Karen Rock - Bad Boy Rancher

“You,” he said, the single word sounding like an accusation. His hands fell to his sides, and he stalked toward her, smooth and graceful, a predatory animal. There was no other way to describe how he zeroed in on her. Like a wolf with hackles raised, Justin Cade seemed to flex every muscle in his possession.

Brielle swallowed hard and stuck her hand out. “Brielle Thompson.” After a moment of hesitation, he clasped it with his callused palm. Warmth exploded up her arm at the brief contact. “I’m sorry about the accident.”

He crossed his arms and his biceps bulged beneath the tailored suit material, curving it. “Wasn’t your fault.”

“I braked, but it all happened so fast.”

“There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

She tilted her head so her eyes caught his. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged and his gaze flitted outdoors, landing on the parent and child she’d spotted earlier.

“Are you doing okay?”

“Suppose,” he said without looking at her, which gave her plenty of license to indulge her curiosity and study him.

Beneath his bearded scruff, he had a perfectly proportioned face: a strong jaw, high cheekbones and a straight, narrow nose. Normally she didn’t like the mountain man look, especially after a lifetime spent around clean-shaven, tightly shorn military men. Yet something about his wild, untamed looks appealed to her. Challenged and drew her in.

“I tried visiting you in the hospital, but they wouldn’t let me back.”

“You’re not family.” He inserted a toothpick in his mouth. “Or a friend.” His eyes slashed across her face then back to the outdoor scene.

Heat crept up her neck and into her cheeks. “True.”

It wasn’t like she wanted to be his friend. Getting close to Justin Cade, she sensed, would be as futile as trying to throw a hug on a cactus.

“I heard you broke your ribs. A concussion, too,” she persisted.

His piercing eyes swung back to her, and the impact of his ferocious gaze was like a hand on her chest, shoving her.

“It’s a fracture.” He yanked at a green tie that brought out the yellow flecks in his eyes. In fact, looking closer, she realized his eyes were lighter than she thought.

“That’s a relief.”

A line appeared between his thick brows. “You think I’m relieved about this?” he mumbled around the toothpick.

“How about grateful?” she snapped, losing her patience with the mulish man.

“Nope. Not that, either.” His broad shoulders rose then dropped in a careless shrug.

Didn’t anything matter to this guy? His face was a slipping mask, and beneath it Brielle saw pain. “I’ve seen a lot of good men and women who cherished life lose it too soon. You’re lucky.”

He scrutinized her for a moment then laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. “Lucky? Good one.” He tipped his hat, pulled open a door labeled 8A, and disappeared inside.

Her eyes wandered over the entrance’s fake wood grain.

Justin Cade might have deliberately taken his hands from the handlebars after all. Maybe he’d wanted to die two weeks ago, and she’d prevented it. Or it’d been some twisted version of Russian roulette with his life.

Did he court death?

She smoothed her hand over her hair, yanked down her suit jacket and wrenched open the door. After the trial, she’d steer clear of Justin Cade.

He didn’t want to be saved, and those cases haunted her most.

* * *

“WOULD THE DEFENDANT please rise?”

Justin shoved back his chair and rose from the courtroom table slowly, ignoring the pain lancing through his side from his fractured rib. His heart drummed, and beads of perspiration broke out across his forehead. An overhead fan whirred in the expectant hush, and the room’s wood-paneled walls seemed to close around him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the woman who’d driven the van he’d hit two weeks ago. Brielle Thompson, a former army chaplain from Chicago, he’d learned. She’d been hired to run Carbondale’s new rehabilitation and mental health center, Fresh Start, and had been headed there when they’d collided.

Now she sat beside the county DA, ramrod straight, her strong jaw lifted, her face impassive. Varying shades of blond hair, from platinum to honey to a dark gold, smoothed over her head and twisted in a knot at the base of her neck. Although she hadn’t glanced his way since the hearing began, he recalled her light green eyes in the hall and the way they’d seemed to look not just at him, but through him.

He didn’t remember much about that night, except the image of her stricken face peering down at him. He’d even dreamed of it, a reprieve from his usual loop of Jesse calling for him, insisting this time he’d changed, and Justin angrily refusing to believe until it was too late...

“How does the defendant plead?” asked County Judge Charlotte James.

Her daughter, Amberley, who dated his brother Jared, had warned Justin not to expect leniency on his DUI charge. Judge James had lost her sister in a drunk driving accident and imposed the maximum sentence when hearing these cases. She leaned forward, her forearms extended atop the tall bench, a gavel beside her right hand. Her black robe billowed around her tall, thin frame and the narrow oval of her face creased in disapproval. Gray threaded through her shoulder-length brown hair.

Justin cast a quick glance back at his family. James glowered while Jared mouthed “good luck.” Jewel chewed on a nail while his mother’s eyes glistened. Her lips pushed together so hard the color leached out of them. Regret settled sour in Justin’s gut. He’d caused his family pain.

Again.

Jail would get him out of their hair for a while. Behind bars, he’d also escape their pitying, anxious looks...their useless attempts to pull him from his grief. He squared his shoulders beneath Jared’s borrowed suit jacket. “Guilty, Your Honor.”

An annoyed huff escaped his family’s attorney, Chuck Sloan. A portly man with a thick mane of white hair and a perfect set of teeth, he resembled a well-fed cat used to pampering, not scrapping. He’d insisted they plead not guilty to provide better leverage in a plea bargain, but Justin refused. He’d chugged the beer before hopping on the bike. No one had put a gun to his head—a preferable choice, in hindsight, to driving under the influence.

His mind drifted as Judge James called for the accident report, witness statements and the toxicology reports.

He could have hurt someone, an unforgivable, selfish act. Granted, he’d believed the remote road would be empty and his motorcycle little threat to a moving van, but he couldn’t excuse his reckless disregard for another’s life. Brielle Thompson, by all accounts, was an exemplary person, a woman of the church, practically a saint compared to a sinner like him.

Yet despite her brisk bearing and guarded expression today, he recalled the dark anguish in her eyes after the accident and her sudden fury just moments ago in the hall. She’d looked haunted, desperate, desolate—an expression he recognized. It often peered back at him in the mirror.

Was this godly woman possessed by demons, too?

After listening to the officer on scene’s testimony, as well as a brief statement from Brielle, Judge James steepled her fingers, her elbows planted atop her desk, deep in thought. The room descended into a tomb-like silence. A mother, failing to soothe her fussing baby, hustled up the central row of seats and out through the door.

“With a blood alcohol level of point oh nine—” Judge James waved the toxicology report a few minutes later “—your license is suspended for nine months.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Justin laced his fingers in front of him and rocked back on the heels of his boots, nodding. More than fair. Besides, he didn’t need a license to race dirt bikes or go mudding off-road. As for driving, he’d catch a ride with one of his siblings if he needed to go somewhere. Other than the pool hall and a weekly poker night, he rarely left the ranch anyway.