LITMIR.BIZ

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pretending to get your paperwork done. It’s so out of character, you’ve got her worried you’re going postal or something.”

      Eric trudged out of the break room. “This town is so small, it’s a wonder I can take a piss without someone phoning you about it.”

      “I told her you were just cranky ’cause you have the hots for an old girlfriend who’s giving you the cold shoulder.”

      Eric turned back, swallowing his curse. Anyone in the station could pass them in the hall, so he nixed the instinct to vent his sleepless night right then and there. He headed for his office, motioning for Tony to follow. Once inside, Eric slammed the door and rounded on his brother. “Why the hell would you say something like that?”

      Tony held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I just call them like I see them. You were in rare form last night. One minute you were a jealous hound dog because a woman you haven’t seen since high school was smiling at me, the next you were hunting me down to drive the very lovely but elusive Ms. Wilmington back to her car.”

      “If you said one word about Carrinne and me to Angie, the ass-whipping I gave you when you kept skipping school in sixth grade will seem like a tickle. Carrinne’s got enough trouble without having to deal with rumors flying all over town about—”

      “Relax.” Tony sat in a guest chair, his grin now ear-to-ear. “I didn’t say a thing. I wouldn’t do that to Carrinne. Now you, on the other hand…”

      “You can still be a brat, you know that?” Resisting the urge to paddle his kid brother, just to see if he still could, Eric settled in his own chair. Coffee spilled over the edge of his mug and burned his hand. “Damn.”

      “You should get some sleep.”

      “I tried that.” He sipped coffee from his thumb. “Cuddles had different ideas.”

      Tony chuckled. “I’m glad that rat lives next to your bedroom window and not mine. Who knew a miniature poodle could make so much noise?”

      “Clearly, Mrs. Davis chose the pick of the litter.”

      They sat silently while Eric contemplated throwing his weight around at the pound and having Cuddles picked up for disturbing the peace.

      “So.” Tony slouched deeper into the chair Eric was pretty sure predated their father’s term as sheriff. “Are you having her tailed?”

      “Mrs. Davis?”

      A stare was Tony’s only response.

      “No, I’m not having Carrinne Wilmington tailed. Why would I?” Eric pushed the coffee aside and tried to focus on the report in front of him. “Brimsley’s agreed not to press charges, so there’s no reason for the department to be involved.”

      “Unless, of course, you didn’t buy her story and wanted to help out an old friend before she got herself into even more trouble.”

      “Carrinne and I haven’t been friends for a long time.” And that hurt more than it should. “Not since I told her to get out of my life and she obliged.”

      “If memory serves, she’s the only female you ever stuck with for longer than two months at a clip. That’s got to count for something.”

      Eric dropped the report to the desk. “I offered to help last night. She declined. She’s determined to handle whatever she’s come back to do on her own.”

      “And that’s okay with you?”

      No, it definitely wasn’t okay.

      When had his brother grown up and become so good at reading people? It used to be that the only things Tony paid any attention to were motorcycles and pretty girls. Time was, that was all Eric had cared about, too.

      “Hey, Eric?” Angie said over the intercom. “Didn’t you take the call out to the Wilmington place last night?”

      “Yeah,” was his monotone reply. He glowered at his brother. Didn’t anyone have anything better to talk about?

      “Thought you might like to know. Dispatch got a call. Your break-in suspect just did a three-sixty into oncoming traffic in front of the hospital.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “WILL SHE BE all right?”

      “…mild concussion.”

      “Why isn’t she waking up?”

      “…running some blood tests…under observation until her condition improves…should be coming out of it by now…”

      The voices kept pulling at Carrinne, disturbing the peaceful numbness she had no desire to come back from. One of the voices, the deeper one, sounded so familiar. It floated in and out of the disjointed dream playing in her mind.

      It had been so long since she’d let herself dream…

      The man’s voice belonged to a rugged teenager who had melting brown eyes and could drive a motorcycle like an avenging angel. She was sitting behind him as he raced his Harley down a country highway. Her arms wrapped around his muscled body, she leaned close and let the wind and the rush of danger take her. She was sixteen again, and with him she was wanted and safe. Closing her eyes and resting her cheek against his leather-covered back, she whispered words of love into the wind, knowing he’d never want to hear them, but yearning to say them anyway. He needed her, when no one had ever needed her. And though he didn’t know it yet, he’d given her the most precious gift of all.

      They were going to love each other always.

      “Carrinne?” He called to her from somewhere that wasn’t the dream. “Carrinne, it’s time to wake up. Can you hear me, darlin’? Wake up for me.”

      He wanted her to wake up. And what he wanted became what she wanted, too, just as it had when she was sixteen. Swimming up from her dream, she looked back one last time, down that endless country road. But he was already driving away, the motorcycle just a speck on the horizon.

      A sickening throb behind her eyes kept her from running after him. Grounded more firmly in the present with each passing second, she realized she hadn’t really been dreaming at all. Instead, she’d been remembering her first taste of how cruel dreams could be when they crashed head-first into reality.

      Pain hit her full-out, yanking her away from the memory of the last ride she and Eric had taken on his motorcycle. The ride on which she’d planned to tell him she was pregnant. But before she could, he’d destroyed everything. He couldn’t deal with having a kid like her in his life anymore, he’d said. He wanted her to stay away from him. Then he’d driven away, taking everything that she’d cared about with him. Everything except Maggie.

      Through her closed eyelids, an overhead light shot daggers into her skull. She tried to shade her eyes with her hand.

      “Open your eyes, Carrinne.” The voice really did belong to Eric. A very grown-up Eric. “Doctor, I think she’s coming to.”

      “What’s going on?” She struggled to make sense of the confusing signals her brain couldn’t seem to process.

      A hand pressed her down as she tried to sit up. “You’ve been in an accident. Hold still until the doctor can take another look.”

      Blinking, groaning as nausea rolled in her stomach, she’d barely managed to focus on Eric before a man in a white coat appeared.

      “I’m Dr. Burns.” He shined a blast of light into each of her eyes. “Can you tell me your name?”

      “Carrinne.” She winced. “Carrinne Wilmington.”

      “And the day?”

      “It’s…um…it’s July…thirteenth or fourteenth.”

      “Uh-huh.” He checked her pulse while he studied the display on the machine attached to the pressure cuff on her arm. “Good. Now can

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