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Authors: Eden Connor

Tags: #Romance, #BDSM erotic romance suspense

Wildly Inappropriate (22 page)

BOOK: Wildly Inappropriate
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The jailor's glare would've peeled paint, but she took a half-step into the corridor. Lila yanked her shorts down and shoved the stick between her thighs. Her posture was rigid, and her blue eyes flashed. Bright circles of red colored her cheeks. Cynda suppressed a grin when she held out the still-dripping stick. "You'll see two bars in under a minute. And you spilled the coffee."

"If you's pregnant, you don't need no damn coffee," the CO shot back.

"If you were my physician, your opinion might matter to me," Lila retorted. "But you aren't. You're a civil servant. Try being civil."

The CO's smile was cruel. "You's a prisoner. Try shuttin' up and bein' respectful."

"Respect is earned by giving it. And by this time tomorrow I won't be a
detainee
," Lila reminded her. "What's your name again?" The way she squinted made Cynda think the woman was too vain to wear glasses.

"Officer Nelson. Yep, you knocked up," the CO stated, her grin becoming sly. "I'll be right back wif' yo milk and extra sammitch, ma'am," the woman said, sounding far too obsequious to Cynda's ears. The door slammed loudly again. Lila yanked up her shorts, shooting Cynda a triumphant look.

"You haven't heard the last of her," Cynda warned.

Lila rinsed her hands in the fountain. Wiping them on the seat of her denim shorts, she knelt and peeled the soggy bread from the thin slices of bologna. She tossed the bread into the toilet. Putting both pieces of meat on one tray, she poured the remaining coffee into one cup, and handed the tray to Cynda. "I'm so sorry I got you into this mess," she said, sounding sincere. "In twenty-four hours, give or take, Daniel and Colton will be here to get us. I can do anything for twenty-four hours and so can you. As for Officer Nelson, she'd have to take a few graduate-level courses to out-bitch my ogre-in-law."

 

* * * *

 

While poking through drawers in sideboards and dressers, Dan decided Kingsley Dazza could've overheard a conversation between Cammie and Georgia. Cammie was a woman; she'd told someone other than her diary about the kind of sex life she shared with Rafe, Dan figured. Georgia's nephew would've been in his twenties at the time. Dazza might've simply decided the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree and taken the domestic discipline concept a step farther, selecting a collar and leash because it was symbolic of the BDSM lifestyle. There was a place in Greenville where aficionados of that lifestyle hung out, but he'd never spent much time there. Their style of play felt too ritualized to him. He wasn't playing. He needed to have his woman—as well as his brothers—bring him their problems to solve; doing so was inextricably tied to his self-esteem. That was who he was. Head of the family, now that Rafe was dead.

Something made him wonder how old Rafe had been when Cammie went missing. He calculated the dates. Thirty-seven? No, thirty-six. Rafe had been younger than Dan was now. Shock riveted Dan to the floor. Sinking onto the wide seat of the hall tree, he tapped the old drumsticks he'd found on his knees, staring through the mesh baby gate at the sleeping, rotund form of Not-Jacques.

 

* * * *

 

Cynda looked at the unappetizing bologna. They'd been served two meals so far and each time they'd been given a bologna sandwich. She'd hoped breakfast would be something different. "No, you should eat this," she protested, above her growling stomach.

"Can't do it," Lila assured her. "I'd be puking my guts up before you could blink. You wanna listen to that?"

Cynda didn't have to look at the toilet to know it was less than two feet away. "Nooo."

"Then eat up," Lila said, rising to drink long gulps from the fountain while Cynda tried to decide what to do. Wiping her lips with the back of her hand, Lila looked at her. "The milk will hold me over till my stomach settles down. Promise. You eat that."

Unhappily, Cynda picked up the meat. Her stomach rumbled painfully. She washed it down quickly with the coffee, her heart sinking when Lila drank from the fountain again.

The door swung open. Officer Nelson dropped a sandwich-sized square wrapped in institutional brown paper towels onto Lila's bunk and opened the small carton of milk. Smiling triumphantly, she held the carton over the toilet. "County regulations say I gotta provide you with milk. Don't say nothin' 'bout you gettin' to drink it." Tipping the container, she let the contents stream into the toilet. Her smile looked triumphant before she did an about-face and stomped out. The clang of the door echoed in the tiny cell.

Lila looked at the sandwich. "You think she spit on it?"

"I'd bet on it," Cynda whispered, her stomach knotting.

 

* * * *

 

Dan watched the pup's tummy rise and fall. Did it matter why Dazza wanted that piece of land? He wasn't going to sell it to him, but he might walk it later. He hadn't realized the bridge had rotted. No one went that way anymore. The bridge had been put up fifty years ago, maybe longer. He might ask his brothers whether they thought it was worth repairing, but it was just a shortcut over the ravine. The migrants used to use the bridge before John Carpenter sold off his peach orchards. The terrain there was too rocky for orchards. That section of the property was littered with scrub pine that blew over in the slightest storm, and huge river oaks that had driven their roots deep. The ravine filled with water after a hard rain.

Not-Jacques stirred and began to whine, prompting Dan to don a pair of shorts and fetch the Sunday paper. Calling for Daisy, he walked to the end of the driveway, easing the heavy, bundled newspaper out of the plastic tube the paper carrier had staked to the ground next to his mailbox. She came trotting out of the garden, holding something in her mouth. "Release," he ordered, sliding the rubber band off the paper. He glanced back at Daisy, to be sure she'd followed his command. A section of the paper slid loose and fell to the ground. Cursing, Dan bent to pick it up.

It was the real estate section, which he normally never read. The headline below the fold grabbed his attention. Dan bounded up the steps and held the front door open for Daisy, whistling impatiently. She trotted past him like she'd been born an indoor dog. Dan shook his head, thinking of the way Cynda's eyes had lit up when he'd agreed to let the damn dog into the house. "When Cynda leaves, you're a yard dog again," he informed her. Daisy didn't jump the child gate. She went the opposite way, into the kitchen, and stopped at the refrigerator. Cynda had been giving her milk, swearing the dog needed it to make milk for her pup. He'd never done that before, and this was hardly Daisy's first litter; more like her last. Guilt pierced him. What did he know about making babies, or caring for them? Sighing, he grabbed the gallon of milk out of the fridge and poured Daisy a bowlful before settling at the counter.

His coffee turned to acid in his stomach. The tiny print fuzzed as he stared at the paper, dropping his head into his hands.
How the hell did I sink so low? Am I so jealous of what Colton has with Lila that I've turned into some monster who jumps at the chance to make Cynda into my dress-up doll and plaything?
He thought she was okay with it, but like Daisy and the milk, what did he really know? From the little he'd read in his mother's diaries, it was pretty clear how badly a man could misinterpret a woman's silence. Cynda had signed that contract out of desperation, not attraction.

If he'd caught Eric doing something like this, Colton wouldn't have been able to pull Dan off their brother, assuming he'd have even tried, under the circumstances. This was more than wildly inappropriate. What he'd done to Cynda was a damn disgrace. He had to make this right.

 

* * * *

 

"Forty-one's not that old," Cynda disagreed, hoping to keep Lila's mind off her hunger. "I mean, you're raising Jonah, right? How old is he?"

"Thirteen." Lila rubbed at her eyes. "Sarah moved to LA before he was born. It was a huge adjustment for him to move here on top of her murder. Then he had to readjust when my house sold and Colton dragged me to live with them." She got up and drank from the fountain again.

"Dragged you?" Cynda's conscience stabbed her every time Lila did that. She was being nosy, but they had a whole day to kill. She wanted to know more about Daniel, but keeping Lila on topic was challenging.

Lila snorted, curling up on the bunk. "Let me just warn you. The minute a De Marco tells you he loves you, what he actually means is, in his mind, you belong to him. In the biblical sense. He decides you're moving in, you move in. You don't get to vote. I thought men Colton's age had to be chased down and hog-tied for that kind of commitment, but every time I opened a newspaper to look at houses, he'd take it out of my hands and tell me his house was half-empty. They must get that from Rafe. From what I've heard, he never looked at another woman after Cammie left."

Cynda tried again, hoping to glean some details about Daniel's old girlfriend. "Daniel sure lives in a big house for a single dude."

Lila's eyes widened. "Oh my God, he's like an old maid about that attic. I just wanted to look, and he wouldn't let me up the steps."

Cynda barely suppressed a groan. "His mama's things are up there," she said defensively, playing with the beads at the end of one braid. "Didn't look to me like he throws out much, but I guess there's plenty of space to store stuff." The farmhouse was easily four or five times the size of Grams' mill house.

To her frustration, Lila zigzagged again. "Yet another reason having a baby's a terrible idea. Colton built a two-bedroom house. It has a small office and right now, it's piled to the ceiling with my stuff." Lila rolled onto her side and propped her head on a hand. "Daniel let you in the attic and showed you his mother's things?"

"Yes, well, he let me go up there and look around." Cynda didn't want to admit why, so she added, "If Colton built the house, he can add a room. You gettin' way ahead of yourself. What if he wants a baby?"

The other woman's eyes looked stricken. "What if I don't?" Lila whispered, flopping onto her back. She brushed paint chips off her blanket for long minutes before she burst out, "When Charlie was Jonah's age, my husband started making plans for us after Charlie left to go to college. We were going to travel. When Charlie was a sophomore in high school, Pete became paralyzed. Then Charlie left to join the Marines and two months later, Pete died. Nine miserable months after that, Colton showed up and I fell in love with him. I started thinking once we get Jonah into college, maybe Colton and I could do the things I never got to do with Pete."

"I don't think you can fit a man into another man's plans. Every man's got his own."

Turning her head slightly, Lila raised a brow. "Hrmph, I don't think he planned on us having a baby."

"No, you said he thought he couldn't. That's not the same thing," Cynda pointed out. "Men can surprise you about babies. They don't want 'em until they find out they're having one, most of the time. I mean, he comes from a big family, right?" Cynda chuckled. "Besides, girlfriend, from what you say about your female troubles and his bein' sterile, isn't this baby sort of a miracle? It sounds to me like God pointed and said, 'Those two, right there, I want them to raise this one'."

"Yeah, if you wanna make God laugh, tell Him your plans," Lila retorted wryly, lifting one hand to trace the cheap serpentine springs in the bottom of the bunk above her. "Wouldn't be so bad if I had some help, you know?"

"I might be unemployed by now," Cynda said, thinking about how nasty her manager had been when she'd been forced to squander her one phone call to tell him she wouldn't be able to work her weekend shifts. "I hate that job, though. My dream job is to become a nanny."

Lila looked at her again, her eyes round as saucers. "Seriously? Like, the come-to-my-house kind of nanny? Or do you want a job as a live-in nanny?" She fell back onto the pillow again. "I guess if we were going to build a nursery, we could just as easily add a bedroom. Colton goes stark raving bonkers if I try to pay for something, but he might let me buy the materials and his brothers would help him do the labor."

Cynda would adore the kind of job Lila described. Being a nanny was even better than teaching kindergarten because she wouldn't have to let go of a child she'd come to love at the end of the school year. Grams and three of her neighbors had spent the last fifty years looking after each other. The small mill village was close enough to the De Marco's land that Cynda could keep an eye on her grandmother.

If Lila was serious, all she had to do was figure out what to do about King. She didn't expect Daniel to help her. Why should he? They'd only just met, not to mention
how
they'd met. But, if she could become Lila's nanny, she'd still see him and maybe, he'd still want to play his games with her.

"I love babies," she confessed. "All kids really. Taking care of one from the day it's born till it starts school would be the next best thing to havin' my own." She tensed, waiting for some cutting comment from Lila. They'd talked for hours, but this was fertile ground for racist remarks. White women seemed to think wanting to stay home and raise your babies was beneath them. She counted by ones, waiting for Lila to throw in something about Cynda being her maid.

 

* * * *

 

His idea might work. Dan flung the paper aside and hurried to shower and shave. It was too hot to put on a suit, but he found a decent pair of khakis and a polo shirt. Unsure, he switched to a short-sleeved shirt and tie, fumbling with both while he eyed the clock. He had to make it before the person he needed to see left for church.

Pulling his truck into the same spot where he'd parked two nights before while waiting for Cynda to change into her work clothes, he looked at the mill house with critical eyes. Someone had replaced the old siding with brick, but the trim needed a coat of paint and the house could use a new roof. He couldn't tell whether anyone was home, but red geraniums bloomed riotously in clay pots on each of the front steps. The heat already felt merciless as he trotted up the sidewalk. It could use a good edging. He rang the bell, looking around. Inman Mills had been among the last textile mills in the area to close. A white-steepled church glinted in the sunlight at the top of the hill behind the small house. The old red brick mill a short distance down the street had boarded-up windows. It loomed over an adjacent baseball field appearing to be in use. The grass was clipped and the chalk lines looked fresh.

BOOK: Wildly Inappropriate
7.74Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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