Surrendering to the Sheriff (5 page)

“Maybe for the same reason I did.” She paused. “He had your younger sister, Shelby, followed, too.”

Aiden cursed. “And you didn’t think you should come to me with this?”

Kendall lifted her shoulder. “You and I aren’t exactly on the same side in this investigation, and technically I’m one of Jewell’s attorneys. If anything had come up that was legally pertinent to the investigation, I would have disclosed it as I’m required to do. But a private citizen hiring a PI isn’t something I have to disclose.”

Hell’s bells.
She sounded like a lawyer and it set his teeth on edge again. “I’ll have a talk with Palmer, and these little following adventures will stop.” Aiden gave that some more thought. “Did he have me followed, too?”

“No, not that I know of anyway, but Palmer’s digging into your old investigations. Into the McKinnon investigations, too. I think he’s looking for anything that’ll weaken the case against Jewell.”

Yes, and he could try to smear Aiden’s name in the process. He followed the law, but there was always a gray area or two when it came to investigations. Palmer better not be looking to throw him to the dogs to save the likes of Jewell.

Palmer also had better not be behind tonight’s fiasco.

Apparently, Aiden had yet someone else to question, along with Jewell’s attorney, Joplin. Maybe if he poked around enough, he’d find the snake responsible for that bullet Kendall had taken.

“I need some good news,” she said, staring out the window into the darkness. “Any good news.”

Aiden could possibly help with that. “Leland managed to get the surveillance footage from a camera just up the street from your office. One of the deputies is looking at it now to see if they can find any clues about the attack.”

She shivered, rubbing her hands along the sides of her arms. Then she winced when her fingers brushed against the stitches.

Okay, maybe not good news for her after all. Because those images of being grabbed and dragged into an SUV probably didn’t qualify as good. Still, if they didn’t get anything from the dead gunman’s past, then the footage was their best bet.

“How bad is your arm hurting?” he asked.

“It’s manageable.”

Which meant she was hurting. “I can call the doc and see if there’s anything you can take.”

But she shook her head. “You’ve already done enough.”

That didn’t exactly sound like a big thank-you, but Aiden let it slide. Soon, though, they’d have to talk about the final subject on his to-do list. The final and the biggest one.

The baby.

He took the turn into Sweetwater Springs. Since he’d never been to her place, Aiden followed her terse directions of “that way” and “here.” He pulled to a stop in front of a house just one block off Main Street.

A whopping big house at that.

A reminder that Kendall was rich.

Her daddy, Travis, had been a rancher and plenty well-off. Travis had died when Kendall was just a kid, and the money, the ranch and all the other properties had been split between Jewell and her. Jewell had gotten the sprawling Sweetwater Ranch. Kendall, this house. Kendall’s folks had divorced years before Travis’s death, so her mom hadn’t gotten anything, and then her mom, too, died the following year in a car accident, giving Kendall an even larger inheritance.

Aiden’s family had money, too, but nothing like this.

“I don’t have my remote to open the garage,” she said. “The kidnappers took my purse, but I can use the keypad by the front door to unlock the house.”

“No butler to let you in?” he mumbled, immediately hating the snark.

“He has the night off,” she zinged back. A reminder of one of the things that had always attracted him to Kendall. She was nobody’s doormat.

Not even his.

Aiden looked around before they got out, and as he’d done in the parking lot, he quickly got them moving. They reached the front door, where she used the keypad. He hadn’t thought there’d be any more surprises tonight, but he got one when he stepped into the foyer. Yeah, it was a mansion all right.

And an empty one.

Kendall pressed in some numbers to disarm the security system and then immediately reset it once they were inside.

“I put everything in storage so I could get the house ready to sell,” she said, following his gaze to the rooms off the foyer. Also empty.

“Because you were leaving. Leaving without telling me you were pregnant.” And yes, he meant for that to be a zinger.

Unlike her previous gaze dodging, she didn’t dodge this time. She met his gaze head-on.

“I’m thirty-six, and I figured even though this baby wasn’t planned, it’s a good time for me to start a family. I didn’t want to shove my dreams down your throat just because you were the one who got me pregnant.”

Ouch.
“You’re calling me a sperm donor?”

“I’m giving you an out that you’ll likely want when you get past the emotional punch of seeing that ultrasound.” Kendall didn’t give him a chance to challenge that. “Your mother and sister are never going to accept me, and I’m not letting them raise my baby.”

He couldn’t argue with the last part or the emotional punch, but he could darn sure take issue with the first. “I don’t want an out.”

But man, it thinned his breath to understand what that meant.

He’d be a father to this baby, no matter who objected. Even if he’d probably suck at it. He hadn’t exactly had a good role model, since his father was a cheating, mean old bastard. However, he was a better man than Whitt had been.

He hoped.

Aiden might have convinced Kendall and himself of that if his phone hadn’t rung. “Leland,” he greeted his deputy when he answered.

“We got a problem, boss. The McKinnons are tied up with an armed robbery at a convenience store just off the interstate. There’s a hostage.”

Aiden groaned. Not only for the hostage but for what that meant. “Can anybody else do protection detail for Kendall?”

“I’m working on it, but I figure you need to stay there with her.”

He didn’t miss the slathering of doom and gloom in his deputy’s voice. “Why? What happened?”

“There’s been a spotting of the SUV that Kendall’s attacker used to get away.” Leland paused, added some profanity. “Someone’s on the way to check it out, but the guy’s in Sweetwater Springs.” The deputy paused. “Aiden, he was seen less than a mile from Kendall’s house.”

CHAPTER SIX

Aiden was in her bed again.

Well, in her
bedroom
anyway.

Something that Kendall had sworn would never happen. Of course, their one night together hadn’t happened here but rather at the Sweetwater Springs Inn. Because the inn had been walking distance from the bar, and they’d both had too much to drink to drive.

Now he was here, sleeping on the floor next to her bed, because that masked kidnapper might try to come after her again. If most of her furniture hadn’t already been put in storage, he might have opted for a guest room. There were six of them in the sprawling house, but since the only bed had been hers, he’d taken the floor.

A wise move.

With tensions running so high between them, the last place she needed Aiden was in bed with her. Even if her body thought that would have been a stellar idea. Of course, her body was always making the wrong call when it came to Aiden.

As it was nearly seven in the morning, Kendall eased out of bed, trying to keep her movements slow and quiet so she wouldn’t wake him. However, she wasn’t able to muffle the little sound of pain when she flexed her arm. It hurt. And had done so for most of the night. Still, it was far better than it could have been. The kidnappers could have killed her.

Not exactly a sunshiny thought to start the day.

She’d worn cotton pj’s to bed, but she also pulled on a robe before she stood. Since Aiden was right there on the floor, she stepped around him so she could head to the adjoining bathroom. Or at least that was the plan. But one look at him, and her feet automatically stopped moving.

Another wrong call that her body made, but that didn’t prevent her from looking at him.

He was a sight all right. No pj’s for him. He was still wearing his jeans but had stripped off his shirt, boots and holster, and the stripping had left her with an unobstructed view of his toned chest and abs.

He had a six-pack.

And the hot outlaw looks to go with it.

His dark blond hair was a little too long, but the tousled look suited him and went along with that desperado stubble. Ditto for his gray eyes. She couldn’t see them now that he was sleeping, but the color seemed to change. They could be stormy dark or cool as mist depending on his mood.

Most of the time when he was looking at her, Kendall got the stormy version.

“Ogling me?” he asked, and she got a full dose of that gray when he opened his eyes.

“Trying not to step on you,” Kendall corrected. And yes, ogling him in the process. She didn’t wait around to see if he bought her answer. Kendall headed to the bathroom.

“Stay away from the windows,” Aiden called out, something he’d reminded her of a lot since they arrived at her house.

She listened but did take a quick peek outside to make sure that goon wasn’t in her yard. No sign of him. She had mixed emotions about that. Kendall wasn’t eager to have him anywhere near her again, but if he had been out there, then maybe Aiden could have captured him.

Kendall hurried into the bathroom so she could take a quick shower. And put on some makeup. Fix her hair, too, only to remember that she hadn’t brought a change of clothes in with her. That meant putting the robe back on so she could get to the closet in the bedroom. When it came to being around Aiden, the more clothes, the better.

Clearly, he thought so, too, because when she went back in, he was dressed, sitting on her bed and talking on his phone. No more ogling his chest, but sadly, her brain reminded her of how he’d looked lying on her floor. A flash of another memory, too, when Aiden had been naked and in bed with her.

That helped ease the throbbing in her arm, but it didn’t help with other parts of her. Nor did the long look that Aiden gave her. His gaze—stormy gray, as expected—slid from her head to her toes, and then he jerked his attention away as if disgusted with himself.

She knew how he felt.

The last time he’d looked at her that way, they had landed in bed, and she’d gotten pregnant.

That brought on another set of images, this time from the ultrasound she’d gotten the night before. Kendall went into the massive closet and slid her hand over her stomach.

A boy.

For weeks she’d wondered about the baby’s sex, and now she knew. Ironic that when she was a teenager, she’d fantasized about marrying Aiden and having his son, and here she was carrying that child.

Of course, in her clueless teenage fantasies, Aiden and she had been perfectly happy. Kendall was still thrilled about the baby, but there wasn’t much else that she could slap that happy label on.

She dressed. Not easily, since every little movement of her arm gave her a twinge of pain, and some gave her more than a twinge. But she managed to get on a pale pink dress and sandals. An outfit that Aiden would probably consider too prissy, but she’d already put on some baby weight around her stomach, and most of her other clothes were too tight.

“Anything new on the kidnapper?” she asked when she went back into the bedroom and saw that he’d finished his call.

“Nothing. But Leland had the Rangers do a bug sweep of the office, and it’s clean. No listening devices. I also found out from Laine that she wasn’t the one who told Carla about you being pregnant.”

Good. It was a small thing, but Kendall was glad Laine hadn’t gone back on her word to keep it secret. “Then who told Carla?”

“Still working on that.” He tipped his head to her bandage. “How’s your arm?”

“Fine.”

Ah, she got the stormy eyes again. “How’s your arm?” he repeated. “And I’ll keep asking until I get a truthful answer.”

Kendall huffed. “It hurts, and the stitches are pulling. Satisfied?”

“Satisfied that you’re in pain? No. Satisfied that we’ve moved past the polite-answer stage? Then yes. Because I’m thinking we’re going to need more than polite responses when we talk about the baby.”

She swallowed hard. Kendall had been expecting and dreading this conversation, of course, but she wasn’t sure she was up to what would no doubt turn into a full-blown argument. An argument that would include why she’d planned to leave town and never tell him about their son.

Aiden stood from the bed and walked closer to her. With that holster slung low on his hips, he looked like a Wild West outlaw, ready to draw. “So, why were you at the Bluebonnet Bar three months ago?”

Of all the questions she figured he would ask, that wasn’t one of them. Nor was it something Kendall wanted to discuss. “Does it matter?”

He lifted his shoulder. “I’m just wondering if you went there with the idea of finding a sperm donor so you could get pregnant.”

She laughed, definitely not from humor but from the absurdity of his suggestion. “You’re kidding, right?”

Another shoulder lift. “You said it yourself. You’re thirty-six and want a family. Maybe that’s why we ended up in bed.”

Good grief. The man could irritate every bone in her body with just a few questions.

It was stupid, but she grabbed a handful of his shirt, yanked him closer and kissed him. It took Kendall less than a second to prove her point, because there was a flash fire of heat. She certainly felt it, and judging from the husky groan that Aiden made, he felt it, too. Her body wanted to continue proving the point, but this kind of fire-playing was dangerous.

Kendall stepped back, tried to gather her breath. “That’s why we ended up in bed together. Aided and abetted by some Jack Daniel’s, of course.”

He made a sound of agreement and pursed his mouth a little. A gesture that caused her body to clench. And beg for another round with Aiden. Something it wasn’t going to get.

“So, what got you started on the Jack Daniel’s?” he pressed.

Kendall hoped the flat look she gave him let him know she wasn’t happy about this subject, but like with the arm question, Aiden wouldn’t let go until he was satisfied that he’d gotten the truth.

“I’d gone to the jail that day to talk with Jewell.” Kendall pointed her index finger at him. “And so help me, you’d better not try to use any of what I’m about to say against her.”

That got his attention. And he nodded, eventually.

Kendall gathered her thoughts, tried to put this in the best light. Impossible to do, though. “I asked Jewell to tell me what happened that day your father died. I wanted her to explain how her DNA got on the bedsheets in the cabin.”

A cabin where the prosecution was going to say that Jewell and Whitt had carried out their secret affair. An affair that’d ended in violence because Whitt had told Jewell that it was over and that he was reconciling with his wife.

“And?” Aiden prompted when she didn’t continue. “Did you think someone had planted her DNA?”

“I’d hoped. But Jewell said it got there because she’d been on the bed. With your father,” she added in a mumble.

It’d crushed her to hear that. Jewell had been a mother to her. Someone she loved unconditionally, but Kendall had loved Jewell’s husband, Roy, too, and her sister had admitted to what the town had buzzed about for twenty-three years.

That Jewell was sleeping with a married man. Because why else would Jewell have been on that bed?

“So then I came right out and asked Jewell if she’d killed Whitt,” Kendall continued. “But she said that was best left for the jury.”

Aiden stayed quiet a moment. “You were finally convinced your sister’s a killer.”

Kendall took her time answering, too. “No, but I think she could be covering for someone.”

Roy, maybe. Heck, maybe even Carla if Jewell was somehow rationalizing that she owed the woman because she’d been sleeping with her husband.

“You won’t use this against Jewell,” Kendall insisted, then paused. “Why were you at the Bluebonnet that night?”

“Looking for the cure to a really bad day.” Aiden edged back a little from her. “Topping the list, I’d killed a man in the line of duty.”

Kendall had heard about it—a shooting was big news in a small town—but she’d been so focused on her own problems, she hadn’t realized what Aiden was going through.

“Running into me at the bar didn’t help cure your bad day,” she added.

But Aiden didn’t answer. He drew his gun and hurried to the windows at the front of the house. Kendall heard the car engine then, but when she went to see who it was, Aiden pulled her behind him.

Then he cursed.

“It’s Mr. FBI himself,” Aiden grumbled. “Seth Calder.”

His arrival was both a blessing and a curse. Seth was Jewell’s stepson and therefore Kendall’s step-nephew. She loved him like a brother, since they’d practically been raised together, but she was so not in the mood to face yet another surly man today.

Aiden was more than enough.

Kendall headed out of the bedroom and toward the stairs, but as he’d done at the window, Aiden got in front of her. Seth rang the bell, and he didn’t wait even a second before he rang it again. Then not even another second passed before he pounded on the door.

“Kendall?” Seth called out.

Yes, definitely surly. He’d no doubt heard about the shooting and probably wanted to know why she hadn’t called him. She didn’t think he’d buy that the kidnappers took her cell phone.

The pounding continued while Kendall disengaged the security system, and then Aiden threw open the door. And there Seth was. All six feet three inches of him. Imposing. Irritated.

Worried.

Cursing, Seth reached for her and pulled her into his arms. “How bad were you hurt?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Not bad.” She stepped back to show him the bandage. Thank goodness there was no pain meter on it, because it was throbbing again.

Seth looked into her eyes, no doubt trying to ferret out the truth, and then his cool blue eyes landed on Aiden again. “What the hell’s he doing here?”

“My job,” Aiden answered. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

Since this sounded like the start of a testosterone contest, Kendall shut the door and quickly tried to diffuse it. “Aiden saved my life, and when Cooper and the others couldn’t come over to stay with me, Aiden volunteered.”

“Well, he can go, because I’m here now,” Seth snapped.

Aiden’s hands went on his hips. “I don’t think that’s your call, FBI Agent Calder.” He said Seth’s title as if it were some kind of scarlet letter. “This is my investigation, and I’m staying close to Kendall until I find out who kidnapped her and put that bullet in her arm.”

That would have sounded good if Aiden hadn’t added an accusing glare that he aimed right at Seth.

Seth got in his face. “If you’re suggesting I had any part in that, then you’re a dead man.”

Aiden gave Seth the same hard look he’d gotten. “Can you vouch for your sisters, too?”

“Yes. Can you vouch for yours?” Seth fired back.

“Yeah.”

“Even the one who’s been hounding me?”

“Shelby,” Aiden provided on a huff. “My kid sister takes her investigative reporter duties a little over the top. But she sure wouldn’t destroy evidence needed to convict Jewell. Shelby’s determined to make Jewell pay.”

“Then who the devil did this to Kendall?” Seth demanded, tipping his head to the bandage.

“Somebody who wanted evidence destroyed,” Aiden readily supplied. “Or else somebody who wanted to make it seem as if Jewell or her kin was into evidence tampering. I’m looking into all the suspects.”

Kendall couldn’t get a word in edgewise, as Seth just talked right over her.

“There’d better be someone with connections to your family on your suspect list,” Seth insisted.

She instantly thought of the conversation they’d had with Carla. Plenty of venom there, maybe enough to want Kendall dead while also making Jewell look even guiltier. Plus, there were things in Carla’s past that she was keeping secret from her family. Since Kendall now knew that secret, she probably shouldn’t keep it from Aiden. But she wouldn’t tell him now, not with Seth ready to latch on to anything he could throw in Aiden’s face.

And vice versa.

“There is someone with connections to my family on that list,” Aiden admitted. “Lee Palmer. He hated my father enough to want to see Jewell walk for killing him.”

“Or maybe Palmer did the killing himself,” Seth fired back.