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  Feel the rush of my breath

  Feel the heat of my hand…

  Heat crawled up her backside as the words of the song suddenly made themselves manifest. The fiddler had snuck up on her. He put one of his ginormous hands on the bar, leaned his big body in, and slapped a ten-dollar bill down on top of her tab like he’d been counting the number of Cokes she’d drunk.

  He turned toward her, his unreadable wolf eyes shaded by the brim of his Stetson. “You want to take this somewhere else?” he asked in a blurred drawl. Her insides clutched and burned.

  She was close enough to see a network of lines at the corner of his eyes, and little threads of silver in his goatee. He wasn’t young. That scared her a little. He was more man than she was used to handling—older and bigger and more dangerous than anyone else in her past.

  “Maybe I was mistaken,” he drawled in response to her slight hesitation. “I got the idea you might be interested.”

  Jane looked up into his eyes. A hot, blue flame flickered there. An answering heat resonated deep down inside her. Was this wishful thinking, desperation, or real desire made manifest by her own weakness for guys like this? It was kind of hard to tell.

  Her head screamed that going with this guy would be like repeating the mistakes of the past. Getting soaked on a park bench would be better than this. But her body wasn’t listening. Instead she gave the fiddler a smile and said, “Cowboy, take me away.”

  “You drive a minivan?” The girl—Mary, he reminded himself—stood beyond the service entrance to Dot’s Spot with her hands fisted on her hips and a semisurprised look on her face.

  “Yeah, well, it’s practical for hauling around sound equipment and guitars. Disappointed?” Clay said, as he opened the side-panel door of his ancient Windstar and hoisted his fiddle, mandolin, and guitar cases into the cargo space.

  The question was rhetorical. She was disappointed. Women had a habit of mistaking him for someone else—usually some bad-boy jerk with a Harley who would do them wrong sooner or later. Ironically, most women wasted no time in doing him wrong, as if he were the punching bag for their collective disappointments with males in general and bad boys in particular.

  He turned around and faced the girl. She had the wrong idea about him. And he wasn’t going to disabuse her of it. He was going to take her to the Peach Blossom Motor Court and become that bad boy she was looking for. He wasn’t going to apologize to anyone for it either.

  He was tired of being a good man.

  He was tired of living his life along the straight and narrow.

  But most of all, he was weary of being alone.

  The girl stepped forward, her body swaying in the lamplight, the gusty wind lifting her hair and whipping it across her face. She tucked the hair behind her ear and gave him a simple smile that curled up the dimples in her cheek. Desire, sweet and warm, flooded through him.

  He opened the van’s door for her, and she stepped close enough for him to catch the blended scents of cigarette smoke and something spicy like sandalwood or jasmine. Awareness jolted him to full arousal. He felt like a sixteen-year-old with a killer hard-on—the kind that blinded a boy and made him do stupid things. He had to admit he liked that mindless feeling.

  She turned in the corner of the door and glanced up at him. She stopped moving, her lips quirking in a clear show of interest. He leaned in, slanting his mouth over hers, pulling her lower lip into his mouth. He tasted cinnamon and the hopefulness of youth.

  He fell hard into that kiss and knew he was a goner the minute she responded to him. He put his hand on the flare of her hip and pulled her hard against him.

  He was headed straight to hell, with only a short layover at a no-tell motel before the Devil took him.

  • • •

  The sign said “Peach Blossom Motor Court” in flaming pink neon. Jane had hit rock bottom in her life. The fiddler had checked them in, and she watched through the windshield of his van as he returned with the key in his hand.

  He was something, all right. A big man striding across the parking lot on a pair of the pointiest cowboy boots she had ever seen. Yessir, she would probably forget about this low-rent scenario the minute he put his mouth on hers again.

  He opened the van door for her and looked up at her out of a pair of eyes that were as pale as a winter day on Meadow Mountain. The fire in those icy eyes burned so hot she felt the flame in the middle of her chest.

  He gave her his hand, and she laid her fingers on him. His hand was huge, and warm, and rough, and male.

  He helped her down and then shut the door behind her. He leaned his big-boned body against her, pushing her up against the van, his hand sliding down her rib cage and coming to rest on her hip. He was sturdy and hard, and so large that his body shielded her and made her feel safe in some inappropriate way.

  How could she feel safe with a man intent on taking her without even giving her his name or asking for hers? But there it was. She knew the fiddler wasn’t going to hurt her. The Universe kind of whispered in her ear and told her this would be okay.

  She found herself inside the shadow of his Stetson, caught up in the heat of his mouth. He lost his hat, then she lost her mind.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jane startled awake, panic folding over her as she struggled to place herself in space and time. Then she heard the soft, even breathing of a slumbering man.

  And remembered.

  The memories of her frantic trip from Atlanta brought unwanted tears. She squeezed her eyes shut, even before she remembered the fiddler. She had thought her days of running were over.

  She needed to get out of here before the fiddler woke up. He was a bad boy, like the bad boys in her past. She had made a huge mistake last night. She had known it was a mistake even before he’d slapped that ten-dollar bill down on the bar.

  When would she learn?

  Jane pushed herself up on the hard motel mattress and looked over at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was almost eight in the morning.

  She rolled out of bed, collected her clothes and purse, and tiptoed into the bathroom. She gave the shower a longing look, but she didn’t have time. She ran enough water in the sink to dampen a washcloth for a sponge bath. She brushed her teeth with the toothbrush she kept in her purse for emergencies and pulled her hair back in a long ponytail.

  She looked at her reflection in the mirror and almost cried out loud when she saw the mark at the base of her throat.

  A little strawberry bruise—tender to the touch—marred the skin right above and to the left of her clavicle. She blinked at it for almost a minute, feeling something hot and cold run through her system.

  Last night had been, without question, the most amazing sex she had ever had in her life. And looking at that bruise reminded her that, for a little while at least, the fiddler had managed to make her forget just about everything, including her moral code and her self-respect and even Woody West.

  Hoo boy, she needed to get out of here. She was not a slut, but standing there looking at that bruise made her feel like one. How on earth had she let herself do this? Desperation was not an excuse, although it was an explanation.

  Jane put on her less-than-clean clothes, squared her shoulders, and opened the bathroom door. She paused a moment, hearing the slow, steady sound of his snores.

  She stole into the room, trying not to look at him as she tiptoed toward the door. She got to the corner of the bed and lost the battle.

  The feeble light from an overcast day edged the window and gave the room a monochromatic feel. She looked down at him, and in the colorless light, he seemed almost like a fantasy. He was handsome, and male, and big, and strong, and silent save for the deep susurration of his breathing.

  She reluctantly turned away and took one step toward the door before tripping up on his blue jeans. They lay crumpled in a heap by the bed, his wallet peeking from the back pocket. She could have his name, at least. All she had to do was look in his wallet.

  She
knelt on the carpet and took the wallet from the jeans. She flipped it open and stared down at a Tennessee driver’s license with a photo of a much younger and more hopeful-looking man than the one curled up on the bed.

  Clayton P. Rhodes.

  His name was Clayton.

  Something tugged at her chest, and she could have kicked herself for succumbing to her curiosity. It would have been better if this encounter had been anonymous.

  She clamped her back teeth together and told herself to move on. She was wasting time.

  She turned the wallet over, and peeked into the billfold. He had about eighty dollars on him. She could almost feel the Universe tempting her. With that much cash, she could get a bus ticket to a bigger city—Charlotte maybe—where she could find a job waiting tables or working in a beauty shop. She could take care of herself.

  It might be easier to find work in Charlotte. She allowed herself to think about it.

  Then she rejected the idea. She had stooped to something low last night. She didn’t need to add stealing to the list.

  She was about to return the wallet to his jeans when Clayton P. Rhodes captured her wrist in his powerful fingers and bent it backward far enough for it to hurt.

  Panic crashed through her. “Lemme go.” She tried to twist herself out of his grasp, but the man had leverage and strength on his side.

  “No, ma’am,” he said in a drawl as broad as a double-wide trailer. He pulled her up onto the bed and then turned on the bedside lamp. They squinted at each other in the sudden light. He had the advantage there, since his eyes were silver and hard to read. Her heart fluttered inside her chest, and she started thinking about routes of escape.

  “I’ll take that,” he said, plucking the wallet out of her fingers.

  “Please let me go.” She hated herself for begging like that. Guys who got physical scared her.

  The pressure of his fingers lessened a fraction. “Honey, didn’t anyone ever teach you wrong from right?”

  “I wasn’t trying to steal from you.” Her voice came out as a choked whisper.

  “Uh-huh. Then why did you have my wallet in your hands?”

  “I just wanted… you know… to know your name.” She tugged against his hold, but he wasn’t letting go.

  “Yeah, well, you could have asked me, and I would have told you my name.”

  She pulled a little harder, and he released her wrist. But before she could put distance between them, he leaned forward and pulled her purse off her shoulder.

  “Hey,” she shouted. “Give that back.”

  He shook his head, then loosened the bag’s drawstrings and dumped her possessions onto the thin cotton blanket. The flotsam and jetsam and loose change of her life spilled out with a jingle and a jangle. How humiliating.

  “What are you doing?”

  He started pawing through her things. “Same thing you were doing a minute ago.”

  “Well, stop it.”

  He ignored her command and picked up one of her self-help cassette tapes. He frowned down at it and read the title aloud: “Manifesting a Better Reality by Dr. Franklin Goodbody?”

  He looked up at her with one of those male stares that confirmed that men were from Mars. “Little gal, I’d say you need to get your money back for this. You don’t believe this crap, do you?”

  “You shouldn’t laugh at things you don’t understand,” Jane rejoined, folding her arms across her chest.

  “I wasn’t laughing. I was pointing out the obvious. What is ‘manifesting’ anyway?”

  “Thinking positively about the things you want so you make them manifest in your life.”

  “Uh-huh. Sort of like Norman Vincent Peale and the power of positive thinking only without bothering with prayer, huh?”

  “What?”

  “You have no idea who Norman Vincent Peale is, do you?”

  She shook her head. She had obviously failed some kind of test.

  He gave his head a weary shake and put the cassette tape back in her purse. He picked up the player and fiddled with it for a moment. “This thing is an antique. And your battery is dead.”

  She responded by hugging herself and refraining from any explanations about how she couldn’t afford an iPod, had bought the tapes secondhand, and had burned up the batteries on the long bus ride from Atlanta as she practiced her manifesting techniques. Somehow all that positive thinking had not turned Last Chance into Camelot, or Clayton P. Rhodes into Sir Galahad.

  Dr. Goodbody said that to manifest a better reality, you needed to know what you wanted and the reasons why. Jane had a feeling that manifesting Clayton P. Rhodes was the result of seriously muddled thinking on her part.

  “You know,” he said, as if they were having a conversation. “I find it interesting that most women will nag a man to death about tracking in dirt and messing up the house, but not a one of you can keep your pocketbooks organized.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?” she asked, avoiding eye contact and trying to keep the waver out of her voice. “Because it’s not working.”

  “No, I think I was aiming for irony.”

  She turned her head. He was smiling at her. He had a winning smile, and she wondered why he didn’t use it more often. “Irony?” she asked.

  He looked back down at her things, reaching this time for her wallet. He hefted it in his large hands as he inspected the green leather with the pink flower embossed on one side.

  “Kind of girlish, isn’t it?”

  She said nothing. It was kind of girlish. She had owned it for a long, long time. And even though it was worn out, she had been unable to part with it. It was the last remaining vestige of the life she had left behind in West Virginia seven years ago.

  He unsnapped it, flipped it open, and stared down at the ID she had been using for the last seven years. “Mary Smith?” He aimed another disbelieving look in her direction. “Gimme a break. It says here you’re twenty-eight. How old are you really?”

  She shrugged.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “I swear, if you’re jailbait, I’m going to shoot myself right here.”

  “I’m not jailbait. I told you that last night.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re not twenty-eight and your name is not Mary Smith.”

  “Are you only thirty-four?” she countered, thinking he looked older than the birth date listed on his license.

  “Yes, ma’am. I am. And if you’re eighteen that makes me almost old enough to be your daddy, which is a thought I find disturbing.”

  “I’m not eighteen.”

  “Right. Why am I starting not to believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”

  Because you are tapped into the negative energy of the Universe. She wanted to throw it in his face, but she had a feeling he would laugh at her.

  He continued to work his way through her wallet, inspecting her Fort Myers Library card and Florida State Cosmetology license. Both bore the name Mary Smith—the name she had been using since she ran away from home. She had been doing okay in rebuilding her life, when Woody came striding into the Shrimp Shack six months ago.

  She was such a fool.

  Clayton P. opened up the little change purse on the side of the wallet. “What’s this?” he asked aloud as he held up her expired West Virginia license. “This is interesting. How many girls carry two driver’s licenses? This one says Wanda Jane Coblentz, and it’s seven years out of date. Wanda Jane?”

  “Yeah, well, your name is Clayton Rhodes, and I’ll bet everyone calls you Clay, so don’t get so high and mighty, okay?”

  He laughed. It sounded like his singing voice. He had a positive-sounding laugh, she would give him that.

  “Look,” she said. “I would appreciate it if you could forget you saw that license, okay?”

  He stopped laughing and shook his head. “Not okay.” He glanced down at her photo ID and then back at her. “Doesn’t look like you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So you’re twenty-four?”

/>   She nodded. “Not jailbait.”

  He put the license back into the change purse and peeked into the billfold section. “Five bucks, huh? And I don’t see any credit cards.”

  “Okay. You’ve humiliated me enough now. Can I take my five bucks and leave?”

  “And go where?”

  “Anywhere that isn’t with you.”

  “That bad, huh?” he said with a little glint in his eye.

  “Yeah, well…” She shrugged. What was she supposed to say? She didn’t think telling him that he was incredible between the sheets was a good idea under the circumstances.

  He dropped her wallet back into her purse, then looked up at her out of his pale gray eyes. “Look, I’m sorry about last night. I should have asked you if you needed a place to stay instead of…” His voice faded out, and he looked away.

  His ears got red. The big, tough guy was blushing. He looked down at her things, picked up her makeup case, and put it back into her purse without rifling through it. Jane scored that as one small victory.

  “You know,” he said, eyeing the mass of coins that remained, “you probably have close to ten dollars in silver here. You might want to lighten your load.”

  “Such as it is.”

  He looked up. “Had to leave Fort Myers in a hurry, huh?”

  She didn’t answer. It disturbed her to think he’d already figured out half of her secrets. She looked away and heard the sound of change jangling as he pawed through her things.

  “Hey, what’s this?” he asked a moment later.

  She turned, and he was holding up the little necklace that Woody had given her the day before yesterday. A rush of pure hatred ran right through her. “You can have it,” she said.

  He chuckled at that. “Honey, you should always hang on to your jewelry. No matter what. That’s what my momma always says.” He squinted down at the little green charm on the gold chain. “What is that, a camel?”

  “Yeah. It’s a stupid dollar store jade camel, okay? It’s not worth anything. I’ll bet the chain isn’t even gold.”

  “Uh-huh. He did you wrong, didn’t he?” One of his eyebrows arched in question.