Beg To Die

“Laura, I made a mistake in leaving our engagement party before it ended. I didn’t realize at the time how it would look to you, your parents, and our guests.” Jamie took another couple of steps toward her. “Chalk it up to my eagerness to do something I should have done a long time ago.”

She looked at him again, this time for several seconds, before glancing down at the floor. “What—what are you talking about? What should you have done a long time ago?”

“Ended things with Jazzy.”

Laura’s head snapped up, her gaze focused directly on his face. He’d known that statement about Jazzy would gain him her full attention.

“I don’t understand,” Laura said.

He moved closer, bringing himself within touching distance of his eager-to-believe-him fiancée. “Last night at our engagement party, with our family and friends here to celebrate with us, I realized just how important this marriage is to me…how important you are to me. I want our marriage to work. I—I love you, Laura.”

Tears gathered in her eyes as she stared at him, disbelief battling with hope in her expression. “You went to Jazzy and you spent the night with her.”

“Yes, I went to Jazzy.” He reached out for Laura. She pulled back, retreating from his touch. “I went to her to tell her that it’s over between us. Now and forever. I told her that I love you. She understood. We talked for a couple of hours—just talked—then I left.”

“If that’s true, then where were you all night?”

“I drove around for a while, thinking, pondering my many mistakes, making plans for my—our future. Before I knew it, I found myself over in Knox County, nearly in downtown Knoxville. I thought about calling you, but hell, sugar, it was the wee hours of the morning. So I pulled off at a rest stop and got a few hours sleep before I headed back home.”

“I want to believe you.”

Jamie zeroed in on her, leaving her no room for escape. Knowing she wouldn’t put up much of a fight, he pulled her into his arms and said, “Believe this, Laura. I love you. Only you.” When he lowered his head to kiss her, she turned away from him. He grasped her chin and maneuvered her face around so that he could take her lips. Once he kissed her, she succumbed without even so much as a whimper. God, she was so easy. Dumb little cunt.

When he finally ended the kiss, she looked up at him with love and trust in her eyes. “Oh, Jamie, I love you so much.”

“I know you do. And I love you even more. We’re going to be the happiest young couple in the state of Tennessee come three weeks from Saturday.” He lifted her into his arms and swung her around the room. “Hell, make that the happiest couple in the whole United States of America.”

Reve wanted nothing more than to escape Cherokee Pointe as fast as she could. She’d been a fool for coming here, for seeking out Jasmine Talbot in the hopes the woman might prove to be her biological sister. Even though she didn’t quite believe Sally Talbot’s staunch denial that Sally’s younger sister had given birth to more than one child, Reve couldn’t accept the fact that she and a woman such as Jazzy Talbot might be blood related. The woman was trash. And from what she’d gathered on very brief acquaintance, Jazzy was a whore. Even if by some weird trick of fate she and Jazzy were related, Reve didn’t want to pursue the truth. She didn’t want to be the woman’s sister. Hell, she didn’t want them even to be cousins. And she certainly didn’t want the likes of Sally Talbot to be her aunt!

As she zoomed her Jag along the highway leading out of town, she considered the can of worms she might have opened with her visit. Why had she told them her name? If any of them wanted to find her, it would be very easy. Everyone who was anyone in Chattanooga, in all of Hamilton County, knew who Reve Sorrell was. She was the heir to Sorrell fortune! People like Jazzy Talbot and her aunt Sally were the type to want money from a long-lost relative.

And what about Caleb McCord? She’d taken an instant liking to him, but she didn’t kid herself about what sort of man he was. From the looks of him, he was a diamond in the rough, a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks. A woman like Jazzy would know how to handle that kind of man, but Reve figured she would be out of her depth. She liked her gentlemen friends to be her social, intellectual, and financial equal. It didn’t take a genius to figure out Caleb McCord didn’t fit that bill, at least on two counts.

Would Caleb’s curiosity about why Reve Sorrell and Jazzy Talbot looked enough alike to be twins translate into action? Would she have to pay him off so he would let the matter drop? And once they discovered how rich she was, what would it cost her to make Jazzy and Sally Talbot disappear from her life?

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.”