Page 7 of Return to Laurel Valley

“I don’t think anyone is going anywhere, including your skip. If he’s in Laurel Valley he’s stuck here. The roads are closed and power lines are down. That’s why I’m heading out. I’m not sure what time I’ll be back, but don’t leave. It’s too dangerous. You’re welcome to whatever you need here. There’s food in the kitchen and you already know where the shower is.”

Her cheeks flushed and she bit her bottom lip, and then her hand came up in a sweet gesture and touched the side of his face. When she kissed him it was as if time stopped and everything was focused on that one moment where her lips met his.

“You could tempt me to stay,” he said, pulling away.

“But you can’t.” She let him go and snuggled back into the pillow.

“I’ll be back when I can. We’ve got power lines down and roads washed out. A couple of college kids coming home late are stranded out by Mill Pond. I’ve got a deputy headed over there, and I’m going to go deal with the power lines. I hooked the boat to my truck earlier, so things should go fairly quickly.”

“Be careful.” Her voice faded away as she drifted back into sleep.

Blaze stared at her a second longer. He wanted to say more. To tell her what had been brewing inside of him this past year. He’d known she’d come back, because whether she realized it or not, this was where she belonged.

He loved her. He’d had plenty of time to think about it after she’d walked out of his life. They had a lot to learn about each other still, but he knew as sure as he was breathing that she was meant for him. He only had to make her come around to the same realization. In the end, it would have to be her that made the decision to stay.

* * *

Lily sat up straight in bed, her heart pounding and her hands damp with sweat. The dream was always the same. She’d only been a cop for two years. But it had been two years too many. Long enough to watch her partner, Tony DeLuca, gunned down for no good reason.

It had been a routine call for a domestic disturbance. They’d been to the same house more than a dozen times before. The woman never pressed charges, but the neighbors’ complaints made a visit necessary. The woman would answer the door, her lip bleeding or her eye swelling shut, and she’d tell them she fell and that everything was all right.

It made Lily sick every time they took a call to that house because she knew one day the woman wouldn’t be able to answer the door at all. And there was nothing they could do about it.

She’d known in her gut when they got that last call that things would be bad. Her instincts were never wrong. But she and Tony took the call and knocked on the door, just like they had so many times before.

The woman answered the door like she usually did, and Lily could see the red marks in the shape of fingers around her throat. Her pupils were dilated so they were big as black saucers, and a streak of blood was smeared under her nose. Her hands shook and she only cracked the door an inch or two. The terror on the woman’s face was enough to send chills down Lily’s spine. Something was different about this time, and Lily’s hand automatically went to pull her weapon from her holster.

Tony tried to get the woman to come outside and talk to them for a bit without the husband interfering, but it was as if she were frozen in place. The shots that fired through the door took them all by surprise. And by some horrible stroke of bad luck, all three bullets hit Tony right in the middle of the chest.

If Lily had been the one to knock on the door that night—like she had almost every time before because she was a woman and the less threatening of the two—she’d be the one buried and gone instead of Tony. Lily had been given a second chance at life at the expense of her partner’s, and it was something she’d never forget.

After the shots had fired, Tony’s body had slammed back into her, falling on top of her, so she was trapped beneath his heavier frame. The breath was knocked out of her and for a few seconds, she was completely paralyzed. There was no amount of training or scenarios that could prepare you to catch your partner as he died.

Lily had still been on the ground, scrambling to her knees to call for backup, when two more shots sounded from inside the house—a shot for the wife and another the husband inflicted on himself.

She’d turned her badge and gun in that day, while Tony’s blood had still been sticky on her hands. Nothing her captain could say would change her mind. She didn’t have the guts to make it as a cop. But she had good instincts, and she had a nose for finding the bad guys. Becoming a bounty hunter was her only other option if she wanted to utilize her skills.

She shook herself out of the memories of the dream and looked around the room, trying to reorient herself to the present while repeating in her head that there was nothing she could do to change the past.

The rain still pounded down against the roof. It looked as if buckets of water were being poured onto the windowpanes, distorting the images in the street. Darkness still hovered in the sky, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of the clouds or because it was still the middle of the night. No matter the time, she was wide awake and she might as well get up.

She stretched slowly, feeling the soreness in her muscles. She’d known it was inevitable the moment she’d ridden into Laurel Valley. She knew she’d end up right where she was—in Blaze’s bed. She was his wife. And the knowledge brought a panic inside her she didn’t know how to deal with. She’d never been someone’s wife, or even had to care for or be responsible for another person.

Her parents had died in a car crash when she’d been fifteen and Jacob had been nineteen. Jacob was already involved with the wrong crowd, but after her parents’ death and the responsibility of raising his teenage sister, he’d kicked things up a notch, taking bigger risks for bigger money. She’d gone to the police academy after she’d graduated high school and never looked back. Jacob had taken a different route.

Blaze had asked her why she’d not gotten the marriage annulled. And the truth was, she hadn’t wanted to. She’d liked the idea that even on the other side of the country, she belonged to him. And she’d known the moment she’d stepped into Blaze’s presence for the first time that he was meant for her.

Lily remembered her great-grandmother from her childhood—she’d been impossibly old and she was blind as well. But she’d had the sight. And she’d told Lily there would be a man one day who’d be her equal, her perfect match, and not even the afterlife could keep them separated.

The words had etched themselves in Lily’s mind through her teenage years and through her time at the academy and then on the job. When she’d left law enforcement to become a bounty hunter she’d put the dreams of her childhood behind her and focused on the job. But then she’d met Blaze O’Hara, and her grandmother’s words rushed back in an instant. It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room, and she knew with certainty that her grandmother’s prediction was right—not even the afterlife could keep them separated.

The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Blaze. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to be his wife. But she’d come here to do a job, and she couldn’t let someone like Jackson Coltraine go uncaptured. He was evil. And the longer he was out among people the more likely he was to hurt someone.

Her pack was on the chair in the corner of the room, and then she remembered her backpack of clothes was in the saddlebag on her bike. If her bike was still where she’d left it, that was, and not floating down the street with the cows and who knew what else.

The important thing was she had her paperwork to capture Jackson Coltraine. She could pick up clothes and other supplies anywhere. And she could appreciate Blaze’s warning about the roads, but the itch at the back of her neck was telling her she needed to get out there and start looking. Coltraine was dangerous. And even sick, he wasn’t someone to underestimate.

Before she could get back to work she needed coffee and a shower. In that order. So she rummaged through one of Blaze’s drawers until she found a spare T-shirt, and she pulled it over her head, enjoying that the soft cotton smelled of him. Then she headed to the kitchen to see what more she could learn about the man who was her husband.

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