Beg To Die. BEVERLY BARTON

      Cursing herself for allowing her desire to know the truth about her “double” to create a potentially embarrassing situation for her, Reve didn’t realize how fast she was driving until she whizzed past a big black pickup truck going in the opposite direction. Suddenly she heard a siren. Damn! Glancing in her rearview mirror she saw the blue flashing light atop the truck, which had turned around in the middle of the road. Oh, great. Just great. Who was this guy? A policeman? A sheriff’s deputy?

      Slow down and pull off to the side of the road, she told herself. Pay off this overeager lawman and be on your way.

      Before she could follow through with her plans to be a cooperative citizen, an enormous animal dashed across the road in front of her. Good God! A full-grown buck with an impressive rack that would gain the deer the admiration of any hunter. She swerved, trying to keep from hitting the magnificent animal, and in the process wound up running her Jag into the ditch. And not just a shallow ditch on the side of the road. No, it was a deep ditch, on the side of the mountain. Luckily she managed to bring the car to a full stop only seconds before it would have hit head-on into a massive oak tree. When she skidded to a halt, even her seat belt didn’t prevent her from bouncing. Thankfully, the air bag didn’t deploy.

      With her heart beating wildly, her nerves screaming, and a sudden headache pounding in her temples, Reve tried to undo her seat belt. Her nervous fingers couldn’t manage the simple task. What was the matter with her? She wasn’t hurt. Didn’t have a scratch on her. Whatever damage had been done to the Jag could be repaired, and if not, she’d simply buy herself a new car and use one of the five others she owned in the meantime.

      Why was she shaking like a leaf?

      Shock. She was in shock. That had to be it.

      A loud rapping on the driver’s side window gained her immediate attention. When she looked through the window, she gasped when she saw the face of a darkskinned savage, with black hair down to his shoulders, and a set of slanted green eyes peering at her. Maybe she’d hit her head and didn’t remember. Surely she was hallucinating. This man couldn’t be real.

      Suddenly the driver’s side door opened and the hallucination spoke to her. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

      Reve gulped as she came face-to-face with the most brutally masculine man she’d ever seen in her entire life. A big, fierce warrior, with an angry look in his moss green eyes, reached out and began running his huge hands over her head, neck, shoulders, and arms.

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she cried. “Get your hands off me.”

      He ceased his inspection and withdrew his hands. “I was trying to check you for injuries, since you didn’t respond. If you’re all right, let me help you get out and up the hill to my truck. I’ll call a wrecker and—”

      “Who are you?” She stared at the guy, noting that although he spoke with authority, he wasn’t wearing any type of uniform. For all she knew he was a serial rapist who just happened to be in possession of a flashing blue police light.

      “Sheriff Butler,” he told her.

      “You’re the sheriff?” Inspecting him further, she realized he was Native American, at least part Native American. Of course half-breeds and quarter breeds probably weren’t all that uncommon in this area, which wasn’t that far from the Cherokee reservation just over the state line.

      “I noticed you have a Hamilton County tag,” he said. “You visiting somebody here or you just passing through?”

      “Just passing through,” she replied.

      He reached over and undid her seat belt. “Think you can manage to get out, or should I help—”

      “I can get out without any help, thank you very much.”

      After grabbing her purse off the other bucket seat, she shoved the sheriff aside and managed to exit the Jag, but the minute her high heels hit the soft, uneven ground, she lost her balance. He grabbed her around the waist, the action unintentionally bringing her body up against his rock-hard chest. She gasped, then looked up at him as her heartbeat drummed loudly in her ears. Their gazes locked instantly.

      “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he stared at her, his mouth slightly parted.

      “Take a picture, Sheriff, it’ll last longer.”

      “Sorry.” He apologized, but continued staring at her. “You remind me of a friend of mine. The two of you could be—”

      “Twins,” Reve finished his sentence for him.

      “Yeah, how’d you know?”

      “Just a wild guess.” She pulled away from him and tried to walk up the steep embankment, but three-inch heels weren’t made for mountain climbing.

      Sheriff Butler came up beside her, put his arm around her waist, and all but hauled her up the hill. How totally demoralizing, she thought. Up until this moment in time, she’d never had so much as a parking ticket. And here she was being dragged away from the scene of an auto accident she had caused by her reckless driving. Well, not reckless, just speedy.

      When they reached the side of the road, the sheriff released her instantly, as if he had no more desire to touch her than she had for him to have his hands on her. There was something unnerving about the man, something about him that sent off warning signals in her brain. And what disturbed her the most was that her reaction to him—to his touch—wasn’t revulsion. No, it was something else. Something she couldn’t name.

      “We’ll get a wrecker out here to bring your car up and take it to the garage,” he told her. “You’re lucky. It would have been a damn shame if your bad driving had totaled your little XKR. I guess that fancy sports car must have set you back at least eighty grand.”

      She didn’t like his tone, didn’t like his condescending attitude. Hell, she didn’t like him! He was too bossy, too big, too masculine. “No big deal,” she replied. “The only thing that matters is that no one was injured, not even the deer.”

      “Yeah, you’re lucky, all right.” He surveyed every inch of her, studying her closely as if he was memorizing her face and body. “Speeding the way you were doing often leads to serious accidents. Sometimes fatal.”

      “I wasn’t driving that fast.”

      “My guess is you were doing over seventy-five in a fifty-five speed zone.”

      “You guess my car cost eighty grand. You guess I was doing over seventy-five.” Reve crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the sheriff, giving him her best I’m-important-and-you’re-not expression. “Do you know anything for certain, Sheriff, or do you just go through life making uneducated guesses?”

      His gaze narrowed as he focused on her. She shivered. That stern, disapproving glare rattled her nerves.

      “Get in the truck,” he told her as he headed toward his vehicle. “I’m taking you to my office where I’ll get all the information I need. Then, if I decide not to arrest you—”

      “Arrest me!” Reve stormed around the hood of the truck, following him until she could grab his arm. “Now, you listen here to me, you big country hick Cochise wanna be, I’m not accustomed to being treated this way. I can easily contact the governor and—”

      He turned around, grabbed her by the shoulders sternly but gently, and said, “Get your butt in the truck. Now. And if you want to call the governor when we get to my office, then you call him. Hell, call the president for all I care. The way I see it, you must have a screw loose to overreact to everything that’s happened the way you have.”

      “Are you implying that I’m mentally incompetent?”

      “Lady, I’m not implying anything. Now, get in the truck before I pick you up and put you in it.”

      Reve jerked away from him and planted her hands on her hips. “Do you have any idea who I am?”