Her hands clenched on the steering wheel as she drew in a hard, deep breath. Her father had always called her his little rogue. He would smile fondly when she dressed in her
“good girl” clothes as he called them, and his eyes would always twinkle as though he knew something she didn’t.
“You’re as wild as the wind,” he would tell her, and she had always denied it.
But now, she could feel that part of herself burning beneath the surface of the “good girl.” The dreams of teaching had always held her back. A teacher had to be circumspect. She had to be careful. But Caitlyn Rogue Walker was no longer a teacher.
She no longer had to worry about being circumspect. She didn’t have to worry about protecting a job she didn’t have.
She flipped on the car’s turn signal and took the road that headed to the little bar outside of town. It had begun there—somehow, her drink had been spiked there that night—and if her father knew what had happened, he would burn it to the ground.
Unfortunately, she had loved being in that damned bar.
She had sat in the corner, watched, devoured the atmosphere and had longed to be something more than a “good girl” while she had been there.
There was an apartment overhead. The manager, Jonesy, was a good friend of her father’s, as were the bouncers that worked there. She only had to walk in, announce who she was, and take over ownership.
Had her father somehow sensed her dreams would go awry here more than he had told her? Because he had offered her the bar. Told her that when she got tired of playing the political games that filled the educational system that she could always run the bar. And his eyes had been filled with knowledge, as though he had known the wildness inside his daughter would eventually be drawn free.
Her reputation had been destroyed because of whatever had happened there the one night she hadn’t been cautious enough. Now it was time to remake that reputation.
Rogue was young, but she was pragmatic. She was bitter now, and she knew that bitterness would fester until Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay had paid for what they had done. But she wasn’t going to let it destroy her. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of destroying her.
She smiled in anticipation, in anger. Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay had no idea what they had done. They had destroyed Caitlyn Walker, but nothing or no one could destroy the Rogue she intended to become.
One week later
Sheriff Ezekiel Mayes eased from his current lover’s bed and moved through the bedroom to the shower. The widow he was currently seeing slept on, oblivious to his absence as he showered and dressed.
It would be the last night he spent with her, he knew. Zeke insisted on privacy in his relationships. He didn’t publicly date; he didn’t claim any woman. There was no room in his life, his heart, or his secrets for such a woman. And she was steadily pushing for more. He knew if he didn’t break it off now, then it would only become a mess he didn’t want to face.
He didn’t want ties. He didn’t want the complications that came from claiming any woman as his own. He didn’t want the danger he knew a woman of his could face. He was walking a thin line and he knew it; he wouldn’t make his balance more precarious by taking a lover that could become a weakness. Calvin Walker’s daughter was definitely a weakness, simply because of her affiliation with the Walkers and others’
hatred for them. The job he had set for himself demanded a fragile balance at the moment. Maintaining that balance would be impossible if he gave in to the needs clawing at his gut right now for one innocent little schoolteacher.
As he moved from the bathroom Mina rolled over and blinked back at him sleepily.
Slumberous, dark eyes flickered over him as a pout pursed her full, sensual lips.
“It’s not even dawn yet,” she muttered, obviously less than pleased to find him leaving.
She should have expected it. He always left before dawn.
“I need to get into the office early,” he told her. And he did, but it could have waited.
Mina Harlow was a generous, warm lover, but she wanted a relationship, and Zeke wasn’t ready to complicate his life to that extent. He hid enough of himself the way it was, he wasn’t interested in hiding it on a regular basis.
“Whatever.” She stretched beneath the blankets before eyeing him with a glimmer of amusement. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. That little schoolteacher that looks at you with stars in her eyes, Miss Walker. The school board fired her last week.”
He didn’t want to hear this particular piece of gossip again. He sure as hell didn’t want to hear the satisfaction in Mina’s tone at the fact that the little schoolteacher had been hurt. Mina was gloating over it, simply because Caitlyn hadn’t hid her interest in him.
This was bullshit. Catty, snide, and hurtful. He’d thought better of Mina at one time.
“I don’t like gossip, Mina,” he reminded her.
She gave a soft little laugh. “Come on, Zeke, it’s all over town and now it’s hit the Internet. Pictures of her in the cutest little three-some with another couple. Who would have guessed she had it in her.”
Zeke wouldn’t have, and he still didn’t believe it. He’d heard about the pictures more than he wanted to. He refused to look at them.
“Miss Goody Two Shoes got caught having her fun,” Mina said smoothly. “I can’t believe she thought she could get away with playing like that here. She should have known better.”
Zeke’s lips thinned as he sat at the bottom of the bed and pulled his boots on. Dammit, he didn’t need to hear this again. He could feel that edge of burning anger in his gut, the one that warned him he was letting a woman get too close.
Caitlyn Rogue Walker was nothing to him, he told himself. He couldn’t let her become something to him, either. She was too damned innocent, no matter what those photos might show. Not to mention too damned young.
“Too bad the cameraperson didn’t take a few more.” Mina yawned then. “Miss Walker wasn’t even fully undressed, but she was definitely getting ready to have a good time.”
His jaw bunched. The innocent Miss Walker had pissed off the wrong people, and Zeke felt responsible for that. Hell, this was just what he needed. He had steered clear of her for the express purpose of making certain she was never targeted for any reason because of him, and she had ended up as a target because of his son instead.
She had caught the attention of two of the town’s worst inhabitants. A brother and sister who delighted in destroying anyone they could. She had caught their attention by defending his son at school.
He felt responsible. It was his son, and despite his knowledge that she had been set up, he still hadn’t managed to find a way to punish those who had hurt her or to tamp down his growing interest in a woman he had no business touching.
He could feel the curling knot of anger, a hint of territorial possessiveness where the teacher was concerned and squelched it immediately. Miss Walker was too young, too innocent. She wasn’t a woman that would accept a sex-only relationship, nor was she a woman Zeke would be able to hide the darker core of his sexuality with, as he did other women. Women such as Mina. Women who touched only his body, never his heart.
Miss Walker had the potential to touch the inner man, and he refused to give her the chance.
He’d failed to protect one woman in his life already; he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“She’s Calvin Walker’s daughter, you know,” Mina continued. “Hell, I thought he was dead. What’s he doing with a daughter? Damned Walkers have never been worth crap, so it shouldn’t be surprising.”
Zeke rose to his feet and turned back to her. “I’m heading out, Mina. Take care.”
This relationship was over. He could barely manage civility now. Mina had always seemed like a kindhearted woman. She had a ready smile, compassionate hazel eyes, a gentle face. And a mean streak a mile wide. He’d learned that over the past few months.
When it came to other women, younger women, anyone she considered a threat to what she might want at the time, she turned viperous.
“And you’re not coming back.” Her expression lost its amusement now. “Did you think I didn’t know your attention was waning, Zeke?”
“We had an understanding, Mina.” He’d made certain of it before the relationship began.
She sat up in the bed, unashamedly naked, her short brown hair mussed attractively around her face.
“Your attention hasn’t been worth shit since you met that girl,” she accused him snidely. “You go through the motions, but I don’t doubt you’re thinking of her when you’re fucking me.”
His brow lifted. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Mina, and it’s not a part of what we had.
In this case, you’re wrong. There’s nothing between me and Miss Walker.”
And there never could be. She was too young, too tender. Zeke didn’t mess with women whose innocence lit their eyes like stars in the sky. Caitlyn Walker was the forever kind, and Zeke simply didn’t have that to give her. Forever required the truth, it required parts of himself being revealed, and he’d learned at a young age that the truth wasn’t always acceptable.
“There’s nothing between the two of you because you’re a closemouthed bastard intent on making certain you never give so much as an ounce of yourself,” she snapped.
“What’s wrong, Zeke, can’t anyone match the memory of that paragon you were married to? Or did you simply spend too much time in Los Angeles partying with all the gay boys?”
Zeke stared back at her silently. Prejudice in the mountains was still alive and thriving; he’d known that before he came home.
“Good-bye, Mina.”
He turned and left the room. He’d be damned if he’d let himself be drawn into an argument with her, especially one she could use against him at any time in the future.
Zeke had a lot friends that still lived in L.A., and yeah, a few of them were gay. He and his past wife, Elaina, hadn’t felt that sense of prejudice that thrived here. He didn’t give a damn what a man or woman’s sexual preference was. He hadn’t cared then, and he didn’t care now.
As he left Mina’s little house outside town, he reminded himself that he was here to do a job, not to make friends or to find another wife. He’d been born and bred in these mountains; he knew every cliff and hollow, every breath of breeze and sigh of the wind.
And he’d missed it like hell when he’d been forced to leave. Not that he’d had a choice at the time. It was leave with his mother or face the further destruction of his soul.
At fourteen, his life had changed forever. One moment in time had cursed him and had caused his parents’ divorce. Moving to L.A. with his mother and meeting Elaina, the woman he’d married, had changed it further. At seventeen he’d become a father himself, and through the years he had learned the hard way that he couldn’t run from his past. It had found him, and his wife had died because of it.
He was back in Kentucky because of it. Because he was tired of running, tired of fighting to forget what couldn’t be forgotten.
Damn, he loved these mountains though, he thought as he started his truck and pulled out of Mina’s back drive. The sun was rising over the peaks of pine, oak, and elm that filled the rolling hills. There was a mist in the air that drifted off the nearby lake, and the scent of summer filled his senses.
The vision of Rogue—he just couldn’t see her as Caitlyn—filled his head, no matter how hard he tried to push it back. He was thirty-two years old, a grown man next to her tender twenty-one. She was so damned tiny she made a man second think his own strength and so damned innocent that all a man could think about was being the one to teach her how to sin.
Someone else would have to teach her, he thought, if someone hadn’t already. He was staying just as far away from that land mine as possible. She would be the one woman that would tempt him. If he dared to touch her, if he even considered taking her, he’d never be able to give her only a part of himself. And because of that, he could never have her. There wasn’t enough left of him to give, sometimes he felt as though he had never completely found himself and never would until the demons of his past were destroyed.