Roan Read Free Page A

she’d even promised to marry him. Not that she wanted to think about that now. Her ex-fiancé wasn’t someone she wanted to waste time on ever again.
    â€œSo you’ve lost them,” she said, her tone as even as she could make it.
    The sheriff lifted a shoulder, a movement that caused the muscles under his shirt to bunch and flex. “Could be. This Horseshoe Lake area is a maze of old logging and oil well sites and tracks that lead to fishing camps. If they have sense enough to cut their headlights, hide out a couple hundred yards down some overgrown trail, we may never see them.”
    â€œYou don’t seem too concerned.”
    â€œTurn-Coupe is a close-knit community. We watch out for our own. Everyone knows everyone else. Strangers stand out.” He flashed a tight smile. “Someone will spot them and give me a call. They always do.”
    She felt sure that was true. The sheriff was a man to be trusted; even she could see that. The authority in his voice and air of command had drawn her toward him the minuteshe stumbled from the van. It had been a mistake, in her case. And she wasn’t sure what it was going to take to make it right again.
    â€œHere, hold this.” As he spoke, he caught her good arm and pulled her hand across to keep the bandages in place on her shoulder. She flinched as he brushed the raw strips on her wrists where her tape bonds had been pulled away. He paused, then turned his upper body to allow the light from the patrol unit’s headlamps to fall across her arm. A frown drew his brows together. “What’s this?”
    Tory glanced from her blood-crusted skin to his narrowed eyes. “What does it look like?”
    â€œAs if you’d been tied up.”
    â€œGive the man a prize.” Her wrists should hurt, she thought in morbid fascination, but the blazing torment in her shoulder and throbbing at the front of her skull made the scrapes seem trivial.
    The sheriff studied the patrician slenderness of her fingers, the once perfect sheen of manicured nails, and the smoothness of skin that had rarely seen a pan of dishwater or done a day’s work. He surveyed the expensive white silk that covered her before meeting her eyes once more. “So,” he said in grim understanding. “Been indulging in a little bondage play?”
    Her gasp was so sharp that it hurt her throat. “Do I look like…like someone who would enjoy such a thing?”
    â€œYou look—”
    He stopped abruptly, and Tory was startled to see his skin darken, a change visible even in the uncertain light. For a brief moment she was far more aware than she wanted to be of his long fingers brushing the curve of her breast, the breadth of his shoulders as he hovered above her, and the firmness of his touch. Her stomach musclestightened and she drew a ragged breath. In bald explanation, she said, “I was kidnapped.”
    â€œSure you were.”
    His disbelief hurt, which was strange. Why should she expect this Louisiana lawman to believe her? She wasn’t even sure her stepfather would accept her version of what happened, and he knew her better than anyone, was the only person in the world who might care whether she lived or died. As the realization sank in, she felt her anger seep away, leaving misery and weariness in its wake.
    â€œHold this,” the sheriff instructed again as he placed her palm over the bandaging on her shoulder. He paused a second, then released her and picked up the scissors once more. He cut the neck of her top across to the shoulder and down to the armpit, severing the sleeve, then peeled the blood-soaked material away to expose the miniscule lace bra underneath. He paused again.
    Tory clamped her jaws together to hold back her protest for both his tactics and the wave of pain that they caused. He glanced at her face, then, but made no comment, for which Tory was grateful.
    With relentless efficiency, he ripped open more