Shattered Vows. Maggie Price

forearms on either side of her shoulders. He eased his chest off hers. The next instant she pried one booted foot out from beneath his leg and delivered a stunning kick to the side of his shin that had stars springing into his head.

      “Get off me, you jerk!”

      Expelling an explicit curse, he locked his leg back over hers. “Dammit, woman, it’s me.”

      “I heard you the first time,” she hissed.

      As if accepting she was outweighed and out-muscled, she stopped squirming. Rays from the far-off streetlight slanted across her face, picking up the flashing anger in her green eyes as she glared up at him.

      “I looked out the bedroom window and saw some prowler skulking in the dark. I thought you were on the other side of the house.”

      “I doubled back. Decided to look through the garage window for your car.”

      “You ought to know better than to prowl around at night. I came out prepared to take you down.” She jerked her chin in the direction the Sig had flown when she crashed to the ground. “Shoot you, if I had to.”

      Bran set his jaw. Her reaction was typical Tory—grab a situation by the throat and deal with it. In contrast, his first wife would have stayed safely indoors, phoned the police and reported the prowler. But Patience was long dead, and at this instant the woman squirming beneath him was the primary concern of both his mind and his body.

      His hands tightened around her wrists. “When you spotted me, you should have called the cops. Let them take care of things.”

      “No self-respecting private investigator needs a cop’s help to take down a measly prowler.”

      He hooked a brow. “This coming from the P.I. presently smashed beneath said measly prowler.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “What do you want, Bran?”

      “If you’d returned one of my phone calls you wouldn’t have to ask.”

      He stared down at her for the first time in three months, inspecting her with intensity. Her thick blond hair was still long, looking like polished gold in the faint light as it flared across the dry grass. He didn’t have to wonder how it would feel to stroke that soft cheek or settle his mouth on those lush lips. Despite his parka’s thickness, he was aware of the long, lean lines of her warm, supple body. The sparks they’d forever generated in bed had made for register-on-the-Richter-Scale sex. Problem was, they always had to come up for air and that was when their clashing personalities and opposing needs sent everything to hell.

      The heat swarming into his blood had him clenching his teeth. Dammit, he hadn’t come here to sate his physical needs. Not when an escaped killer had threatened revenge against him and three other cops.

      Bran thought back to the panic that had hit him when he’d glanced through the garage window and seen that Tory’s car was gone, which was unusual this late at night. Fearing that bad-ass Vic Heath had beat him here, then left in Tory’s car, he’d bolted around the side of the house, intending to use his key to get in the back door and check her welfare.

      Instead, he’d collided with her.

      Relief that Heath hadn’t gotten his hands on her seeped into him like water soaking into sand. “Where’s your car?”

      “Being worked on.” She squirmed. “Dammit, Bran, let me up.”

      He nearly groaned when he felt himself stir. “All right.” He pushed to his feet. “Look, I’d like to come inside. We need to talk.”

      She sat up, flicked a look at the hand he offered, then rose without his help. “About?”

      Not us, he thought, feeling the same wariness he saw in her eyes after she scooped up her Sig and turned to face him.

      “A cop got killed this afternoon.”

      “Not someone in the family, right?” Her free hand flew to her mouth in shock, then dropped. “Bran, tell me it’s not—”

      “It’s not.” His grandfather and dad had retired from the Oklahoma City Police Department. He had two brothers, three sisters and several soon-to-be brothers-in-law currently serving on the department. Whenever word of a cop getting hurt came down, the entire McCall clan held its collective breath.

      Reaching out, Bran brushed a blond wave off her cheek. “We’re all fine.” He had never questioned her love for his family. Her feelings for him were a different matter.

      As if to prove that, she took an instant step back, forcing him to drop his hand. “Good. Okay.”

      He looked across his shoulder past the shadow-laden side of the house toward the front yard. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. Felt nothing.

      “Is someone out there?” Tory’s voice was a whisper on the freezing air.

      “My gut tells me no,” he said, keeping his gaze trained on the sliver of front yard he could see. “But there’s a bad guy loose who’d like to ambush some cops. Which is why I parked a couple of blocks over and walked here. Skulked, as you call it,” he added, looking back at her.

      He’d never thought of Tory Dewitt as easy on the eyes. There simply wasn’t anything easy about her. She was tall—nearly his height—model-thin, with a face as angular as her body. A pointed chin, sharp cheekbones and sensual mouth combined to create a tough, stubborn, sexy face. At the moment, though, she looked more dangerous than sexy, standing inches away in her black jeans and worn leather jacket, one hand gripping the Sig while her breath made quick puffs of steam in the frigid air.

      He dipped his head. “The dead cop was a corrections officer. You didn’t know him, but there’s a chance the bastards who killed him might come after me. They could show up here. You need to know what’s going on.”

      Her mouth thinned, and he sensed her fingers tightening on the Sig. “All right.”

      She led the way along the shadowy cobblestone walk that Bran and his brother-in-law had laid during a sweltering summer five years ago. Now, Ryan Fox was dead, the only cop in the McCall clan who’d died in the line of duty. Bran hoped to hell there would never be another.

      He followed Tory inside, closed the door and set the deadbolt. He realized the house had looked uninhabited from the front because the only light came from the one she flicked on when she walked through the door.

      He missed this house, Bran thought as he glanced around the homey kitchen, its soft yellow paint setting off deep blue counters. When he and Patience had bought the place, they’d done so with a sense of permanence, of putting down roots, building a life together and raising a family. Growing old together. That dream had ended three years ago on the day his high-school sweetheart went off to play tennis. She’d suffered a brain aneurysm on the court, and she’d come home in a coffin.

      Bran closed his eyes, opened them. He was keenly aware that the air in the kitchen held no lingering aroma of delicacies fresh from the oven. Unlike Patience, who’d nearly lived in the kitchen, Tory didn’t cook. Other than the refrigerator, the only appliance that got more than a passing glance was the espresso maker he’d bought her to brew the lattes she seemed to exist on. He’d surprised her with the espresso maker last Valentine’s Day, right after they’d eloped.

      Now, eleven months later, their marriage was circling the drain. Bran walked to the long bank of windows on his right and began closing blinds, thinking he and Tory sure as hell wouldn’t be spending the holiday made for lovers together this year.

      “Want a latte?” she asked.

      He turned, shrugged out of his parka. “Sounds good.”

      He studied his wife as she abandoned the Sig on the nearest counter, then peeled off her scarred leather jacket. Her jeans, ripped at one knee, hugged her narrow hips and endless legs. The long-sleeved T-shirt tucked into the jeans was plain white cotton, and her unhampered breasts pressed nicely against the soft fabric.

      The sudden