Stella Bagwell - The Deputy's Lost and Found / Her Second Chance Cop - The Deputy's Lost and Found / Her Second Chance Cop

Seeing the whole thing disturbed her, Brady urged her over to a flowered lounge positioned a few feet from the edge of the pool. After she took a seat on the end of the long chair, he sank next to her and reached for her hand.

“I’m sorry, Lass. I wasn’t thinking. Damn it, I’ve never been around anyone who can’t remember who they are and I keep forgetting to watch my words. Everything I say seems to put a glaring light on your predicament.”

Shaking her head, she stared pensively into the darkness. “That’s all right. I don’t want you to watch your words around me, Brady. I want you to be yourself. I don’t want you to try to isolate or cushion me from reality. I’m tougher than you think. Really I am.”

Brady couldn’t stop his hands from wrapping around her slender shoulders or turning her toward him. There was something sweetly endearing about her that pulled at everything inside of him. Something about the trusting look in her gray eyes that made him want to be her protector, her hero, her everything.

“Tough is not the way I’d describe you, Lass,” he said lowly. The holes in the crocheted shawl exposed patches of skin to his hands. The soft feel of it excited him, almost as much as gazing at the moist curves of her lips. “Strong. But not tough.”

Her lashes fluttered demurely against her cheeks. “Brady, we came out here for a walk,” she pointed out. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re sitting.”

He rubbed the top of his forefinger beneath her chin and swallowed as the urge to kiss her threatened to overtake his senses.

He murmured, “As a deputy of this county, I can assure you that sitting isn’t a crime.”

The tip of her tongue slipped out to nervously moisten her top lip. “Brady, that kiss … earlier—”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think we should repeat it.”

She looked confused and worried and for the first time in his life, Brady felt a bit of unease himself. Which didn’t make any sense. Kissing a beautiful woman had never concerned him before. He didn’t know why it should give him second thoughts now. But kissing Lass had been different, he realized. So different that he wanted to do it over. He wanted to make sure it had actually felt that amazing.

“Why?”

Her mouth fell open. “You have to ask? Brady, I can’t even tell you my name! I don’t even know how old I am!”

He cupped his palm against the side of her face as his thoughts rolled back to the night he’d found her lying lifelessly in the ditch. When she’d finally regained consciousness and he’d sheltered her in his arms, he’d experienced some very unprofessional feelings and since he’d gotten to know her, those unprofessional feelings had only deepened. Hell, that was enough to scare any tried and true bachelor. But it didn’t scare him enough to make him rise to his feet and walk away from her.

“Of course you can tell me your name,” he insisted. “It’s Lass.”

“Only temporarily.”

Ignoring that, he said, “And you certainly look old enough to kiss.”

She sighed. “Kate says you’re somewhat of a ladies’ man.”

He grimaced. “Grandma has a motormouth.”

“Then she was speaking the truth?”

Since she wasn’t trying to pull away, Brady made the most of the close proximity by delving his fingers into her silky hair, sliding them downward through the long strands.

“Look, Lass, I’m not going to pretend I’ve been some sort of saint. Especially when—”

“When I can’t even tell you what I’ve been,” she finished miserably. Then biting her bottom lip, she looked away. “I’m sorry, Brady. I had no right to question you about your past. Not when mine is a complete blank.”

“Lass, Lass,” he softly scolded, “no one has to give me your résumé for me to know that you are and were a lady. And in spite of what Grandma says about me, I’m a gentleman.”

Her eyes softened and then to Brady’s amazement, her face drew near to his. “Yes, I think you are,” she whispered.

The moment their lips touched, Brady realized he’d made a mistake. Her kiss didn’t just taste amazing; the sensations went far deeper than that. Like tremors of an earthquake, waves of pleasure vibrated through him, urged him to crush her close, to search out the mysterious sweetness of her lips.

Seconds could have passed or minutes, he didn’t know, but suddenly he felt her arms go around his neck and the sign of surrender brought a groan of triumph deep in his throat. Her lips parted wider and he took advantage, slipping his tongue past their sweet curves and into the honeyed cavity of her mouth.

The intimate connection caused his head to reel and before he could get a grip on his senses, their surroundings began to float away. His hands began to urgently roam her body, his lips fought to totally capture hers and in the process he forgot everything but making love to the woman in his arms.

Until her hands slipped to his shoulders and pushed, her lips abruptly jerked away from his.

The sudden break jolted him and as he attempted to gather himself together, he wanted to ask her what was wrong, why had she interrupted something so incredible.

But one look at her face answered those questions for him. The two of them had been on the verge of losing control, of making love right here beside the pool. And she wasn’t all that happy about it.

Pushing a tangle of hair from her eyes, she said in a husky voice, “I think we’ve ‘walked’ enough for one night. Don’t you?”

Did she really expect him to answer that? He looked away from her and drew in several long, mind-cleansing breaths. What was happening here? He wasn’t supposed to want Lass this much. He wasn’t supposed to want any woman this much.

Rising from the chair, he reached for her hand. “You’re right, Lass. We’d better go in. Before our walk turns into a run.”

He’d been wrong to kiss Lass.

The next morning, as Brady drove south to the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, that dismal thought continued to swirl through his head. He’d misjudged the whole thing and instead of it being a pleasant little connection of the lips, the kiss had turned out to be a heated embrace that had turned him on his ear and left her strangely quiet for the remainder of the evening.

Now, all he could do was relive the experience over and over in his mind and wonder what it all meant. That the two of them had great chemistry together? There was no doubt about that. But he’d dated attractive women before and some of those occasions had turned into overnight delights. Yet he could easily admit that nothing about those unions had messed with his thinking or left him in such a mental fog. Lass was doing something to him. Something that he didn’t understand or want to acknowledge.

Sighing, he glanced over to the empty seat of the pickup truck outfitted with a two-way radio, weapons and other police equipment. This morning he’d left Hank back in Ruidoso, scouring the more popular restaurants and motels where Lass might be remembered by the staff.

Normally, a case like hers wouldn’t receive this much investigative work from the sheriff’s department. Instead, Lass’s case would have fallen under the health and welfare services. But thankfully Sheriff Hamilton had agreed with Brady that the circumstances surrounding Lass’s amnesia smelled of criminal mischief and needed to be resolved.

Brady had no idea how long Ethan would keep the case open or how much time and manpower he would expend toward it. With county cost a factor, Brady knew the search couldn’t last forever. He couldn’t imagine having to tell Lass the effort to find her home and family had to come to an end. In fact, if it came down to it, Brady would use his own resources to find Lass’s identity.