Debra Webb - Special Assignment - Baby

His lids fluttered open and that silvery gaze was cluttered with what looked like regret. “What do you want me to say, Brin? I did what I had to do. I couldn’t stay. I thought you, of all people, understood that?”

“Let me go, Court.” Sabrina stumbled back a step at the intensity of the remorse in his eyes. She didn’t want to see it. She wanted to keep believing that he hadn’t cared and still didn’t. It was the only way she could justify her own actions. “Just let me go.”

“We need to set things straight between us, Brin.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Too late.

She yanked her arm free of his touch. “Stay away from me,” she warned. “And stay away from my brother.”

He cocked one sandy-brown brow. “That’ll be pretty difficult since you keep showing up around here and your brother seems to be a part of the movement,” he suggested with that old Court confidence. His stance had already eased into that sensual, predatory male posture that had always made her heart pound in her rib cage. Just like it did now.

“I’m helping with the children,” she said when she found her voice. “They needed another teacher. And my brother is a kid, he doesn’t realize what he’s doing.”

“Then, I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

Sabrina swallowed and backed away another step. “Don’t think you can pick up right where you left off, Court Brody,” she warned, ire surging through her. “I’m not the foolish girl I used to be.”

One side of his mouth hitched up in a heart-stopping, sexy gesture. “I never thought you were,” he assured her in that low, husky voice that made her insides quiver.

“I have a life now…one that doesn’t include you,” she retorted, aiming for a direct hit to his enlarged ego. He ignored it.

A frown line suddenly formed between his eyebrows as if he’d just remembered something important. “By the way, who’s Ryan?”

COURT’S QUESTION reverberated through her, rocking her already crumbling resolve. Sabrina grappled for an answer that would satisfy his mounting curiosity. The longer he waited, searching her face, reading the uncertainty she couldn’t hide, the more suspicious he grew.

A sudden jolt of fury fueled her courage. “He’s none of your business,” she snapped. “In fact, nothing about me is any of your damned business anymore, and you’d better get that notion through your thick skull, Brody.”

His silvery gaze narrowed, then darkened with irritation. “Fine. If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way it’ll be. I just thought we could be friends.”

Friends? The blast of anger she experienced moments before erupted into blazing flames of raging emotion inside her, tightening her throat and chest, sending adrenaline pumping through her veins. He wanted to be friends? He’d stolen her heart so long ago that she had forgotten what it felt like to have any control whatsoever over her own desires or dreams. Then, when it appeared the rest of her life was determined to fall completely apart around her, he waltzed back into town nine years after leaving her behind and took what her foolish heart openly offered just as if he had never left at all. Two years passed without another single word, and now he wanted to be friends.

“Friends like you I don’t need.” Sabrina spun away from his intense glare and practically sprinted back to the sanctuary of the classroom. Her heart slammed mercilessly against the aching wall of her chest. That was too close…way, way too close.

Once inside the meeting hall door, she sagged against the wall and attempted to catch her fleeing breath. She had to find a way to avoid Court altogether. Just being near him shook her, tied her up in knots so that she couldn’t think straight. She just couldn’t deal with another of these high intensity face-offs.

She took another deep, calming breath. She needed to do two things to protect her son and herself. Her plan was simple, she would avoid Court Brody at all costs, and she had to make sure Charlie never mentioned Ryan to him again. That in itself would be no small feat. Charlie questioned everything she said these days. More often than not he argued against whatever she decided. But she had no choice. She had to make him see, without telling him the reason, that Court could never find out about Ryan.

Satisfied now that she had a plan, Sabrina pushed away from the wall and walked toward the classroom to the left of the main hall. As she entered the room, she produced a smile for the dozen sets of curious eyes that greeted her. This was where she had to focus her attention. Whatever happened within the walls of this compound, whatever insanity Joshua Neely had planned, Sabrina had to find a way to protect these children and her independence-seeking brother.

She glanced at the two solemn-faced teachers hovering over Neely’s provided lesson plans. No one else here recognized the truth of the matter. But Sabrina saw it as clearly as day—Joshua Neely was a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing—she surveyed the room again—and these little lambs were his prey.

COURT STOOD IN THE MIDDLE of the quadrangle, barely registering the comings and goings of those around him. He scrubbed a hand over his face and tried to sort the tangle of reactions twisting inside him.

There was another man in Sabrina’s life. Court swallowed, the movement restricted by the emotion clamped around his throat. He had anticipated that, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he fully expected her to be married and maybe have a kid by now? Just because he’d come home two years ago, after nine years of living away, and had found Sabrina still single and ready to fall once more into his arms didn’t mean that she would be still waiting.

Court released a long, frustrated breath. Deep down, he admitted, that’s exactly what he had expected. Oh, he could fool himself by saying that he hadn’t really anticipated seeing her. Or that he didn’t even know for sure that she was still around the area. But they would be lies.

In the deepest recesses of his soul he had known she would be here, still running the ranch her daddy had left her. Still holding some power over his heart that he couldn’t quite label…or wouldn’t label. No matter how far away or how fast he ran, something about Sabrina kept a part of him forever attached to this place. The place he never wanted to see again, the place where he’d spent his teen years restless and impatient. The place he’d been ready to watch fade in the rearview mirror of the first vehicle he’d ever owned for far too long before the wish became a reality. The day he’d finished paying for that old Ford truck, he’d kissed his mother goodbye and left Montana without ever looking back, other than the occasional brief visit.

Court cursed himself for dredging up and overanalyzing ancient history. He didn’t belong here anymore, no matter what that small part of him still connected on some level to Sabrina said. When this assignment was over, he would leave, and this time he wouldn’t be back. Once Montana Confidential was up and running full steam, there wouldn’t be any need for a guy like him. An ex-Montana boy. Next time anything went down in the Treasure State, the Bureau would just have to send some other sucker. With the Confidential boys in place, there would be no excuse that they needed someone familiar with the people and the landscape.

“Court!”

Court turned around to find Raymond Green double-timing it in his direction. “Yo, Raymond, what’s up?” He manufactured a smile of greeting for the zealous man.

“Joshua wants to see you in the hole.”

Court frowned. “The hole?”

Raymond grinned, excitement gleaming in his eyes. “Come on, I’ll show you the way.”