between them.
I've heard enough lies—told them to myself mostly
.

"Really," she insisted. "It's just a little hard to take in that it's over."

"It's not right." Maddox's mouth was grim. "He was the one at fault. You should have been the one filing for divorce."

She smiled, touched that his sense of justice was offended on her behalf. "It would never work that way. Rob controlled the marriage. There was no way be would give me power over the divorce. And after all the things I said about him… I may have left him, but he had to divorce me."

Maddox scowled. "That's bull."

His anger didn't frighten her. Later, she would think about that, and wonder. But right now, his wrath warmed her.

"That's the way it had to be. It's all right." she reassured him gently. "I got what I wanted. What I needed."

 
"Ann!"

She flinched at the sound of her husband's voice. Ex-husband's voice, she reminded herself firmly, but his change in status didn't seem to have any effect on her nerves.

Rob sauntered toward them flashing his "trust me" smile. She tightened her hold on her purse.

"You sure got out of there in a hurry. You didn't give Henry a chance to hand you your papers," he reproached her.

She fought the urge to apologize. "He can mail them."

"Oh, I wouldn't let him do that. You can't leave without your papers."

She felt the slow crawl of blood in her face. He made her sound like a dog. As if all she needed to go out in public now
was
a collar and a new keeper. Without her willing it, her gaze flickered to Maddox.

"Hey, MD."
Rob's genial tone never faltered, but his eyes were cold and hard. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Maddox lifted his brows slightly. "Yeah, a cop in a courthouse is a real unusual sight."

"Ha, ha.
So, what are you doing here?"

Ann held her breath. Rob might not want her, but he could get ugly if he thought someone else did.

"I've got a case over in criminal court," Maddox said finally. "I saw Annie and thought I'd come over and say hello."

"Well, wasn't that friendly," Rob said. He turned back to Ann. "No hard feelings, I hope?"

She exhaled. "No. No hard feelings."

"Good. You know my offer's still open for Saturday night. Just to prove to everyone we can be civilized about all this."

She didn't feel very civil. And she had nothing to prove to anyone at the club. "Thank you, but no."

"I wish you'd reconsider." Rob stepped closer, dropping his voice confidingly. "We wouldn't want Mitchell to think his parents can't get along like reasonable human beings, now, would we?"

It was a threat, made in the same rich, persuasive voice that talked her out of her panties and virginity at eighteen and into marriage four months later. The same voice that kept her captive for ten
years, that
made her doubt the screaming wrongness of her life and the bloody evidence in her mirror.

Stop making a fuss.

You're overreacting.

If you were any kind of wife to me…

If you just wouldn't make me so angry…

If she made him angry, he would take it out on Mitchell.

She moistened her lips. "I don't want to be any trouble."