Run Wild With Me (2 page)

Cautiously, Andrea slipped out of her rain slicker, let it drop to the floor, and considered her next move. She stuck the gun under her arm while she removed a blue cap from her back pocket and tucked her hair beneath it. There was no point in letting the intruder know he was dealing with a woman.

Repositioning her gun, Andrea opened the door to the kitchen and tiptoed inside. Drawn toward the faint flicker of light emanating from what she remembered to be Miss Mamie’s parlor, she slipped through the kitchen into the wide hallway. Outside, the storm suddenly hushed. In the silence the water in her shoes made a slushing sound as she moved.

Andrea cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “Is anybody there? I have a gun,” she threatened, hoping that the intruder wasn’t waiting in the darkness, more afraid that he was.

Still no answer. Holding the gun before her like a shield, she crept down the hall.

Everything happened at once. Just as she felt his presence behind her, he caught her throat in an iron grip and twisted her arm painfully behind her back. The gun hit the floor with a crash and skittered into the shadows as her captor choked off the scream lodged in her throat.

“Don’t move!” he growled.

His order was almost funny, since he was holding her in a death grip.

“Let me go!” she croaked. “I’m a police officer.” But the air was being crushed out of her, and all that was distinguishable was a weak “go” and “police.”

“Oh no. I’m not about to let you go, buddy. I’ll call the police, as soon as I find out what you’re up to.”

The man holding her was tall, with arms made of pure steel. She couldn’t budge. Her throat was dry and tight from the pressure of his grip. He
began to nudge her forward. What was he going to do? She lurched awkwardly in the darkness. Her foot caught something on the floor, and she lost her balance, stumbling just enough to slam her free elbow into the solid body behind her. Suddenly she was falling.

The man released her arm, bent over double, and staggered backward. His foot shot out from under him as he stepped on her gun, and he crashed against the corridor wall with such force that he was propelled forward again, landing directly on top of Andrea.

For a moment he didn’t move. She couldn’t. Perhaps he was dead, she thought.

“I told you not to move,” he growled in a low threatening voice.

“Fat chance,” she gasped.

His body covered hers like a solid wet rug. The air was slowly being pushed from her lungs.
I’m dying
, she thought,
dying in the line of duty, and I’ve never made an arrest
. Jabs of pain radiated from the side of her head where it had slammed against the floor. There was a hard knot between her breasts, protruding painfully into her chest wall. The man above her began a slow circular move, bringing him nose-to-nose with her.

Andrea could feel short puffs of warm air on her forehead as he breathed. She froze, willing herself not to groan from the weight pressing down on her. It wouldn’t do to let him know that she was a woman when she was at such a disadvantage. Her lower body was beginning to tingle as his weight cut off her circulation.

After what seemed like an eternity, the knot between her breasts began to stir. His hand had been caught between them when he fell. There was a sudden shocked stillness as his fingers splayed themselves against her body.

“Sawblades and sledgehammers! A woman!” The stranger jerked his hand away, doing a half-sit-up in an attempt to untangle himself from her. “What the hell are you doing sneaking around here in the dark? I could have killed you.”

“You very nearly did. Get off me, you big hulk, before you smother me.” Andrea shoved him away and slithered out from beneath him, holding her aching head with both hands.

“Consider it an even exchange. I may never do the Texas two-step again,” the intruder said as he unfolded himself and came to stand over her.

She refused to look at him. “Where is my cap, and what have you done with my gun?” Andrea demanded, then considered the absurdity of her request. She’d made a fool out of herself. First, the gun wasn’t loaded. Second, his resounding chortle of disbelief said clearly what he thought of her demands.

“Gun?” He reached down and lifted her roughly to her feet, his fingers digging painfully into her upper arm. “Somebody let you have a gun? Get in here in the light, where I can get a good look at you.”

“Light?” She attempted to jerk herself away from his grip and winced as her head protested her sudden movement.

“Light, as in fire.” He shoved her before him
into the parlor. “The fire I was building in the fireplace when you broke in.”

The fire sizzled as water dripped down the chimney. The flames died for a moment, then flared up brightly. Her intruder was a twentieth-century highwayman with a menacing frown and piercing black eyes. Andrea gasped. The sound she made as she replenished her lungs with air wasn’t from fear this time. It was from pure shock. And the resounding ringing in her ears wasn’t entirely from the bump on her head.

Louise Roberts had been right.

The man was “wild-looking.” His jet-black hair was too long, his brows and lashes too theatrical. The dark stubble of his beard gave him a dangerous look. Lean and powerful, he had the troubled look in his eyes of a man who had seen too much pain. He seemed to smolder with tightly leashed energy.

“What kind of town is this, where the women skulk around in the dark playing with guns?” He spoke softly this time, waiting a long time in between each word as if he weren’t quite sure what to make of her.

“I’m not playing,” Andrea answered, her voice sounding as though it were coming from far away as she tried to escape from the unrelenting force of his gaze and the pressure of his hand clasping her arm.

He towered over her, holding her firmly as he stared down at her. “Too bad. I’m very good at games. It was your turn to be ‘it.’ ”

“Stop talking like that,” she snapped. “I think
you’d better know, cowboy, I’m the chief of police, and you’re under arrest.”

“Arrest?” He tilted his head and smiled, never loosening the grip he had on her arm. “Well now, darlin’, we seem to have something of a problem here. Who’s got who?”

“It’s
whom
, and don’t call me darling.”

“Fine. I’m an agreeable fellow. What shall I call you?”

“Chief Fleming will do. Now, take your hand off me. It’s you who has the explaining to do.” She crossed her arms defiantly across her chest and stretched herself to her full height. “You’re wrinkling my uniform.”

“Uniform?” His gaze left Andrea’s face and skeptically studied the blue oxford fabric bunched up between his fingers. He swung around, turning her toward the fire.

As soon as the light touched her face, Sam Farley knew he’d made a mistake. He’d crossed paths with the law often enough during his travels to have overcome any fear of an officer in blue. It was the woman who caught him by surprise.

Sam felt his mouth tighten. She was standing there, returning his stare with a cool challenge that intrigued him. She looked like a cat who’d dropped down from the top of a fence and bristled her hair in warning to an intruder in her territory. A drop of rainwater rolled down her face and fell to her shirt. It spread in a dark circle just above her pocket, the pocket that covered her left breast.

He allowed his gaze to slide up her slim neck and strong chin, which she’d jutted forward in a dare. She was tall with a mass of dark hair tousled in wet wild curls across her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes were blue, a shimmering blue, the color of a Nevada sky in midsummer just before a storm.

“Stormy,” he whispered under his breath. Whoever she was, she’d forever be Stormy in his mind. “Well, well.” He managed to pull his mind back to her accusation. “So you are a cop. Sorry. I didn’t feel a badge.”

“That’s about the only thing you didn’t feel, cowboy.” The words slipped out, bringing back the mental picture of the two of them lying tangled on the floor.

Andrea felt her face flush, and she chastised herself for losing control of the situation. Buck would never have allowed himself to rise to the bait this way, and neither should she. “Now that you know who I am,” she said forcefully, pulling away from him, “I’d like to know why you broke into Miss Mamie’s house?”

“Because,” he said simply, as if the reason were obvious enough for a child to understand, “I didn’t have a key.”

He spoke so sincerely that Andrea believed him. “In a crazy kind of way, that answer makes perfectly good sense,” she admitted. “Now, would you like to explain why?”

“No. I don’t know whether I can,” he said, turning his fierce attention to the fire. He frowned. “I’m not sure that I ought to have come here. I
always thought that she’d exaggerated. But she may have been right after all.”

The tension eased from his voice. He flexed his shoulders, and from her side view she watched a slow smile spread across his face, changing a worried expression of grim suspicion into one of devilish delight. With a haircut and a shave, he might be … interesting, Andrea decided.

“Who?” Andrea asked. “You just said that
she
may have been right. Who may have been right? Mr.… for heaven’s sake, cowboy, what is your name?”

“Sam.”

“Just Sam?”

He turned back to face her. “Sammuel Granger Farley. Sammuel with two
m
’s. My mama meant to name me Farley Granger after some movie star she fell for when she was a kid. My mother was a hoot. She had a good imagination. The hospital record keeper who wrote it down didn’t, and she couldn’t spell either.”

“Where’re you from, Sam with two
m
’s?” He was looking at her, but she could tell that he wasn’t seeing her. For a moment he seemed to have forgotten she was there. Andrea waited, watching him stare thoughtfully down at her. Outside the house the lightning flashed again.

“Everywhere and nowhere,” he finally answered. “I guess you’d call me a vagabond.”

Suddenly a clap of thunder racked the house like an explosion, rattling the walls and windows, and vibrating the floor.

A bolt of lightning sliced through the sky, curled
into a ball of fire, and ran along the electric wire into the parlor, exploding into a swirl of orange flame that crackled and died at their feet.

Andrea screamed. Somehow, Sam’s arms were around her, and her arms were around him. The wind ripped one of the wooden planks from the window and flung it down the porch like a boomerang. Rain slammed furiously against the windows like the frantic beat of a hundred hearts.

“Wow, you sure do set off some spectacular fireworks, Chief Fleming,” Sam said softly. “Much more acceptable than gunfire. I think I’m going to like being your prisoner.” Sam lifted his hand to the back of her neck and held her motionless, sending her pulse racing faster than a wild animal being chased by one of Otis Parker’s coon dogs.

Fireworks? Andrea heard his words in horror. Her nerve endings vibrated as she fought the current of exhilaration sweeping through her. She knew what a coon felt like when it was about to be treed.

“Let me go.” When she pulled away from him, she felt as if she’d been singed. Who was this man? How had he managed to turn his arrest into some kind of intimate encounter?

“Please?” she whispered raggedly. “That’s enough. I insist that you tell me what you want here—right now.” Sam stared at her in astonishment, then shook his head in exaggerated nonchalance. “No, ma’am. I think not. That wouldn’t be wise at all, Chief. But what I’d settle for
right now
is a phone.”

“If you’re planning to call for help, forget it. No phone here, Mr. Farley. No taxi, and you already have the police.”

“Call for help? Me? No way. I learned to take care of myself a long time ago. But I might be tempted to ask if you’re the law in this place.”

“Tonight I am. If you need to use a phone, I’ll be glad to drive you down to the station.”

“What I need is food, darlin’. I’d like to pick up a pizza.”

“Pizza?” Andrea began to laugh. The absurdity of his request broke the tension. “There isn’t a pizza parlor closer than the county seat, and that’s ten miles away. This is the country, Mr. Farley. Everything is closed at this hour.”

“Great. And I swore,” he drawled solemnly, “that I’d never be hungry again.”

The man was hopeless. She was beginning to doubt that he was even acquainted with Miss Mamie. Andrea would have known if he’d ever been in Arcadia before. If she hadn’t, somebody else would have. Sam Farley was a man who wouldn’t be easily forgotten. She knew she ought to be firm, in charge. Yet every time he relaxed his stern manner, he knocked her off balance. Even covered with dirt, cobwebs, and blood, he was … 
blood!

“Mr. Farley,” she gasped, forgetting her confusion. “You’re hurt.”

“Not in a place you can see, Chief.”

“But you’re bleeding.” He was injured. What had happened to him? She couldn’t have done that. She’d hit him in the stomach. Maybe she’d
been wrong about him. Maybe he’d robbed a bank and been shot. Maybe he’d been in a car wreck and that was why he had to walk. What kind of police officer was she?

“I’m sorry I hit you. Don’t worry, Mr. Farley,” she reassured him weakly. “As a police officer, I’ve been trained to handle emergencies. There is a first-aid kit in the car.” She took a deep breath and hoped that the injury wasn’t serious.

“You’re in charge, Chief. Whatever you say. You realize that I could claim police brutality. What’s the penalty for that in Arcadia?”

“Police brutality?” Andrea gave an incredulous shrug. “Why would you want to do that?”

Buck. I’ll get Buck
, was Andrea’s first thought. She’d turned toward the door before she remembered that Buck’s leg was encased in white plaster with two little hearts drawn in the center by the nurse in the county hospital emergency room.

Wait a minute, Andrea told herself sternly. She wouldn’t let this man rattle her. She was the chief of police. She’d have to treat the injured man herself. What to do first?

Andrea forced herself to face the fact that, beyond covering it with a Band-Aid, she hadn’t the wildest notion of what to do with a wound. Her first day as chief of police of Arcadia was turning into a complete disaster. She’d just admit to police brutality and take him straight to the hospital.