Taming Deputy Harlow Read online

  “Don’t be silly. Jamie was here yesterday. He might as well listen in now. I don’t have much anyway, not more than we already discussed.” He turned and walked back into his office. “How was your evening together?”

  So, that’s why he invited Jamie. He didn’t know how tortured she would be with him near her, much less given what she was about to tell him.

  Jamie grinned as he passed her, winking in a way that warmed her to the point of awkwardness. She couldn’t resist him. Her body wanted to smile and so it did.

  Reluctantly, she went to the seating area, where Kadin waited.

  Jamie sat next to her on the sofa and she wished she had taken the chair adjacent to Kadin. His mere presence, with his big body and fresh scent, sent a pleasurable shiver through her.

  “Your cold case is quite interesting,” Kadin began. “The notes are all very small-town, but the sheriff did a thorough job collecting evidence.”

  “Small-town?” Should she be insulted?

  A flash of a smile lifted his lips. “It was like reading a mystery. I could follow his thoughts like the character in a book. He made comments about the people of Never Summer that made it rather entertaining.”

  When she’d read it she hadn’t picked up on that. But then, she lived there.

  He stood and went to the whiteboard on the wall beside the seating area. “Even though it seems there wasn’t much to collect, I’m confident we’ll find some trace evidence.” He picked up a marker and wrote Ella, Tourism and Highway 149 in a row and spaced apart. “There are a few areas I’m not sure were examined close enough.” He turned to look at them, marker in hand. “Ella is from California. No one checked there for family because she told everyone she had no family.” He drew a line from the word Ella and wrote Family? “That includes checking out Jeffrey’s alibi. Also, why did Ella move to Never Summer? When did she move there? These are all questions that were never asked at the time of her murder.” He drew a line from the word Tourism. “Never Summer survives on its tourism industry. Since no one in town was a suspect, it seems likely a stranger passed through and may have committed the crime. I found nothing in the report to suggest any tourists were questioned.” He wrote Locate and Question Tourists. “And the highway. Why dump the victim’s body on that road? Sure, it’s remote, but it’s also close to Never Summer and no attempt was made to hide or conceal the body...” He wrote, Why this highway in this direction?

  Reese sat transfixed and in awe. He’d just laid out the course of her investigation for her. She could learn a lot from this man...her father.

  “I can help more if you’d like.”

  The offer chased her awe away. If he helped with the investigation, she’d have to see more of him. He didn’t even know she was his daughter. That had to be addressed first. She had to tell him before any of this went any further.

  “Yes, well...” She cleared her throat and adjusted her position on the sofa, clasping her hands on her lap. This was harder than she thought. Not only for her, but for what it would mean to him.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Kadin’s brow rose a fraction and Jamie looked sharply at her.

  “I...I didn’t come here to talk about the case. I...I mean I did, but...but there’s another reason.”

  Kadin looked from Jamie to her, clearly perplexed.

  “Maybe you should sit down for this.” Oh, God, she was nervous. Did she really want to do this? What choice did she have? He deserved to know. He had a right to know.

  She licked her lips and looked down at her clasped hands, which were turning white in her tight grip.

  “Whoa.” Kadin put the marker down on the metal shelf below the whiteboard. “This is serious, then.” He faced her but didn’t move to sit.

  She looked at Jamie. He really shouldn’t be here for this.

  “What is it?” Kadin asked. “Just tell us.”

  Lifting her head, she looked up at Kadin. “It’s personal.”

  “Personal.”

  “Yes. Between you and me.”

  “Me and you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would have remembered an affair and I never sleep with women as young as you.”

  “No.” She shook her head, lowering it again and then catching a glimpse of Jamie’s rapt expression. “It’s not that.”

  The quiet hummed. She heard Jamie’s exhale. Kadin just waited.

  At last she looked up at Kadin and said, “I’m your daughter.”

  Jamie choked on what must have been a midswallow with her shocking announcement.

  Kadin’s face remained impassive. Wearing no cowboy hat, nothing shaded his bright gray eyes or hid thick black hair, trimmed but unruly. She’d gotten her blond hair and brown eyes from her mother.

  “I read all about you,” she said. “You had another daughter you lost to a terrible tragedy. I didn’t come here to be what she must have been to you. I want that said up front.”

  Still, Kadin only stared at her.

  “I was adopted by my parents, Mya and Nelson Harlow, in New York when I was an infant. My mother was too young, just sixteen, when she had me. She never told you she was pregnant or that she gave the baby up for adoption.”

  “That’s impossible,” Kadin finally said. Then he jabbed his thumb at the whiteboard. “Is that case real or did you use it as a ruse to get in here?”

  “No. It’s real. Yes, I did use it, but...I...I didn’t know how to tell you. I only thought you deserved to know.”

  “Why are you really here?” Kadin now demanded.

  Reese sat back, not expecting this kind of reaction. But then she realized he would be shocked at first, and then skeptical.

  “Giselle Yates,” she said. “I’m not sure if Yates was her last name when you knew her. She moved from Massachusetts before she gave birth. She didn’t tell you because her parents forced her to give up the child—me. I only just met her. Giselle. My biological mother. She told me what happened and about you. I didn’t know you were my father until she came to see me.”

  Kaden just stared at her again.

  “I decided to meet you because I think you have a right to know,” she repeated. “M-maybe I was mistaken.”

  She started to stand.

  “No.” Kadin put up his hand and then ran his fingers through his hair. Then with a curse, he walked away from the seating area and leaned over his desk.

  “I know this must be difficult for you.” Reese stood.

  “I’ll leave the two of you.” Jamie stood and went to the door, closing it softly behind him.

  After watching him go, Reese went to the desk. “With your daughter’s murder... I’m so sorry.”

  “She never told me,” he said, still bent over the desk. “After all these years. She never told me.”

  “She was afraid you’d talk her out of giving up the baby and at the time it was more important for her to repair her relationship with her parents. What they thought of her took priority. And then time passed and she decided it was too late.”

  “Too late?” He straightened, anger storming his eyes. “She should have told me.”

  Reese nodded. “I agree. That’s why I came here. You needed to be told, and now I have.”

  “How long have you known?” he asked.

  “I’ve known I was adopted since I was a young girl. I was raised in a good home. We lived in New York for a while and then my dad wanted to go back to his hometown, Never Summer. We’ve lived there ever since. My mother couldn’t have children so they adopted me. It wasn’t until I was in college that I began to get curious about who my biological parents were. I started to search for them...for you. I found my mother first. She traveled to Never Summer to meet me last month. She told me your name and didn’t know what had become of
you. Then just a few days ago she sent me a link to an article about your agency. That’s when I learned about you.”

  She watched him take in her facial features while haunting memories must have been swirling inside his brilliant mind. Did he wonder if his murdered daughter would look like her had she lived? That twisted her heartstrings.

  “I’m going to need some time to absorb all of this.”

  “Of course.”

  “Please don’t take offense. This is quite a shock for me.”

  It must be, especially after losing his second daughter to murder. “No, I completely understand. I didn’t come here to force a father-daughter relationship. You don’t have to worry about me injecting myself into your life. You can keep in touch if you like, but no pressure from me.”

  He didn’t seem to register what she said. Giving him the space she could see he needed, she turned to go, quietly closing the door behind her.

  She almost forgot to stop by Jamie’s office. In the hall, she spotted him getting up from behind his desk. He stopped just inside the doorway.

  She walked to him. After she entered, he closed the door.

  “You sure can deliver a bomb.” He whistled. “Kadin Tandy’s daughter, huh?” His words were light but his tone was leading. “That’s incredible. The media is going to go berserk. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “The media doesn’t have to know.” They had an intimate dinner that had led to sleeping together. She could have easily told him over dinner, but the magnitude of meeting her real father had kept her from saying anything. It was still too personal.

  He waited a few seconds as though expecting her to explain. When she didn’t, he didn’t seem put off, which touched her deep down.

  “They won’t hear it from me,” he said. “But eventually, word is going to get out.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” She did not look forward to that. “And your discretion.”

  He nodded and moved a step closer.

  This would be goodbye now. She didn’t evade him when he put his hand on her lower back, fingers caressing her rear before gliding up to pull her to him. He made her hot for him just like that. Breathless yet again, she ran her hands up his chest as he lowered his head and kissed her. He moved his mouth with hers, gently, reverently at first, but the hot desire they had for each other couldn’t be quenched with just that. In an instant, she opened to him and he to her. The kiss grew fevered and out of control.

  “It wasn’t a dream.” Jamie pressed her to the door and kissed her again.

  Unable to stop herself, Reese reached for the clasp of his pants. He kissed her ravenously and then withdrew, taking her hand in his to stop her from continuing.

  “Not like this,” he said.

  Both of them breathing heavily, Reese tipped her head back.

  “It has to mean more,” he added.

  She feared he’d deliberately left off the rest of his thought—to you. This had to mean more to her.

  She pressed with her hands on his chest until he moved back a step. “I should get going. I’m going to miss my flight.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time.” He released her hand and stepped back some more.

  She turned and started to open the door.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  She looked back over her shoulder.

  “I’m going to be seeing a lot of you.”

  A flash of apprehension shot through her. “You’re in Wyoming and I’m in Colorado.”

  “That isn’t going to stop me. Besides, a man like Kadin Tandy won’t allow you to walk out of his life. His daughter.”

  She stared at him as the implications became clear. She wouldn’t be able to avoid running in to him. While her pheromones cheered, her mind had other plans.

  Chapter 4

  Jamie couldn’t concentrate on the résumé he held in front of him on his desk. Reese had returned to Never Summer two days ago. He planned to give her some time before he began his campaign to win her heart. He wasn’t sure he could. His mind kept wandering back to when he’d awoken around 2:00 a.m. to find Reese still sleeping against him. Her eyes had fluttered open, drowsiness clearing and that mysterious, potent chemistry taking its place.

  He’d rolled onto her and saw a flash of vulnerability. The first time they’d done this, lust had ruled. The second time meant something.

  He would never forget that look in her eyes, as though he’d penetrated so much more than her body. He would have stopped if she’d told him to, but he knew she’d fallen under the same spell.

  Capitalizing on her sweet vulnerability, he’d run his hands from her inner thighs up to her knees and spread them. She’d inhaled with an impassioned sound and arched her chest, head back and eyes sliding shut.

  “Look at me,” he’d told her.

  She’d opened her eyes and the vulnerability intensified as he’d pushed into her, exquisitely slow, nearly going out of his mind to find her so ready for him. She’d inhaled again, sharper, softer after that, startled breaths with each inward stroke of hardness against softness. Perfection mating.

  He’d kissed her the way a man would kiss the woman he loved as they both climaxed. Hard, deep pulsations that touched his soul. Her soul. He could believe they’d communed with the forces of heaven just then, the universe, the great energy and giver of life and love.

  Three knocks made him drop the résumé he still hadn’t read onto his desk and look toward the door.

  Kadin stood there. “Have a minute?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  He didn’t look happy as he shut the door and came to sit on one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Reese said something peculiar before she left my office the other day.”

  Why talk to Jamie about this? He surely had people closer to him that he could talk to, like his wife.

  “She said she didn’t come here to force a father-daughter relationship or to inject herself into my life. No pressure. Keep in touch if you prefer.”

  Yeah, that pretty much sounded like Reese. The way she ran away that morning had been a real eye-opener.

  “She gave you quite a shock. Hell, I was shocked.”

  “Who wouldn’t be to discover they had a child they never knew about? A grown adult? But she seemed...distant.” He seemed to need verification from Jamie, the only other person who knew Reese, even if only minimally.

  “Like she pushes off serious relationships, be they father-daughter or boyfriend-girlfriend?” Jamie said.

  “Yeah. That’s it. You noticed?” Then he angled his head. “Did the two of you cover a lot of ground that night you went to dinner?”

  Was he fishing for information? He must have needed the last couple of days for it to sink in that Reese was truly his daughter.

  “That’s one way of putting it.” Jamie wasn’t comfortable talking about the type of ground he’d covered with Reese, not when Kadin was her father.

  “Do you think she wants to have a father-daughter relationship with me?”

  “She didn’t tell me you were her father. I found out when you did. But Reese is an extremely independent woman.” She thought she could walk away from her biological father and Jamie and not have that independence threatened. What she didn’t take into account was that not everyone would try to take it away. “I think she has a hard time with change.”

  Kadin nodded in thought. “She grew up with adoptive parents and has her own life in that small mountain town.”

  “And she wants to be sheriff.”

  For a moment Kadin appeared discouraged, a rarity for a man like him. But then he brightened. “She could be a detective here.”

  He clearly wanted his daughter in his life, more so than she likely wanted him in hers. Would he use his agency as incent
ive? Would Reese change her goal of being sheriff to working as a detective at DAI? To Jamie, that was a no-brainer. This agency would be a much bigger advancement in her career than being sheriff in some unknown town in the middle of remote mountains. But Reese would view any coercive efforts to get her to leave that life very differently. She’d accuse them of asking her to follow someone else’s life, not hers. Her vulnerability had given him the first sign. Racing off to the shower before he woke had been the second and last he needed.

  He’d met women like her before. He’d sought them out in his previous life. Should he avoid them in his next? No. It was too early to make that judgment, and more than her independence made her interesting to him. He’d risk everything pursuing her, even with the remote possibility she’d surrender to him.

  “It must have been quite a blow learning she was your daughter.” It had come as a big shock to him. Kadin must have almost collapsed.

  “It just about killed me, making the comparisons and dealing with never being able to see my daughter again. But then I realized what a gift this is. I have another daughter.” He sounded awe-stricken.

  “How does your wife feel about it?”

  “She was thrilled. She’s the one who came up with the idea of taking a vacation to Never Summer.”

  “A...vacation?” He’d inject himself into her life and Reese would recoil.

  “I won’t crowd her. It’s a way to get close without suffocating her. I’m sure she needs time to get accustomed to meeting her real father.”

  “I doubt she’ll throw you out of town, but you might drive her away if you push too hard.”

  “You seem to know her pretty well.”

  “Intuition.” Kadin didn’t need to know how Jamie had learned so much about Reese. Or when. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I want you to go with us.”

  “You... With your family?” He felt his eyebrows rise and he leaned on his elbows.

  “We’d meet there. And you’d have to stay at a hotel or something. I need you to be a sort of buffer, the guy offering to help with her case on behalf of DAI.”